Human brain is probably nature’s most versatile creation ever. Not only because of the wide range of its “regular” powers, but because of its capability to modify itself, to turn itself into what the particular situation requires. A law in learning shows that, when you think about a task before doing it, you improve your performance. For example, if you are about to play guitar, a mental visualization of guitar images, finger positions and the like, will put you in “guitar mode”, anticipating and improving your performance. The reason is that such exercise activates the cells of your reticular system, the ones in charge of polarizing attention towards this or that (human brain is always selective: the amount of stimuli is so enormous that it must pick only the relevant stuff and leave the rest aside).
Sadly, besides a gift, such brain plasticity can sometimes be our curse too. There are tons of bibliography on the infamous art of manipulating other people’s behavior and forcing them into not quite healthy habits. A quick scan on why someone would want to do that gives us two possibilities: power or money. Believing, like Buddhists, like Steven R. Covey, in human interdependency like I do, it looks like a sophisticated way of long-term suicide, but hey, that’s the way things are.
It is no secret, for instance, that advertising takes advantage of the most Pavlovian, animal-like side of human nature. In “Emotional intelligence”, Daniel Goleman describes an experiment in subliminal stimulation. Firstly, the subjects were bombed with a series of images, at a speed rate high enough to guarantee that they did not consciously “see” any of them. Later, they were asked to choose the images they liked most from a list of many. Guess which ones they did “freely” chose.
This is only an example from a long, long list we tend not to think about much, in the same way that we try not to think too much about the industrial poisons present in everyday food. Nothing of what I say here is really new, I know, there is no alternative by the moment and that is okay with me. But I was wondering about the consequences of commercial manipulation on other human areas, its “collateral effects” due to brain plasticity. Here are a few thoughts on the issue, and hopefully you’ll find some of them not too exaggerated.
The “disposable” mentality
Manufacturer X makes some additions (+) and subtractions (-) and finds out that it is much more profitable (income=income x 20) to make its product (paper cups/tv sets/pens/printers/cell phones/engines/whatever) disposable than having a proper technical service. On the other side of the equation is the customer, so the Acme guys set off their campaign to create a “disposability culture” (disposable=good) and after some massive bombing they succeed.
Congratulations, X, your product is sold and the satisfied customer will come back for more as soon as it gets broken (disposable=good). Now that the commercial intercourse is over, let’s use a different term to refer to the customer. For example, human being.
The human being wanders around keeping that “disposable” mentality about things. The repetition of stimuli keeps him in that state. Everybody wants him to go on like that. Then he/she meets his/her emotional partner. Let’s say they are through a bad moment, lacking communication and feeling uneasy with each other. So then he/she decides to quit that relation: it is easier, after all, to get a new one than figuring out what’s broken. Disposable=good or, in other words, you don’t see yourself as committed to another human being, but as a consumer of a relation.
The effect is achieved but the stays with you. It is like using a cannon to kill a fly. Of course, one gets influenced by many other things, we have free will, but consider that it is not only one particular brand or product, but all of them, yelling at you at the same time. All the day. Every day. And human brain is like clay.
My sad, uncommon case
At this point, I find all of this very difficult to explain, so let me present a personal example. I’m into literature. I really enjoy classic books, high quality fiction. Call me snob if you like, but best-sellers make me bored; I’ve tried hard, I swear it, but I find that they usually have too many words to say very little… I prefer long-sellers, from all times. I’m a nostalgic, I know.
Well, anyone who shares this passion knows that there is a series of titles and authors to whom one returns again and again and again. Borges once said that reading a book was a fuss, that the real pleasure was in re-reading. C.S. Lewis recommended to keep a 50% read/re-read ratio. Etc. Good novels, good short stories or poetry books are objects of beauty and passion, and do not get exhausted, ever. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”, said beautifully John Keats.
From a technical point of view, literature is quite a primitive narrative system, and its battle against more sophisticated formats, like films or videogames, is lost from the start. I have always thought that the strong point of literature is humanism. An opportunity to share enthusiasm, invisible friendships, a feeling of community between those who have read, loved the same moments in the same books.
So it was to my surprise when I recently met a group literature-savvy people and discovered that such attitude is no longer held. I made same attempts of recall, some of those “calls for comradeship” that had always been natural among my peers, to find that the only response were guttural, laconic comments like “yeah, I’ve read that” (i.e. “yeah, what do you mean, of course I’ve read that”). That was all. I did not find the least sense of community, wonder or gratitude in those people, only a vague feeling of alarm, a suspect of facing a severely impaired human being, or even worse, of being underestimated: of course they had consumed that, who hadn’t.
On the contrary, these guys seemed to see books as a way to confront among them, as a possession to boast of, or some sort of “decoration” that you have to keep on accumulating so as not to be left behind in the race. Needless to say, it did not take me long to leave, because I like to read, not to race. My bitter conclusion: books were also taken by its industry, also moved to be considered disposable stuff. Once again, outside conditioning left a lasting, harmful trace, not limited to commercial behavior, but something that sticks to you in the aftermath. Like a virus. But hey, who cares? Income=income x 20, even if the guy in charge of that multiplication will also suffer in his turn the effects of such unnatural, unhealthy attitude. I wonder in how many fields it works like that. I don’t want to look like the grumpy grandpa here, because there is no solution in sight to the problem, but I’m afraid our current world talks too much about rights but very little about duties.
