Prisoners of Our Subjective Experiences
In the early twentieth century, the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll was considered one of the pioneers of behavioural ecology, a study of how animal behaviours evolve in relation to their living environment. In 1909, he coined two German terms: Umwelt and Umgebung. Umwelt is an animal’s subjective experience of the world based on its sensory and cognitive capacities. Umgebung, on the other hand, is the objective world an animal lives in, regardless of its ability to discern the elements around it. To understand the lived experiences of an animal, Uexküll explained, “We must first blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows.” In the umgebung of a city sidewalk, for example, “a dog owner’s umwelt would differ greatly from that of her dog’s in that, while she might be keenly aware of a SALE sign in a window, a policeman coming toward her, or a broken bottle in her path, the dog would focus on the gust of cooked meat emanating from a restaurant’s exhaust fan, the urine on a fire hydrant, and the doughnut crumbs next to the broken bottle.” Both owner and dog may be living in the same umgebung, but their subjective worlds—their umwelten—are completely distinct: both dog and woman would notice the exhaust fan, but the dog would be much more attracted to it.
In the 1960s, with the advent of the civil rights movement, feminism, hippie culture, and animal rights, both concepts began to creep into mainstream academia and intellectual circles, emphasising how different beings—human, social groups, or species—perceived reality differently, leading to misunderstandings, conflicts, and the rising significance of empathy. But because we are so caught up in our bubble, anchoring our beliefs and morals to what we see and think to be true, we turn blind to each other’s worldview. “Ultimately,” the author John Vaillant would come to conclude, “the problem comes down to umwelt—we are such prisoners of our subjective experience that it is only by force of will and imagination that we are able to take leave of it at all and consider the experience and essence of another creature—or even another person.”
Breaking free from the prisons of our subjective experiences, transforming or manipulating the umwelt of one’s life—that’s the idea for today.
Reality Distortion Field
In the early ’80s, there was an office gossip—short of a joke—about Steve Jobs possessing an aura known as the “reality distortion field.” Bud Tribble, the software designer who coined the phrase, adopted it from the “Menagerie” episodes of Star Trek, in which the Talosians, an advanced alien species, possess incredible telepathic abilities that allow them to create highly convincing illusions, manipulating what their captives believe they are experiencing as entirely different realities. “In [Steve’s] presence,” Tribble said, “reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything [with his] confounding mélange of charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.” Jobs had a penchant, an aptitude for enveloping others into his umwelt, bending their will and imagination to believe in his vision of creating great, history-making products (and that other companies’ products were “shitty”). But along with it came unrealistic expectations, demands, and frequent emotional outbursts. Yet, the reality distortion field was, above all, empowering: “It enabled Jobs to inspire his team to change the course of computer history… a self-fulfilling distortion” that would plant an individual into the umwelt of another, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, and knowing what they know. On one occasion, Jobs walked up to the cubicle of an engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system and started complaining that it was taking too long to boot up. When the engineer tried to explain, Jobs cut him off and activated the reality distortion field. “If it could save a person’s life,” Jobs said, “would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” Jobs then walked up to the whiteboard and began convoluting a scenario. “If there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, [that is] the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year!” Having his umwelt distorted by Jobs, the engineer came back a few weeks later with an operating system now booting up twenty-eight seconds faster. As another colleague said, “You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”
Smoke Out
Edward Bernays, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations,” wrote books such as Crystallizing Public Opinion, Propaganda, and The Engineering of Consent, in which he “approached the age of mass media like a scientist in search of general principles.” These “principles” were grounded in two insights that everything about public relations followed. First, “modern society, with its millions, is essentially ungovernable. The public must be controlled by manipulation.” Second, “the people can be made to behave as you want them to behave via the subconscious of the public mind… which can be directed with symbols and signs.” In 1928, Bernays was hired by the American tobacco tycoon, George Washington Hill, to expand the cigarette market. Hill was particularly annoyed by the stereotype that women who smoked were “unladylike,” which then influenced the demand of cigarettes and thus profits. Hill attempted to alter this negative image by reframing smoking as a way to lose weight or look beautiful, but failed. Knowing this, Bernays advised Hill that he should instead link his private interest—to get women to smoke more—to a public cause. Bernays then published a series of ads that, instead of challenging the taboo from the outside-in, manipulated the umwelt of a female smoker from the inside-out, transforming the symbol of unladylike-ness to a “symbol of empowerment.” The ads called for women to “smoke out,” where “female citizens of New York were asked to leave their offices one afternoon and stroll along Fifth Avenue, puffing all the way.” These “smoke outs”—less of a community meetup than a counter-cultural movement that elevated the female confidence—were rapidly adopted across American cities. When asked later how he managed to come up with something so original and unique, Bernays said he did not invent the issue—women really did want to smoke in public—but had “merely exploited an existing sentiment, crystallizing public opinion and manufacturing consent” by infiltrating the subjective minds of female smokers.
The Education of the Imagination
In his authoritative book on self-mastery, the 20th-century French psychologist Émile Coué wrote that man’s inability to get satisfactory outcomes in life is the result of our misplaced priorities in two fundamental aspects of human psychology: the will and the imagination. “When the will and the imagination are in conflict,” Coué wrote, “the imagination always wins, without any exception.” In this case, “will” refers to the purposeful and determined efforts to bring about a desired outcome, and “imagination” refers to the hidden ideas, convictions, feelings, anxieties, and emotions working beneath our awareness. When both aspects go head-on with each other, the imagination wins. The umwelt prevails. For example, the harder you try to remember a forgotten name (will), the more your mind fixates on the blank space (imagination), making it even more difficult to recall. The more you attempt to avoid looking nervous during a presentation (will), the more you focus on your anxious thoughts (imagination), the harder it becomes to stay calm. When this happens in our everyday lives, “not only does one not obtain what one wants,” Coué wrote, “but exactly the reverse is brought about”—known as the “law of reversed effort” which “explains why we get such unsatisfactory results when we aim at the reeducation of the will.” “What we have to work for,” Coué concludes, “is the education of the imagination.”
Peer Norms
The psychologist and Stanford professor Carol Dweck, best known for her theory on growth and fixed mindsets, discovered that those who embody the “fixed mindset”—the belief that intelligence and abilities cannot be developed—often struggle with life satisfaction. In contrast, those with a “growth mindset”—the belief that intelligence and abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence—tend to have a higher chance of achieving overall life satisfaction. But deeper into her research, Dweck also discovered that, despite embodying a growth mindset, the effects of positive life outcomes may be negated when “someone in the growth mindset condition dwells where peer norms aren’t favourable.” By “peer norms,” Dweck was referring to how the environment of one’s life affects one’s life outcome. And so, where peer norms are or aren’t favourable, they influence the umwelt of one’s life, either transforming one into a free man, free to discover the experiences and essence it has to offer, or into a prisoner, enslaved by the constraints and limitations of one’s subjective experiences.
