Phil's Place: Learning By Repetition

At The Lowest Level

Fascinating Fall foliage

My philosophically conversant neighbor, Margaret, introduced a topic of discussion last week while driving to Trader Joe’s, regarding how often repetition is the preferred method by which we have been taught what we know. Essentially, I think she was saying, “Much of what we believe to be true, is not necessarily based on reality, but the result of us hearing information being repeated until it becomes a fact.”

I have been mulling over this topic of repetition as the primary method of dispensing and retaining information. Here is what I think, so far:

Marigolds in Dorothy’s garden

Don’t touch the hot stove. Don’t eat that. Say please. Come here. Sit. Stay. Don’t hit.

Most young brains can only operate at the level of a bird, fish, or reptile, partly because the prefrontal cortex, (where logic, reason, and higher consciousness takes place), isn’t functioning fully until we reach the age of about 22 years, or older.

New vulture in the neighborhood

Repetition is considered the most effective way to program the Amygdala, (the basic survival piece of brain that we share with all animals). Even after we become intellectually functional, we still can’t perform actions without permission from our amygdala.

Something as simple as consciously lifting a finger has to go through our amygdala for approval before it will allow the impulses to flow through nerves to muscle. It controls our unconscious behavior, too.

Our northern volcano

The Amygdala operating system is coded with fight, or flight, survival instincts. It can’t be programmed by logic or reason. It doesn’t understand that language. Emotion, and repetition are it’s primary means of communication.

Unfortunately, this basic brain component is frighteningly simple to program, (if you know how), and successful advertising agencies are diabolical experts at programming, and reprogramming, our amygdalas.

Fuzzy pollinator at work

Getting ones own amygdala to operate in our best interest is sometimes difficult, and nearly always tricky. What is it that makes one afraid to dive into the water? Yep, you guessed it! Somehow, ones amygdala becomes convinced that diving into the water can cause death, so it makes ones physical and mental self reject diving in.

After one repeats enough dives, and it notices it isn’t dead, that lizard brain reprograms so there are no more bouts of panic and anxiety before each dive.

Repetition is the key to communicating effectively with our inner reptilian gatekeepers.

This time using the optical zoom lens

Kids don’t have the knowledge or intellectual acuity to filter, or shield themselves from advertisements that target their vulnerable amygdala. We need to protect them from being molested by junk food advertising. It is insidious and harmful to their health and well being.

But how do we protect our ‘adult’ population from propaganda that causes them to act against their best interests?

TV, Radio, and print media are being used to program adults amygdala with a relentless, effective, advertising blitz. One of the products being driven into peoples brains at the primitive level, is an ideology that has people believing the most outlandish nonsense, making them behave in irrational and antisocial ways.

Tiny beauty

Another campaign directs the brainwashed to purchase and use energy wasting products, with righteous excess, thereby requiring the additional extraction, refinement, transport, and burning of fossil fuels.

These aggressive mind control techniques are certainly affecting us globally, but at the moment, I would like to focus my concern on a smaller sphere of dysfunction;

How do I get my somnambulist friends to wake up?

It is very difficult to engage in intelligent discourse with the possessed. They have been programmed to distrust and fear logic, facts, evidence, science, history, education, and reason. Still, I don’t think it’s a lost cause.

If we keep looking for a way to reach our altered friends, I am sure we will eventually find a means to ameliorate the damages.

Today’s Refreshing Video;

(Brought to my attention by Marian Sauer)