Short Snapshot #2: The X is the word

Have you guys ever heard the song "The Bird is the word" by "The trashmen - Surfing Bird". It is a very comical song and a viral one at the time I am posting this. However, I bring this song up in this blog, because as you all now, there is a lesson that you can literally learn out of this song.

One of the important thing about the lyrics of the song is that it repeats the same word "Bird" multiple times. A lot of  sentences will have an average saying of the word "Bird" 4 times ("The bird bird bird, the bird is the word"). In addition, some sentences just have only the word "Bird" in it ("Bird bird bird, bird bird bird bird."). Furthermore, it interrogates by social status and surprise to force that the word "Bird" is more important than anything else ("Did you know that the bird is the word? Everybody knows that the bird is the word!"). All these are no more than playing the mental networks out of blind faith to mesmerize a thing without any cause and effect or explanation.

There was a show that was done in Ted talk about how a presentation can be persuasive even if it has no content inside (by mesmerizing people, being professional, etc. - find reference in the sources of life section). I also have done some organizational classes that talked about the "halo effect": If people believe it, it will definitely happen. We also know how big innovators like Steve Jobs tried to twist the truth by mesmerizing a fact to be the absolute truth as his arsenal weapon. Sometimes people do not look at cause and effect too much and the only way to persuade them is by mesmerizing mental networks. This can have the potential (but not definite) to change their wrong perceptions/ bad habits into good ones as a form of patience. Mesmerizing mental networks to individuals will give them an opportunity, a chance, to see things through the other side when they were not able before. However, if they don't think critical about it why the other side is correct or not (through cause and effect), the purpose of mesmerizing mental networks is lost. Lets not lie that a lot of part about sex is also mesmerizing mental network too. All these theories, no matter how we bend them left or right around, they all point and conclude to the same thing: mesmerizing mental networks for a fact that has not been observed thoroughly by proper cause and effect.

If things are perceived by blind faith and no proper checks are done in place, we can fall astray from the wrong path. For instance, the telephone gadgets like the Iphone has transformed the minds of thousand of people to put all their motivation and effort on making the best piece of phone ever made. Its not the developers and technicians behind apple that do all the work, but the purchasing power of the people buying the latest phone and testing all its features and giving feedback back to it. And without no doubt, if a lot of people collaborate on the same thing and have the same motivation of the end product, the deliverable will be nice pieces of art that deliver perfection on all quarters on all sides in an iterative process. Sure, a lot of money needs to be bottled down for a corporation to keep doing its research and development for creating a phone that caters the needs of their clients making their life easier, convenient, and more affordable both in hardware and the software environment. But that mesmerizing fact, it went to such point that I cannot accept it. How can it be possible this corporation makes double the money of big american gas company resources, a commodity that is the most important to sustain ourselves energy wise for the whole infrastructure our society lives? How after having so much money left out in big vaults still do contracts with third party suppliers to produce their equipment? Add to the fact, those third party suppliers got news that they keep workers in not the best policy guidelines sometimes. And last but not least, why do consumers have to live in contracts of 2 years getting the next iphone with premium plans on a phone service line that is monolithic and tries to survive with its monopoly of having control of the whole network infrastructure by doing an "OPEC" agreement with other phone service providers? Why some people even cash out of a new phone every year when the average user is not a download freak or hard core nerd? All that money in revenue by that company and all that money invested into that company in the stock exchange is our greatest priority our world needs now? Really?

So now I am going to talk and say it again: Yes, the bird is the word, and it can definitely be the word. Everybody will be motivated and do and maybe "be" the bird, but is it the most important thing in this world to "be" the bird? And if so, by how much? Yes, persuasion always works, but I would never used it on any means if that is not ethical as much as I can. Because maybe now someone will say how filthy and shame I am right now, but go a few centuries, where if new revolutions or paradigm shifts exist, and the frame of reference changes completely on who is really the one that should or should not be respected in this world.

In conclusion, we talked about the different places or occasions where we can mesmerize facts, persuade, or put blind faith on something to others. If used properly with good means, it can have good results. But in most cases, when people feel too much comfort on the power they get by the blind faith they put to others, it can go astray, creating motivations that are not potent for what our general society should do as a whole within our current situation. In the end, the people who we will respect and not respect changes over time. It may not be this generation, but the next. Persuasion does not last for long, but true mental networks that are behind cause and effect will always be seen as the true model all humans should follow. Although society has run always by crumbling back to small indulgences again and again, the times when it really shined and had its revolutions are the times where they followed the true model (or mental symmetry to put it) to transform our society into new ways of thinking.

Did you ever used the song "The bird is the word" in your life in a serious manner? In a way, that it represents your self reflection of your identity? Things to watch out is repetition, setting status of something in moments of surprise and boldness without proper cause and effect, and so on. Do you ever say a dozen of times to people "we should use theory X because it makes things better" or "We should use environment Y because it makes our life more easier and productive." or "Person X does a lot of stuff. He is unstoppable". I heard those stuff a dozen of times and I can see a sense on how much it was abused, as a way to twist the truth to others. In some cases it placed little to no damage as there was not a lot of stakeholders behind that environment or were competent enough to not fall on that trap. On other cases it feels it does a lot of damage. And when I mean damage, it may not, if they found the cause and effect correctly. Who knows, they may be lucky and they rolled the dices right. But should I do a risk with the "dices" in one of my moments of my limited amount of time I have in this life? I wouldn't. I prefer to get the dice that most of the sides have high numbers and take a chance on that instead. Not because I want to win, but because I want to use it as a model others to follow in the future so they can get the same high success rate as I do. And if I fail, that was not my whole motivation behind it.

Hint: The song has a lot of correlation with mental networks. At the end of the song, the singer sings the chanting of our pre-historic ancestors "Papa uma mao mao" where they worshiped in their religion (mesmerized and gave status) to statues, the sun, and maybe even the bird. Are we going to advance ourselves or are we going to be stuck doing the same mistakes as in pre-historic times?