At the age of 75, after about sixty years of trying to figure out the Meaning of It All (I started that quest around the age of 16, when I struggled to comprehend the lyrics of early Bob Dylan songs), when I find a fresh idea to explore, it feels great.
That feeling, by the way, is directly linked to the newest fresh idea: habituation, and its antidote, dehabituation.
I've got an article in the March 2, 2024 issue of New Scientist to thank for cluing me in to those words. I'd been vaguely familiar with the notion of habituation, but I hadn't realized the implications of this for those of us engaged in the possibly quixotic quest to fathom the Meaning of It All.
The article, "How to see things in a new light," is an interview by Alison Flood of Tali Sharot, one of the authors of Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. Naturally I've ordered the book.
That title conjures up visions of mindfulness for me, which is all about non-judgmental present moment awareness. One of the benefits of mindfulness is that it makes routine activities feel less routine by our attention being directed to what is actually happening, say, when we wash the dishes, as opposed to what appears to be happening when we're doing this as a matter of routine.
Sam Harris gets at that in his guided meditations on the Waking Up app when he asks the meditator to be aware of their body "as a cloud of sensations." Meaning, and this works best with eyes closed, feeling the tingling, itching, aching, heaviness, etc. of various parts of the body, rather than merely remembering that we're a body with a head, two arms, two legs, a trunk, and such.
By doing that, we're dehabituating our sense of ourselves as a body. Here's how the article describes habituation in the opening paragraphs.
Imagine jumping into a swimming pool. It’s cold, right? But then, a few minutes later, you are used to the temperature. Or how about walking into a room filled with cigarette smoke. It stinks, but give it a while and you don’t notice it any more.
This is habituation – the brain’s ability to stop paying attention to certain things. It doesn’t only apply to sensory perceptions. It is also why new clothes or a new home lose their shine over time. And it doesn’t only apply to good things: it can explain why people stay in bad relationships, why we don’t raise an eyebrow at the fact that most CEOs are male and why we stop noticing the smog engulfing our cities.
Habituation is a fundamental neurological process vital to our evolution, helping us to quickly adapt to our environments so we are ready for the stuff that is new and potentially beneficial or the hazards that may be threatening. But there are benefits to seeing the things we are used to in a fresh light or – as Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein put it in their book Look Again: The power of noticing what was always there – “dishabituating”.
Sharot, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, tells New Scientist why learning how to dishabituate can improve our happiness, increase our awareness of misinformation and even help us fight climate change.
I've always wondered how it is that Donald Trump is so adept at getting a large share of the American people to believe his lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him, how his four criminal indictments are a plot to deny him reelection to the presidency, that he's a great businessman, and so many other falsehoods.
Sharot gives a persuasive answer.
There’s a well-known effect in psychology called the illusory truth effect, which is basically that when you hear something more than once, you’re more likely to believe it. One of the reasons for this is that when the brain encounters anything again, it responds to it less. The first time you hear a piece of information, you’re really processing it – say, “a shrimp’s heart is in its head”.
When you hear it for the first time, you’re really thinking about the sentence, you’re imagining the heart in the head. But the second time I say it, your brain doesn’t have to process it any more and so it’s not responding to it. It is familiar, and we are accustomed to the idea that if something is familiar, it is probably true.
We usually have a surprise signal in our brain that indicates something is not true. But if that surprise signal is reduced or eliminated, and it could be only because we’ve heard something more than once, then we are not attuned to look at things carefully and be suspicious of their validity.
Trump is skilled at repeating his lies over, and over, and over, and over. He knows, or at least intuits, that the more often a lie is heard, the more likely it will be believed. As Sharot says above, "we are accustomed to the idea that if something is familiar, it is probably true."
Religious speakers do the same thing. Often the same message is hammered home at every meeting of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, or other religions. It doesn't take long before most of those who hear the message will take it as gospel, literally.
Any doubts about the truthfulness of their religion's teachings tend to be submerged beneath a sea of habituation. But there's an antidote. Sharot says:
You can dishabituate yourself by taking yourself out of an environment, because when you come back you’re going to see it with fresh eyes, whether it’s a few days away from home, making changes to your routine, trying a new skill.
I have begun taking courses in a field different from my own. I work on different projects in different industries and on different topics. By diversifying your life, you are more likely to dishabituate, which means learning new things, but also seeing the things that are already there in a new way. Basically, any breaks that we have from people, from environments, will cause us to dishabituate.
Some people only read things that they already agree with. In fundamentalist Islam, the Koran is the only book that needs to be deeply understood. It's no wonder that Islam produces so many dangerous fanatics. They are far removed from dishabituation.
I'm grateful that for a variety of reasons, I was able to look upon the guru-centered Eastern religion I embraced for thirty-five years in a new light.
Getting divorced and remarried to a woman who had different spiritual beliefs helped. So did writing several books that gave me fresh philosophical perspectives. And during those thirty-five years I studied other approaches to the Meaning of It All, such as Buddhism and Taoism, along with physics and neuroscience.
I guess the lesson is to always try to look outside the belief-boxes we find ourselves in. This can be difficult to do, since our beliefs can come to seem so comfortable, we don't want to give them up. That's the nature of habituation. Such is fine up to a point. After that, dehabituation is called for.
Schadenfreude is my secret delight. That's why I so hope I live to see Donald Trump elected and the exploding heads.
As for objectivity, the US and the world were in all ways objectively better during the Trump years than it has been during the Biden. And so I find your pitch about having achieved "dehabituation" chucklesome.
Posted by: sant64 | March 21, 2024 at 04:43 AM
Perhaps one insidious thing to start with in the process of dishabituation (become aware of) is the ‘cult of the 9’s’. In the UK, marketing people still stick to the practice of marketing many things with a price tag ending in ’99. For example, items are advertised costing £199.99 instead of £200. And to add insult to injury they offer a £20 discount (not £19.99) if you buy now.
By far the worst is fuel. The Price is blazoned on the forecourts as £145.9 ((£1.45.9p) per litre. If buying 50 litres at £145.9 there is a saving! of 5p. The whole idea is that psychologically we habitually register the price as £145 and not the nearer price of £146.
The price thing is just a mundane (and my favourite) example of how we tend to ‘go asleep’ in our minds. The whole idea of waking up could simply be about just noticing, being aware of what’s happening around us along with our habitual thought processes, beliefs, views and opinions. So maybe then, the simple practice of being ‘here now’ could start with dishabituation.
Posted by: Ron E. | March 21, 2024 at 04:44 AM
"I've always wondered how it is that Donald Trump is so adept at getting a large share of the American people to believe his lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him, how his four criminal indictments are a plot to deny him reelection to the presidency, that he's a great businessman, and so many other falsehoods."
"There’s a well-known effect in psychology called the illusory truth effect, which is basically that when you hear something more than once, you’re more likely to believe it."
"Trump is skilled at repeating his lies over, and over, and over, and over. He knows, or at least intuits, that the more often a lie is heard, the more likely it will be believed."
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Yep, the Big Lie, from Hitler's playbook. That famous motto of Goebell's, that when you repeat a lie enough times, then people start to believe it is the truth.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 21, 2024 at 07:20 AM
Heh, one does wonder, did Trump actually read Mein Kampf, or at least accounts of Goebbell's infamous propaganda machinery, and consciously adapt this strategy? Unlikely, because Trump is semi-literate, and without a doubt the stupidest lowlife to ever have besmirched the White House. On the other hand, he does have advisors and associates and so forth, many of whom do know how to read a book; so who knows, maybe yes? ...In any case, despite his stupidity and his ignorance, without a doubt the man's possessed of an abundance of low cunning: so that, as you say, he may simply have intuited this, and found from experience that it actually works, and so he may have made this strategy part of his SOP: Just make up any random nonsense, no matter how outrageous, and simply keep on repeating it as if it were the truth.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 21, 2024 at 07:28 AM
Trump in Sach Khand: "Mideast peace like never before...TRUMP GAZA PLAZA. Big, incredible Resort and Casino. Also, greatest golf course anywhere in the world. Most beautiful chocolate cake."
Posted by: umami | March 21, 2024 at 08:13 PM
Biden on earth "I'm genocide Joe, don't you know!".
It's interesting to see the calls for dehabituation of OTHERS, always OTHERS, from those who urgently need to be dishabituated from the delusional echo chambers of CNN, MSNBC et al.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
The world was a far better place when Trump was president. Genocide Joe is a senile serial war monger who speaks to dead people and sees pictures of dead babies that don't even exist. This is just facts.
Posted by: manjit just dropping by. Bye bye | March 21, 2024 at 10:01 PM
Is it not common for sentient beings, for humans to "protect" themselves against NATURAL enemies ..predators, snakes etc and all other natural phenomena as earthquakes, landslides, inundation, drought etc etc???
Is it not common for sentient beings, for humans to "protect" themselves against SOCIO- CULTURAL enemies .. the social cultural equivalents of predators, snakes etc and all other natural phenomena as earthquakes, landslides, inundation, drought etc etc???
Does that drive to survive natural and cultural not generates all sorts of , let us call them, negative feelings??
White people
White Christian people
White american christian people .......{ an all other combinations]
Who do they consider and treat as heir natural an cultural enemies ..mind you not only consciously but also UN-consciously.
In my book, if one thinks it through, many a person that express himself as PRO this or that is in fact ANTI
So skeptics are in fact blind believers, with anti scientific sentiments
animal protectors, hate animals
the trump haters, like trump ... hahaha .. but do not want to know that or it doesn't suit them to admit it to themselves and others
So against this background anybody might be able to figure out the sentiments they and others have with regards to the parties in GAZA
Do not forget that the social cultural roots are CALVINISTIC and Calvin and with him all other theologians hat something to say about history and future of the people living in the middle east
And if it does not come as professed they will create it themselves to make it come true
ARMAGEDON
Posted by: um | March 22, 2024 at 02:21 AM
@ Manjit
Wait a moment before you walk away ...
What do you think would and will be the position of Mr. Trump towards the conflict in Oekraine and Gaza?
He is the [robber] chief of all those that cannot control their feelings and thoughts ..in the public domain.
THAT doesn't mean that the rest is any better, but they have learned and are learning their of spring to behave what they call "civilized"
Have a nip of tea Manjit, Think of the colonial powers, especially the British and spanish. and wonder how it has been possible that great parts of the world speak their language and that they could "rule the waves" bring civilisation to the indegenous people ...WHILE ...being such small countries, with small populations???
IT was achieved by??? ...TERROR
Terror can come in physical forms but also psychological.
These days they have not stopped torture of people, but use mental tools of the art.
You even see it at home in the family, in schools, at work and in politics ..we do not longer use physical power. but given the need to control others we have ONLY switched to abstract means of control ..means that are often causing more suffering and have longer lasting negative effects. ... but they are certainly according the "NEW" standards of civilization
We can paint a skunk in fancy colors but he will still stink
Humans are no exception.
They just are what they are.
They have always searched for means to enrich themselves at the cost of others.
They will go on.
Thinking that denouncing the means of doing so that have ben prevalent in the gone by decades, will end it ...is wrong.
Until the next time you will pass bye
Posted by: um | March 22, 2024 at 02:47 AM
It says something about the human race when political leaders – presidents, prime ministers etc, - who have been elected to run their respective countries have current or pending criminal charges. Since 2000, over fifty leaders of democratic countries were indicted and another 40+ were convicted. Trump, with his 91 criminal charges is no exception. So, what’s going on with our leaders?
There is a saying that we get the leaders we deserve, but I would expand on that in that we get the leaders that reflect our own, or our group state of mind. How then can we except our leaders to not be corrupt when we, ourselves are corrupt?
Our own corruption may stem from the fact that we are either not aware of the impact we have on society and therefore our leaders, or we simply don’t care – as long as my life, my interests are para-mount.
With regard to habituation, it seems that we have fallen into the habit of not noticing (or ignoring) the effect our narrow self-interests have on each other, society at large and our planet. Perhaps our self-preservation interests and instincts are simply the result of being wired by nature – and conceivably, for us humans, are perhaps unconsciously usurped by our particular type of conditioned thinking, through our beliefs and opinions.
Posted by: Ron E. | March 22, 2024 at 09:30 AM
@ Ron E.
>> Perhaps our self-preservation interests and instincts are simply the result of being wired by nature – and conceivably, for us humans, are perhaps unconsciously usurped by our particular type of conditioned thinking, through our beliefs and opinions.<<
What else???
Posted by: um | March 22, 2024 at 10:04 AM
To Manit,
Agreed!!!
Posted by: s* | March 28, 2024 at 09:50 AM