Our mind is Illusory & daily advertisement plays games on us !

The famed TV personality Anthony Bourdain committing suicide in his hotel room was a sensational news. He was at work in France, doing another of his food shows. I have watched him on television, eating his way around the world and through many cultures. On television, his work seemed to be filled with fun and frolic. I liked his job and watched him often. Having achieved fame, he chose the path to end his life. It was a runaway mind killing a wonder-filled body. Ending the magnificence of life is too common among achievers. A famous fashion designer and brand leader, Kate Spade did the same weeks before Bourdain and the news was all over. I am sure investigators will dig up the causes. Yet, I believe nothing but their mind killed them. Mind does not register achievement and is never impressed by accolades. Somehow, the biochemistry of success seems not to last long in our body. It fades away as soon as the show ends. The mind goes back to looking for the next comparison and competition, taking us to the rudimentary core of human existence and behavior: survival of the fittest. 

I had realized growing up that I had to push away idol copying and focus on meaningful living. I need to cultivate my mind. A good mind is the only way to a “good life”. Eckhart Tolle’s book, A new Earth, lucidly describes the nature of the human mind.⁽¹⁾ He says that “a mind from the start is close to be called dysfunctional”, or simply mad. Religious scholars have understood it and have described it variously. Hindus called the mind as one which is in a state of “maya”, or delusion. Buddhists say it is filled with “Dukha”, or suffering, and Christians say it is in a state of “collective sin”, meaning “missing the mark or target”. Reading these suddenly made me feel the mind seemed an unreliable thing to carry around.

The mind is illusory. In The Tears of My Soul, the true story of a North Korean Spy, Kim Hyun Hee narrates how the nature of the mind can be changed through simple manipulation. The mind can be tricked. Thus, we fall prey to being brain-washed. On November 29, 1987, two North Koreans, involved in the terrorist bombing of a Korean Air Flight that killed 115, were arrested in Bahrain. One of them committed suicide on the spot. The other, the author of the above memoir, swallowed her poison pill, but survived. Extradited to Seoul, she confessed to the crime and was tried in the highest court. She was convicted and sentenced to death. However, the court later granted a full pardon, ruling that she was not the real culprit in the bombing but an innocent victim of North Korean indoctrination. She had been brainwashed into believing falsities as facts and had never realized she was being possessed. 

We live with our perceptions, which are often mistaken. We also live with our introspection, equally unreliable. It seems we venture into our life journey with an element of uncertainty. In fact, touring the world and reading about the past, I have witnessed the history of humanity: a bold depiction of numerous conquests, wars, genocides and violence. Our cultural history narrates practices involving deprivation, subjugation, banishment, extermination and deaths as means to our liberation. We started wars with imaginary enemies and ended them without any betterment for humankind. Wars resembled an evening game of soccer but with horrific outcomes. Ironically, all of the wars we have fought are a result of the human mindset and an illusion of the constant battle between good and evil. We continue to defend our past in the name of truth, justice and liberty, but deep inside we know we had chased a fictional idea and been fooled by our mind. 

The greatest of all methods to control minds is the daily dose of advertisements. Advertising is a social phenomenon and plays tricks on our brain. They are intrusive and influence decision-making. They work on our emotions, stimulate our pleasure centers, test our code-cracking abilities, decipher the hidden signals and captivate us. Without realizing, they indoctrinate us. In the words of Peter Lunn, “TV ads make us more likely to buy what’s advertised. Denial is not an option – there really is an elephant in the corner.” Sure enough, I see people around me who, influenced by advertisements, have changed to look and act like those billboard personalities. Their speeches are in tune with the advertorials. They buy advertised goods. They even make critical communal and living decisions based on social media advertisement.