I should be done with ranting (for now) by now. So as I wonder why the heck it seems that every one in secondary four is so busy while I'm still having a lot of time to slack, I shall do another crappy addition, to the portal of zoneseeking....

The Placebo Effect.

Idea for this came from "The Twlight Zone". A good enough Sci-Fic program that can entertain to a simple extent (expected on singapore TV anyway). A few weeks ago, the weekly series aired the episode with such as the title.

The show was basically about a man who always thought that he had a certain dieases while in actual fact he did not, this psychological effect of him had seemingly turned into reality one day, when the doctor who tended to him to carry out a placebo effect for cural realised his situation of really developing very strange symptoms. The story took quite a scary turn as his caretaker died from blood spilling out of the body, just when she was taken to the hospital. The doctors realised that everyone was infected with the diease and the hospital was under quaritine. That protagantist doctor herself had developed the symptoms... and everyone had not much time to live. Under futher investigation of that doctor, she found out that the man had gotten the diease by a book.
To quote, in paraphrasal, "It was so vivid... It felt so real... It was almost as if I... I knew..."
The doctors realised that a major situation was on their hands as they were fighting a fictional diease. To paraphrase once again...
"How did the book cure it?"
"It didn't..."
"What? You mean we're all going to die because some author had not come out with a cure for the freaking diease?"

The story ended with the doctor coming out with her own cure by tricking the man to believe that a meteor had struck earth and caused a special element to result. The guy took it, and everyone was indeed cured. But as the guy himself had cried about before he took the 'cure'.
"A meteor... it would cause the whole world to freeze... total devastation... total chaos..."
The doctor told him not to worry.

And yeah, the world was indeed totally freezed up when the doctor opened the door to celebrate. All due to one's man imagination...

I personally thought that the part of the whole freezing up was a bit unrealistic, controlling the forces of nature would be more than pyshic. But the thing about the development of the diease was to some extent... well, realistic. It just shows how strong one's beliefs are and how much they can affect something. Thereby creating placebos...

And the point about the placebo effect, being something that invovles thinking, analysis and then the construction and foundatative measure-cum-grounding of a framework that houses one's beliefs, idealogies and dogmas, it would be something unearthed towards the fact of intention, suspicion and installation.

A creation. A make-belief story that actually turns real.

Or perhaps... seems real. And when we consdier the placebo effect on the smaller scale, not towards the events of drastical life and death situations but rather mindset and contextual interpretative situations (Although this in turn can be extremely life-and-death) It is almost obvious to see a forcefield of placebo in some ways. Well maybe not obvious, but seeable. Its only if you want to see it.

This idea is scary. It is much worse than an unreasonable stigma or even logical but not so incisive dogma. The amout of matter that could result from the placebo effects are lawed upon a creative, experimental set-up. Its not what to decide on. Not what to disagree on. Its just, what one thinks. And then it happens.

Medically, the placebo effect is used for postitive results. There is the layman logic of how this works, and everyone would probaly know that. But then, using such logic, negetive results cannot be refused from the counter as well. Much can result from a placebo effect..... looking at the current state of human beings, negetivity and disorders would not be surprising for the norm.

And very much can be affected. Depending on how strong you figure the mind to be... how much influence you think it would digest and perform... The placebo effect is dangerously existant is some things. Perhaps theres the denail. But looking at a victim like the guy in twilight zone, it seems that counselling doesn't work for it. Fire needs to be fought with fire. There is no water.
Say.... Religion. What if all the religions in the world were just sparked off from placebo effects? The circumstances from growth towards a maturity are potentially favourable for any would-be believer. Its the idea of the 'trend'. The corruption of identity creation. If it was so, faith would be just based loosely onto something because we(all the believers), think so. Stuff that is assumed to happen from the resultant of the higher power might have just been created figments from our everlasting placebo. And if so, therefore the stigma rolls. Therefore the concept goes. Therefore the people rose. And therefore, the placebo is patroled. That would be scary in a way, as it goes to show that the relevances that is contained onto the supporting of the religion in question is just the actions to feed our placeboed effect.

In the case of religions and from there downwards, perhaps idealogies come into place as well. Say one guy comes along and agreee that a certain something is meant to be this way. Another person agrees with the massive logical receptives and sources of information and supports him by writing a book on the guy. More people start to belief... and soon enough a school of thought is created from that guy. Maybe the idea is sparked off by more than one guy. Maybe a larger number got the idea. But still, the placebo seems to be a prized runner in this aspect. It shows itself as more and more people get sucked into the idea. (OH! So thats how the term 'sucker' evolved. And bad English had caused it to turn to 'you suck'. Ah... ) This creates showal splinter groups and as more believe. More evidence comes in. More thoughts are produced. More logic is gandered. The Placebo effect is fed, and becomes a happy substance.

There is a style in the way things are carried out, and knowledges in any environment would be mega-locked to a fuzzily speakable sort of department. There are some ideas in the world that are seemingly symbolic to the style of the placebo effect and even in terms of that style in question, the prefered analysis of most would just be the sense of an 'aura'. Something thats not really a big deal and not really a painful sore. But a very visible example of this is synergy. The thing called team spirit. It seems very empowering when everyone in the team is in sync with each other and can carry out tasks together to completion sake while purchasing their fullest potential. Synergy bullying can also be obvious, say, when some guy in the class did not do anything to insult you or perhaps is just a tad bit irritating. After a rolling of the placebo, the whole class hates him in ganged recongisation without actual appointment and synergy humilation, ignorance and hatered comes alive.

Placebo effects could also be the reason when one speaks about the unspoken laws of life. The things everyone knows about but no one says. This could happen on smaller levels as well, from the national, to the organisational to the indiviualistic. Habits. Supersitions.

But what does the placebo effect consist? How is it created? How does it chart its path onto the human's sciences. I have heard the story of the power of animal's instinct before... and it somehow does seem similar to the human's law of the placebo effect. But I had also realised that from the example, humans themselves fall into this trap.

E.g. Monkey gonna die because no more bananas on island. One monkey suddenly took coconut fallen into the sea from the tree and eat. Monkey see, monkey do. Then all start eating coconuts and the race of monkey survives. Herd instinct? Well, theres an addtional twist...
On a totally different island, miles away, a monkey starts to go to the sea and eat the coconut as well...

And the relation to humans is that when one teenager gets IT savy, it seems that suddenly all teenagers become IT savy. That, perhaps is a more obvious example to give rather then the one I was considering about 'one like pokemon, all like pokemon' thing or 'one guy starts blog, all start' Its not only herd instinct. Its not only trend. Its seemingly placebo-effect-like... I suppose influence does play a certain role, but think about the human example. I personally don't remeber being influenced and interested with computers... I was just, like that. And every other teenager would probaly agree.

(I'm not going to do a stupid paragraph that explores the idiotic suggestion that this whole idea is a placebo effect in itself, thereby leading myself to a moronic contridiction... well, ahem)

But seriously... the placebo effect is something very scary. It can walk over ideas, laws, concepts, beliefs, constants and the whole order in itself. Then it can distort it and cause one to fumble. The placebo effect is usually speaked about in the flow of mind-body. But when other flows are considered... say mind-mind or mind-spiritual...

Let's think about it.

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