There's no quantum leap from childhood to adulthood. We experience millisecond after millisecond...even right...
NOW.
How we visually imagine the continual flow of those seconds can invoke a wide range of emotion. Busy people think time moves too fast. Some people feel time speeding up or slowing down by life stage. And a ticking clock often symbolizes deadlines, due dates, or new beginnings. Can we truly define the nature of time? Einstein said, "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubborn persistent illusion."
Only one thing is certain: how we feel about it, how we interpret it, and how we spend it varies by person and by culture. Are you ready to explore the illusion?
If yes, then fire up some candles, turn off the lights, get comfortable. Listen to this radio segment called the "Time Kaleidoscope."
Last
night I attended a lecture by physicist/author Leonard Mlodinow who described just how little control we actually have on
our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment.
Thanks
to groundbreaking discoveries in neuroscience, scientists are
learning that the human mind relies on subliminal processes.
Or in
other words: we make decisions without realizing we are making them.
Think
about the implications this has on our work, attitudes, and
relationships!
The
best part was how he structured his talk: with audience
participation he ran interactive exercise after exercise showing
people just how easily he could manipulate their choices by using
anchoring techniques or visual imagery. He showed us how our retinas
actually don't pick up all the visual details we think we see, and how
our memories are not a perfect recording of the past.
He also
articulated how our sense of self is an evolutionary trait that developed
to help us overcome adversity.
It
was quite entertaining to hear the audience's reactions—gasps of
disbelief.
We
assume that human beings are born with the ability to perceive the
world accurately. We have instincts like how to eat food, track
visuals, and avoid danger. Then we inherit education, culture and
history from our ancestors. Mash all of this together with our
philosophies, stereotypes, and social constructs and...voila! You
have a creature grasping at straws, trying to make sense of this
glorious and mysterious thing called life.
I
am so happy that in today's modern scientific and technological world,
there are creative and inspired souls developing the tools we need to learn more about ourselves and each other.
As
humans, we should all strive to learn more about ourselves. It's the
best way to help one another and future generations.
I always like to remind myself, "I don't know what I don't know."
“These
submilinal aspects of everything that happens to us may seem to play
very little part in our daily lives. But they are the almost
invisible roots of our conscious thoughts.” - Carl Jung
Be sure to check out his book Subliminal to learn more.
And to get a flavor of his lecture, check out excerpts from a similar talk he gave to the Secret Science Club.
