Sunday, January 9, 2011

...On the Power of the Human Mind...

"Anything is possible if you put your mind to it"
-Quote heard countless times

When I was a kid, I usually drag my brother to play with me in an imaginary world where we have powers, high-tech gadgets (plastic toys), Masked Rider Black-like vehicles (BMX), and impenetrable armor (imaginary, powers stated upon hit). Back then, that was a reality we could escape to anytime. We didn't damage anything, we'd look stupid to those who aren't part of the game, but in that reality we were in, our imagination made it seem to us that we were in some anime we were watching.

"Made it seem". It's not, but it "seems" real. That is but one of a lot of things that the human mind can do. The admission of Power Balance that their claims "are not scientifically proven" gave me further reason to believe that the human mind is capable of those supernatural stuff we see in movies. 

I have three arguments on the subject:

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Respect and Ignorance

This happens to us as kids. When we know nothing about the world around us, we tend to believe that what people who we think know more than us tell us. For example, when we were kids, some of us were told that monsters exist so that we won't play outside at night. We were told not to make faces or else a gust of wind will make that face permanent. Or that if we were good Santa would give us gifts at Christmas.

While some of these things were meant only to discipline us kids, we believed it to be true, and did what we were told, and tried to avoid stuff that we were told not to do. And by believing, we made nonsense into reality. 

Such is the mind of a kid, that 
tabula rasa, that formless clay that you can mold into anything. By simple ideas that are probably not true, the kid is disciplined in such a way that the kid behaves in the manner which you want him/her to. In a way, an idea, a product of the mind, became the most powerful disciplinary tool. 

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Power Balance 
It became a fad that even athletes endorse it. People testified.

And yet, after countless people said that it's all bull, it's only now that the makers of Power Balance actually admit that they have no scientific proof whatsoever that whatever bull they're telling people about their product is true.

But you can't deny facts .They testified because they saw results. And yet, with this admission of the sham, it doesn't discount the fact that people have indeed been helped by that stupid hologram thing.

How? Simply because they put their mind to it. They believed in all the crap that the product marketed itself, and they attributed every enhancement to that. While people should feel cheated, I think they should recognize the fact that it's not a product that helped them, it's always been in them (sounds like a cheesy line from a dying sensei in an anime series). 

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Faith

Funny how we were told in Philosophy that "faith begins when reason ends". Apparently,
 they're not like Church and State that should be separated. They work hand in hand. Those that we can't explain, we leave up to faith. And if we actually believe, most of the time, positive things happen. 

A great example of this would be faith healers. Some scam people by planting "sickly" people and "healing" them, making others believe that they can actually cure their diseases. And in most instances, those who are actually sick ARE cured. 

While I wouldn't want to discount a Higher Power (peace tayo Bro, blog lang), it somehow seems that it's all in our minds; we just need a catalyst to perform "miracles" on us, some tangible person that our Higher Being uses as a tool to answer our prayers. We're not healed by quack doctors who we don't believe in. We sought their help because we believed they can do something about what we were feeling.

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This is what I get from listening to the radio and hearing about that Power Balance thing.

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