Intention

Last night, Ponciano told our Capoeira class the story of 'The Tiger who killed a Wife'. The husband was so distressed, he grabbed his bow and arrow and went deep into the jungle to find the tiger. When he saw it, he stilled himself and fixed his gaze on the target. He pulled back the arrow and released all the pain and anguish at his loss at the tiger. The arrow sunk deep. He went across to the tiger and found that it was in fact a stone. A stone shaped like the one who had stolen his world. The arrow had not broken, instead it had sunk deep into the stone because his intention was so intense.

Like Eric Mead in the TED clip below, I have always been fascinated by the Placebo Effect. As a scientifically minded person, you want to strip out the story and make it replicable and testable. You can certainly do that, but it removes a whole lot of the good stuff. For some people something is only interesting if it can be proved wrong. If you can't say it in a way that has the possibility of it be shown to be false, it can be beautiful, but not 'interesting' in a scientific way. By its very nature, belief and intention are not replicable. You have to buy into stories. Through dance, art, poetry, music, writing we can feel beauty and we can do incredible things. I believe much of this is actually because we allow ourselves to drop our negative beliefs. The beliefs we have that say we can't do certain things. I described one of the first times this really sunk home for me in 'faking it'. Hypnosis can be seen as faking or it can be seen as simply a very deep state of relaxation where you become very open to suggestion. Real limits then act as your boundaries rather than the limits you create in your head.

Ponciano's story of intention is relevant for me. If you are able to focus your intention on something, it can be a form of hypnosis. A form of meditation. If you can relax out of any self created concern, you can become incredibly powerful relative to your doubt-ridden self. In my 5th class of Capoeira there are still a lot of real limits. I have to do lots of strength work. I have to teach my body the rhythms. I have to learn the forms before I can forget about them and just play. I thought the Tiger story was beautiful though, and diving into stories helps you learn.

My Capoeira adventure:

1. First Class - You have to start somewhere
2. Deep End - Learn a little, and enjoy
3. Shattered - This impact is bliss for your body
4. Left from Right, Arm from Leg - Training your body to have an awareness of where it is

Play for Placebo

A Placebo is a scientifically ineffectual placeholder. It is used in Double-blind tests to check the facts behind a theory. Some people being 'exposed' to whatever the thing being tested is will get a placebo. They will think they are getting/doing/experiencing the thing, but in fact they aren't. It is called double blind since the experimenter doesn't know who is receiving the real deal and who isn't either. This is a way to strip out people's biases. The age old story of you will only see if you really believe can be true. You will see. The mind is incredibly powerful. Stories are incredibly powerful. It is hard to call what people are experiencing faking. I also think that if you insist on discarding everything that has been proven to be a placebo effect, i.e. it works simply because you want it to, you can miss out. Much like watching a movie, if you don't suspend your disbelief, you don't get to enjoy the story.

Benjamin Wallace tested 12 incredibly expensive things in an attempt to test whether you can buy happiness. It is a wonderful clip. It ends with the well known point that people really do enjoy expensive wines more, not necessarily because they are better, but because they are expensive. He doesn't say that everything that is expensive isn't really worth it. The two they have stuck with me from this clip is that it is worth spending a little extra on your bed. You spend a third of your life in it. It is also probably worth getting a Japanese toilet.

So what do you do? Do you not buy expensive wines even if you can afford them because you don't want to be a sucker? Do you buy cheaper wines and hypnotise yourself into thinking they are more expensive. You can't really make a deal with friends and family to occasionally lie to each other about the value of things since once the deal is made you will always be suspicious. Or will you? Perhaps you will forget the deal and allow the occasional lavish story to pass by undetected, because you want to believe it.

I think beyond a certain level of consumption, a lot of pleasure becomes about the story value. 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud' by Francis Bacon was sold in November 2013 for $142m. Here the price tag is largely for the way something makes someone feel. The word priceless springs to mind. Since if this is indeed a 'placebo effect' where some trickery and conspiracy can give the same feeling, then those without money but with a desire to control their mind could have a one person lottery ticket.

'Three Studies of Lucian Freud' by Francis Bacon

One of the reasons I don't like the statistics regarding income distribution as a point of equality is that I think they distract from what the people using them are actually most concerned about. If your aim is to have people having equal access to happiness, then absolute poverty and 'placebo free' consumption equality should be of far more concern. Then the artists, musicians, poets, writers, dancers and actors can add all the story value you want. Don't pay for placebo, play for placebo.