Why human beings need to involve themselves in games of strategy and adventure online, effectively playing games within a game I don’t understand.

What better game to play than the one you’re already playing - the game of life? Why sit in front of a computer and play Quake, SIM City or some other video game with limited choices, experiences and outcomes that you need to pay for with time, and mental effort that will lead you absolutely nowhere.  Playing such a game over the course of a couple hundred hours will give you a final screen that turns into a mediocre fireworks explosion or says simply, “Congratulations, you’ve conquered the game.  Don’t miss our next game, Quake II which will arrive in stores just before Christmas 20xx.”

Why do some people spend hundreds or even thousands of hours pitting themselves against fictional characters in a game with a meaningless outcome? The big picture is that there’s no real goal or good purpose to these games. They’re mind-candy designed to stimulate some basic human interest. In SIM City its creating functioning cities. In Quake its about exploring unknown places, conquering enemies and extreme violence that we couldn’t otherwise partake of in reality.

In 1995 I think it was, I became interested in adventure video games like Doom II and Duke Nukem. They were novel at the time. It was an amazing concept to be able to play people from across the USA in ‘death match’ tournaments.  It was glorious fun and I spent a couple hundred hours playing, sometimes all night until I had to drag myself away to attend graduate classes the next morning.

When I think of the couple hundred hours I wasted I can’t believe I took part in it.  Why did I play them?  What did I get as a result?

Maybe some relaxation in a schedule filled with school, work and relationships.

But hundreds of hours?  What if I’d meditated instead?  What if I’d written a book?  Learned something online that mattered?  What if I spent those couple hundred hours learning some programming languages that could have been applied toward the year 2000 scare? I knew guys making $150/ hour updating old code from 1998-2000.  What if I had tutored someone and saved up some money to buy a mountain bike and get a different type of fitness (I was running a lot at the time)?

What if I would have spent the time talking to friends?  Volunteering somewhere?  Starting a business?

There are thousands of choices in this, the most awesome game.  There are infinite choices available with infinite possible results. This is the real game. Real life - as real as it gets, and yet some people don’t want to play THIS game. They are afraid of this game. How sad is that?

This is the only REAL game worth playing. This is the only one that matters even a little bit. In the big, big picture this entire game of life might mean the outcome for our future for the next 30,000 millenia. Or it might mean nothing. Better to act like it means a lot, than the other way around since there is always this chance that this life is what all future experience will be based on. That’s a sobering thought.

Isn’t life on it’s own thrilling enough? The outcomes, the rewards are infinitely more compelling than reaching a screen that says, “Congratulations! You killed 78,667 fictional chunks of code designed to attack you weakly within a GUI 2-D interface.”

TV is the all-time greatest waste of time affecting more people in more cultures than computer games probably ever will. In a way, computer video games are even less purposeful than TV. That’s saying a hell of a lot. Computer games have less intrinsic value than TV.

I challenge you today to stop playing any kind of computer game or watching TV. These two meaningless time wasters are better replaced by… well, anything.

Instead do something like…

• Learn a new sport or create one.
• Take part in a sport or exercise you already love.
• Start a stretching program.
• Use the computer to research something you want to learn about.
• Learn meditation, the ultimate relaxation and stress reliever. Download my free meditation course e-book.
• Question your religion… there must be something bugging you about it - see what others are saying about it.
• Teach your child how to do something s/he is interested in - not that you’re interested in.
• Read one of my favorite books Children, the Challenge; Think on These Things; or No Religion, by Buddhadhassa Bhikku; Hannibal, Thomas Harris.
• Start writing a book!
• Get a RSS Reader from Google and subscribe to some interesting blogs with it. It’s an amazing time saver. What’s a RSS reader?
• Start researching how to position yourself for the Ultimate Job.
• Every time you want to play a video game or watch TV get out a sheet of paper and write 10 things you could be doing instead.

Choose one or two and do them!

Best of Life!

Vern

This applies to a man or a woman, though a woman would probably have much more success with it. What have you got to lose? Just your marriage if you don’t try it!

Cut off all the hair from your head.

In 1996 as I began to meditate I realized something about the way women looked at me. They lusted after me to put it bluntly. I’m not Brad Pitt and I’m not a political powerhouse or wealthy mogul. But I realized something back then. I’m pretty damn attractive. Too attractive to have these women drooling over me because I was newly married and didn’t need the aggravation. Come on guys, you know what I’m talking about. (I hope this came across as humor!)

So, I was recently married and I was getting the usual eye-traffic coming my way at the university where I was finishing up graduate school. Being a student of psychology I enjoyed doing little social experiments to see if I could learn something about life. After a visit to see my brother in New York I decided I’d cut my hair down to about one eighth of an inch and see if people looked at me differently. My brother, who has been effectively bald since the age of twenty-one told me that not having hair is different than having hair. People don’t treat him the way they treat me because I have hair. He seemed to be jealous of me having hair when he didn’t - especially since I was older by four years.

My head was shaved in the Air Force years before - but that was done at the base where every man’s head was shaved. I wanted to see - does hair make a difference in how people treat me? Specifically, I wanted to see - do women treat me in a different way than when I had hair. Friends and strangers - were there differences that I could perceive?

I bought some clippers and put on the #1 level plastic piece. A “1″ is a close cut. It’s 1/4 to 1/8″ of an inch. It took all of five minutes to clip it all off. Wow. I went from a preppy and adorable full head of dirty blond hair down to stubble in minutes. It was comical to look at myself in the mirror. Already I knew the answer - people would definitely treat me differently. I couldn’t even come to grips with the new look for a few days.

Over the next few weeks I noticed a very real change in the way my friends treated me.

The most common question asked was, WHY did you do that? Apparently the shock of reality was almost too much for my female friends who thought me attractive before. They said things like, “It looked so much better before.” “Why do you want to look like a skinhead?” Apparently my head was so white because my hair was blond that I looked like a skinhead to some. I didn’t act like a skinhead any more than I did with hair - but, this was the reaction I got from some people. Apparently the stubble-head incites fear in some. I guess I did look skinheadish - but inside I couldn’t have been further from that.

I noticed a huge difference in the behavior of strangers toward me. Prior to shaving my head I got a fair number of looks my way during the day. I think everyone at the university gets their fair share of looks since out of 35,000 students there must be 100 that think any person looks good enough to make eye contact with.

Well, after I shaved my head I didn’t get the usual looks and eye contact that I got before. I still got some - and it wasn’t from people staring because I looked like a skinhead. I don’t think anyway. I began to get looks from a different type of person that I didn’t get looks from before. Bad girls. Girls with tattoos and smoking outside the classrooms, even teenagers would look at me quite a bit more and smile. It was bizarre. When I had hair I can’t remember ever having a bad girl look my way or go out of her way to make eye contact with me. When I had no hair - apparently they thought I was a bad boy and that appealed to them.

With friends they seemed to distance themselves from me a little bit. It seemed like they acted more seriously toward me and didn’t joke around or flirt as much if they were girl friends.

Anyway - a very interesting experiment that you should try as a man. As a woman I think you would experience really profound differences in the way men and other women treated you. Some would look at you as if you had turned lesbian. Some would think you a skinhead. Some would think you have a medical problem. Some would think you had a mental problem.

I’m considering making social experiments a part of this web site. I have a few more to share with you from growing up in the USA - but, since now I’m in Thailand - I wonder about the generalizability of experiments I do here. Would you still find them interesting? Not sure.

Here in Thailand I’ve shaved my head - sometimes with a razor (see pic) - just so I don’t have to think about hair being mashed down by my motorbike helmet. It’s cooler and nobody gives me strange looks here. The Thai women also have a similar reaction as in America. Less looks after I clip or shave my head. It’s really strange to realize the effect first-hand.

So - if you’re cheating or plan on cheating or could see yourself cheating - shave your head as soon as possible. Use a razor and go totally hairless if you’re just too sexy for your own good.  See how sexy you are then.

Huh?  Still too sexy?  Shave your legs and arms too.

STILL?  Shave your eyebrows smooth and pluck your eyelashes.

STILL??????? Ok, Ok, see a professional I can’t help.

Best of Life!

Vern

 

I studied psychology during my undergrad and graduate program in the USA. I was fascinated by persons with mental disability, having worked in a seniors care home and interacting with elderly with Alzheimer’s disease and many other maladies. I was even lucky enough to have an elderly aunt, 87 stay at my family’s home while I was there saving money to attend college in Miami.

My aunt had a bit of dementia, I’d say “moderate to profound”… but she also had these hallucinations and delusions that occurred once in a while to bring a little excitement around the house. The devil was on the left shoulder and Jesus was on her right shoulder and both were telling her what to do… Quite an exciting time during these episodes, I don’t need to tell you.

My aunt could be the subject of 17 whole blog posts by herself, but that wouldn’t be appropriate for this blog!

Psychology is so fascinating to me because it WORKS. It absolutely works in most situations to either alleviate the problem entirely or to lessen it to manageable levels. I’m not a proponent of drug therapy too often, but there are definitely cases that call for it. There is no other way to treat chemical imbalances in the brain sometimes than by adding chemicals. That’s the way it is and I’m OK with that. It is a horrible thing to see a relative zombied out on Lithium or it’s substitutes, but would you (and the person) rather live with the alternative?

I love the idea of psychological intervention because it’s “talk therapy”. It’s one person saying something to another… or maybe even one person saying it to him or herself that can cause change inside the mind. Changes in mood, behavior, actions can all be affected just by talking.

Going through my grad program I was introduced to some rather radical psychologists. One that stands out in my mind was “Milton Erickson”, an M.D. who lived between 1901 and 1980..

Dr Erickson was a proponent of the “Prescribing the Symptom” methodology of psychological treatment. It’s an incredibly simple and effective idea that has worked for me countless times both in therapeutic relationships and personal relationships throughout my life.

Dr. Erickson’s first official client came to him because he was addicted to pornography and masturbation. He already was masturbating 10 to 15 times per day, so Dr. Erickson told him to “double it”. He told the client he wanted him to do it a minimum of 30 times per day.

The poor client called the next day with problems of impotence. PROBLEM SOLVED!

The technique is THAT powerful. Why it works in my opinion is that by prescribing the symptom the subject is getting permission to do something even more than he / she was before. That takes the power away from the behavior… in this case, the masturbation. Things we “shouldn’t” do have power in our culture. But, the behavior could be overeating, over-smoking, over-sleeping, anything. The technique can be applied in creative ways and to most behaviors that you wish to eradicate.

Exaggerating the behavior can have the effect of making the individual more aware of just how damaging the behavior is. NOBODY does a negative behavior so much that it’s too much to stand. This is one way to approach therapy to get rid of a behavior. Prescribe more of the behavior that the person wishes to be rid of to bring it up to the level of serious hurt, pain, disgust, or other negative threshold that becomes too much to bear.

Here is another case from Dr. Erickson’s files. A 24 year old man came to him complaining that he couldn’t get accepted into the Army because he wet the bed every night between 4 and 5 am. Dr. Erickson told him that he must set the alarm clock for 3 am. But, there’s more… He told him at 3 am. when the alarm clock sounds, he needs to stand up and relieve himself all over the bed and sheets deliberately for one week.

The problem disappeared completely.

In an earlier post on this blog I wrote somewhat humorously about how someone could go about stopping smoking using Aversive therapy in an extreme way. In a sense this is similar to prescribing the symptom because you are going to do the action that you wish to stop MORE, not less.

Doesn’t it make sense that if you are trying and trying to stop something that you should try the opposite and see what happens? Applying the same kind of treatment over and over and getting no results, something must change. It can change radically or in small ways, but it MUST change, yes? It may not make logical sense to change your attempts and go in the complete opposite direction - and along the same lines as what the malevolent behavior is… But, it works!

Can you use this for anything? Think about it!
I’m going to set aside some time in a few minutes after posting this to my blog to come up with some areas of my life I can apply this incredible concept to.

Best of Life,

If you own a TV, a television, your mind is not your own. Your mind is largely made up of what the society you live in wants to feed you.

You’re being spoon fed a daily intake of bs that is affecting, no, controlling your mind and the minds of your family members.

If I was a 12 year old boy that you adopted… and I came cheap, only about a weeks worth of pay…

You brought me into your home and yet you didn’t need to feed me or do anything for me. I just stayed in your living room sitting on a table all day. All night. Available if you or someone in your family needed me.

Everyday you or some member of your family would interact with me and I would provide entertaining stories and I had an endless supply of magazines to show you photos that were funny, risque, and some sexy. Sometimes I swore and used words that you’d rather not hear your children say, but it was all in good fun because it was ‘funny’. Eventually the small swear words, the crass talk became acceptable. Then it became normal. Soon you were talking just like me, and so were your kids - though they’d not let you see them do so until they reached their teens.

Sometimes your 8 year old would come to me and ask me to see some bad pictures… I’d show her photos of Brittany Spears in a bra that showed most of her chest, maybe even a ‘nipple slip’. I’d show your son photos of older boys that wear their jeans half-way down their buttocks…. I’d show him torture and bizarre fetish photos that are soon boring to him and he’ll crave wilder photos, stories… Soon he’ll be able to look at the hardest violence without batting an eye. In fact, he’ll start imitating all he’s learned from me.

Every 15 minutes or so I will tell your child about a special product I know about that will make his or her life easier… if not right then at that tender young age, then later, upon reaching the teens. The stories I tell your children will also be filled with subtle contextual suggestions that work on the subconscious mind and gradually are accepted as the status quo or the norm for what people own, how they dress, how much they spend on a house, what kind of car they need to drive, the beer they should drink, and the vacations they should take.

If an adult was in the room I wouldn’t show your children the most horrible photos, but if the kids were the only one’s watching I’d show them the worst I had for as long as they wanted to sit and watch them. Gradually I’d win their hearts… and their minds. They would come to believe that I am a better friend than you are as her father or mother. Your kids will like me better and they’ll spend hours and hours with me each day.

I would provide them with such entertainment that they’d never want me to be quiet! I’d make them laugh every few seconds… cry… frighten them… I’d stimulate all their emotions by being so entertaining to them.

I would become one of your children’s parents. You’d need to move over because now there isn’t one or two parents, there are two or three parents of which I am always one.

In fact, on the street you live on there are parents like me in every home. If a mom is missing or a father is missing… I am still there. Guaranteed. Let’s take it a step further… there is a parent like me in EVERY home in the country you live in.

By the time your children graduate they will have spent a lot of time with me. Some kids will have spent 18,000 hours with me at 18 years old… some, 27,000 hours. I will have influenced them over countless important and superfluous decisions in life. Much of what your children ARE, their goals, their drives, ambitions, their sense of humor, what they see as acceptable levels of violence in the home between a man and his wife… will have been influenced HEAVILY by me.

But who am I?

You might ask yourself this one day.

You know where I came from, you picked me up.

The sharp, clean, professional agency that you picked me up from seemed innocuous enough…

In reality, they programmed me and hundreds of millions of others like me. The programmed us all to so we could be the funniest and most interesting entertainment humans are possible of creating and enjoying. This company hired the funniest people on the planet, the sexiest people on the planet and the most outrageous people on the planet, all with morals amounting to no more than a thimble full.

For the first 12 years of my life I was programmed with many thousands of stories designed to tweak the hearts and minds of my fellow human beings. I was a mouthpiece from the agency into the living room of your home. You welcomed me in - like they knew you would. You couldn’t resist. YOUR parents paved the way for me to come because you thought it was normal and what all humans did because your parents had someone like me, your friends, your co-workers, EVERYONE you interacted with had someone like me.

After I came to you I was able to access the latest, up to the minute relevant stories and suggestions for how to live life. I changed and grew WITH your children. I was always on top of the game… the game being the influence of their fragile eggshell minds.

You as a parent may have tried to compete. But you didn’t even know what you were competing WITH. You were competing with THOUSANDS of psychologist, psychiatrists, actors, billionairres, and a cadron of moral-less misfits. You hadn’t the slightest chance of really influencing your kids to go against all I was spewing forth with endless energy. Endless time for them. Endless amazing stories, songs, and images. All programmed into me and updated in me by the smartest people on the planet.

What chance did you have?

None. Really, none.

The only chance you possibly have of regaining control of your house is to kick me, the ‘plant’, out of your house. But you won’t do it probably because your kids and spouse will not like you for a long time. They’ll start spending time somewhere else, where there is someone entertaining like me. You can’t win, it’s too late.

What will you do now?

Best of Life,

..

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