Bleach and Detergent

Many would like to think that they are in control of themselves, but do we really heed our life according to our own desires and rationale ?

         

        Our conscious brain operates on a mechanism called the associative coherence. Have you ever wonder what sparks the next word in your brain when you are thinking? Sometimes brilliant ideas just pop out, cartoons illustrate this eureka moment with scintillating light bulb burst out of nowhere above one's head. A truly remarkable moment. But that's really just an exaggerated representation. What about this continuous chain of thoughts that's keep on going seamlessly and endlessly in our brain, what determine the next thought? They seems to be so natural and fluent, from one idea to another idea. Well, you might connotes an idea to be a concept, but a simple noun,adjective,adverb and all other parts of speech are just an internal conception that we agreed to contort into a vocalized sound. The English philosopher John Locke expounded on this complexity of human language and in his explanation he represents words as ideas. So, back to the primary question, what determine the next word or thoughts in our mind?

        

          By the idea 'associative' itself you could have guessed what determine the next word I typed. Association. We make association, an object to a sound, a sound to characters, characters to sound back. These characters later are arranged by association to form writing. This is a simplified summary of the true machination of our conscious brain.

        

          The next thing we are going to delve into will questioned your free will. There's more to association than meets the eyes. Psychology in its young and ferment years suggested that association happen on a conscious level and they link from one to another. But recent studies surprised psychologist, association can also takes place in our subconscious mind, they linked to ideas that do not register into our consciousness, though it is affiliated, but we are not aware of them. More pertinent, association can happens from three to more ideas at a time.

S O _ P               W _ S H

        

 Try to fill in the blank with an alphabet you find first in your brain.

       

           I bet it will be an A. If it is, I proved that you have been primed into thinking soap instead of soup, wash instead of wish. Well maybe because I planted the thought in your brain without your conscious. But my plantation of that particular idea is not like the one of the adventurous mission in the movie Inception that takes numerous detrimental level of dreams. The plantation occurs when you read the title of this article.

        

           We can intentionally disrupt the association of our mind. Politicians and advertisers are precisely the camp that exploit this loop hole to their interest. It is called the priming effect. In the advertising industry this effect is more widely recognised as subliminal message.

      

          Lets say you went to a supermarket, you are uncertain of what to purchase. There's an awful lot of advertising posters everywhere, you ignore them as you walk, probably thinking the shop owner are not good with internal decoration, filling them with nuisance instead. They might have escape your focused vision , but the images  certainly entered your peripheral vision. As you are filling the shopping basket, suddenly you are reminded of the toothpaste that had been squirt out till the last drop from your bathroom, then you grab a toothpaste and throw it in the basket. As you were checking  back the list in your head, most likely you thought of maggi now. You took them and went to the counter and ready to pay, that's when you realize the poster had been about toothpaste and maggi.

    

           Adverts are scarily effective because of this priming effect. They register the message into your sequence of thoughts unconsciously, so when you go down the sequential list in your head, you will inevitably bump into these seemingly natural thought out of your own desires, but truly they are planted. No body likes to be gullible, but we are an easy target of deception.

        

         But dont worry, your are still the chief in charge. Priming effect is robust but not necessarily large. Most that fall victims are the ones with uncertain mind, if you are determined, knows what you want and what you do not need, you will not be susceptible to these effect.

      

         What's more scary about priming effect is that they do not necessarily effect our thoughts and desires but also our physicalized ideas. If you are primed with elderly thoughts, like wrinkles, ill-cough, fatigue and alike, the odds are that you will be slow in your motion too. Probably you will walk down the stairs much slower than usual. Okay that instance might not be convincing, try this. If you are primed with victors stories, you are more likely to pursue your goal more vigorously. This physicalized ideas are a product of priming effect, that have been dubbed the ideomotor effect.

    

         When we knows our natural propensities, trends that we have adopt so naturally, we will gain advantage over ourselves rather than be at the mercy of the greedy businessmen, that wants the last penny in your pocket, and that politicians that want to exploit your loyalty to gain more power and accumulate wealth. Believe me, politicians and businessmen are more equipped with workings of human mind than leadership knowledge, they would care to hire an expert if could, and most of them do. Even Adolf Hitler, the demagogic tyrant, mastered oratorical body language to convince his people to succumb to his leadership.

    

         That is why Plato hated democracy. He believe justice will not prevail until kings becomes philosopher, and philosopher becomes king. He believed only the minority intelligentsia are capable of filtering the gobbledygook and demagogueries of the eventual corruption of all politician who desires only power. And now is more crucial than ever to recognize the lies, as they are spreading across all means of cables and print behemoths.