Constant validation of self is as akin and innate to human self as probably is the wired behavior of animals wagging their tales. Probably that is why, there is this love and hate relationship of most humans with mirrors; still never being able to dispense with it. People around us too somehow stand as ‘mirror’ to us – validating us at times, often disapproving us, still never dispensable for us…
This dualism never leaves us. For example, all performing artists shall admit that when art is devised, people are distractions but still, no performing artists is happy, if he/she does not get loads of people, validating his/her art. This dualism is instinctive. The mirror, we keep looking at, is never enough. We need million mirrors to validate our ‘art’, still, we know and feel it that mirrors are detrimental to the very sanctity of art itself…
This stupid engineering of evolution probably designed our brain and the resultant consciousness in such a way that it is wired in all of us to feel ‘rewarded’. As emotional wellbeing is so core to our wellness definition, feeling rewarded is some core emotional need, which we constantly keep seeking, throughout of our lives. And, the best manifestation of this rewarded sensibility is ample and constant quantum of validation…
This validation is in fact a huge element of subconscious mind states for not only learning but survival. As a small kid comes out of his/her mother’s womb, for every act and behavior, he/she looks up to his/her parents for validation. Science has confirmed that learning is all about how a kid accepts ‘utility’ and ‘futility’, on the basis of validation and invalidation, which parents and ambient milieus extend to him/her…
Nothing, almost nothing stands important to humans and other living beings, which is not aligned to and ascribable to core need of ‘survival’, as perceived and accepted by our brain states. And, nothing stands of any utility, which is outside the cognitive domain of our brain states. This means – need for constant validation is aligned to survival sensibility of brain states. However, as we have come too far away from evolutionary diktats and instinctive life-living, we all need to ‘revalidate’ this validation element in our consciousness structures.
If we can see and accept it, from the specificity of perspectives, it may seem to us that cultures and concomitant societal etiquettes of idealisms are also ‘structures of validation’. As and when cultures become ambivalent on righteousness of singularity of validations, as and when cultures become crumbling structures of idealisms of validation and begin to act indifferent and even loquaciously self-negating, average humans lose the reference point of patterned validation. This is recipe of lustrous smorgasbord of chaos and confusion…
… did someone say, the contemporary cultures globally are pathologically aligned towards this malaise? Anyway…!
Let there be debates on that. What this writer wishes to put in perspective here is the need to accept that we live in 21st century. We are new millennium people. We now have knowledge of critical importance, which science has extended to us. We now know of the brain states and its structural/functional domain. This beckons humanity to design and redesign all cultural structures in a way that is now in sync and linearity with our modern knowledge. Our contemporary cultures need revalidation of the ‘validation structures’, which create cultures and popular societal etiquettes.
Moreover, as education system is core element of culture, the primary task at hand is restructuring modern education on the basis of the contemporary scientific knowledge of brain states. If we have a mechanism and process, which is common to all of us, and if we now know reasonably well about it, this is the time humanity has a global system of cultures and education. The human nature is common, the societies and their pattern of validation therefore should ideally have a global commonality…
Let the debate begin…
