Inception, let's talk about ideas

What's the most contagious virus in the world?


AIDS? Malaria? SARs?


Nope, it's IDEAS.


It's something like a seed, that when planted, will grow so rapidly that you can never remove it ever again.


Once it's concrete, it sinks deep within like a virus that infects the mind and it's existence is perpetual.


In the movie, Leonardo has the role to plant an idea into the CEO's son's mind. The idea is to make him go and create a business for himself, to not inherit his father's business. This process is called Inception.


The problem now is that they are to make him, Robert Fischer, plant the seed himself.


Why must he plant the idea seed himself? Well, it's because if other people give you an idea, your brain will trace back to its origin.


That way, your brain will tell you that it's merely an opinion of what others are thinking about you. It simply won't stick as deep as those ideas which you have thought about yourself.


Hence, their role is to create an environment so perfect that Fischer's subconscious mind will not reject. Instead, they have to lead him to the deepest abyss of his dreams, almost up to 4 layers, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream.


Once he has planted the idea that he needs to be independent deep enough. It will stay there for good. Never will he be able to extract it.


But it is not so easy to lead him to plant the seed by himself. Hence, they have garnered a strong team of 6 just to abet Fischer to have the idea of being independent.


Ultimately, he has to open the safe himself. It is simply pointless to tell him to be independent. He has to think that he has to be independent himself. Thay way, the idea will stick and grow its roots.


From this point, we can actually employ this tactic in real life.


Remember how people criticise you and you get so pissed when you think of it again when you reached home?


Let me give you an example.


Wow, you are so good looking, but the problem is you are too short and fair for a guy, I don't think you will win against those tall guys in terms of the overall image.


The trick here is to strategeically praise him first. Then you criticise him. You should never criticise him all the way for that will not get to him.


He will think that whatever you said are just crap.


The part where you say that he's good looking is to agree with his subconscious. The idea is to be congenial with his subconscious first so that it will not reject you. He knows that he's good looking already so by telling him that again. His subconscious will tell him that you are a reliable person and you have good judgement.


Afterwhich, when you tell him that he's short and too fair. He will start to think about it by himself.


Am I really too short and fair? This is not strong enough.


Remember the point whereby you have to plant the idea many layers down in the dream (up to 3 in the movie).


Similarly, one person's judgement will not suffice to make him think that he's a loser because he's too short and fair.


What you are doing here is merely helping him to grow the insecurity, that he is too short and fair. Introduce the idea to him. Ultimately, he has to plant this idea by himself.


The trick here is to find some other friends. They can tell him things like if only you are taller, I'm sure all the girls will love you and you will be a star. But what a pity, you are too short.


This time round, it will somehow affirm him of the fact that it's really a bad thing to be too short and the best part is that he can't do anything about it.


The thing about height is that once you reached a certain age, it is impossible to grow taller. This way, he's unable to extract this idea out once he has planted it in his mind. He can't do anything about it and soon he will feel helpless whenever he looks in the mirror and realises that he is just too short.


The fact that he's good looking will also be blurred by the fact that he's too short.


But that's not really enough. The last thing to do is to get more strangers who are not in your clique to tell him that he's too short.


For instance, get his colleagues at his workplace or his schoolmates or his relatives to tell him that he's too short.


Continue to reinforce the idea that he's too short.


After a while, the more he look at the mirror, the more he will start to think that he's too short.


There will be a point in time whereby he will finally start to implant the idea that he's too short. At first, it will be in the first layer, as time pass, it will sink into the second layer. As more and more people reinforce his new-found insecurity, it will sink into the third layer and maybe the fourth.


It is possible to remove the insecurity but it is not applicable in this area.


I can give you an example of how you can remove it but the thing is that you cannot remove it completely at the end of the day. In fact, you can alleviate it at most.


For instance, when you were young, you were very fat, everyone was mocking you and laughing and how fat you are, big belly, no physique, ugly body shape. Then you start to train up, exercise, and even run everyday.


After a few years, you become fit and your body shape improves by a mile. Then people start to praise you for your physique and you will feel better about yourself the more they praise you.


The insecurity that you are fat starts to be extracted slowly. It jumps from the 4th layer back to the 3rd and slowly to the 2nd and finally to the weakest 1st layer.


But the trick here is that the moment someone said that you are getting fatter. It will hit you so hard that it might trigger off a slippery slope. The spectre of your fear will start to come back and haunt you.


You were so traumatized in the past that the moment someone say that you are fat, you get hit so hard that the idea starts to sink back to the 2nd layer.


You will then get super paranoid and you look at the mirror and you think, "Yeah, I am getting fatter again. What am I going to do?" Then you will start to exercise extremely vigorously until that person who criticised you say that you are slimmer now.


If that day never comes, you will just keep getting more and more insecure.


Sounds really nefarious and evil isn't it?


It sounds like psychology right? This are just some of my personal thoughts about how you can actually implant and reinforce ideas in people.


I do see how my friends are actually affected by criticisms. Even those really slights ones, i.e. you are really fair these days, guys don't look good when they are fair. Immediately, he went to tan.


Or maybe, your cheeks are getting fatter and your thighs seems to be bigger now.


Or your right cheek seem to be higher than your left cheek.


All these comments will cause the victim to get really paranoid. He will start to look into the mirror and see if his right cheek is really higher than his left cheek.


The thing is that this is something he has never been able to identify in the past. He has never noticed that his right cheek is higher than his left cheek. But the moment you mention it and further elaborate on how it makes him look ugly. It will get to him.


He will feel helpless particularly because he is not able to make his right cheek on the same level as his left cheek unless he goes for a surgery.


Okay, this post is getting really long. I shall end it off by saying that it is not really difficult to implant an idea in a person.


As the old adage goes, you can make a person and you can also break a person.


Praise him all the way and he will begin to trust you and your judgement. Afterwhich, attack him constantly because he will believe whatever you say for he has already trusted your judgement.