Part 2: The Power of Association

When we view the inner workings of our brains like a vast spider web of associated concepts, it helps us to understand that the brain is not an enclosed and protected machine. It is a network in constant interaction with the outside world. Everything we do, hear, say, smell, or see is going to influence the next thing we do, hear, say, smell, or see, ad infinitum. The brain is not as much a processor as a process. A process that is helplessly entangled with and affected by everything else in the world.

Advertisers understand the power of context extremely well. They spend billions of dollars trying to create an association between their brand or product and something with which you already have a positive connotation. Coca Cola shows happy, beautiful people drinking their soda, and your brain helplessly creates a link between happiness, beauty, and Coca Cola. When you see the beverage you get a happy glow in your mind that makes you more likely to buy it. And perhaps this link seeps into a deeper level of processing, and when you feel sad your brain begins looking for a way to help. It stumbles upon that association between Coca Cola and happiness. A thought bubbles up from your subconscious: “maybe a Coke will help”. You find yourself craving the drink even though you don’t know why. Just like the advertisers wanted you to.

Negative associations are just as useful for influencing behavior. This is evidenced with horrific frequency in almost any political campaign. Consider the 2008 presidential election. The Republican Party did everything they could to pile negative associations onto the public’s concept of Barack Obama. Sarah Palin said Obama “palled around with terrorists,” exploiting the fact that Obama lived in the same neighborhood as Bill Ayers, a man who acted as a political activist and domestic terrorist in the 1960s. Though Obama was no more than an acquaintance of this man who happened to live in his neighborhood, the Republicans used the tenuous connection to transfer the negative association of terrorism onto Obama. Similarly, because some voters have negative associations with the religion of Islam, Obama’s opponents tried to declare that Obama was Muslim whenever the opportunity arose.

There is a ceaseless war of branding and associating operating in the background of our lives, influencing what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we value.

Juxtaposition is a great example of this phenomenon at a baser level. When you place two images next to each other, you completely change the way you interpret each one individually. To go back to the “spider web of the mind” analogy, looking at each image separately on different days would be like pulling down on one part of the spider web, letting it go, and then pulling down on another. Looking at them both at the same time, or after a short pause, is like pulling down on two parts of the web simultaneously. By pulling in one area the other area is stretched in a unique way, making it activate in a different way than if it was pulled down alone. This makes some associations much stronger than they would normally be, and others weaker. You change the perception of one image merely with the presence of another image. You do this by changing the context.

I often find myself wondering why socialism is a four letter word in much of the United States. Eventually, I began to appreciate the weight of history, and therefore context, that surrounds the topic. Most Americans who lived through the Cold War were exposed to years of propaganda against the purported threat of socialism and communism. In the minds of many Americans, these strong negative associations indelibly linked socialism to tyranny, genocide, and the imminent threat of nuclear war. It is impossible for me to grasp that level of context and the strength of those associations. This is why I am so often bewildered by the animosity that arises for the usually reasonable policies of Democratic Socialists or the basic tenets of socialism. The association between Bernie Sanders and socialism was one of his most difficult hurdles in the 2016 presidential election. Even though most people do not actually take offense to socialist institutions like public libraries, public schools, or fire departments, many Americans still have intense negative reactions when they see the word socialism. This is largely a problem of historical associations, more so than to actual reasoned differences in values. Patterns of activation can become entrenched when they carry strong emotional ties and have reinforcement over time.

Thinking about association nets in our minds also helped me to see the logic in psychoanalytic theory. Much of the suffering of the human mind can be boiled down to unproductive associations and patterns that form throughout our development. A simple way to view this idea is through the lens of behaviorism. When an action leads to a reward, everything associated with that event is positively reinforced. A warm glow will surround those parts of the spider web, and you will be more likely to perform the action again. When an action leads to punishment, everything associated with the action is negatively reinforced. We feel anxiety surrounding areas of negative association and areas of uncertainty.

I once had a dog who was raised by someone else as a puppy. He had a deep hatred for fly swatters. This sweet dog would instantly attack anyone holding a fly swatter, viciously barking and charging at them — the only time he ever displayed this behavior. He was most likely disciplined with fly swatters when he was a puppy and the negative association persisted his entire life. In much the same way, our personality and behaviors are shaped subconsciously through thousands of minor positive and negative reinforcements every day. Our spider web, our habits, and our preferences are slowly shaped through the pressures of being alive.

The Case for Complexity

The importance of context highlights how difficult it is to understand our fellow human beings. Even at the simplest level of communication, understanding a single word, we can often talk past each other helplessly. The same word will always have a different meaning to any two people reading it. This is in part determined by the current mindset each person is in, which includes how hungry they are, the last thing they read, how much sleep they had the night before, how fulfilled they are in life, etc .— in other words, any factor that can change the condition their spider web is in at that moment. You also have to consider the associations they have attached to the word, the structure of their web. That structure is the product of an entire lifetime of seeing that word with various concepts and mental states associated with it. Two people’s interpretation of a word may be close, but no matter how similar, it will always have a different coloring, a different connotation.

Now try to scale that complexity up to the level of ideas. To the thousands of words, emotions, and memories tied to the concept of socialism. Health. Happiness. Responsibility. Higher Power.

Now try to understand that every person is a complex individual, just as unique and complicated as you are. Factor in the years of life experience and the myriad positive and negative reinforcements that have altered each individual’s mind in subtle ways. Your spider web is what makes sense to you right now — it is the way your brain fires. It is drastically different than it was last year and outrageously different than it was ten years ago. And those are differences that arose even when your early development is held constant, maintaining millions of formative experiences. So how similar do you think your spider web is to that of a stranger’s? What about to someone who lives in a different country? Someone who has been on earth for thirty more years than you, or for twenty years less?

Though our association networks will always be unique, in most cases they will be similar enough between two people that communication is adequate. However, it is important to remember that those two people will never experience the exact same thing, no matter how simple the word or concept they are perceiving.

When you appreciate the complexity behind interpreting even a single word, it becomes clear why there is so much disagreement in the world on complex issues like politics and philosophy. It is easy to be dumbfounded when you see someone espousing a view with which you disagree wholeheartedly. It seems like they must be living in an entirely different reality. In many ways, they are.

The complexity of the human mind is overwhelming, and understanding other people takes effort.

Context is why learning about other people, concepts, and cultures is so enriching. An idea may activate a certain pathway for you every time, but it can activate a completely different pathway in someone else. When you share an idea and start a discussion, when you truly listen, other people can show you brand new ways to view the world. They can forge new connections in your brain, changing the architecture of your neural network. They spin a new silk string on your spider web, causing a concept to activate new areas of the web from then on. They add more context.

The same thing happens when you read a book, watch a documentary, travel to a new place, or do anything that shows you a different perspective. Sometimes the experience not only adds new strings to an idea but actually reorganizes part of your web into an entirely new pattern.

Paying attention to other people helps us see the world a little more complexly than before. Most importantly, it helps us understand that how we think of something may be radically different than how someone else thinks of that same thing. It shows us that the way we think about things is not reality, but instead one interpretation of reality. It shows us that we all only have part of the picture, a small portion of the available context. We all have room to grow. We can all make efforts to see the world more clearly.

This task is daunting, but it is in no way a chore. I think of it as one of the most rewarding parts of life. The reason why I enjoy learning about the world or hearing differing points of view is that forging a new connection in my brain is exhilarating. Seeing that concepts previously completely separated in my mind actually have a broad, glowing strand of silk between them is incredible and humbling. I love seeing a familiar area of my web take on new levels of complexity. I cherish the feeling of awe when I can momentarily grasp that the world is far too large and interconnected for me to understand. That moment always passes and I am back to my narrow view — my limited section of the total context. But that brief moment of understanding helps me break free of my provincial view a little more quickly next time. It helps me to be to be more open-minded and to value the perspectives of others.

Context is everything. Put another way, without context we are nothing. We are what we experience — the way our mind associates concepts into personality, values, and behavior. We are constantly changing. We are an infinitesimally small slice of the context of the human race. What could be more valuable than filling in the gaps in our understanding, expanding our consciousness to include the contexts of others? In doing so, we grow. We transcend our physical limitations and become something bigger than ourselves. We become a member of the human race, discovering what we can about this world we share. We explore the common humanity that connects all people. What could be more valuable than that?

Sources:

Dr. Bushman on the Weapons Effect: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-psyched/201301/the-weapons-effect