By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
Unlike lizards, which only have a lizard’s brain, we are capable of thinking about more than just basic survival instincts, like fight-or-flight. We humans have special “mammalian” brains, which integrate lizard-brain thinking within the neocortex to produce higher level thinking, which allows us to execute cognitive functions like decision-making and (“ahem”) self-control.
That is, unless something goes horribly wrong. According to one expert, it already has. The cell phone, and more particularly, social media feeds are making us act so stupidly, that we are losing the ability to act upon “lizard brain” survival instincts anymore.
I will show you what I mean. I received a call this week from a potential client who told me she “wanted to hire a lawyer to help get the medical board to go after her surgeon.” Okay, ma’am, “What form of malpractice did you experience?”
She replied, “he snatched my cell phone out of my hand while he was talking to me.”
Now, to put the picture in the frame, for those of you who are not health lawyers, and do not know technical medical jargon, a “surgeon” is a special kind of medical doctor, who makes incisions into your body and takes things out that are killing you. Or puts things in, which you more or less are really going to need if you want to live.
Here, I will draw you a chart up on the white board. On the left, we will put “people you no longer need to listen to.” (This would include ex-husbands and wives, etc.”) On the far opposite side we will write “suuuurgeons.” (I am elongating for emphasis).
This woman couldn’t put her phone down long enough to listen to her surgeon. (See also “Main Character Syndrome.”) A lizard would have better sense. But is she really this stupid? According to one expert, she might have been literally “brainwashed” by her phone.
Brainwashing. I came across a behavioral psychologist on YouTube, who works with law enforcement and the government at “HumanPsychEngineering.com.” He has the best theory I have heard, on why our smart phones make us behave so oddly.
Much like “psyops,” conducted by governments and organizations, our social media feeds know that we get an ego boost from being told we are “special,” “virtuous,” “a member of a group that supports something that matters,” “important,” “awesome,” “accepted,” a “victim,” or a “good person.” This can be especially intoxicating when mixed in our brains with our survival “lizard-brain thoughts (that there is an “enemy” or “something to be feared,” an “oppressor,” a “bad guy.”)
In short, our phones know how we think, and use this against us. Suppose you have just a passing interest in [“Thing X”]. Your phone’s algorithm quickly finds out that have an interest, and then “feeds” it to you. . . so often and so convincingly, that you will literally want to check on “Thing X” all the time– even if “Thing X” can’t possibly exist. It is a kind of “brainwashing.”
This happened to Patty Hearst in the 1970s when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Patty Hearst was the granddaughter of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. During her captivity, she was brainwashed into joining in a bank robbery by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
There was just one problem, there is no such thing as “Symbionese” people, nor an army that needed to liberate them. It was complete fiction. Yet, these knuckleheads talked Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of one of the richest people in the world, into robbing banks to support a cause that couldn’t possibly exist. She spent 7 years in prison for it.
There is something to this, I think, that is worth exploring. Just based upon the way people walk around staring at their phones. They look hypnotized. But not everyone is susceptible to social media feed suggestions. Perhaps one third of people really get addicted to these things, one third are highly unlikely to find any interest is a news feeds, and the middle third are somewhere in between.