brain alteration through branding

(or creating corporately conditioned consumer clones)

Most adult humans find a comfortable predictable day to day manner of living preferable to living on the edge.

Individuals judge conditions and situations confronted primarily through pattern matching. Most individuals claim they use logic and reason to come to a particular conclusion even though their actual decision was based more upon a "feeling" than on a conscious decision.

For example, when a consumer purchases a product and the product works as advertised and expected then that consumer will emotionally register satisfaction with the product. That emotional satisfaction subconsciously brands an individual. Subconscious emotional branding creates the "correct" emotional response, the "right feeling", when we see the product on the shelf the next time and that induces product loyalty.

Superbrands at Brandweek

"In the mid-1990s, studies began to suggest that decision making, long held to be a prime example of a mental process best accomplished without the interference of emotions, could not only benefit from emotions, but also might require them." - Jenny Lauren Lee

"People actually remember few ads. Yet commercials have an effect nonetheless. Even if they fail to sell a particular product, they sell consumerism itself by ceaselessly reiterating the idea that there is a product to solve each of life's problems, indeed that existence would be satisfying and complete if only we bought the right things." - Alan Durning

In a study conducted in 2007 to see if branding affected preschoolers the children were given identical food: one was branded McDonald's, the other was presented in unmarked wrappers. Three quarters of the children thought the McDonald's branded food tasted better.

"Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about - to brand younger and younger children, to instill in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand-name product." - Dr. Victor Strasburger, American Academy of Pediatrics

To find profit in so many similar items, marketers must brand a product on a buyer's mind.

Such efforts put the average American adult in the cross hairs of as many as 3,000
advertising messages a day, five times more than two decades ago.

Children are exposed to 40,000 advertisements every year.

By the age of 18 months, they can recognize logos.

By 10, they have memorized 300 to 400 brand logos.

The average adult can recognize thousands of brand logos.

Many seemingly rational decisions are reflexive snap judgments, shaped by networks of neurons acting in concert.

These orchestras of cells are surprisingly malleable, readily responding to the influence of experience.

The inescapable influence of marketing does more than change minds.

Brand marketing physically alters the brain structure.

Just as practicing the piano or learning to read can physically alter areas of the cerebral cortex,
the intense, repetitive stimulation of marketing shapes susceptible brain circuits involved in decision-making.

"We are embedded in an enormous sea of cultural messages, the neural influences of which we poorly understand.
We are beginning to understand the way in which messages can gain control over our behavior." - neuroscientist
Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston

While monitoring brain activity directly researchers make inquiries into consumer choice by harnessing techniques pioneered for medical diagnosis: positron emission tomography, which measures the brain's chemical activity; magnetic-resonance imagery, which measures the brain's magnetic fields; and functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures blood flow around working neurons.

"This is a way of prying open the box and seeing what is inside." - psychologist Jonathan Cohen,
director of Princeton University's Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, & Behavior

In the mind's eye, celebrities trigger many of the same circuits as images
of shoes, cars, chairs, wristwatches, sunglasses, handbags and water bottles.

Objects and celebrity faces were reduced to a common denominator: a spasm of synapses in a part of the cortex called Brodmann's area 10, a region associated with a sense of identity and social image. None of these neural responses come consciously to mind when a shopper is browsing brand labels.

Much of what was traditionally considered the product of logic and deliberation is actually driven by primitive brain systems responsible for automatic emotional response processes that evolved to manage conflicts between sex, hunger, thirst and the other elemental appetites of survival.

In recent years, researchers have discovered that regions such as the amygdala, the hippocampus and the hypothalamus are dynamic switchboards that blend memory, emotions and biochemical triggers.

These interconnected neurons shape the ways that fear, panic, exhilaration
and social pressure influence the choices humans make.

Political beliefs trigger the same malleable circuits of reward, identity, desire and threat that product branding does.

Lattices of neurons are linked by pathways forged, then continually revised, by experience.

So intimate is this feedback that there is no way to separate the
brain's neural structure from the influence of the world that surrounds it.

As researchers have learned to map the anatomy of behavior they have realized that the brain,
shaped by the interplay of genes and environment, is more malleable than anyone had guessed.

"There is a fundamental conflict in our society - between consumers and business.

This conflict is played out on the fields of the mass communications media.

To be sure, there is overlapping interest. Consumers often want to buy and businesses always want to sell.

But the concept of advertising is predicated on salesmanship, i.e., it's no trick to sell people what they want to buy; the trick is to make people want to buy what you want to sell. When you succeed at that, you're a salesman. Otherwise, you're simply a clerk.

Media advertisements and commercials are designed to be salespersons, not clerks.

Consumers think purchasing decisions are within their control. If they are told they are being manipulated into wanting to purchase a product, they will recoil. They know ads are designed to "sell" but they think that such susceptibility mostly applies to others, not to them. This is known as the "Third Person" effect.

People also want to be entertained. But they do not want to think that entertainment is, in fact, merely a vehicle for inducing them to purchase advertised products. They want the boundaries between entertainment and advertising pitches to be clearly delineated. That delineation is the last thing business wants.

Not until or unless consumers of entertainment understand how businesses manipulate them into awareness of and desire for their products via ostensible entertainment programming, will the media playing field ever be level.

When consumers found the remote, the videotape and most recently, TiVo, they zapped commercials. Advertisers returned the volley with product placement.

In feature films, where advertising had never established the foothold it had in television and other media venues, deals between producers and advertisers have flourished. Studios are paid large fees for conspicuously placing products in a scene or making brand name products part of the storyline.

The following is an actual proposal for product placement:

Dear Mr. Smith,
We are about to go into production with the motion picture, "Run, Sheep, Run", a suspense thriller, set in Los Angeles. If there is any interest from your company, and I'm sure there must be, the film is better than any commercial that has been run on television or any magazine, because the audience is totally unaware of the sponsor involvement, I would like to have from your company the suggested brands for the people as listed above and the necessary cartons of cigarettes to be used, We would enter a contract, that upon delivery of the answer print to the distributor, your company, Reynolds Tobacco, would pay to our production company, the sum of $500,000.00. If for any reason the film is not distributed, then your company is out only the time in answering my letter, and a few packages of cigarettes, I think this protects both of us . I expect to hear from you very shortly.

Robert P. Richards 08/25/72

Curiously, product placement, visual or auditory, may, in fact, be superior to straight commercials because, except for those who intentionally search for shopping inspiration, people generally put up defenses against invitations to a purchase. Product placement circumvents these defenses and places the product in the viewer's eye and mind for future influence.

Advertising promotes the mantra that to buy is to be alive, to buy is to be real, to be important, to count! It's the American way." - Stuart Fischoff

human brain development

"Verbal abuse from peers is associated with elevated psychiatric symptoms and corpus callosum abnormalities. The main causes are stress hormones, changes in inhibitory neurotransmitters, and environmental experience affecting the formation of myelin electrical insulation on nerve fibers. The most sensitive period for verbal abuse from peers in impairing brain development was exposure during the middle school years. This is the period of life when these connections are developing in the human brain, and wiring of the human brain is greatly influenced by environmental experience."

"Unlike the brains of most animals, which are cast at birth, the human brain develops largely after we are born. The brain of a human infant is so feeble that human babies are helpless. Human infants cannot walk, visual perception is rudimentary, and cognitive abilities, likes and dislikes, talents and skills, and the ability to communicate by speech or through reading and writing do not develop fully until the completion of adolescence. Our brains are the product of the environment in which we are nurtured through the first two decades of life. Our experience during childhood and adolescence determines the wiring of our brain so powerfully that even processing of sensory information is determined by our childhood environment. Whether or not we can hear eight notes in a musical scale or 12, or whether we find symmetry in art beautiful or boring, or whether we can hear the difference in sound of the English letter "R" vs. "L", depends entirely upon whether our brains wired up during childhood in Western culture or Asian culture. The neural circuitry underlying those sensory perceptions is directed by what we experienced in early life, and these circuits cannot be rewired easily in the adult brain." - Douglas Fields, Neurobiologist; Author, The Other Brain

a vision

A vision, an epiphany.

A cognitive light bulb fired by the binder of the substance of the universe.

Humans have such large heads.

Unlike the foal who shortly after birth climbs to her wobbly legs, a human infant can do nothing for itself. Upon birth each and every human is dependent on other humans for EVERYTHING. I remember that time in my childhood that I looked with marvel and awe at the abilities of the gods that took care of me. Emblazoned in my soul is also that belt at the waist of the angry god which was right at my eye level.

Along with the compassion the gods showed me they also showed me anger when my behavior was unacceptable to a strange set of rules. At times these rules were easy to understand - don't hit your sister, it makes her cry (and upsets the gods). At other times the unspoken rules were unwittingly broken and the anger of the gods was provoked unleashing a cascade of pain and sorrow.

The most important thing to each and every human infant is the feeling of belonging, feeling the embrace of the protective "god" and soothing the anger of the angry "god" through compliance. Buried deeply in the subconscious are the keys which unlock emotional reactions. These emotional "keys" originally turned in response to the actions of the "gods" remain in place throughout life. Buried deeply in the subconscious as we grow into adults is the old memory of the gods who cared for us as infants.

When we reach adolescence our subconscious suggests that we are nearing "godhood". Soon we will be as big, as smart, as strong and as capable as the "gods". Reality steps in and slaps us in the face. Not once, not twice but an uncountable number of times.

Soon enough we come to learn that we will never become "gods", even though our minds ache for the control and power of godhood. Soon enough we learn we are not immortal and soon enough we learn we can be broken.

Our parents, who as infants we saw as gods, no longer measure up to the office of godhood so we look for other gods.

Gods to fear, gods to protect us, gods to save us.

Perhaps those gods live high atop the mountain where they control the thunder and lightening. Perhaps they live inside of the Mosque, the Temple or the Megachurch. Perhaps those gods live only as ghosts, demons or apparitions inside the black magic flat screen, untouchable yet so glamorous living a life of action, adventure and romance. Or perhaps those gods live in a far distant capital governing our lives from behind the marble columns within the gilded halls. Humans need to belong and they look to on high for guidance - emotional reactions blazoned into their subconscious as infants.

Faith in the gods is lost when those gods fail us. Faith in oneself is lost when finally we realize deep inside and have to admit to ourselves that we will never attain the godhood we so desperately seek. These "gods" - high atop a mountain; living in the church, temple or mosque; moving as shades with the black magic flat screen or sitting on their throne behind white marble columns - lose their glorious status as we come to see that their power is limited, that they make mistakes and that they bleed just like us.

This is the way in which humans perceive greater power. Our gods crushed and dead, trampled to death by a relentless reality that doggedly marches through time day after day after day. Our spirits crushed by the fact that "our gods are dead" we fail to see that it was us along - our understanding of "the gods" was a mistaken one. We have been searching for a protector, a savior, a god to emulate but now we find that our god was a lie.

Many turn to hedonism "might as well make the most out of the very short time I have" . Others turn to peers, "let us form a governing group, together we are stronger ... perhaps we can get the others to believe we are gods".

We fail to recognize that our god was a lie because our concept of God was befuddled. Time for humanity to grow up.

Most humans have some concept of God and most of those concepts are rather hazy. The main reason these concepts are hazy is due to the need to make connections with those originally ingrained concepts of god in light of all the knowledge gained later in life.

Few modern men understand the mystical experience.

"The deep mystery of life, consciousness, reality and your natural place within existent reality. The deep mystery of existence is a mysterium, a mystery, tremendum et fascinans-tremendous, terrifyingly horrific when initially contemplated because understanding smashes all of your fixed notions of existent reality. Horrific, yet at the same time utterly fascinating, the beauty of your own nature and being. When you start thinking about these things, about the inner mystery, inner life, the eternal life, there are not too many symbolic conceptual images for you to use." - Joseph Campbell

A mystical core exists within all religions, Eastern and Western. This mystical core is directly related to human dreams, emotional needs and emotional experiences. Human subconscious reality is symbolically expressed within this mystical core in each religion in ways that differ only as to culture or sub-culture. Each religion has an element of truth in that the subconscious symbolic spiritual archetypes spring directly from human dreams, emotional needs and emotional experiences.

The essential elements of religion conceptualize spiritual reality as common among all men.

All human life is spiritually interconnected through the subconscious symbolic spiritual archetypes that express subconscious human reality in the mystical core of each religion. All human souls are motivated at the most basic spiritual level to participate spiritually as well as materially in life. All human beings deal with the forces of reality spiritually in much the same way, even though there are cultural and religious differences.

The mystical experience comes from a dis-associative state of consciousness. Minds trained to think in a linear academic manner have a much more difficult time of reaching this dis-associative state of consciousness than the shepherd in the field watching the sheep.

Throughout history psychoactive substances have helped those with compartmentalized minds to reach that dis-associative state of consciousness.

"In contrast to the mechanistic Western view, the Eastern view of the world is "organic." For the Eastern mystic, all things and events perceived by the senses are interrelated, connected, and are but different aspects or manifestations of the same ultimate reality. Our tendency to divide perceived reality into individual and separate things and to experience ourselves as isolated egos in this reality is seen as an illusion which comes from our measuring and categorizing mentality. It is called avidya, or ignorance, in Buddhist philosophy, and is seen as the state of a disturbed mind which has to be overcome: When the mind is disturbed, the multiplicity of things is produced, but when the mind is quieted, the multiplicity of things disappears." -Fritjof Capra

Once within the mystical experience, a dis-associative state of consciousness, the quieted intellect (allowed only the ability to observe) comes to understand that this is communion with Creation.

Some see only silence, some hear only light, some taste only aroma, some smell only flavor, but all touch Creation.

And once you touch Creation then you have no need for man's inadequate descriptions of God. And once you have touched Creation/Nature/God you realize that there is only one thing of any importance at all: LIFE !!!

FIRST NO HARM !!!

Note: Throughout history humans have reached for God by modifying consciousness to reach a dis-associative state of consciousness and thus attain the mystical experience. Within religion this has been done through pain - flagellation, fasting, chanting or the use of psychoactive substances.

Warning: For the beginner use of powerful psychoactive substances should be confined to use in religious rituals, or when immersed in nature, in the presence of a Spirit Guide.

Coherence in Thought and Action

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This web site is not a commercial web site and is presented for educational purposes only.

This website defines a new religious ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate crime.”

This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.

American social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.

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