si dawson

experiments in self-improvement

Category: life

March 13, 2011

TV Is Heroin Crossed With Hypnosis

I haven’t owned a TV in almost 20 years. I don’t miss it at all.

Note that I didn’t say I don’t watch TV. I and everyone I know does.

TV is everywhere these days: your phone; the internet; public spaces;  download & watch it on your computer. The only real changes are the increased ease of time shifting (choosing when we watch), placeshifting (where we watch), and largely optional advertising.

Is TV Relaxing?

Yes, but not in the way you’d expect.

Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did a study which appeared in Scientific American in 2002[1]. Participants carried a beeper which beeped several times a day and when it did, they wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling.

When beeped while watching TV, people recorded feeling relaxed and passive. What was surprising was that the relaxation ended as soon as the TV was switched off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continued.

Additionally, the participants had more trouble concentrating after viewing than before, and EEG studies showed less mental stimulation (identified by increased alpha brain wave production) while watching TV. Neither occurrences happened as a result of plain old reading.

In other words, we associate “watching TV” with “being relaxed” (so we do relax), but after we finish watching we can’t concentrate, feel sluggish, and become as stressed (or more so) than before.

Despite all this, of course, we keep on watching.

pic by claudia-ann

IS TV ADDICTIVE?

Substance dependence is defined (very roughly, it’s a big subject) as: spending a lot of time using the substance; tendency to increase the dose (using more than you planned); a psychological or physical dependence on the effects of the substance; a desire to continue using the substance for the sense of improved well-being it creates; giving up social, family or work activities to use it; experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you stop using it.[1]

Not all addictions are chemical, of course. Any behavior that leads to a pleasurable experience will be repeated, especially if that behavior requires little effort. The psychological term for this is  “positive reinforcement.”

Two experiments were conducted[2] where people were asked to stop watching television. In the first, South African families agreed to switch off for a month. The poorest family gave up after a week, others suffered from depression, saying they “felt like they had lost a friend.” In the second, 182 West Germans agreed to avoid TV for a year (with the added bonus of payment). None lasted more than six months, and all of the participants showed increased anxiety, frustration and depression. Yes, the exact symptoms of heroin withdrawal.

from Requiem for a Dream

HEROIN? WTF?

In order to understand television addiction, it’s important to note what is happening inside our brains.

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. How much? Research by Professor Herbert Krugman[3] showed that the right hemisphere becomes twice as active as the left, an extreme neurological anomaly.

The crossover from left to right releases a surge of endorphins, which include beta-endorphins (pain numbing) and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

Just like any addiction, people regularly overestimate their control over television watching. When people estimate how much TV they watch, their guesses are usually far lower than the reality.

HYPNOSIS? WTF?

There are further implications of the left-to-right hemisphere blood flow effect.

Further research by Krugman revealed that our brain’s left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while we are watching television. The left hemisphere is the critical region for organizing, analyzing, and judging incoming data[4]. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of our brain, which processes information emotionally and uncritically, to function unimpeded.

In other words, we switch off our critical thinking abilities and just absorb anything thrown at us. We watch emotionally, not intelligently.

Further to this, psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves, which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness (as with the left-to-right hemisphere shift). High frequency alpha waves do not normally occur when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland’s research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall.[6]

Production of alpha waves and the subsequent receptive state are also the goal of hypnotists. They’re both present during the “light hypnotic” state used by hypno-therapists for suggestion therapy.

Of course, when this research came out the advertising industry jumped all over it. Marketers began designing commercials that were utterly irrational (since that part of the brain is switched off) but intended to implant moods that the consumer will then associate with a given product. Endorsements from athletes and celebrities are great for this.

pic by photo extremist

TV ISN’T REAL (BUT WE DON’T KNOW THAT)

Some other interesting things happen in the brain while we’re watching television.

The higher brain regions (the midbrain/neo-cortex, ie “cognitive parts”) are shut down, and most activity shifts to the lower brain regions (the limbic system, our “reptilian brain”). Our limbic system controls our very basic “fight or flight” response.

Researcher Jacob Jacoby found that, out of 2,700 people he tested, 90% misunderstood what they had watched on television only minutes before.[5] That’s what happens when our higher brain functions are switched off.

Furthermore, the limbic system can’t tell the difference between something we’re watching, and reality. Anything we see in front of us is real to our vestigial reptile brain. Identifying the difference between reality and fiction is a job performed by the neo-cortex (which is off, remember).

What it all means is this: With our neo-cortex out of the picture, our limbic system then reacts to TV as if it were real, and releases the appropriate fight/flight  hormones (with the concurrent stresses that places on the body). Add to that, longitudinal studies have shown that extended lower brain activity leads to higher brain atrophy. The more TV we watch, the poorer our cognitive brain functions.

In other words, too much TV makes us stupider and more emotionally reactive, more animalistic.

TV IS worse than you think

In summary: It’s highly addictive, makes us docile (without actually relaxing us), stresses us as if we experience everything we see, makes it harder for us to concentrate and over time really does make us stupider.

I’m sure this is all of little surprise.

Will it stop me watching? Probably not (see also: opiate addict).

However, I sure as hell am going to be a lot more discriminatory in what I choose to watch. While I’m watching TV, my brain is passively absorbing 1800 pictures a minute (ie, 40,000 pictures in a half hour show, along with all the emotion). I like my brain, thank you, and would prefer more of a say over what’s inside it.

As a starting point, I’m going to stop watching visual media (except in social situations – don’t need to become a pariah) for at least a month. It should be an interesting mini-experiment.

references

[1] Kubey, R. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. ‘Television addiction is no mere metaphor’, Scientific American, February 2002 [abstract] [pdf]
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[2] “Millions Addicted To The Box” Eastern Province Herald, South Africa. 23 Oct 1975. [no online doc available]
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[3] Krugman, Herbert E. ‘Brain Wave Measures of Media Involvement’, Journal of Advertising Research, 1971; 11.1, 3–9 [pdf] [online doc]
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[4] Gazzaniga, M.S. ‘The Split Brain Revisited’, Scientific American, special edition, July 1998; 12 (1) 27–31 [pdf]
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[5] Jacoby, Jacob & Hoyer, Wayne D. `Viewer Miscomprehension of Televised Communication: Selected Findings’, Advertising & Society Review – Volume 1, Issue 1, 2000 [abstract] [online doc]
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[6] T.Mulholland. The concept of attention and the electroencephalographic alpha rhythm. In Attention in Neurophysiology, eds C. Evans and T.Mulholland. London, Butterworths, 1969, 100-127. [no online doc available]
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    March 11, 2011

    Are You Using The Internet, Or Is The Internet Using You?

    I’ve been giving my internet use a bit of thought recently.

    I realised (wild generalisation alert!), there are two primary ways I use the internet:

    1. To waste time
    2. To find information

    and, of course, a few secondary ways:

    • To build, create, produce, expand (eg, write a blog post, build a business, send love to people)
    • To communicate
    • To provide services to others

    Sites like Facebook, Twitter etc are built on communication – but even there, most of the time we’re really just doing something because it fills in time. I.e., we’re firmly in category 1.

    The time-wasting sites are easy to spot. We go there when we’re trying to avoid or escape from something else (drudgery, unpleasant tasks, boring work). We look up and the next thing we know, hours have passed. We have slightly more information in our head, sure, but it’s of dubious benefit.

    The question underneath all this is simple: Are we expanding or contracting our life? Are we producing or consuming?

    If all we’re doing is consuming, that’s a contraction. We’re not adding anything to the world and generally, we’re actually disconnecting from the people & things around us. Trite chit-chat is no substitute for a heart felt conversation.

    If we’re producing something, that’s an expansion. We’re adding value to the world.

    If we’re using the internet as a conscious tool, then it’s working for us. If all we’re doing is wasting time? Really, we’re working for it (and the pay rate is lousy)

    Based on this, I’ve switched off access to my primary time waster sites (reddit, slashdot, hacker news, boing boing, kottke). As interesting as they are, it’s time for me to more consciously choose what I put into my mind.

    Minimise the external (and typically trivialising) influence, maximise my internal choice.

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      February 25, 2011

      My Life’s Purpose: Loving Through Service

      In Oct 2009, I started Twit Cleaner. This business has been through some ups & downs, but over the last year or so I noticed myself disconnecting almost completely. I’d lost all motivation for it, and for life in general. I’ve kept working, of course, but my heart just hasn’t been in it.

      I knew (some how) that it was still the right thing for me to be doing, but I had lost that initial zest. It was still bringing in (a little) money; It suited my skillset, interests and desired lifestyle perfectly; I just couldn’t figure out why I was doing it.

      And that ‘why’ is critical.

      If you don’t know why you’re doing something, you’re not going to keep pushing forward through its vicissitudes, no matter what it is (and no, “for the money” isn’t a strong enough motivator).

      In the back of my mind through all this, and indeed my whole life has been something I haven’t been able to connect to at all – the idea of ‘service’.  I learned about this from quotes I first read decades ago:

      Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

      – Albert Einstein

      The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

      – Mahatma Gandhi

      I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

      – Rabindranath Tagore

      I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

      – Albert Schweitzer

      I figured these guys might know what they’re talking about.

      Serving others though? Does that mean I should be, I dunno, a janitor? Also, doesn’t it all sound just a little menial? A little gruelling? A complete waste of my talent/skills/life?

      Expanding or Contracting?

      Now, the last year or so for me has been pretty tough. Some of the crap I’ve been through I wouldn’t wish on anyone (the details aren’t really important).

      As I’ve tried to figure things out and work my way through it all, I’ve noticed my energy getting smaller and smaller. This is hardly surprising really, if all I’m thinking about is the problems in my life, of course my energy is going inwards. I’m looking inwards, not outwards.

      As so often happens, I’ve watched it all play out through my Aikido.

      I’m currently 2nd dan, working towards my 3rd. As part of this growth, my Sensei has been pushing me to be more expansive, more embracing of my attackers – essentially, to expand my energy field (which of course is mirrored in my posture, movement, inner weight, composure & unshakability while under attack).

      As with everything in this universe of ours, things are always moving one way or another. Growing or shrinking. Expanding or contracting. Life is endlessly in motion.

      So here I’ve been, shrinking, in my personal life, my Aikido and my work (it’s also why I haven’t been posting here very much). Simultaneously, I’ve been working as hard as I can to sort it all out – and making good  internal progress, but still not really seeing much of that progress externally.

      It’s been confusing as hell (and not a little stressful) but I’ve been persevering. I’m nothing if not tenacious.

      The thing I realised this morning though, the thing that pulls all of this together, is this:

      My Purpose is simply to express as much love as I possibly can in the world , through whatever and wherever I am right now.

      Joy, and the value of a life

      Ultimately (and you’re welcome to disagree with me here, of course) the value of a life is simply whether the world, on balance, is better off through your being here.

      Some people achieve this by raising beautiful families. Some by saving the whales, creating art, writing books and so on. Every person is born with a unique set of interests, skills and proclivities.

      A great question for figuring out where you’re meant to be is – “What brings you the most joy?” (note: not enjoyment, joy)

      We feel this joy because we’re either already really good at something (so can achieve things at a high enough level to satisfy our intuitive understanding of “the way things should be“) or what we’re doing speaks to us profoundly enough that we’ll persevere until we do become excellent.

      The way we contribute to the world is through the effect we have on the people around us. We bring love into the world through our actions, through our work.

      The areas we feel most drawn to and most passionate about are where we’re going to be bringing the most love into existence.

      The way I figure it, if I’m lying on my deathbed, the ultimate question I want to ask myself is this: “Was the world a better place for having me in it?”

      How this affects our lives

      As I start to think and feel in terms of expressing love for the world – How can I help these people? How can I make their lives, even a little bit better? How can I best use the skills I have to achieve this? – I immediately notice the following:

      • My energy shifts from contracting to expanding
      • My head empties of any and all of ‘my’ nonsense
      • I feel super motivated and connected to Get Stuff Done
      • I feel (for lack of a better description) bigger, like, city-block bigger.

      Ie, it puts me straight into flow. Straight into the highest, clearest, most powerful state of being. The state where, if I’m doing Aikido, my attackers somehow go flying in all directions with zero effort from me. The state where, if I’m coding, I look up after a couple of hours and I’ve suddenly completed dozens of tasks, many of which I may have been struggling with for weeks.

      By focussing on loving those around me and using my skills and my joy to express that love, I detach completely from “the little me”, my ego, all that negative internal noise. I connect fully and completely to the most perfect, capable and highest part of myself.

      Now, finally, I understand why the greatest minds have always stressed service so strongly. What people mean by “follow your bliss.” Until now I’ve never understood the ‘how’, or even the ‘why.’ Now, finally, I get it.

      .. and as a bonus, I see exactly why having my skills and working to improve the lives – in a small but real way – of the 200 million people on Twitter, is exactly the right place for me to be.

      Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

      – Muhammad Ali

      A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

      – Henry Ford

      The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.

      – Lee Iacocca

      Happiness… consists in giving, and in serving others.

      – Henry Drummond

      He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.

      – Confucius

      It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

      – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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        September 7, 2010

        Living Off The Grid

        The other night I went to hang out with a friend’s dad who has lived off the grid for 20 years.

        I first started hearing about this sort of thing in detail shortly before the Y2K debacle. Lots of tech guys who knew way too much got super convinced that the end of the world was nigh – airplanes would fall from the sky, public utilities collapse and society in general was about to grind to a halt indefinitely.

        Of course, none of this actually happened, but it did provide a lot of opportunities to read about people’s ideas for living off the grid – ie utterly self-sufficiently, independent (as much as possible) from society at large.

        This is the first chance I’ve ever had to meet anyone who’s successfully done it.

        The house is in the Santa Cruz mountains in California, USA:

        (Yes, exactly there. Hehe)

        With any house, you need power (to turn into light, heat, cooling, web browsing & so on). Typical options are wind, solar hydro, gerbils in treadmills etc – but none of these would work here due to the massive redwoods (except maybe the gerbils).

        The energy source for this house is the propane tank:

        It's about the size of a small submarine.

        This runs a propane fridge (not pictured, since it just looks like, well, a fridge) & the generator.

        Now, here’s where the real magic happens.

        The generator is basically just an engine (like in a car) with an alternator (also like a car) that turns that rotational energy (ie, the wheels spinning around) into Alternating Current (AC).

        So, the generator looks like this:

        It's shiny coz it's a year old. They last about 5 years, typically.

        This spits out AC electricity. Now, AC is good for things you plug into the wall. In this part of the world, electric sockets are 120V AC, so you could, in theory, just run everything off the generator. Catch is, you wouldn’t want it running all the time. For a start, it’s noisy as hell. Secondly, you typically don’t draw constant current from the wall (eg, notice how your fridge switches on & off), which means wasted power.

        So, the power needs to be stored somewhere – batteries. Batteries work in Direct Current (DC) not AC, so you need convert AC to DC. That’s what this box does:

        The ACDC converter box then plugs into the batteries:

        See how they look like normal car batteries? That’s not an accident. They’re actually marine batteries, which means they charge deeper & slower, but last longer. They’re basically exactly the same as car batteries though. Batteries last anywhere from 3-5 years before they stop holding their charge & need to be replaced. Since they need to be replaced relatively regularly, cheap & common is a better option that fancy, rare, expensive and possibly better performing.

        The batteries take 4 or 5 hours to charge up. They’re then converted from DC (stored in the batteries) into AC, & fed back into the house by this (the DCAC converter):

        All this stuff is in a shed out the back of the house – remember the noise from the generator? Yep, far away is good.

        The house itself is a great little two bedroom cottage:

        It was built by first towing a caravan up there (& living in that), then slowly extending it, piece by piece. Eventually the only bits of the caravan left were the kitchen & the bathroom. Looking at them now though, you’d never guess. Other than some old formica, they look exactly like regular rooms (otherwise I would have taken a photo).

        There’s also a wood fire, which makes a huge difference in winter, of course. So here’s an interesting tidbit. It turns out that if you run a cast iron stove day & night for 20 years, you burn right through the cast iron. Who even knew that was possible? Incredible.

        Water is fed in from a stream that runs through the top of the property (ie, via gravity feed). The drop from the top to the bottom of the property isn’t really enough to get any power off though – the property would need to drop about 100 ft for that. There’s also about 5 foot a year of rain, although there’s no real need to collect it.

        Sewage is dealt with in a common way, it pipes out into what’s called a leach pit, which is basically a field made of a bunch of rocks of different sizes, where it then breaks down naturally & fertilizes the land.

        In terms of being off the grid, the only connection the house has to the outside world is a telephone line. Here’s the catch: It took two years & him getting all 25 houses on his dirt road to ring the local telco 8-12 times each before it happened. The local installation guys said it was the biggest project they’d ever done.

        And what’s it like to live there? It’s like this:

        

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          June 22, 2010

          How To Never Feel Rejected Again

          I’m finding that when I get the same thing occurring in many areas of my life within a very short period of time it’s time for me to learn a very specific lesson.

          Recently I found myself feeling rejected, in various ways, in 6 or 7 different situations over the span of a week or so.

          Typically it would go something like this:

          1. I’m looking to make a connection with somebody – to spend time, or go see a movie, say.
          2. I get enthusiastic & excited, looking forward to this situation.
          3. They then deny me that connection.
          4. I feel rejected, & disappointed that it’s not happening.
          5. I then react badly (get grumpy, upset, or act coldly towards them, etc)

          So then we have two people feeling crappy, instead of one.. that can’t be good!

          pic by lady vervaine

          I’ve taken to going for monster 3 hour walks while listening to various soothing podcasts. It’s a wonderful way to get exercise and get things clear in my head.

          On one of these recent long walks, I had the following realisations:

          The key issue with rejection is this – said person is not behaving the way I want them to. I.e., I’m trying to control them.

          If you stop and think about it, wanting to control anyone is the height of arrogance. It’s taking away their own free will, not to mention assuming we know better than they do what’s right for them – and how would we feel if someone else tried to do it to us?

          So, when that control fails (as, of course, it will – we can’t ever really control anyone else), I then disapprove of them – ie, I withdraw my love.

          pic by

          pic by sephorah

          Now, for a start this doesn’t tie in well with my intention of unconditional love always.

          Secondly, my not feeling rejected is entirely predicated on my control of them succeeding (which, of course, it won’t).

          I’d been tying how I loving I feel towards them to whether or not they behaved the way I wanted them to. So, sooner or later I’m going to end up being ‘not loving’ towards them (and as a side issue, feeling crappy myself).

          To shortcut the whole rejection thing, I need to let go of the expectation that they will always behave exactly the way I want, or indeed that I have any control over them at all.

          Once I let go of wanting to control them, I can choose to love them regardless of their behaviour.

          Oh, and voila, since their behaviour makes no difference to this choice I’m never going to feel rejected by anything they do. Sometimes they’ll behave in a way I might enjoy more (which is great), sometimes they won’t (in which case, who cares, it’s their life to do with as they wish).

          Of course, I’m always free to remove them from my life if what they’re doing is particularly deleterious to myself – but that’s a whole other conversation.

          Dogs never try to control, always just love. pic by ingrid0804

          In summary:

          Wanting to control others leads to feeling rejected when this control fails.

          Choosing to love (have positive regard towards) them regardless of their behaviour means never feeling rejected again.

          If there’s one thing I’m learning in spades, life really can be very, very simple.

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