Your entire life has led to you reading this article right now. Think about it. Everything that happened in your childhood,all your decisions and actions, all the books you have read , all the events in your life have lead you up to reading this piece of content right now. How crazy is that!
This moment right now, is the latest moment in your existence. Right now you are the oldest you have ever been and this is the most recent thought going through your head. You are filtering this moment right now through the lens of your past experience, through the life you have lived.
Nobody in the entire universe is experiencing this moment in the exact same way as you are. It means that your reality is unique to you. It also means that it couldn’t have been any other but the way you are experiencing it right now. It is a powerful thought (read it again if you want).
Your brain,comprising billions of neurons give you a feeling of reality.
But-
Is your mind recording the reality or constructing it?
To put it another way consider this-
You are free to do what you want but what you want, is decided by your personality ,which is shaped by your past experience as well as your culture and environment.
So it means that we are part of a very complex machinery and all our actions and words and responses to dials and levers set by the environment and other humans.
This suggest that we are not responsible for our thoughts and actions.
The talk about free will is not something new. Philosophers from ancient history are debating this without reaching any conclusion.
Interestingly, with rise in data collection and computing power as well as development in behavioural psychology and neuroscience, humans have became hack-able animal.
Complex Behavioural patterns can be identified and recorded from the large data sets and can later be reverse engineered to achieve motivated results .
Put simply, It means that with the required skills, resources and motivation one can take control over your free will and can make you think and feel in a specific manner ,with you being completely unaware of the manipulation.
The fact of the matter is ,manipulating public behaviour has always been a thing, but this time the attack is far more individualised as well as personalised.
What sounds like a distant scientific dystopia is happening right now as you read this article.
Literature, painting, Music and other creative art are time-tested human attempts to connect(and hence trigger) a particular human emotion ,from a long time. Netflix knows your shows taste better than you. Ever noticed how Spotify exactly understands your music taste and auto-play the exact song out of the million ,that you love the most! You are not the only one who is overwhelmed by Amazon. The reason why your 5 min YouTube session become 5 hours is because YouTube exactly knows the videos that you will click on.Humans are emotional beings (contrary to popular belief of being Logical Sapiens ). So if the companies want, they can make you feel motivated ,and purchase gym supplements or even grieve over you lost loved ones. They also also light up a particular political ideology in your subconscious .
Is there a brand that you like but don’t know the reason why you like it? May be, you are a victim of a very good advertisement campaign.
The historical win of Donald Trump in a the US president and the Brexit is also attributed to large scale personalised manipulation of public behaviour to attain a motivated results. Such incidents have raised several eyebrows and has challenged the fabric to liberal democracy. After all you get to choose the leader you like ,but you don’t get to choose what to like.
So do you still think that you could have chose not to read this article?
