The placebo effect is the name that medical science gives to the ability to heal on belief alone.
Think about that for a second.
Realize how insane it is that people are not in continuous shock and awe at this gift.
The worst part is when they collectively shrug, ignore it, and go back to slinging pills.
Yes, even scientists grant that belief and will alone have the power to heal the body in ways they don’t understand, can’t explain, and have nothing to with their magic drug$.
But nobody’s too interested in this outside of the fringe, kook weirdos on the margins.
It’s one of the most fantastic things I ever heard.
A person can create real physical change in their living body through a belief and nerds will say “Oh it’s JUST a placebo”.
That’s a real-life superpower getting bad-mouthed as a failure because some nerd science didn’t work right.
Ridiculous.
The placebo effect is a real challenge to the materialist and mechanical image of nature that fascinates everybody in our self-hating culture. You can’t talk about nature as a vast mechanism of causes and effects, free of mind, when the mind can cause real effects on matter.
The placebo effect is real and I am all for it.
What I want to know is, what else can we do with this?
It’s well established that the belief power is weaponized against us, pretty much everywhere and always, by advertisers and CIA spooks and witch doctors and who even knows who else.
You may as well use it on yourself for your own purposes.
It takes three ingredients.
1- The belief.
Belief can mean what is believed, like “I believe that snow is white.” It can also mean the state of believing, like “I believe in God”, when you have the conviction regardless of any independent justifications or reasons.
Placebos need both parts.
2- The conversation.
The placebo effect happens when a doctor gives a treatment to a patient. You’ll notice that there’s two people involved. The doctor prescribes the treatment and instructs the patient. The patient receives the treatment and agrees to use it.
There’s two parties involved in this conversation.
3- The ritual.
Building on the last thing, that conversation happens in a particular way, in a particular place, through a particular sequence of steps. A trip to the doctor is, in a loose but credible analogy, like a trip to the local priest. There’s symbols of authority, there’s people around handling administration and operations, there’s a place where the conversation happens and where the priest-doctor blesses the patient with the treatment.
The situation creates a context where belief can happen.
This is powerful stuff, so use it wisely and don’t spread it around all over town.
Matt Perryman
https://matts.email