Who You Are

Many philosophers and scientists have tried to come up with a good definition of consciousness, and although it's still largely a mystery and a generally accepted definition still eludes us, we've managed to divide the human consciousness in two parts; the subconscious and the conscious part.

We all have a strong sense of "self"; whatever the answer to the question "who am I" is, we all agree that it is located somewhere inside us, or inside our minds, to be precise. At the moment I'm typing up today's post, and this is the result of me choosing to do just that. The words I choose aren't random; I carefully select words out of whatever limited English vocabulary I possess, in order to convey my thoughts to you, dear reader. And I'm so glad you have freely chosen to read whatever I'm about to type next. We both are in control of our actions and choices, and of all the choices we both could have made, we've chosen the ones that set us on a path to meet here and now. This is not fate, but the result of our deliberate choices in life.

However, the title may have already alerted you to the fact that what follows is an explanation of why we are not in control. You see, one of the most quoted percentages in cognitive sciences is 95%. Research shows that for 95% of the time we are controlled by the part of us we know nothing about, our subconscious minds. Almost all our cognitive activity is done on "auto-pilot", without us even being aware of the fact that we're automatically responding to internal and external ques. When we fall in love, we have no choice in the matter; it just happens and only later we realize how good or bad a choice we've unconsciously made. Fear and anger are other automatic reactions, as well as disgust or happiness.

Although we're consciously aware of our preferences, like music, food, fragrant, colors and so on, we do not choose any of those preferences; they are all an automatic reaction in our subconscious minds. And the thing about our subconscious minds is that it is formed by people and things and events external to us; it's the part of us that's mostly not us at all. When you drive your car from work to home, you can have a discussion with someone because the driving foes without thinking; it's learned and automated behavior. That's 95% of our existence: automated learned behavior, mostly learned by our parents, siblings, teachers, and everything else in our environment that makes a lasting impression on our unconscious minds.

Using the analogy of the iceberg, which is only ten percent above water and ninety percent under water, our behavior and decisions are based for about 95% on unconscious processes.
_{source: InSites Consulting}

I'll let you take a guess at which segment of society is most interested in this science of the subconscious mind. Corporate marketeers is indeed the answer; in the field of commerce there has been for decades now a constant war over our subconscious minds. The most important thing these relentless marketeers have learned, is that words are not very useful to communicate directly to our deeper, unknown selves; it's visuals and smells that attack our primitive brains most effectively. This knowledge could be used for our collective benefit, to make better all our lifes. Let me give you an example.

In Dutch trains there are so called "silent carts", where passengers are supposed to not be loud and noisy. Apparently the Dutch are a noisy bunch, because it's almost never quiet in the silent carts. Scientists hired by the marketing department of Dutch Railways came up with the solution of plastering the walls of these carts with pictures of bookshelves with books on them, giving it the look and feel of a library; this worked like a charm. The reason for this success is that we subconsciously associate a library with silence, and this stunningly affects our behavior in a most dramatic way.

The reality is that the science is mostly used for some personal gain or profit. It's disturbing to realize that most of our public sphere is in control of corporate entities that have the one singular perspective of making profits, and all the public sphere is plastered full with their attacks on our inner selves, constantly pushing our most private buttons to influence our behavior through our mental blindside...

The above is an edited version of a post I originally published on Steemit in Ferbruary 2019

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