Subliminal Pre-Concious Decision Making

Before I delve into the topic of subliminal advertising, you must watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

Descartes "cognito ergo sum" is famous in philosophy. The premise is that since humans "think" therefore they exist and are different from others. Human thought therefore is treated as the absolute truth and human consciousness resides at the center of this experience.

If anyone saw that video, then my take is that humans are not conscious or that human consciousness is a mere illusion that gives us an outside experience of actions that we do. Subliminal advertisements are banned in 40 countries. As the famous Benjamin Libet's work proves, that signals for actions are actually initiated before the conscious decision making process. His revolutionary work annihilates any conception that consciousness has any use. Humans could perfectly live and survive even if the "thinking" part goes to sleep. John N. Gray argues in his book, "Straw Dogs", that man is no different than other animals and the whole struggle for idealism is flawed. Human experience is no different than an animals experience.

Conscious decision making is not really conscious at all. We react to our environment, just as animals react to earthquakes. We are natural beings who are not in control of ourselves. The chemical reactions in our body that control every single aspect of our life are not in our control.

Lord Jim's (Conrad's famous work) decision to jump the ship was not conscious at all. He had to live with the guilt of abandoning ship for the rest of his life. It became a desperate saga which ultimately ended his life for the sake of justifying his actions. Had he known that his actions were not voluntary but may have been subliminally advertised to him unconsciously, then he would probably have had a better subjective experience.

The crux of the whole discussion is that we shouldn't take our decisions seriously. We are natural beings and if we try and make an effort to control who we are then we simply end up destroying the subjective conscious experience that really has nothing to do with reality. I do not seek to live a life of hedonism but the negative expects of consciousness must be shunned. They should be handed over to a higher being. Even the term "Genius" was derived from spirit and any extraordinary work was often credited to this other being than the person who had done the work. The work was a manifestation of that other spirit. Taking credit for either the highs and lows destroys the conscious experience which should be preserved. The noble savage knew this naturally. Bad decision making was maktub and great achievements were the work of genius. No credit was ever given to the person himself.


Here's a link on a talk related to this other "GENIUS" given by Elizabeth Gilbert.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html