In a startling discovery at the beginning of the last century a Russian Scientist, Ivan Pavlov coined the term conditioned reflex. As many of you know, he experimented with dogs and other animals, and observed that if he rang a bell (or a tuning fork) while the animal was offered food and the dog would salivate at the sight of food, eventually even if the food was not present, the dog salivated nevertheless.
In other words through repetition, the dog was conditioned to connect the sound of the bell, (or the tuning fork) with the food and automatically salivated.
At the heart of his conclusion there are a few very significant assumptions.
Firstly, the reflex to salivate happened without any conscious interference. The dogs did not think, Oh, this is the bell ringing, food is coming, I think I will salivate now.
Even more (but not immediately obvious to untrained people) is that human beings respond similarly to animals. (In fact Pavlov also experimented with children). And when I say human beings I mean me and you, and your friends, and family. We’re all subject to conditioning. In NLP terminology we call this anchoring.
While the public is largely not aware of how conditioned they are, understanding the process of anchoring, how the connection between a certain stimulus and a certain reflex (say for example a certain feeling) occurs, makes NLP people able to change things here and there, so they can be free of unwanted automatic responses.
We see this all the time when we get to the Collapse Anchoring part of our NLPCoaching Practitioner training. It is so uncanny to talk to people who discover that when X happened, they automatically responded Y. And they did not know why. It was beyond their conscious awareness.
What You Want To Know… and Quickly
Here is how it works: let’s say that you walk into a shopping mall, and you hear “Jingle Bells” – only the tune not the words, where are you transported instantly in your mind?
End of The Year Holiday Time, of course!
Why? It is June 17… there is no reason to think of holidays! But you may say, they play this music always at the end, big sales in the stores, presents, bargains, shopping, more shopping and … more shopping…
And this is exactly my point. What does Jingle Bells have to do with shopping and why do you get into shopping fever hearing this song?
However, there are many, maybe tens of anchors or reflex conditionings of which you are not aware and especially you don’t know the consequences of, but you’re subjected to on a daily basis. You just act automatically, and think that you’ve done that out of your own volition.
That’s a problem!
Battle for Our Conditioning
Without us being asked, for many years now the companies selling us advertising for their products have used auditory (and other) anchors to condition us to respond in a certain way.
So, what are the consequences of the changes in our country’s esthetic in general, and how are these related to anchoring you in a certain way.
What do you think the implications are of our fascination (which is in and of itself a conditioning) with MTV?
A lot of songs nowadays are increasingly recycled. They are not even recycled well; they are a sort of an infantile reproduction of the originals.
Why?
Does this have cultural implications? We respond in an old way, and yet, the quality (or lack thereof) in the music we hear is putting a strong fingerprint on our thinking. The music is childish, infantile, and it creates an infantile and childish automated response in us.
You can almost call this “corporatized music”. It is creating inside us a simple response, a sort of an artificial demand for a simple kind of music that may or may not be good for us. There is a lot of good contemporary music, but it is not being done by the Lady Gagas of the modern fashion. The latter are here today, and replaced by others like them tomorrow, but the effects on us remain and are transmitted through generations further down the line.
Part of the effect of this modern music is to dumb people down. It is not a music that is meant to engage positively our intellect, but it is meant to reduce us to primary instinctual responses. Almost like going back in time when we used to live in caves and bushes.
Notice the change? Maybe not!
When did it happen? And what happened to us since? What changes happened in our society? Quality music engages the intellect in a positive way. It is not that music should always engage the intellect, but notice the young who grew up only with a certain type of music. Try to play for them an older, classical piece of music in its original version and they would not know what to do with it. They cannot even appreciate the quality of that music and the complexity of their thinking does not allow them the even think that way.
If you think that I am talking here about likes or dis-likes you miss the point. I could not care less about what type of music you like because certainly you have the right to listen to what you please. This is NOT about taste. This is about the effects contemporary music (and art in general) has on all of us by creating certain responses of which we may or not be aware.
It is like somebody who plays with Crayola on a piece of paper, being shown a Rembrandt or the Mona Lisa. They’re lost, because that kind of art is for the sheer joy of an intelligent sequence of ideas that makes sense and wire the mind very, very differently.
The corporate music, and art for that matter, is so connected to all our activities that we have to have music to everything that we do. We’re bombarded with it – in banks, in hospitals, in shopping malls, everywhere! We cannot work without having a pair of cans on our ears. We do not eat, walk, run, exercise or drive without some sort of music. So we pile anchors upon anchors unconsciously allowing ourselves to be conditioned permanently.
And what is happening is that I this way, people are subjected to someone else’s taste and being anchored by them, creating conditioning to direct their responses in a certain manipulated way.
Pay Attention!!!
In our view, whichever side you take on the modern music and art industry, awareness is the first step into knowledge and understanding. From your mental well-being perspective, one concern I do not see anywhere discussed is the issue of consciousness. Is our consciousness being changed, dumbed down, reduced to primary responses when we receive this kind of input?
Evidently and discernibly so!
Stop being blissfully unaware and pay attention!!!
Even if your body is responding like the dogs’ woof, you still have an independent consciousness and you can choose to free yourself from being conditioned every day, from birth to the cradle by unwanted stimuli in your environment. Empower yourself to find out what you are conditioned to on a daily basis. Learn how to break free from being subjected to other people’s anchoring. Learn how to collapse those anchors, and break free.
You can learn from us….