Knowing the people and their situation, I jestingly said: “They work within a dampening field. Everyone who walks through that door immediately loses 50 percent of their intelligence.” It always seems as if these people and almost everyone around them are either woefully uninformed or unable to think, despite the fact that some of them seem pretty intelligent and have advanced educations.
(This phenomenon is also commonly observed in politics and public policy.)
My acquaintance is not a scientist or a science fiction fan, so she didn’t know what a dampening field is. To clarify, I went online and found the following definition at Yahoo! Answers:
In broadcasting, it is an electromagnetic field that counteracts another electromagnetic field, i.e., a radio or television broadcast. The common name for it is "jamming" as in jamming a signal.
I sent her this definition with the following addendum:
In an area surrounded by a synaptic dampening field, a preselected percentage of brain synapses fail to fire, or their signals dissipate before reaching neighboring neurons. The selection is set by increasing or decreasing the intensity of the dampening field at its generation point.
There are also brainwave dampening fields that can impede the generation of brainwaves, or cause them to generate at a lower frequency, so that instead of the normal waking Beta or optimal-functioning Alpha brainwaves, all individuals within an affected area generate only Theta or Delta brainwaves, indicating near catatonia or deep sleep, respectively.
Later, with specific reference to the people my acquaintance had in mind, I added:
Some synaptic or brainwave dampening fields have been found to autogenerate, emanated by the habitual, concentrated self-serving thought of the affected
area’s occupants or their “thought leaders”. It has also been found that some areas seem to be naturally afflicted with synaptic or brainwave dampening
fields. Through interviews and observations of the areas’ occupants, researchers have hypothesized that these dampening fields are generated by the collective “negative” karma of the occupants or their leaders. Research is ongoing to validate this hypothesis.
Of course, none of these addenda are true or even scientifically plausible. They are my sardonic humor mixed with New Age technobabble. (I can, however, think of some authors who would probably endorse these ideas as facts.) But the mystery remains: Why do smart people do stupid things?
There is actually an easy answer. Often smart people do stupid things because they have an idea, a desire, or a fear that preempts other important considerations. They don’t weigh those other considerations adequately vis-a-vis their particular predisposition. Sometimes they’re just so busy thinking about one thing that they forget other things. Or the opposite may be true: They’re thinking about too many things at once and not giving adequate attention to the subject at hand. Then again, they may just not have the information they need to make an informed choice. They may not realize they lack this information or may not know how significant the lack of information is.
This easy answer only gets us part of the way to unraveling the mystery, though. Stupidity can be infectious. A group of intelligent people gathered to resolve a problem can easily fall into stupid groupthink. But it goes beyond even this. Whole organizations can be infected by the mindlessness of their leaders.
I don’t mean that these people literally haven’t got minds. People in leadership positions wouldn’t have reached them without any minds at all. They’re not using their minds to best advantage. In this case mindlessness is the opposite of the Buddhist concept of mindfulness–being fully present and attentive in the moment, looking deeply into everything within us and around us so that we truly understand it. So the employees or group members infected by their leaders’ mindlessness do things just as hurriedly or just as sloppily, and make decisions just as poorly, as their leaders. It may be because too much is being demanded of them. It may be because the demands being made of them are not rational. Members or employees who feel they can’t leave “go along to get along” rather than mount a hopeless fight against the prevailing mindlessness.
How, then, to react to this infectious stupidity? Anger is self destructive and frustration only builds upon itself to create more frustration. Humor often borders on contempt, and sometimes crosses the border. Contempt is the convenient answer, but it’s also the wrong one. Who among us can truly claim never to have made decisions guided by the wrong considerations? So who are we to judge others for doing the same? How about compassion then? Compassion is fine so long as it isn’t really just concealed contempt: “It isn’t right for me to despise them, so I feel sorry for them.” In that case the two are not different.
I think the best answer has two parts:
First, we can learn to see ourselves in those making the dubious choices, and to see them in ourselves. We are not really different from them. Only the contexts and content of the choices are different. Then our compassion can arise from love rather than contempt, and maybe we can even make use of it.
Second, if we are caught in one of these dampening fields and can’t make use of our compassion to make the situation better, we should recognize that and get busy today making other plans.
The whole concept of dampening fields is fascinating to me though I don't see how research can ever fully get to its core.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, Lana. In a way, that was part of the reason why the idea of a dampening field presented itself--having recourse to a mystery to resolve an enigma. Unfortunately, in the specific instance considered above (and perhaps others like it), the enigma wrapped in a mystery all resolves to a complete lack of understanding of anyone by anyone. Makes for an interesting challenge for all involved.
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