Mind Games
The mind is a terrible thing. So begins the post at www.lifehack.org: YOUR BRAIN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. And how. I’ve been feeling particularly neurotic for the past three days, which isn’t necessarilly a major tribulation, except that usually when I am in distress I know exactly why. Feeling a general sense of angst is something I’m not equipped to deal with particularly well, and true for form, I haven’t been.
After reading the article, it begins to make me wonder what kinds of things might be interfering. I certainly won’t discount spiritual matters, but we live in a world with a lot of junk flying around us all the time, and we see most things through the lens of our experience in that same context. What have we picked up along the way that might be altering our behavior?
If subtlties like the unconcious perception of a clean scent will make us more likely to be clean, how can we be on guard for deliberate influences, just as subtle, created by greater minds than ours?
I’m not talking about the government, though I believe there’s more going on there than we know. And that’s as it should be. I struggle against the minds of the laymen who think they have all the answers when they’re hundreds of steps removed from the situation they’re commenting on. I’m more concerned about corporate press, entertainment, news media, and yes, spiritual influences. And by greater, I don’t mean more clever or prone to deceit. I mean more deliberate, cunning, dare I say, “cruel?”
I am in marketing. The whole goal of marketers is to influence people who are not predisposed to a desired behavior; those with the favorable predisposition don’t need to be marketed to, except possibly just to get information to them. Money isn’t the sole target either. Sometimes it’s a decision to buy, but just as often to go, see, or do. We already know that subtle perceptions can influence a decision. But to know that the same subtle perceptions can precicely direct a subconcious behavior… hello Pavlov.