I am fascinated by the intricacies of the brain and human mind. The basic foundational questions about life and existence that try to solve the “who am I?” and “where do I come from?” mysteries. What prompts decisions and behaviors are driven by so many different mediators and agents. I watched an episode of Derren Brown who is a popular English mentalist and illusionist. His acts are often designed to expose psychics, mediums and faith healers. He always makes it clear that his amazing feats are not due to some super-natural powers or abilities. He uses feats of memory, suggestion, hypnosis, cold reading, misdirection and showmanship. Our minds preside in a spectrum of factors that consciously and unconsciously mold our decisions and how we ultimately take action in any given area. You Tube has a large selection of his videos that portray strengths and weaknesses of the mind and the effect that social compliance has on our choices. What makes ‘you’ who you are, and ‘who’ makes ‘you’. The scary part is realizing how the ‘ewe’ is compromised and becomes a machine that is guided and directed to carry out desires and goals that are contrary to your true ‘you’. Your ‘you’ becomes part of bigger agenda that capitalizes on human weakness and insecurity.

I was particularly affected by an episode from Derren Brown’s show ‘Pushed to the Edge”. He investigates the power of compliance by eventually trying to persuade a man to push a person…..off a building! A well orchestrated production designed to captivate a man into performing tasks that are questionable. At first he agrees to take part in a seemingly minimal lie of little consequence. He agrees to mis-label sausages containing meat as being vegetarian. After the first lie is engaged and complied with, a series of bigger deceptions are deployed for him to be in collusion with. He absolutely knows it is wrong and deceitful. Each step leads to a more damaging outcome when a more serious lie is acted upon. The episode escalates to the point where the subject has to choose whether to push a person off a roof. Several of the subjects actually pushed a live person off the building! Obviously the victim did have a hidden harness preventing any injury or death.

You might also think ‘obviously’ the subject would never knowingly push a person off a building to their death. Not so! Several subjects were set-up and given the option to make a conscious choice to push a person off the roof of a high rise building or refuse such a horrific act.  Seeing this had a chilling and eerie effect on me. I started to reflect on decisions and major choices in my life. I started to ‘reverse engineer’ what I thought at the time to be good or appropriate decisions that ended up being the opposite. Not only did my choices change my life, but many other people were affected.

It was like opening Pandora’s box. The phrase meaning to perform an action that may seem small or innocent, but instead turns out to have severely detrimental and far-reaching repercussions. Evils of the world can escape when the lid is opened out of curiosity. And, likewise habits and foibles of the mind left unchecked can become anchors into other paradigms and outcomes contrary to the real YOU. This is not an invitation to open a bigger Pandora’s box of guilt and remorse. I found clues for awareness in how I engage mindless compliance. I found the video to be a wake up call to be more vigilant about my choices. I invite you to relax into the video and see if ‘chillin’ doesn’t become ‘chilling’. Simply add a ‘gee’ and wonder, could that be me?