TED Community » Abid Azam

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Psychology, music, film, art, health, gaming, romance, poetry, personal growth, humor, language, creativity, education, storytelling, and social change.

An idea worth spreading

For any idea we should not ask whether we can fit its integration into our lives, but how we can condense every other aspect of our lives to accommodate it. For life is all about compromise, and that entails shape-shifting and morphing into something new entirely. Baby steps to evolution.

Talk to me about

Anything. I'm a great listener.

My TED Story

Is being written as we speak...

Comments

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  A comment on Talk: Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys?

  May 24 2012: I know this is a 4 minute TEDtalk, and so detail is not to be expected, but I'm skeptical about the psychological basis of this work. It is one thing to say such and such is causing so and so development, it is another to attempt to causally or by correlation explain why a particular human disposition is more prone to pitfalls in male aptitude. I don't think the latter is done here. When he says brains are being "digitally rewired", I take it to mean that excessive technological enchantment makes us too dependent on novelty as opposed to genuine social interaction. But I think this technological enchantment merely has the appearance of being solitary, and is actually more encouraging of social interaction, albeit of a different kind. The real digital rewiring is of how we each experience this technological age to fuel our social ventures, as opposed to the other way around where over-reliance on technology renders us as "struggling boys". The rising numbers of "struggling boys" can also be explained by inability to detach or distinguish social surroundings from virtual ones. That is where the real research questions lie, because otherwise we are choosing to ignore the vast number of guys that have been able to adjust well to abundantly technological world. Now does that mean the guy who's watching 100 porn videos in a week could still be a responsible well educated man? Probably not. Outliers aside, I think the middling group needs to be examined a little more closely than categorized into guys who play too many video games/watch a lot of porn etc.

• A reply on Conversation: Is there a stigma attached to positivity?

  Jan 18 2012: I'm not so sure Walter, as to the stigma only being invoked by depressive neurotics. I communicate with many people who are actually in outreach settings, with future-oriented focus, and it is even those I feel the stigma coming from. I mean it in a more subtle sense, like simply not attending to positive messages, or telling someone to stop being 'preachy', these are the kinds of things done casually in conversation that I feel are actually a part of this stigma that pervades our society. People have a tendency to not take seriously the messages of compassion, self-enhancement, and optimism offered by other people or institutions of any kind. Just recently I attended a workshop on positive psychology and one of the people there quickly asked upon entering "this isn't one of those self-help things is it?", and sort of cringed at the idea of it. It's embedded fairly deeply in the common psyche.

• A reply on Conversation: Who & what are you seeking peace with most often....self, others or life?

  Jan 17 2012: I know that I won't be fully satisfied until I have explored my aptitude for peace in each of the three realms before my day is done. But its not like I am conscious of this and try to force myself to have this state at all times. For example, lately I've realized that I have a need for high levels of social interaction on a daily basis, and it doesn't even have to be meaningful, I can find meaning on the most mundane interactions if I need to, but the substance has to be there. This is an interpersonal need, that infringes upon my peace of mind as well. So in order to attain that balance I try to put myself in situations where I can get chit-chat, teamwork, group work, or rambling conversations in to my day. But I don't have control over the universal aspect of this activity, whether I'm able to occupy the space other people are is a barrier that I just have to maneuver around, because I cannot manipulate it.
  
  So its not that I analyze each action or occurrence through three different lenses, rather I try to be cognizant of the overlap between what I need, what others expect/can grant for me, and what the strict randomness of the universe actually allows.

• A comment on Conversation: Who & what are you seeking peace with most often....self, others or life?

  Jan 14 2012: This is a question I ask myself whenever I have to take action or interpret some other action or phenomenon. I ask, what is my soul telling me? What are other people telling me? And what is the universe telling me? You can see how the frame of the narrative expands from the moral, to ethical, and finally spiritual. I think I don't necessarily seek peace in one domain more so than another, but rather I seek peace between these three realms so as to balance out life's forces and take all into account. Hope that is a sufficient first response to the question.

• A comment on Conversation: What is costlier, a personal or interpersonal problem?

  Dec 28 2011: To Luis,
  
  It is fair to say that one should be more active and rigorous in how they deal with personal problems, than interpersonal problems. I think where the conversation goes from here is the risk involved with that, and whether it is justified to treat yourself with more of a magnified lens when you are unsure if an interpersonal problem is actually more of a personal problem that another person has. What's the call on that?

• A reply on Conversation: What is costlier, a personal or interpersonal problem?

  Dec 28 2011: You've raised an interesting point about which to deal with first if they are interrelated. The standard thinking is that you cannot be comfortable with another person if you are not comfortable with who you are. But I think that is an outdated way to look at it. Now, people are more encouraged to be self-accepting, and more often than not choose to accept some part of themselves as a flaw they cannot change. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is prominent in the western individualist society that is growing in its influence. So now, do you look at that a forced self-acceptance that is bound to reveal itself later in the form of other personal problems, could that not possibly spill over into interpersonal problems? I should probably give an example before I go any further. I suppose a situation such as inhibiting envy would be problematic if you just acknowledge it passively and say to yourself that it is just a character flaw you have. Confronting it personally, asking why it exists within you to have envious feelings for another individual is probably harder than just letting it pass. So it is likely that is will happen again, and potentially be more intense than before resulting in interpersonal conflicts. So in that sense, it is probably better to deal with the personal issue first, actively, that is.