psychology – Page 144

What’s Mental Damage to You is a Profit Opportunity to Someone Else

Here’s a grim, meathook reality so grim that you might want to sit down for it in case you can’t sit down pain-free for the next week: There is nothing in the whole world as profitable as human suffering. In every time and in every place, human misery offers unparalled opportunity to make dollars.

Understanding this is a matter of understanding some psychology.

A person’s level of motivation to take any given action is a function of the amount of pleasure they expect to gain or the amount of suffering they expect to avoid.

If they come to believe that a previously favoured course of action will lead to a decrease in future pleasure or an increase in future suffering, they will come to change their behaviour.

The psychology of advertising is little more than causing the reader, listener or viewer of the advert to suffer in some way and to then create an association between the product that you are trying to sell and the alleviation of that suffering.

This is done with a simple two-step procedure.

The first is to get the reader to feel bad for some reason. In practice, there are an almost unlimited number of ways that you can make a person feel bad. The really big ticket items, though, are a fear of disease, a fear of low social status and the fear of not being attractive to the opposite sex.

These fears play into the ultimate biological reason why human beings feel fear – namely, when the biological organism calculates, consciously or otherwise, that its potential to maintain or to spread its genes is threatened.

The second is to promote a product as the solution to that feeling bad.

In the case of fear of disease, you can sell medicine and insurance. You can manipulate the target’s fear of germs by exaggerating the prevalence of them to sell cleaning products. You can manipulate the target’s fear of dying by exaggerating the degree of anxiety that a reasonable person ought to feel if they do not have life insurance.

In the case of fear of low social status, you can sell flash cars, expensive clothing, jewellery, houses, golf clubs, yachts and more. Basically anything that appears to compensate for any kind of erectile dysfunction or small penis will attract people who are willing to pay money for it.

In the case of fear of not being attractive to the opposite sex, you can sell just about anything. The use of sex to sell a product is almost universal in advertising. After all, it plays at the fundamental male fear.

The psychologists who conduct advertising campaigns know that the human male – in the vast majority of circumstances – is permanently in a state of subconscious anxiety about his capacity to pass his genes on through a fertile female of his species. This will make him reliably dumb in ways that can be anticipated and profited from.

All the advertiser has to do is to associate the lack of their product with a lack of mating opportunities, and the presence of their product with the presence of mating opportunities. When this is achieved, the male will be willing to pay money for the advertiser’s product in order to alleviate the anxiety the advertiser has created.

It can therefore be seen that the purpose of advertising is literally to make you suffer for money.

This column is no exception. We make a living from telling you when you’ve been lied to – and then selling you what we claim to be the truth. The more we can aggravate your sense of outrage at the lies of politicians, priests and psychiatrists, the more likely you will become to spend money on our books.

Of course, we claim to be doing it out of solidarity, in your own interest – but then so did the priests who burned Giordano Bruno at the stake.

As above; so below – but don’t forget that anyone who is trying to make you suffer is probably not doing it out of sadism but simply for the $$$$$.

The Consequences of Making All Fun Illegal in Nelson

This burnt-out stolen car has sat on the side of Maitai Valley Road for over a week. Actions that lead to the consequences shown above are often the result of boredom

In the words of Doug Stanhope: “Boredom is a disease. Drugs cure it.” This might be a throw-away line from a famously irreverent standup comedian, but it points to a truth that our society lacks the sophistication to debate: boredom causes legitimate human suffering, and this costs money and even lives.

Some psychologists are aware of the consequences of boredom. It’s now believed that boredom literally causes the brain to degenerate, as it requires a certain minimum amount of excitory stimulation to maintain the strength of existing neuron connections.

This is why it seems to actually hurt. The mental pain associated with boredom is the pain of your brain dying from a lack of stimulation, in the same way that a newborn infant neglected by its mother may die of hospitalism from a lack of oxytocin.

It’s not likely that anyone in Nelson will go as far as shooting someone out of sheer boredom, as happened to the unfortunate Chris Lane in Oklahoma. But the more boring this city becomes, the further we move towards forcing people to become violent in order to combat the pain that comes from so many fun things being illegal.

Boredom is a real thing that makes people misbehave. It has been observed in British prisons that boredom leads to misbehaviour.

When there are too many recreational outlets closed off by puritan laws, people naturally come to ignore them and may purposefully break any law just to relieve the boredom

The reason for this ought to be clear by now, especially if the reader knew any juvenile delinquents while growing up. Because boredom is painful, people suffer from it, and as a result of the suffering they become willing to destroy in order to alleviate it.

Almost everyone has done something recklessly stupid at some point because it felt good on account of that it relieved boredom.

Unfortunately, the people making the laws in New Zealand are whores, not psychologists. They have whored themselves out to the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol industries, and these industries have commanded the politicians to make recreational alternatives to their products illegal for the sake of wiping out their competitors.

Neither is the Nelson City Council any better. They have proven themselves utterly incapable of taking care of a single homeless protester outside the Farmers building, so the expectation that they could comprehend an end to the War on Drugs is far too much to ask for.

Nelson, like all provincial New Zealand towns, is not an easy place to live in when a person is aged between 18 and 30 or thereabouts. If you’re a young person and consequently have a high point of homeostasis for excitement, there are not many really good options.

Cannabis is illegal, the drinking culture is violent and disgusting, the hookup culture is vile and depressing, and the control freaks have even taken away the simple pleasure of having a cigarette to relax by making it too expensive to be enjoyable.

Well, this is the price. This is how we end up with burnt-out cars sitting on the side of Maitai Valley Road.

As this column has previously argued, there ought to be cannabis cafes on Bridge Street. Giving the young people of Nelson greater recreational options than booze and television would result in less boredom, which would result in fewer burnt-out cars.

This would necessarily require a change to New Zealand’s cannabis laws, which would have ancillary benefits, not least putting a stop to the current wastage of $400,000,000 of tax money every year.

Perhaps some of the estimated $120,000,000 of Police funding that would be saved from cannabis legalisation could then be used to clean up the mess on the side of Maitai Valley Road, as it has been sitting there for over a week.

Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of European New Zealanders

Possibly the single most striking characteristic of the demographic bloc of Kiwis of European descent is that they are considerably older than average. The correlation between being of European descent and median age was 0.72.

Predictably, then, there is a very strong positive correlation with being of European descent and being on the pension – this was 0.65.

This raises the interesting point that, for all the rhetoric about lazy Maoris sucking unemployment benefits out of the country, there are legions of wealthy white Kiwis getting paid much more than an unemployment benefit in the form of a pension, which is not means tested.

Aside from this, the trends show the general pattern of industriousness among Kiwis of European descent. The sorts of industry that demands a committed and sustained physical effort tends to be stacked with them. The correlation between being of European descent and working in construction was 0.38; with working in agriculture, forestry and fishing it was 0.37; and with mining it was 0.25.

Like the average Maori, the average European New Zealander is born in New Zealand. The correlation between being of European descent and being born in New Zealand is 0.33.

European New Zealanders are also markedly likely to delay reproduction. The correlation between being of European descent and being in a couple without children is a very strong 0.81. This reflects the degree to which Kiwis of European descent have a tendency to live for a number of years together as a couple before committing to having children.

Some might predict, based on that, that the correlation between being of European descent and being a solo parent would be significantly negative. It turns out to be a strongly negative -0.68.

Kiwis of European descent were much more likely than average to be former tobacco smokers. The correlation between the two was a very strong 0.74. This is strong enough to suggest that it is a common cultural experience among Kiwis of European descent to have struggled with tobacco addiction and to have successfully overcome it.

European New Zealanders were the only racial group that had a significant positive correlation with biking to work – this was 0.38. This correlation may not reflect so much the culture of European New Zealanders as the fact that Christchurch is an extremely bicycle-friendly city and is also very European, whereas the opposite is true of Auckland.

They also had a moderately strong positive correlation with working from home, which was 0.58. All of the other races had negative correlations with working from home, which probably reflects the fact that the vast majority of Kiwi farmers and people living in isolated areas are of European descent.

Perhaps fitting the stereotype that white people are never desperately poor, there is an extremely strong negative correlation between being of European descent and being in the income band of Loss or Nil Income, which was -0.84.

There were two separate income bands which had a significant positive correlation with being of European descent.

The first was the $15-25K income band. The correlation between being of European descent and having an income between $15-20K was 0.29, and with having an income between $20-25K it was 0.34.

Probably the reason for this is the large number of young Kiwis of European descent who become students, because a person on a student allowance or loan and maybe working part time will be in this income range.

The second was the $60-100K income band. This is about where people expect the average Kiwi of European descent to end up. The correlation between being of European descent and having an income between $60-70K was 0.32, and with having an income between $70-100K it was 0.29.

Being strongly represented in these high income bands reflects that the average Kiwi of European descent is a bit older and a bit better educated than the average and will therefore have significant career advantages in both seniority and expertise.

Given that, it is not surprising that there is a strong positive correlation between being a manager and being of European descent – this was 0.54. The other occupation that had the strongest positive correlation with being of European descent was technicians and trade workers, which was 0.33.

The strongest negative correlation between being of European descent and working as a particular occupation was with the Maori-dominated machinery operators and drivers, which was -0.31.

There was also a moderately strong correlation of 0.51 with being of European descent and living on the South Island.

Kiwis of European descent are very likely to either own their own homes or to live with their parents still. There was a negative correlation with being of European descent and every band of rent paid, apart from the $150-199 per week student niche, which was 0.01.

Perhaps interestingly, there were no significant correlations between being of European descent and having any of the higher degrees. The closest was with having a doctorate, which was 0.22.

This reflects how the bulk of the population in New Zealand is Kiwis of European descent and subsequently they comprise most of the middle between the high-achieving Asians and the low-achieving Maoris and Pacific Islanders.

This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.

The Politico-Retard Spectrum

The term “political spectrum” is not descriptive enough to really explain what’s going on in people’s heads. It seems to imply that there are two rational poles opposing each other, usually represented by a conservative and a social democrat party, and that all political philosophy necessarily falls in between those two poles and nowhere else.

This fails to describe the reality of the situation, which is that politics is a small number of shamelessly lying psychopaths pretending to oppose each other in order to pull the strings of a large number of morons in order to enslave the rest of us.

Neither does it describe, for example, the fact that the less intelligent a person is, the more faith they will put in politicians, or that if a reasonable person defies a politician they will die thanks to the power gifted to that politician by the people at the retard pole of the politico-retard spectrum.

The politico-retard spectrum, therefore, has two different poles: the retarded one, as described above, and the other one. Anyone at this other pole will reject any label the author of this essay puts on them, so let’s call that end the freethinking pole.

The retarded pole is defined as consisting of people who have full faith in politicians and in the political system. A person at this pole genuinely believes that politicians are there to help him or to do good, and if they hear a politician say something on television, they will believe that this is true.

These people genuinely believe that cannabis causes mental illness, and they genuinely believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they genuinely believe that it is necessary to borrow the nation’s money supply at interest from private banks.

The politico-retard spectrum is much like a food chain, in the sense that people at the retarded pole spend all of their time and energy fighting other people at the retarded end (usually in the form of the democratic election circus) and inevitably lose ground to anyone closer to the other pole.

Cognitive dissonance is the enemy of the person at the retard pole of the spectrum.

Like all authorities who have taken their position by aggression or by lies, politicians frequently contradict themselves. The more retarded one is, the more confusion this contradiction will create, because anyone stupid enough to believe a politician will have to suffer cognitive dissonance every time that politician contradicts themselves, which will be often.

And so, like dumb people everywhere, the experience of a person at the retard pole of the spectrum is mostly one of confusion. A facial expression of confusion – with a furrowed brow, downturned lips and blank, unfocused eyes – is consequently one of their most recognisable characteristics.

A person here does not realise that a vote for either the centre-left party or the centre-right party is a vote for the establishment. They do not realise that, to the degree that all parties have bought into the political system, voting for any of them will deliver no more and no less than what the system is set up to deliver.

Having a poor memory is associated with a position on the retard pole of the spectrum. This is especially evident when people fall for the same lies every electoral cycle, despite having been severely burned by those same lies last time.

For instance, every non-incumbent candidate runs on a platform of change, every single time. Also every single time, they fail to change anything once they win.

They may force through a cosmetic change or two, but the people who have power under the incumbent aren’t just going to let it go because a new person wins the election.

Anyone who doesn’t fall for this bullshit is necessarily up the freethinker end of the politico-retard spectrum, by default. A feature of being at this pole of the spectrum is that it becomes very difficult to draw lines around any part of what is being thought and to say that it is characteristic of this pole.

Perhaps the best way to understand it is to consider the far pole of the politico-retard spectrum as the pole one is at when one is no longer susceptible to the crude lies told by politicians which appeal to the reptilian complex of the human brain.