Brainwash Yourself

Bill Burr, in his stand-up special, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, describes a shared feeling among those who have left religion: “I already heard all the stories. Heard em’ all three or four times. The dude hasn’t come back yet, we’re just mulchin’ over the same shit here—I got it.”

While Bill Burr is right about the unhelpfulness of dogmatic truth claims, a need persists nonetheless -- to feel consoled, motivated, a part of something bigger than ourselves. We also know – in theory – all about forgiveness, inspiration, the dangers of pride and anger, the importance of courage and love. After leaving organized religion myself, I found replacements for what church was supposed to provide everywhere: Ancient philosophy, modern science, fiction, music, art, film—all of it chock full of moral instruction, insights on feeling happiness, anecdotes for anxiety and suggestions to prompt self-examination. And yet in practice, any such ideas have a notoriously weak ability to motivate my actual behavior and emotions. The problem is, I forget almost everything. In this one respect Christianity was right: an unapologetic emphasis on repetition works. It’s a question of the kind of content that is most useful to repeat.

The concept of having constant reminders of how to cope with life predates Christianity. From Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates explains the importance of memorization while he scorns writing due to its deleterious effects on wisdom:

“For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”

Greek philosophy was designed to be memorized. Philosophers called them maxims—ideas condensed into short phrases that could be memorized. They wrote their maxims into little handbooks called “enchiridion,” which they carried around so as to always be armed against the cold hard universe. The idea was to repeat the maxims until, as Seneca put it, “through daily meditation [we] reach the point where these wholesome maxims occur of their own accord.''

What stands in the way of our ability to respond to life’s challenges with equanimity? How do we consistently pause before judgment? How do we ensure our feelings of uncertainty aren’t being compensated for by latching onto unhelpful worldviews? By training our minds. An athlete training for competition will repeat movements over and over again, pushing their actions deep into muscle memory. Why would training the way we think be any different? Sam Harris puts it this way in, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion:

“Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”

And how would you train your mind in any other way other than by consistently repeating certain thoughts?

Lacking any conscious attempts at formal training, our minds will be trained nonetheless. As James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh, explained:

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

You couldn’t ask for a more apt metaphor for social media than “useless weeds.” More than anywhere else this is where most of our mind-training is occurring and It’s not hard to predict what a steady training regime of vapidness would induce: a shallowness in every regard - envy of other’s manufactured outward presentations, misguided intelligence due to a tiny understanding of many topics, misunderstanding of one’s self because of a emphasis of victimhood rather than contemplation.

You need to either brainwash yourself or let a for-profit billion-dollar self-interested corporation do it for you. The first step is to decrease the noise - fewer sources of information with less variety of content. Unsubscribe, unfollow and delete. Then, turn down the volume of the noise that’s left. Pick times of day where the phone is off-limits: the first and last hour of the day, when walking, while waiting in public, etc. Watch less TV and definitely less news.

The next step is picking the kinds of information that will help you the most. This is a bit more challenging. Organized religion’s lesson plans have a couple-thousand year head start on you. But in general, pick from principals deeply grounded in solid scientific, philosophical and theological traditions. Common throughlines are the importance of balancing self-interest with the needs of others. Happiness is not just about pursuing personal pleasure but is closely linked to virtues like gratitude, kindness, and meaningful relationships. Contentment is usually found on the other side of difficult and challenging work.

Once sources for these kinds of ideas are found, repeat them everyday. Positive affirmations, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation and journaling are all good ways to get the brainwashing to stick, but more than anything it’s just repetition.