Societal Conditioning Examples

Daily Life Examples of Societal Conditioning

In this article, we'll be looking at how decision making needs to be looked at for few trivial decisions in life to maximize happiness

1. Brushing your teeth

From the time we're kids we're told oral hygiene is important. You need to brush your teeth daily. Some people brush once a day, some people twice and some may be more than that. Assume the question I'm posing to you is how many times is the ideal number of times you should brush your teeth. 

People generally think of brushing as a good oral hygiene improving activity. Fair. But did you know that brushing your teeth has negative effects on your body? You can use do extensive research using GPT/google to know this but essentially while more brushing helps improve oral hygiene, the chemicals used in the paste has a seriously negative effect on your body which atleast I didn't know until recently. It has a mild effect equivalent to taking certain form of synthenic hard drugs people use for recreational use. So where do you draw the line b/w what is the right number of times you should brush your teeth.

WHO recommends twice a day and atleast personally, I've seen most people in my friend circle sticking to this norm. Assume that that's in the morning and night. What if in the afternoon, I take a very heavy meal and i have food particles stuck b/w my teeth Will I stick to the "societal conditioning" from WHO that you only do it twice a day or will i act on my gutmeter and brush if i feel the need. I would do it whenever i feel the need by blindly following the gutmeter. And i was doing it more times daily until recently i got to know about the negative effects of brushing. That became new input to my brain and my gutmeter needle got changed and now again, I brush whenever I want and make myself happy in the process. Somedays thrice. Some days once. Again, reiterating my point from before. there's no right or wrong answer. What your gutmeter tells you is always right for the moment. 

2. Sleeping

How many hours of sleep should you have daily?

I've heard some doctors say 8 hours. Some say 6-7 hours. Is there a right answer? I don't believe so. I operate on the model where I naturally go to sleep when my gutmeter makes me want to sleep. Some days I'm physically exhausted,  mentally drained and my brain, mind and body needs more rest. Then I brain knows all that and makes me sleep extra - may be 8 hours Some days, I haven't exerted enough. I'm  already well rested where even 2 hours of sleep is more than sufficient for me. If you say that doctors recommend so many hours of sleep, I'm telling you that that's conditioning at play. If you say that that's research backed, my response might seem drastic - According to my theory, these doctors are mentally because they themselves are conditioning by a million societal notions. That's why for the same disease if you go to 2 different doctors, they gave 2 different routes/medications and neither of which can guarantee the result. Science needs to be precise and predictable. You don't need to agree with me on this. My personal view is that doctors who formulated medical were mentally blinded as well because of which I don't totally buy that science because of which I will not accept a recommendation from a doctor on how many hours I should, which in itself doctors don't have a consensus on. 

Bigger point here being do your gutmeter tells you blindly. If you're already well rested and you sleep for 5 hours and wake up, don't confuse yourself thinking that you should have slept for 8 hours because that societal conditioning making you a confused person.

If you are telling me that two doctors, one suggesting 6 hours of sleep and another suggesting 8 hours of sleep - that both are scientific. I'm sorry. I refuse to accept that.
If i child is growing up without no adults in the world conditioning him or her that so many hours of sleep required, the child would reach an evolutionary equilibrium in terms of the hours of sleep. That equilibrium if any can be reached only if the child makes mistakes on deciding how many people hours he should sleep daily. That input will be given by the gutmeter and the brain progressively naturally experientially learns what should be the ideal number in hours the human should sleep. I still feel that the equilibrium will never be reached because it depends on your brain activity everyday and everyday will be unique. Hence. Rest required everyday will be unique which is known to the brain which influences the gutmeter which makes you sleep as and when it wants making you happy in the process..
Setting stupid societal notions like 8 hours sleep should be there or 6 hours sleep should be there (on which itself medical science is not consistent) confuses humans. Humans who are conditioned illogically by X number of hours start getting confused why they don't sleep so much. The answer is so simple and it's right out there. You just need to grab the banana as the monkey by blindly following your gutmeter
I discussed with my wife who is a doctor on this and let me give you additional perspective. Scientifically it is proven that your brain needs rest. I accept that. Scientifically it is proven that it's at night time, the brain syncs with the sun and uses the energy to remove the toxins and waste released on a daily basis in the brain. What that means is evolutionarily, it is logically clear why humans sleep at night for getting this rest which also I'm comfortable accepting.

What I'm not comfortable accepting is sciences recommendation on the number of hours you should sleep. Science says that you need to have on average so many cycles of rem sleep, deep sleep etc. Science has conducted experimental tests on humans and has taken an AVERAGE of what should be the ideal number of hours required for humans to sleep. Let's for the sake of discussion assume that that number is 8 hours and consistent across all medical scientific experiments

Now the operating word I want you to focus on is average. Ideally science needs to plant a brain activity capturing device in the brains of every single human on the planet which measures brain activity and at the end of the day, that sensor should analyse the data and based on amount of rest required for the day, the sensor should recommend at a hyperpersonalised level what is the number of hours of sleep required by you for the night. That is the ideal number of hours is rest you require and if you sleep too much / too less compared to this number, then you test it out for a doctor recommended period of time and if it is not coming closer to the actual number recommended by the sensor, then you consult a doctor for help

But such a sensor/devicee doesn't exist

So currently  you accept the doctor's recommendation of 8  hours of sleep. Now at a hyper personalised level, assume the sensor would have told you you need only only 7  hours of sleep for the day . But you think that 8 hours is required and you try sleeping. Your brain is well rested by 7 hours and you wake up. Now you suddenly feel like you're not well rested because of science's conditioning of 8 hours. That makes you confused. Some days the body and brain might require only 3 hours of sleep. For instance, today I slept for 3.5 hours and I was super rested. My wife can confirm this after seeing me in the morning. So had I been conditioned by science's 8 hours, I would have started questioning my body and if this repeats over so many days. I'll start being concerned and go to a doctor to seek help. And people do do that where they are prescribed sleep inducing medication which affects the brain and body in other different negative ways additionally. And that has long term negative impact

So point being, if you blindly follow your gutmeter, sleep when you want as per the signal given by the gutmeter, the brain will give you sufficient rest and it'll wake you up at the right time. You'll have control over your body clock.

This is my take on this topic. Big picture message is to show that conditioning on such a simple thing like sleep can confuse people, have long term negative impact on their brains and bodies through things like sleep inducing medication which a ton of people on the planet take. Reiterating, equilibrium is to blindly follow your gutmeter. Happiness is a natural output.

I had used content till above and posted this article. Then on my personal family group with my brother Jacob, sister in law Aswathy and wife Merin (who is a doctor), there was a discussion on this. I think it's worth sharing screenshots from the chat as some of you might have concerns similar to what my wife and brother/sis in law had. So, i'm changing the style of messaging to whatsapp screenshots just to put across few important points. My wife calls me Jo and I'm father is referred to here as Appa for your reference and Heads up is the name of our whatsapp group. 

These are 2 examples of societal conditioning affecting our daily lives at a practical level.

Profit Maximization vs Customer Experience Maximization

Next I'd like to move onto some thing more complicated and affecting people in a real way. It's a societal notion that I want to unshock you of. You'll have natural rejections but like I've said a million times, that rejection thought that's coming into you is a function of your adulterated program which is conditioned. So, let's move to the question of How should businesses ideally be designed. I'll layout a theoretical framework and prove to you that the current metric which businesses are run on which is profit maximisation is based on a societal notion and not the logical metric to run businesses. I'll explain what should be the right metric and give 3 examples of this ideal business model design should be to maximize lone term value to all stakeholders. It'll be an exhaustive post as it will challenge all conventional norms. I'm in the process of drafting it. I want it to be super-robust so that entrepreneurs and business owners can move away from solving a fictitious problem which I'll prove to you you're currently doing to solving the real problem for the customers. If you've reached till point, I'll be posting about this next Saturday. I do independent consulting for startups based on my business model design.

Summary is that profit maximisation is a societal notion. There is no logic to that. Customer Experience maximisation should be the objective. Right now, customer experience measurement is thought of as some sort of secondary metric. Primary metric for business success remains profit maximisation. I totally agree that capital is a constraint. Now assume that you have infinite capital, how would you have changed your business model design to ensure a self-sustaning infinite revenue generating positive loop is created. Now, estimate what is the cost required to setup this positive loop. That is the investment you need to get from investorts/friends and family. In simple words, as of now primary success metric for most businesses is profit/shareholder value and CX/ NPS is thought of as a secondary metric. (NPS stands for Net promoter score which is a measure of how good the CX for the product/service is)

My business model just reverses this where NPS becomes my primary metric and I'll invest as much capital to ensure NPS is 90+ for my test base and only then I'll market my product to customers. Sounds simple. I'll explain using practical examples how NPS driven design and profit-driven design is fundamentally different. Only then you'll get the power of NPS driven business design. 

If you want to know how I arrived to this point and how you yourself can reach a point of complete happiness, you need to think of a logic right? Some powerful logic that can rewire your mind. Assume I have that logic. Imagine the journey you're about to embark upon to be like a bridge of logic you'll be passing through. Please be mindful that even if you pass through the bridge, it'll take some time for your rewiring to happen. But this is a start. 

I'm starting off with a story that was the pivotal point in my life. It literally flipped my life. So if you're ready, let's start with the first story - Welcome to the Firm