Читать книгу The Power of Narrative Intelligence. Enhancing your mind’s potential. The art of understanding, influencing and acting - Арсен Аветисов - Страница 19

Watch your words, they become your actions. ― Lao Tzu

The extent to which a person is surprised by events correlates with the activity of their thought processes. The term 'thought processes’ itself appeared as an attempt to describe the activity of the human brain. Nowadays, much is known about the origins and locations of these processes compared to the last millennia, but we still do not have a complete understanding of how people think.

The act of thinking is linked to human cognitive activity. Thinking includes components such as attention and perception, forming concepts, making judgements and reaching conclusions. Individuals carry out this process using words and images. Essentially, the thinking process is akin to having a conversation with oneself. If people continue to react to the world around them without asking questions or seeking answers, there will be no end to their surprise. Their instincts, rather than their ideas, will shape their behaviour.

But we already do know something important about thinking. For example, the fact that thinking is strongly influenced by associative memory. Associative memory is a kind of personal library of what a person has seen, heard, felt, and done. Most of this library is compiled and classified without conscious human control, so we can only guess what is presented in it and in what form.

Opinions, judgements, preferences, tastes and decision-making systems are built based on this library. When a person forms an opinion about what is good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or not, all this is determined not so much by what they see, smell, or hear, but by what is already present in the memory, how similar experiences have been labelled and rated, what images and words have been used.

Therefore, to some extent, language and its well-established encodings and patterns are to blame for the simplistic perception of the world around us and the very quality of human thinking. At the current rate of development, a person actually needs more words to formulate problems. No one expected that with the advancement of technology, thinking would not be deployed at the same rate, but on the contrary, would be limited. While people today possess significantly more knowledge compared to previous centuries, the language used to convey and elaborate on this knowledge is much poorer.

The 'mental library’ also comes with its own set of issues and peculiarities. People can explain their daily decisions and actions to themselves based on their past experiences, present conditions, and the overall context. But the problem is that they may have initially incorrectly identified these circumstances and situations stored in their 'library’. This can lead them to access the wrong shelf and end up in the wrong place, which can have serious consequences at times.

A person’s thinking can be influenced by numerous factors. One of the factors, the influence of societal goals and corresponding behaviours, was mentioned above. Adaptation to the chosen community and the fear of being excluded from it is an important aspect of a person’s sense of security. The desire to be recognised within a particular environment, whether chosen independently or by chance, shifts much of the personal responsibility to what is commonly called the circumstances, such as nationality, company, group, or family.

This negates the person’s idea that the reason why they found themselves in a certain society and in certain circumstances is in themselves. But, in the end, a person chooses where and with whom to live and unconsciously fears losing it. And they are not so much afraid of losing, as they do not want to change anything familiar.

Even though deep in their minds people are always ready to be happier in a new place, they are often held back by those 'superhuman efforts’ required to make this change. People sometimes do not even dare to think about the unknown future.

Overall, people try not to think that all possible consequences of their choices and ideas will eventually be marked with a single stone with two dates – when they enter the process of the constant need to choose and adjust, and when they exit from it.

But there is another important detail, an issue that a person does not notice or tries not to delve into, again due to saving energy when thinking. The question is as follows: ‘Has the person determined his or her own choice, or have others done it for him or her? Not the circumstances, not the weather, but certain people with certain interests.’

People know that there are many methods of influencing their behaviour. They believe that within a family or small group, they also can influence, mistaking for influence their ability to give orders or the forced submission of others as a result of dependence on them.

Yet, along with this, people do not know much about how illusions, which they willingly believe, are professionally created. Similarly, they are unaware of how and in what situations they become highly suggestible. People do not understand why they tend to follow leaders and why they seek relief from stress in group cohesion or collective faith. They do not know the whole system, but they have heard about the existence of some methods used by corporations to influence employees and by the state to influence everyone. However, they do not fully comprehend the details of this system and are inevitably influenced by it.

Influence techniques are a powerful weapon in the hands of people who pursue their goals and interests. This is also a dangerous weapon if the interests of these people differ from the interests of society. Using the society itself, 'public opinion’ can be formed. Like a collective neurological imprint, the 'public opinion’ can be permanently fixed just as a photographic fixer was used in the processing of film or paper in the analogue age. Anyone who was an amateur photographer at that time remembers that the image is short-lived without fixing. Extremely short-lived.

If for a moment we imagine that every person is a kind of neurological robot, the carrier of an infinite number of constantly fixed photos, then everyone around you is an eternal prisoner of these ideas, value systems, certain scientific paradigms and mass illusions.

William Blake once said: 'I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s’. Nowadays, to create your own system of vision of the world or even preserve it is very, very difficult.

A person’s perception of reality is shaped by the information transmitted to the brain. For centuries, people communicated through gestures, shouts, drums, smoke signals, and clay plates, which can be seen as forms of technology. The emergence of a primitive printing press was revolutionary for its time.

Even in today’s digital age, people continue to create their analogue worlds through paintings, symphonies, sculptures, songs, novels, and poems. These artistic expressions not only serve as art but also as materialised information about the world. Information that all this time, as they think, has created a reality for them and has kept them safe from themselves. Everything from Renaissance paintings to Andy Warhol, from myths of the ancient Greeks and classic novels to contemporary bestsellers, contributes to a system of artefacts, concepts and judgements, which has helped people to protect themselves from the surrounding chaos and is called culture.

The words 'culture’ and 'cult’, having the same roots, are completely opposite in their meaning and impact on individuals. People are always more inclined to create a cult rather than putting in the laborious effort to maintain a higher level of culture, and the lower the level of culture, the more likely a cult is to be created. A cult can be formed around anything, even something as mundane as a mobile phone, and attract a large following of fans. It is surprising to think that more people might know about iPhones than about the Mona Lisa.

People, as depicted in films like The Matrix or Inception, use their brains to create their own models of the universe and a map of the world. This virtual map is not specific to any particular area, and it is uncertain who created it – whether it was themselves or someone else. The information age has significantly enhanced the speed and quality of replicating such maps. The widespread availability of personal impact has multiplied the range of interpretations for any phenomena or events, some of which may stem from others’ perspectives.

People have stopped deeply analysing facts and evaluating them using logic and common sense. It is easier and more economical to simply believe in the presented interpretations, consequently making it even easier to convey these interpretations to them, provided you know how.