Do you Agree?

Thirty million book owners of The DaVinci Code must be right, and the movie is a worldwide hit. Publicity and religious controversy has fueled instant name recognition, filling the theater seats internationally.

With that endorsement I went with my adult son and sat through its mediocre acting, beautiful filming, and a story line that contained no suspense.

We will survive wasting a few hours and some bucks, but what does it tell us about our own suggestibility through social-proof?

When public acceptance reaches critical-mass, there is a chain-reaction and an atomic explosion of behinds in theater seats. Is it based on a conscious decision, logically reasoned using the wisdom of our left-hemisphere?

Placebo - Latin "I shall please you."

It is a Placebo Effect, where our non-conscious (right-brain) takes over. When your doctor suggests a medication, his authority and expertise is part of the treatment. How else can physicians explain the efficacy of a sugar-pill or a saline (water) injections that extinguish a rash or allergy?

Recent research on the Placebo Effect suggests that the human Mu Opioid Receptor triggers healing and a seeming cure of symptoms. Even the government acknowledges that up to 40% of cures can be reproduced with the absence of legitimate FDA approved drugs.

If you believe your physician, you send sensory messages through your brain to create improvement in your condition.

Social proof is the public voting with their wallets to buy a book at Barnes and Noble, pay to download a TV show like Lost, or see a movie like The Da Vinci Code.

We use the experience of others (critics and consumers), to decide whether to spend our time and money or withhold it.

Should we feel guilty for not making a conscious decision and merely validating an emotional desire to be part of the flock?

Who Is The Boss of You?

There is Social Bonding and Social Distancing; the first links you to people, even if it is just consumers; and social distancing is ancient Eskimos leaving the old to die on the side of the trail. Which excites your hormones?

So hormones and emotions are my explanation of why a lousy movie like the DaVinci Code is doing Titanic business.

Do You Agree that the best is yet to come?

A research project of U.S. attitudes reveals that optimism is as American as Apple-Pie, regardless of personal economic conditions.

Here's the Deal!

A national marketing company offered a list of people they telephoned $10,000 cash for the future rights to whatever financial rewards these individuals would acquire beyond their present monthly checks, and personal savings.

See, the people they offered the money had to be over 75 years of age. They were asked to sign away any winnings from a Lotto or Give-Away or totally unexpected source of instant wealth, like hitting the Blackjack table at Las Vegas.

Think about it - 99% of these folks were living on a social security check, had no independent pension, and were what you would characterize as just a line above poverty. Less than 1% of the men and women who fell under that category would agree to sign away their potential future winnings - from sources unknown.

Do you have to be a psychiatrist or a philosopher to conclude that regardless of advanced age, Americans believe in the Dream.

Do you believe in the Homerun with the bases loaded; the underdog being at the right place at the right time when it is raining money?

Here Goes

At age 77 Grandma Moses, a New York widow started painting. Google her and discover her works are in museums and priceless.

At age 76 Arthur Miller, wrote a new play with a different and positive message from his Death of a Salesman etc., which were world-class successes.

At age 76 Arthur Rubinstein gave a piano concert in London that was acclaimed, causing him to continue playing into his middle eighties.

At age 82 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe finished writing Faust, his most popular work.

At age 82 Winston Churchill wrote A History of The English Speaking Peoples. It became one of his major and most successful works.

At 83 Dr. Benjamin Spock was arrested for demonstrating for world peace.

Einstein Said

a) "The question that drives me hazy is, am I - or the others - Crazy?"

b) "The mind that solves the problem is very different from the mind that first - confronts it."

c) Happiness is: 1. Pleasure 2. Involvement 3. Meaning

The most common form of happiness extolled by the media is sensory pleasure.

Involvement is being useful to other people. Meaning comes from offering your

talents and gifts to people or organizations - beyond yourself.

Einstein often quoted Elbert Hubbard -

To avoid criticism, rejection and failure, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing!

Professor Einstein offered this:

What separates the successful people from the rest of us is the requirement of an investment of time-discipline-stamina. The unsuccessful folks choose the rewards without a willingness to do the hard-work. Not possible unless your father is a Rockefeller.

Meaning

Why is it our dream that 100% of young people and the majority of adults triple their reading speed, and double their memory?

Would you experience great self-worth if you could read and remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time it takes your peers to hardly finish one?

Is it merely a competitive-edge and being on the fast-track that we encourage?

Meaning comes from offering your unique expertise to something beyond your own person.

The foremost American psychologist remains Abraham Maslow who chose to base his work on healthy personalities instead of those suffering mental illness.

We strongly suggest two things - be a lifelong speed reader for knowledge sake, and be useful to massive numbers of folks as possible. Second: Google and study the work of Dr. Maslow for personal growth.

See ya,

copyright 2006
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org