Stay Asleep. You Are Already Hypnotized.

Maybe the issue isn’t that we can’t sleep… it’s that we’ve gotten very good at staying asleep. This episode explores the subtle ways we’re influenced every day… through repetition, routine, media, and our own patterns. From advertising and film to the small rituals we never question… how much of what we think is “us”… is actually something we’ve learned?

Co-written by Doug Quigley.

Written and narrated by Gary Naccarato.

For more, visit theartofclarity.studio

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate and review. Your support helps others find the show.

Topics include attention, focus, mindfulness, digital distraction, creativity, memory, and the impact of technology on the nervous system.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I had a colleague and friend who wrote a book titled You Are Already Hypnotized A Few Years Back, one of the greatest titles for a book ever. They opened the book with a quote from a course in miracles. The quote is The Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to him waking up. Let that sink in. I'm sure most have heard the classic bit of lore, the back in the heyday of print ads, the idea of subliminal messaging, embedding hidden images, suggestive shapes inside ice cubes, inside product shots, all designed to influence behavior quietly, unnoticed. The theory was simple, slip something in just beneath awareness, and it begins to work. A suggestion without the person knowing they've received one. There was even a book in the nineteen seventies Subliminal Seduction, claiming advertisers were embedding sexual imagery in everything from liquor ads to cigarettes. Ice cube spelling SEX Black Velvet anyone? Who loves you baby? Most of it was never proven. Some of it was probably nonsense, but that's not really the point. Because whether it was true or not, the idea stuck that we could be influenced without knowing it. And maybe that's where it started, or at least where we became aware of it, the idea that something could get in subtly, quietly, without permission, without awareness, and begin to shape our behavior. Welcome to the Art of Clarity, a podcast about creativity, the nervous system, and the strange ways the modern world competes for our minds. This all traces back to the nineteen fifties, when a market researcher named James Vickery claimed that during a film the phrases eat popcorn and drink Coca-Cola were flashed on a screen for a fraction of a second, too fast to consciously register, but enough, he said, to increase concession sales. It turned out he fabricated the results completely. But again, that's not really the point, because the die had been cast. And once an idea like that takes hold, it doesn't really matter if it's true. It becomes something else, a lens, a suspicion, an unspoken awareness that maybe we're not as in control as we think we are. And years later, working in advertising, I saw a different version of the same thing. At one time, advertising used to be creatively fulfilling. Agency boards that were bold, challenging, clients willing to take risks, agencies willing to push. There was energy in it. You felt like you were making something unique and sometimes even groundbreaking. Well by the time I left data analytics, digital tracking, focus groups, it was death by a thousand paper cuts. Everything was tested, refined, measured, validated again and again and again. We'd get eight boards for a campaign, get on a call with the agency to talk through them, and at the end of the call you'd hear it. They're intesting. Absolutely soul sucking. And once the results came back, three would move forward. I can almost assure you they were the three least interesting. Eventually, every single creative decision, from wallpaper color palettes, to casting choices, to tone, pacing, dialogue, everything went through layers of testing and even more soul sucking data validation. Because the goal was never to wake anyone up, it was to make something that felt familiar enough, safe enough, acceptable enough that no one would question it. When everything is tested, refined and smoothed out, what you're left with isn't something bold, it's something passable, something generic, something status quo. And maybe that's the point. Maybe the issue isn't that we can't sleep, it's that we've built a world that rewards us for staying asleep. And we've seen this idea before, maybe even without even realizing it. In film Fight Club, a story about consumer culture, identity, insomnia, people sleepwalking through their own lives. You are not your job. You are not your stuff. And then there's the game, a man dropped into a reality so carefully constructed he can't tell where it ends and he begins. I don't think the game is just about manipulation. I think it's about film itself, about building a world so convincing people stop questioning it. Different stories, same idea. And it's not lost on me that both films were directed by David Fincher, who made an undeniable mark in advertising early in his career. Ironic? Probably not. People don't just get hypnotized, they participate in it. I heard someone somewhere, maybe a movie, I'm not sure, say that making your bed every morning sets the tone for the day. And I get that, because every morning and I mean every morning, I get up, make coffee, walk the dogs, make the bed, straighten up the living room, fluff the pillows on the couch, vacuum up dog hair. It's my morning ritual. And if I can't do it, I'm for lack of a better term, unsettled until I can. I know enough about the subconscious to recognize what that is a pattern, a rhythm, something the mind, my mind begins to protect. So if I have to leave early and I don't have time to do any of it, the first thing I do when I get home is the ritual, minus the coffee, even if it's one or two in the afternoon, because this is how it works. It's not some big moment, it's repetition, quiet, consistent repetition. And over time a pattern becomes a preference. A preference becomes a habit, and eventually it just feels like part of you. At what point does something that serves you become something that you serve? People don't just get hypnotized, they participate in it. We repeat things, routines, thoughts, behaviors until they feel automatic, until they feel like us. And at some point we stop questioning where they came from. To sleep, maybe to dream, anything to keep from waking up. We stay busy, consume, scroll, drink, distract. Not always because we want to, but because when things get quiet, something else shows up. Awareness. Time, mortality, meaning, those are the things that start to show up when everything else goes silent. Maybe we don't just struggle to stay asleep at night, maybe we spend most of our waking lives trying not to fully wake up. Because the moment things go quiet, you start to feel it. Time moving, life passing, and that subtle awareness that the end is never very far away. And waking up isn't always peaceful. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. So we fill the space. We buy things, we text, we binge, we stay busy. Not because we need to, but because it keeps us from sitting too long in that awareness. In the United States alone, tens of billions of dollars every year are spent trying to help people fall asleep and stay asleep. So the question becomes, why is everyone having such a hard time staying asleep in a world that seems designed for it? Or maybe that's not the problem at all. Maybe the problem is that we've gotten very, very good at staying asleep. This is Gary Nacarado, and this has been The Art of Clarity.