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10/21/2004: ""What the BLEEP Do We Know?""

   Last Sunday night I went to see a movie (title above) with some friends. The movie was about quantum physics, neurobiology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religion. It was a bit much for one movie, I think, and the plot suffered a bit. The movie was essentially a documentary with a series of excerpts from interviews with experts in the various fields I mentioned. So maybe the plot wasn't really that important except to provide examples for the very lofty discussion.
   I like what the film had to say about the effect that a person's thinking has on his or her life. To a very large degree, we make our lives what they are from the inside out. Circumstances often appear to be completely without relation to our desires, hopes and dreams. In fact, our predispositions and prejudices and habits of thought determine much about how our lives develop. I have found this to be true in my own life. When I allowed myself to believe that I was powerless to make my life into what I wanted it to be, I was powerless to do so. When I was suffering a major depression I was convinced I was worthless and, what's more, this conviction perversely served as its own proof! On the surface of my mind (as it were) I could recognize how wrong this was, at least in its circular logic if not in its factual content. But deeper in my consciousness, embedded in the habitual structure of my thoughts and the physcial structure of my brain, I could not take the action necessary to change my life. Or so I thought.


   Now I have changed my life. After deservedly being fired from a job back in February 2002 I have started taking classes, served successfully as a teacher for a year, worked as an intern at NASA and gained a brighter perspective. It took a change in my thinking, a fundamental change on a physical 're-wiring' level and a (perhaps more fundamental) change on the level of my attitude, to make it happen. Outside circumstances, while not under my control, were also not really preventing me from becoming what I am.
   So I am not averse to accepting the underlying ideas the film is apparently espousing. In fact, I know that I still have a lot of work to do before I am the person I hope/know I can be. All the same, I am unhappy with the movie for several reasons.
   First, the movie slips in a reference to Masaru Emoto's 'water crystals' (see www.masaru-emoto.net and www.whatthebleep.com/crystals). Supposedly it offers proof of the physical response of water to the stimuli of thought, music and the written word. While this is beautiful idea, I have to say that I consider it to be nonsense. Water crystals will always show different form at different times depending on an incredible array of chemical and physical circumstances. To say that all of these circumstances have been taken into account and to claim that thought alone can affect the shape of the crystals of frozen water is to be incredibly naive. In using this bit of entertaining pseudo-science I think the makers of the film have undermined their point.
   I would like to say more about exactly how the central ideas of the film were undermined by the use of the 'water crystals' but I have to run to Physics class. More later...
Also more about:
   Second, the people interviewed in the film use quantum physics as 'evidence' for the ideas I have outlined by example.

note to self for later completion of this entry: remember how
neurobiology, cognitive science and psychology are used as evidence

Replies: 1 Comment

All I ever get is junk in my comments. Hey, people, nobody reads this stuff so stop posting SPAM here.

Junk Comments said @ 03/12/2005 10:26 PM EST