rel="nofollow" href="http://www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org/journal/pdf/4-3%2006%20Amir%20-%20Plato%20Love.pdf">real, good and beautiful. After all, isn't that what you want in the end?3 If you abuse this power then you will miss out on better relationships with better people. Because people can only ever become more secure and better for you when you become more secure and better for them. If your plan is to poison others to get what you want, then you might win zero-sum games of one-upmanship but you'll also end up surrounded by poisoned people. What's the point? You may as well just poison yourself.
And if you still want to abuse this power, then I'm not worried anyway.
There's this little-known secret among intellectual elites that there are safety-switches deeply embedded in the human animal which keep people with bad intentions in a lower cognitive range. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, you actually need empathy and compassion in order to reach higher levels of cognition. There are parts of your brain you simply won't be able to access if you're stuck in a lower cognitive range. So I would hope you're not that dumb for both our sake's.
Gifts & Charms
Gifts & Charms is an acronym to describe the different kinds of neuro-hijacks that can take over your own psychology or human relations (in no particular order).
G = Games (the Fun Drug)
I = Injustice or Disrespect (the Anger Drug)
F = Futility under Pressure (the Paralysis Drug)
T = Triggered Over-Reactions (the Crazy Drug)
S = Shocks to the System (the Anxiety Drug)
&
C = Curiosity (the Curiosity Drug)
H = Humour (& Other Incongruencies) (the Happy-Delirious Gas)
A = Attention-Grabbing Stimulation (the Party Drug)
R = Rhythms that Hit an Emotional Sweet-Spot (the Mood Drug)
M = Monotony (the Sleeping Pill)
S = Nonsense & Ambiguity (Where's the S word? See, nonsense is annoying AF, hey?) (the Madness Drug)
Note 1. This Manual is a practical thinking prompt, not a medical journal or encyclopedia. So the list of Gifts & Charms is not an exhaustive list of neuro-hijacks. Rather, it is based on what's most cohesive, most memorable and easiest to understand, in order to maximise the effectiveness of this Manual as a thinking prompt.
Note 2. You can access all the links in this Manual at: www.jamienuich.com/hijacklinks
Games (the Fun Drug)
How it Starts
Boredom. A challenge. Your move. My move. Me vs you. Rewards.
What it Looks Like
Play. Fun. Board games. Cartoons. Video games. "Earn more points." Gambling. Roasts. Wild 'N Out. War games. Guerrilla warfare. Arms race. Gamesmanship. Zero-sum games. Brahms Hungarian Dance No.5. Sports. Google's offices. Pranks. HR performance policies. A battle of wits. Provocative conversations. Better. More. The next level. Promotion. Career ladder. Progress. Status games.
What’s Happening
The conventional idea of games is limited to children's games, video games and all the things that are labelled as games. Predictably, conventional thinking fails to appreciate how greatly human behaviour is geared towards playing games.
For instance, how many psychologists or thought leaders today would categorise games as a legitimate motivator in human behaviour?
But if you go outside this conventional 2D thinking then you end up with a totally different understanding. If you consult the subjects of philosophy, the social sciences and marketing then you will find there is a serious appreciation for how fundamental games are to human (and even animal) behaviour.
"Play is older than culture, for culture presupposed human society but animals have never waited for man to play." (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens)
Indeed, marketers have turned gaming into a creative art-form to drive greater consumer demand in business. There is a specific concept in marketing called gamification which is when you take the principles and elements of game-design and apply them to non-game contexts, like selling more stuff in business. Gamification can be used as bait (like the McDonald's Monopoly Game) or as part of the structure of the transaction (like Starbucks Rewards). And consumers love it. Real conversions are undeniable.
Equally, this concept can be applied beyond marketing, in all facets of life, in:
business and politics. Think "political cat and mouse", "strategic chess", "monopoly in business", "game theory".
personal development. The expression "level up" says it all.
human resources. Job promotions and performance reviews in the workplace use this concept.
education. When learning is fun. Edutainment on mobile phones with Angry Birds. Didn't you like your "fun" teachers the most?
personal motivation. You could make a game out of anything to motivate yourself: setting mini-goals, setting wagers, re-defining personal excellence.
human relations. You could frame human relations as a game to leverage the innate desire to play in human interactions. Zero-sum games are frowned upon in diplomacy. But that doesn't stop people from covertly trying to keep playing zero-sum games, even when stop. So if you can't beat em, then maybe you will need to redesign the game instead.
A True Story on How to Turn Work into Games
When I began work as a litigator, the first task I got was disclosure on a piece of monster litigation. (Disclosure is going through all the documents in a legal case to figure out which ones are relevant. In the legal world, it's the "junior" work.)
Anyway, it was time-consuming work, 97% of the
