Posts Tagged ‘awareness’

#Facebook’s Unauthorized Experiment on It’s Users Provides a 101 Lesson in #SocialConditioning

Posted: July 4, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
7/3/2014

Social network sounds so much more appealing than electronic social emotional psychological experiment platform.

It was recently revealed that in 2012, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of just under 700,000 users, in order to measure the effects the news feed changes, on the mood(s) of the user(s).

The exact number of users who were unknowingly experimented on is 689,003. The exact amount of time was one week. Facebook showed less (than) positive posts from both friends and publication providers. Facebook did not get the consent of the users to do this experiment.

Facebook has both apologized, and offered no apologies for conducting this unauthorized psychological experiment.

Me personally, I find something like this to be disgusting and despicable. This is also a great learning lesson on a variety of levels. Let’s focus on how the results of the experiment show what social conditioning is.

Social conditioning is how we learn to think, perceive, and act through the media (movies, television, music, magazines, newspapers, social media websites/platforms, etc).

Facebook proved to themselves and to the world that social conditioning is a very real, very applicable, very effective social-emotional concept. Social conditioning shapes all of us, myself very much included. Facebook itself can be considered one big social conditioning machine.

It was also learned in the experiment that emotions are contagious. That people can in mass be manipulated to feel happier or sadder. What are the implications of this? What other large companies have performed experiments like this in the past? In the present?

I’m not going to bring this article down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. There are simply questions worth asking of ourselves internally as well as the external world around us. How much of what we think and feel is rooted in our own personal identity, integrity, character, and principles? How much of our identity, values, and consent has been manufactured?

Think about it. Be aware of it.

What is “it”? It in this case would be the non material aspects of what makes you up as a person. Your thoughts, feelings, and so on. Do you think, perceive, and act based on what you internally believe? Or are you being so manipulated by the world around you that you have no identity that isn’t a corporate brand or group think produced? No one is above being asked that question, especially not yours truly.

Think about it. Be aware of it.

 

The Awareness / #Intent to #Change Trap

Posted: July 2, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
7/2/2014

One must be aware they have a problem and/or need to change before anything can be accomplished in the direction of personal growth.

However, awareness is only the first step and personal development/self help is way more than a twelve step staircase.

The intent to change is mandatory. One must state their intent to themselves, writing it down in a journal is also mandatory. However, the intent to change can be a double-edged sword to those who think that awareness of a problem/short coming and the intent to change will do the work for them.

This is one of my biggest personal failures in my quest to be my best self. Constantly, repeatedly thinking that my intent to change will do the work for me when I am pressed up against my comfort zone in the moment(s) of choice.

There is no substitute for taking action.

No amount of awareness or positive intent to change will create substantial change. The negative/counter productive habits of thought, perception, and action can only be changed by consistent new actions to create new points of reference. Only by taking the actions and creating a new pool of reference experiences will you create your new reality.

That is how we dig ourselves into holes, that is how we dig ourselves out; action.

Awareness is the way out, that is true. One can’t change without the intent to change, that is also true.

But we only change outside of our comfort zone. It is easy to be aware of our short comings and intend to change while we’re not being tested by ourselves or by the external world around us. Feeling the fear in the stomach when the moment of choice is upon us, is where/when we must exercise courage and take action in the direction of the change and new reality we wish to manifest.

Trying and failing is fine. Trying and coming up a little short is fine. Step by step, day by day. But the key word/concept is trying, trying is action. We must build new reference experiences for our mind to access. Those reference experiences, as the continuously, constantly accumulate, eventually become our new reality for better and for worse. We can do this with an exercise regiment or by eating like a pig, by being the life of the party or a wallflower, cultivating a new hobby/skill set or binge watching digital video programming.

That’s why the saying goes: “easier said than done”.

Awareness is not easy to cultivate, having it is an accomplishment.

Intent to change eludes many for entire lifetimes.

But at the end of the day anyone can want to change, think they have to change, plan to change, and say they want to change. But it’s all about action. We can’t pay our bills with positive intention. I won’t meet a romantic partner because I am aware that I want to. None of us progress (or decline) without action. Don’t get caught in the ego centered quicksand of believing that wanting to change is enough, simply wanting anything is never enough.

…Action…