They’re doing unbelievable things down South:
In late March, senior FEMA official Gregg Phillips made the claim that he had involuntarily teleported – yes, TELEPORTED – two separate times, including one incident where he warped 50 miles to a random Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, while he was driving in his car.
Are you surprised by this? Spend a week or three in the South, where teleporting to the Waffle House at 2 am is a routine occurrence. I was known to do a little teleporting to the Waffle House myself back when I was younger.
It involves a secret reality-warping technology called a liter of cheap bourbon.
A story that looks ridiculous when taken at face value often has a hidden meaning that you can’t see. Taking the face value at its word is a common intellectual sin. You can always look deeper. Those incurious souls that don’t look beyond the surface story often find that the real meaning goes right over their heads.
Take this gem from a recent article by author Mark Manson:
The world seems to be full of intelligent idiots. The examples are endless.
There was a recent study that asked 30 behavioral scientists to predict which interventions would motivate people to go to the gym more often. Keep in mind that these are people who study human behavior for a living, and they were simply being asked to predict what will change human behavior.
Not only were their predictions horribly wrong, but they were worse than the random guesses of a person off the street… or a coin flip.
As a somebody who is more than a little-bit interested in behavior change in the realm of exercise and nutrition, this is 100% consistent with my experience.
In matters of human mind, heart, will, and action, The Science is bumbling and inept.
Psychology and social sciences coast on the prestige of physics without hardly any of the results to show. Some of it is worth reading, but the great majority is junk science with bad methods that will not replicate and only exists to pad out a junior faculty’s resume for promotion.
Take it at face value and you might think scientists are kung-fu masters of the mind.
You’re meant to hear the magic words “science says…” and stop thinking. Accept whatever statement comes next because, heck, a scientician said it. Are YOU a professional credentialed scientician, plebe? How dare you ask questions of the priests scientists.
I’ve been at this for a little awhile and I’ve yet to find the 11 secret herbs and spices that will make inactive people want to become active, or convince people with disordered food habits to eat better.
A person either wants it or they don’t.
Desire can’t be bottled up and handed out in pill form.
It certainly won’t come from nerds building theories about human motivation and behavior.
The closest I’ve seen to that kind of magic is leading by example to people who are receptive, while giving them the support of a social group along with regular reinforcement.
But even there, it isn’t like you can press the right buttons, put up the right signs for an awareness campaign, make the right behavior nudges, and fix the problem.
People may be dumb but they aren’t stupid. They recognize when they’re being manipulated and many will resist it out of spite, resentment, and stubborn defiance.
Folks need to see the point in what they are doing, why it matters, and feel that purpose in their bones and guts. Stern lectures don’t do that. Posters and TV spots with stupid slogans don’t do it.
Sometimes you just have to talk to people and find out what’s going on with them.
Sometimes a person isn’t going to change and doesn’t want to do different. We’re so used to the Industrial Model of People Management that the idea of a recalcitrant person who cannot be saved and doesn’t want to be saved hardly registers. Tragedy is real and awful things happen beyond our powers to prevent or fix, I’m sorry to tell you. Welcome to life.
Anyway, if there’s a point in all this, it’s that we are easily fooled creatures who buy into our own arrogance without any question of whether our thoughts are true, accurate, or even useful. Often they are none of the three.
Illusion, self-deception, and self-betrayal are a few of the most powerful forces at work in our lives.
Heaven knows I can’t make a single soul do a blessed thing they don’t want to do.
But I can help the lost souls who are already in motion and in need of a little guidance.
If you’re stuck with your fat-losing and fizeek-prettying progress, or you want to learn how to teleport to the Waffle House, send me a message and let’s see if I can help you.
Matt Perryman