Thanks to reader anon who left a link to an article titled “Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed“, we can continue discussing an issue that interests me a lot, namely, a grievous ignorance of the general public of everything that concerns human psychology.
The article is in no way different from a multitude of similar pieces where all that an author has to sell is zero insight into anything whatsoever. The blueprint for these article is always the same: the author identifies an extremely trivial phenomenon, shows that s/he is completely baffled by it, and proceeds to roll out a very bizarre explanation that is based on badly digested self-help books and TV shows of the Dr. Phil type.
This is the big question that the article’s author find it so hard to answer:
One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my trip was that I spent much less per month traveling foreign counties (including countries more expensive than Canada) than I did as a regular working joe back home. I had much more free time, I was visiting some of the most beautiful places in the world, I was meeting new people left and right, I was calm and peaceful and otherwise having an unforgettable time, and somehow it cost me much less than my humble 9-5 lifestyle here in one of Canada’s least expensive cities.
Yes, hugely surprising. For people under the age of three. Because everybody older than that has already figured out that vacationing is easier than working and, hence, the psyche needs a lot less maintenance (called “compensatory mechanisms” by those who as old as 18) to vacation than to work.
In the documentary The Corporation, a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.
We all know how much I love this impotent and immature narrative of parents as victims of their own small children. What is especially funny is that an author who dedicated the preceding paragraph to ranting against companies selling people useless junk immediately demonstrates the propensity to buy useless junk in the form of idiotic documentaries. Of course, it is easier to swallow the pablum dished out by such stupid film-makers than to make an effort and realize that the only language small children know is the one their parents taught them. If they nag, that only happens because their parents taught and encouraged this system of communication to the kids. If these parents suffer so much because of “having to buy the things they don’t want to buy” (which is, of course, a lie. They do exactly what they want to do), they can simply teach their children another way of communicating. By doing so, they would do us all a huge favor because I, for one, find it excruciating to have to deal with whining students who bring this annoying habit from home.
[To be continued. . .]
Clarissa's Blog 
I think what’s weird it that many people don’t have a concept of personal development. For instance, I explored a number of ideas whilst doing my PhD, and many of them were dead ends. Some were not and some were. Apparently, this is incomprehensible. One can’t explore a perspective without affirming it. Everything one explores, one affirms.
Is this why people are so lacking in psychological skills? They don’t feel they have the option to explore a possibility without having to embrace it for life?
LikeLike
I think such people are simply lazy, to be honest. What betrays them is their love of the passive-voice sentences. Even linguistically, they refuse to be active agents of anything.
LikeLike
Certainly, laziness is pretty common. Ubiquitous. But there also seem to be some ideological limits on developing too much independence. Perhaps it derives from a fear that one might find everything to be merely relative and no position fundamentally more substantive than another.
LikeLike
I think you are granting this author more profoundness than s/he has. As my colleague said yesterday, “You spend all your time with smart people, so you have no idea how inane and vapid a regular person is.”
This person’s position can be summarized as “Something vaguely bothers me. I will now go and blame society.” There is nothing more profound behind this article than that, I believe.
LikeLike
I wasn’t speaking about that particular author, who I really cannot understand. I am, though, getting quite a sense of how vacuous people are, with some recent replies to some of my videos. These are very funny, so long as one is insulated enough to view the decline of culture as a comedy. For instance, I keep telling one guy that Luce Irigaray’s areas of expertise are psychoanalysis and philosophy. She’s actually not trying to be a scientist, or a sociologist or a psychologist — and yes, Wikipedia has it wrong in supposing the psychoanalysis=sociology. The guy refuses to compute this and says he requires a more detailed expression of her understanding of science for “Lucy” to impress him. He needs to be impressed and he is waiting there until it happens. Esteemed intellectuals from all over the world, please come down a thousand levels and try to impress this undergraduate from a science department somewhere in the US. It’s very important to an ape that needs to be impressed before it gets it’s brain in gear.
LikeLike
“The guy refuses to compute this and says he requires a more detailed expression of her understanding of science for “Lucy” to impress him. He needs to be impressed and he is waiting there until it happens.”
– Ha ha ha! This is the best. Yeah, let’s wait for him to be impressed. Or for hell to freeze over because, I think, that will happen sooner. The pathetic self-aggrandizement of such sad little creatures is sad to observe.
” Esteemed intellectuals from all over the world, please come down a thousand levels and try to impress this undergraduate from a science department somewhere in the US”
– The problem is that these idiots have convinced themselves that all opinions are equally valid. So for him, there is no real difference between Irigaray’s “opinions” and his own.
LikeLike
The guys I am dealing with are so far removed from any intellectual consciousness that they feel that they themselves might possibly be intellectuals. In another thread, some guy is insisting that the reason none of his romantic relationships have worked out is women will not accept the natural gender hierarchy that would enable any communication to occur. They won’t accept it and therefore his communication is thwarted. Then he goes on to explain that it makes perfect sense for women to accept their alleged inferiority in relation to him, in exchange for loyalty and service. He would promise to be loyal and serve them, if only they would facilitate communication by accepting inferiority. I asked him whether he liked submitting to his boss. he said that thankfully he was not in love with his boss. He went on to say that nothing in the world is equal to anything else. I think he is right about that. But he needs to come out from standing alone and place himself next to his neighbor, so that he might more deeply understand how inferior he is.
LikeLike
I usually tell such people, “It is disgraceful for any human being to have the loyalty and service of inferior creatures like you.” The start puffing in such a funny way in response! 🙂
LikeLike
I think this guy is, like so many self-important apes, impervious to irony. To waste any of my energy on him is a shame, but I do want these kinds of people to begin to negate themselves rather quickly. The best way I can think of to move this process along is to agree explicitly with everything he says.
LikeLike
http://youtu.be/rG3YpfoZrys
LikeLike
I agree about children nagging on parents.
“What is especially funny is that an author who dedicated the preceding paragraph to ranting against companies selling people useless junk immediately demonstrates the propensity to buy useless junk in the form of idiotic documentaries.”
Well, perhaps you didn’t watch so much of this documentary…
LikeLike
I wouldn’t watch it at all because any study that relies on what people say as if it were an indication of their true motives is quite silly.
LikeLike
Thank you for admitting that you don’t know what you’re thinking about.
LikeLike
Thank you for admitting that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
LikeLike
???
LikeLike
You said that you’re not interested by the forest, and because there’s some stupid tree in the forest, the forest is stupid.
LikeLike
You said that you’re not interested by the forest, and because there’s some stupid trees in the forest, the forest is stupid.
LikeLike
I’m responding to a very specific text that I have linked to. Whether the documentary really says what this blogger thinks it says is beyond the point. The idea promoted by this blogger is stupid, no matter who expressed it and when.
LikeLike
Fair enough, I agree that this film is partly wrong on this very topic (and some other topics), but I recommend this film to everyone as “a starting piece” (not as a master piece: this is simply not the case because those filmmaker are not sufficiently intelligent) to debunk claims about “free-market” (sic) capitalism.
LikeLike
My only point here is that children are the product of their upbringing and of absolutely nothing else whatsoever. If they whine or nag or whatever, that is because this is what their parents want them to do.
LikeLike
And this is way less bad than all of the Michael Moore crap (even though there’s some good insights in Farenheit 911) and the “Super Size Me” crap.
LikeLike
“My only point here is that children are the product of their upbringing and of absolutely nothing else whatsoever. ”
This is you main point, and I said before that I agree on this point. But if you write something stupid outside your main point, it’s normal that there will be still some critic.
LikeLike
“One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my trip was that I spent much less per month traveling foreign counties (including countries more expensive than Canada) than I did as a regular working joe back home. ”
The problem is that he spend too much at home…
LikeLike