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Hacking Mind, Part 1 - The Three Basic Laws

Let's freeze-frame and rewind for a moment. Remember number three: "if rules one and two are in conflict, rule one always wins". Well, this is the spot that we are most concerned with, because this is the only rule that depends on variables, rather than constants. Somewhere in one of the Mahayana sutras, the 'Diamond-Cutter' I believe, one of the protagonists said "all combinations are subject to separation". In rules one and two, there are no combinations, only the constants "seek pleasure, avoid pain". So here we have a conditional point: a point of entry. It as at this point where we are the most vulnerable to advertising, social programming, religious hysteria, and scientific con-artistry. It is easy to get a person to mix up pain and pleasure, but impossible to make them seek pain and avoid pleasure. In other words, it is easier to exploit an existing rule than it is to make a new one.

For instance, back in the 1950's, the tobacco industry infiltrated movies, television, radio and all other forms of media with the propaganda that there was some status-increasing value in consuming their product, while knowing that their product is an addictive poison. Celebrities regularly smoked on TV, while on the channel next door, a husband and wife were not allowed to be seen in the same bed. Millions were not only bombarded daily with the idea that smoking was OK, but that the most popular and influential people in the world enjoyed that behavior. Once the addict realizes that they have been trained to perform such a self-destructive stunt on a regular basis, and now the pain of detoxification is greater than any pleasure of freedom from the addiction, or for that matter, and also greater than the idea of remote pain from eventual lung disease or other problems. But they don't realize this intellectualy, it is a physical realization that the brain references by way of its three basic rules, and because the future pain is not yet a part of the experience, the brain sees that "avoid pain" as something far off and not being felt.

So how does one stop? Is it that one has to make the pain of the habit more potent that the pleasure one receives from it? No, because the pleasure has left a long time ago. If someone has just become aware of the Cancer and Emphysema potential of their habit, that should be enough to trigger rule 3 into action shouldn't it? Well, it isn't, because every wrapper tells you that the stuff inside is poison.

You have to understand that the potential damage from the habit is seen by the subconscious as low on the priority scale compared to the more immediate need to avoid the suffering from withdrawal and detoxification. Therefore the addiction is supported by rule one. People are smoking to avoid pain: the real pain of allowing various tars and such to leach out of the system, while the nerves and cells deal with the shock of being pulled out of the biochemical state they have come to accept as their environment. In other words, it's abbout the physical cells following rule one, avoid pain. So what's the hack?

You have to get the subconscious to understand that there is a greater pain that can only be avoided by passing through the immediate suffering of detoxification.

In order to reassign the priority of a basic pleasure/pain association, the reason for the reassignment has to be made personal, and in order for the hack to be made personal, one has to find out about the rules that anchor pleasure and pain for the individual.

If we look at an individual's value system, and broke it down into simple complimentary pairs, we could say that one pair common to most, if not all of the human race would be the pair excitement/stability. If the person were more weighted on the side of stability, do you think health would be a high or low priority? If they were more weighted on the side of excitement, where would risk-taking rank in the same list? What if you have a culture that is trained to think the excitement side of this pair is inherently better somehow than the stability side - would it not be more difficult to deal with problems like drug addiction? What if an individual's basic nature tends more towards stability, and they are engaging in a risky behavior like drug addiction, because of some sort of learned rule like "to be loved I must be more exciting". How could that take precedence over a rule like "to be happy, I must be healthy"? So now we're beginning to see where the hacking skills challenge comes in.

Let's say that someone has all the marks of the person whose top value is certainty or stability, yet they are actively practicing a destructive, disgusting habit like smoking. On the one hand, they may be more difficult to help, because their defenses are stronger and they don't like change. But on the other, they might be easier, because they value their health, and that is the weak point in the chain of rules that can be exploited by our hack. Every pain, every sorrow, every personal problem needs to be associated with the habit. They need to understand that they are victims of a ruthless attack on health and human dignity, because this means pain to this sort of person, and that's what we intend to do, make escaping addiction the number one priority.

For the excitement prone people, a totally different tactic is required. They need to know how they are trapped, enslaved, weak and cowardly by refusing to stand up to the challenge of defying their masters who tricked them into this form of servitude. They need to be shown that detoxification is an adventure, and introduced to the end results of the process as being the very embodiment of freedom. Once this association is gained, people for whom excitement is a core value will be able to do what it takes to free themselves from the bondage of addiction.

Of course, there are many variations to these themes, but the principles are the same. if there is a problem in any facet of life, pain and pleasure have been re-associated, so that the rules can be re-written and new values created that help, rather than harm the individual. If you understand the values in operation, you understand how the rules are constructed. If you understand how the rules are constructed, you know how the associations are built. Once this information is gathered, a hack can be built to solve any personal issue regarding health, prosperity, success or relationships.

In part 2, we will explore the idea of 'rules' in greater detail and begin to approach how important they are in our relationships.

© Roy Kirkland, 2005