Undercover Actors and the Shadow Self

which published just prior to this one, UH. And in that episode, we talk a lot about this UH, about the idea of layering reality with these with fiction, particularly as it involves institutions and sports and UH and product performance products that are given to to an audience, layering it with fiction to improve upon it and change it. And we touched a little bit about what happens when

you put these layers of fiction upon yourself. We talked to pro wrestler Colt Cabana Quis him a little bit about what it's like when he has to play a villain in the ring and then when he leaves the ring, uh, you know, how he's able to shut that off, but how he still feels like there is a certain amount of him that is UH, that escapes into this villainous character.

And likewise there's a there's an aspect of him in the really goody were not really goody two shoes, but the good guy version of himself that he also portrays. So in this episode, we're going to continue the sort of exploration, but we're gonna be looking beyond the world of pro wrestlers and looking into the world of actors method acting, for instance, We're gonna look at undercover cops, uh, and we're also going to look at our online selves

a little bit. And before we do so, just wanted to UM, let you know a little bit about cafe being in case you didn't hear the other episode. Cafe is a term that's an old Carney term that he's uh used to indicate that someone should keep being fake. In other words, if you are wrestling, UM, and you're it's a fake wrestling match, you want to make sure you don't break out of characters, so you want a

cave ape, right. And we talked in that other episode about how kfaving really pervades the fabric of our culture, and this is something that has come up, I believe with Cold Cabana. Um it has come up and uh Eric Weinstein's article about k fabing uh that you can find it everywhere. You can find it in reality shows because a lot of these reality shows, as we know, are scripted, and yet the audience doesn't seem to care much like in pro wrestling, right that they don't care

that there's k saving going on. It's about the spectacle. Yeah, and uh, but then it can also end up sort of warping the individual, or seeming to because we asked Cold about this and he said that, yeah, there are times where a particular wrestler lets their gimmick, let's their their fictional self, um, kind of alter their their real self. Like they'll they'll buy into the gimmick too much, they'll believe the hype about the character they betray, and on

some level it becomes with confused with who they are. Yeah, that's why Eric Weinstein in his essay alluded to that and said that sometimes they believe these confabulations of their storylines so much so, like for instance, some sort of infidelity or adultery, that they will actually then go on to commit adultery. Some of these pro wrestlers and some of these various storylines that they've had to play out.

So we start thinking about that, and of course we look at ourselves and start to wonder, okay, what about our own minds and our own consciousness and sense of self Because when we get up in the morning, we basically have to put on our public selves right when we go out the door. And what is this story that we're telling ourselves? What is this script that we're we're following for ourselves? Yeah, and ultimately, who is that guy?

Who is that girl that you are in these various environments like who's that Who's that person that you are on the subway train versus that person that you are in the office, versus that person that you are, uh, you know, say tucked into bed with your significant other or you know, talking to the cat in the meddle, And I don't know. It's like every different an environment, every different interaction with the external world, it tends to

summon a different you. Yeah. And although we tend to think that we've got this continuity director in our head making sure that we're always the same person we we purport ourselves to be, there are opportunities for us to break from the script. And that's what we're gonna look at a little bit today. And when you start thinking about scripts, of course, we have to look at actors yes, now, yeah, when you start thinking about actors, and certainly that comes up.

You know, we're talking about like pro wrestlers who are in an angle where they have to pretend they're having an affair, and then they end up having the affair. I mean, you can think of various examples of actors and and they end up meeting on a set where they're playing significant others and then they end up being significant others to a certain extent, you know, And and certainly I even remember I was in a community play adaptation of seventy six. I was Thomas Jefferson and uh

and I ended up dating um Mrs Jefferson after the play. Uh. So you feel like that the groundwork was put there and that it was just like that whole debate about whether or not you have any free will. It was like the suggestion was there and you followed it. Maybe I don't know, it's it's possible, but but but certainly you see this at times. You see people that that, and you hear stories about actors really getting into their roles,

particularly as far as method acting is concerned. So method acting uh generally combines uh, the the you know, the actor's consideration of the character's psychological motives and personal identification, like they're they're getting there trying to get their mind inside that of the character they're portraying, Like they're they're asking themselves, who is this person? And then what do

I need to do to connect with them? Like how can I connect my own feelings with the feelings of this character and and therefore create a more um believable presentation on the screen, this versus more you know, a more traditional, like non method approach, where one just simply it gets up there and and you know, recites the lines and does so in a way that that mimics um,

legitimate deep felt emotion and uh. And then there's of course, there are stories plenty of stories about actors who supposedly like don't break character, like for like an entire week of fifth filming, even though they're only filming like during the day, like they're they're they're staying in character outside of the picture um and uh. And the and those stories are like you people get a little um auntsie

about that, particularly people who really follow the method. Uh, and they'll say, well, that's not really what method acting is all about, that's not what was actually you know, originally part of the method as it was conceived. And then you also have some some stories that just simply didn't happen, like one of the famous ones is is

supposedly and again this is has never happened. But Solrence Olivia and Dustin Hoffman, Um, we're on the seat of Marathon Man and and Dustin Hoffman shows up just looking like hell, just dirty and just just strong outlooking because his character is supposed to be. And he explained, and he explains it in preparation for the scene, he stayed up all night and he didn't bathe and all this, and Olivier supposedly responded by saying, my good Sarah, why

don't you just try acting? Ha ha ha. And it's supposed to know, it's supposed to be a good laugh at the method actor has expense saying, well, why don't you just pretend to be the thing that you are instead of trying to embody it. But what I like about that is that's cafe being the cafebe, you know, because here's this fake story about this about fake in reality, right, um, yeah,

And I think that's really interesting. What I like about actors is I think they're very interesting creatures because they are dealing with this duality of nature, right, and they are having to inhabit this space and try to do so in a way that really fools us. Right um. Actor Tandy Newton has a great ted dot com talk and she talks about what it's like to be an actor and what it's like to inhabit another character, and she has some interesting thoughts on it, and we just

wanted to share some quotes with you. She talks about this idea that she always felt separate from other people. She always felt like the other, particularly because she was someone of color in England growing up and write away and a female and so here she is already the other. So she talked about this idea of oneness and separateness.

She said, our little portion of oneness is given a name, is told all kinds of things about itself, and these details, opinions and ideas become facts which go towards building ourselves, our identity. So she's talking about this idea of self and this little bit of self we can grab in the world and define ourselves by. And she says, and that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world. But the self is a projection based on other people's projections.

Is it who we really are or who we really want to be or should be. So she says that this whole interaction with self and identity was really difficult for her growing up. So she said that when she found acting it was revelatory. She said, I can hardly find the words to describe the piece I felt when I was acting, my dysfunctional self could actually plug into another self, not my own, and it felt so good.

Because she says that while she had a degree from cab Cambridge, a thriving career, she herself was a bit of a car wreck because she was so invested in this idea of self and she hadn't quite yet figured out that it is just a projection, it's an illusion. And she says that that this, this idea of self is something that we value above all else, and we've created an entire value system in a physical reality to support the worth of self. Yeah, it reminds me of

the study that we ran across. And this is from Ellie a contage from the University of Amsterdam. She was curious how much how much actors are aware of their performance when they perform it and how into what extent they're letting a character take over. Because we've we've we've heard we've heard that before. We heard a little of that from Cold Cabana about you know, you're you're playing this character and you just your your juices get flowing

and you just you embody the character kind of possesses you. Right. So, um So, this study was interested in that. So she asked Dutch actors to rate their own emotions and the emotions of the characters they were playing across a range of different states from disgust to anxiety, tenderness, pleasure, fear,

et cetera. And as she found that positive emotions were often felt by the actors as they played those characters emotions, but the more and more negative the emotion that they were supposed to portray, the less likely it was that the actor word report actually feeling that emotion. So so so in this study they found that actors were better

able to connect and be taken over by those positive feelings. Okay, so they were able then to manage that system of not being influenced so much by by their emotions are the emotions of the character? Um See, this is why I think It's such an interesting mind game, this acting, because you do, you get into some very weird territory about who you are and what reality is. Yeah, and we've discussed before too, like we're talking about chest opening exercises,

which we talked about laughter and smiling and laughter. Year then all this and it, you know, comes out to that kind of that fake it till you make it kind of vibe, the idea that just on a physical level, if we, you know, we smile and it makes us, it makes us begin to feel the emotions that would have made the smile. When we put the effect out there, it generates the cause, even if there was no cause.

And so what Tanny Newton is saying is that when when you think about this self and you think, okay, well I'm happy today, and and if you are so malleable that you allow all these different forces to act upon you, then what you're doing is you're confusing self for actual living Because what she says is that it's uh, the self is not an actual living thing. It's projection, which are clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves

from the reality of death. So she's saying that it's our ability to divorce ourselves from the concept of self and then ground ourselves in others and outside experiences. That really liberates us and allows us to live fully. So I liked what she had to say about this from an actor's perspective, because, Um, there there is a ton of duality going on here. So what do you mistake for the real thing? And what is the real thing? I think is what we're trying to get at here.

Um In Underscore you get into questions of what is there a real thing? Is there is there anything at the heart of this or is it just a bunch of masks encircling the formless um? And then and then to what extent are some is something? If there is a true you, then to what extent is the fake you? Almost as powerful there was. There's a really great episode, I think a shorty of Radio Lab that aired recently

called What's Up doc Um. I recommend you guys checking it out, And I know a lot of you are Radio lap fans anyway, But it concerned mel Blank of course, the classic voice actor who you know did the voice of Bugs, Bunny and countless others and voice and uh. In the end up they talked to his son in this episode, and he talks about like when he played these care it wasn't just like all right, I'm gonna do Wacky Voice number one in vacky Wacky Voice number two.

I mean he was there was almost there was a sort of method acting mentality there where he knew these characters. He would embody them and even though he's just doing the audio, he would act out. You know, you could you'd see physically his he was different when he was doing one for voice versus the other, and uh and so.

And in this episode they talked about how at one point he was in this horrible crash car crash on dead Men's Curve in Hollywood Boulevard and he nearly died, and he was he was out for two weeks in a coma, and he would not spond to anyone, respond to anyone. But then how do they get him to respond? That's the crazy part. Well, this is yeah, this is

the crazy part. His neurosurgeon, Dr Conway, Uh, just he said, out of nowhere, he just decided to call him bugs Bunny called Mel Blank, one of his character's bugs Bunny and said, uh, something like, hey, bugs, how are you doing today? And then Mel Blank actually responded as bugs bunny,

what's up back? And in character right, he responds, he comes out of his comma, basically inhabiting this character, and he goes through a couple of other voices, um, I think, including Porky Daffy and fog Horn Lankhorn, until he himself mel Blank, the person the self that that we all think of, is sitting there saying what's going on? Where am I? So, Timmy, it points to this amazing moment where you do have this question of like, well, how much of mel Blank is the characters? And how much

of those characters is are is mel Blank? You know? Um? To what degree is he himself or this fictionalized character that he's inhabited. Now this leads us into another area as we discussed earlier undercover cops, undercover agents, vice operatives and uh and you know, in the interview with Colt Cabana, and we asked him briefly about you know, what it's like when he's out there and he's portraying a bad guy.

He has his character, the officer, Colt Cabana is like a you know, vile uh, you know, foul mouth the policeman and uh. And then he has to go back, you know, he has to leave the ring, go into the backstage area. And he says he's able to shut it off like it's not. It doesn't bleed over into

his life after the fact. And of course that brings to mind again these these vice officers, police officers who have to go out and pretend to be drug dealers, pretend to be, um, you know what happened some sort of criminal element in order to infiltrate it and and you know, and and actually get the actual criminals and get them arrested. So what happens when they're doing that?

What happens when they have to play that part? And then is there is there the chance that the the the the criminal element they're pretending to be becomes the real them? Did they end up? You know, essentially they're pretending to be this monster and then the monster consumes them and it does happen. Yeah, I mean this is a high wire act, right, and um, you have a bit about how there have been some instances right where that shadow self has taken over. Yeah, yeah, And this

is of course, this is important stuff. This is stuff that's been that's been studied because ultimately you're talking about law enforcement, which is important. You're talking about individuals risking their their lives and and ultimately their their sanity to to engage in these kind of operations. So uh. Dr Michael or Ato a professor of psychology at the University

of Ottawa. He conducted a ten year study of undercover agents and uh he he looked at seventy two undercover cops and out of the seventy two, um, there were there were six that ended up being disciplined for acting inappropriately during their missions. So one for one person that was using cocaine. For another, it was conspiracy to self class to self classified information about ongoing investigations. For one, it was actually selling classified informations. For another, it was

sexual involvement with a confidential informant. For another, excessive use of force. And for another it was theft of money

from an evidence locker. UM. I mean and uh And you see the varying degrees of of shadiness in these and you can imagine, like all right, you know, like in the cocaine, you can imagine like a guy who's posing as a drug dealer being put in a position where he has to use the drug or someone says, hey, he's you know, not hey use that drug, but but you know, encouraging them to sample it to prove their worth. You kind of see that as a trope in various

undercover cop movies anyway. But then other stuff like stealing money from an evidence locker, like that's more of I have come back from the role I'm pretending to be and now I'm actually that in the evidence locker. I'm that at at the base, at the home um where

I'm supposed to leave this criminal fake me behind. So his ultimate finding, uh Dr Garrotto's finding was that undercover agents with a disciplined self image and control of their impulses almost unwaveringly saw themselves as merely playing the part of a drug dealer. So like Cold Cabana or or any number of actors, and out there they were able to say, all right, um no, I'm back home now,

and at home, I'm the real me. I am this version of me, and that other thing that that the drug dealer that I was just pretending to be for like six hours, that's just a show. That's just a fake. So ultimately he says that it's what you need is an internal set of social standards that prevent you from losing your sense of identity. Yeah, it makes me think back to our episode on will power and self control, and I wonder if living a double life creates a

heavy cognitive load. We talked about this cognitive loade and that if you have to remember, you know, let's say two or more items as opposed to ten items, and then have to take some sort of UM test and self control afterward, you're going to be less likely to follow through with self control if you have a high

cognitive load. So, in other words, if you're a double agent, or you have a double life, then you have to keep in mind this entire other story, which might erode some of that self control, uh and lead to some of these ego depletion that we've talked about before too. That you just have a finite amount of mental energy to dedicate to certain tasks. So I can see how the shadow self could kind of take over very easily

in that instance. UM wanted to mention to that. Psychologist Dr Alan Sillarian has has talked about what it's like to work with secret agents. He says, the most secret agents I have met have two signature traits fearlessness and

a high tolerance for anxiety. Whether because of bio biological factors such as an elevated level of the mood enhancing neurochemical serotonin, or because of the influences of their early lives, these people seem to be extreme risk takers who can tolerate and manage worry, tension, and stress with natural ease. So you have to wonder that what point are the stakes so high that the tension um begins to to

erode some of that self control. All right, well, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we are going to discuss fiction. We're going to discuss avatars. And when I say avatars, not only are you going to talk a little bit about your online avatar, but also the the older concept of the avatar itself and

not the movie. All right, we're back, and uh, we're gonna talk a little bit about avatars here about the online self, because this is a you know, we've discussed already this idea that that we we assume different personas U two varying conscious degrees whenever we're interacting with the outside world. There there's a slightly different you when you're talking to your mother. Uh, there's a slightly different you

when you're talking to the grosser, you know it. It's there's just all these different masks swirling around the the ephemeral self, and we just put on those different masks to interact with the world. But here's this avatar, this opportunity to build a new you from the ground up, right, And what they found, Now, what some researchers have found is that it isn't always too far from the real you, the flesh and blood you. Uh, this is very interesting.

It's from an article called is It a Game? Evidence for Social Influence in the Virtual World. It was published in the journal Social Influence. And in the study, which was conducted by Paul W. Eastwick and Wendy L. Gardner, one avatar tried to influence another to fulfill a request,

because we're talking about here is relationships. They were using something called there dot com for this, which is kind of like second life, this kind of limitless virtual environment where people create little versions of themselves and then they kind of teleport around and interact with each other. And you know, a lot of the fun is just sort of outfitting your character, uh, you know, giving it certain

physical characteristics, so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, like I said, it really is about communication, because you're just mirroring what you're already doing in society, or at least this is what this paper is saying. Um. So yeah, you've got these. You've got one avatar trying to influence another to fulfill a request, just like in life. Right, I asked something of you, you asked something of me. We try to cooperate together

to get something done. Um. The experiment, or in this case, an avatar, first snakes an unreasonably large request to which the responder is expected to say no, followed by a more moderate request. Yeah. I think it was something like go to like twenty screenshots from a particular environment in this in this uh this world. So it's like if you were like playing one of these quest games like Skyrim, and you just it was like a ridiculously, ridiculously complex

mission for some seemingly low payoff. So as I expected, the avatars, which is similar to people who participated in the same experiment in the real world, were more likely to comply with the moderate request when it was preceded by the large request. Then when the moderate request was presented alone. Now that's kind of a that's a tactic that I think a lot of people use, Like if I just go in for the it's sort of like

if you asked for a raise. If I asked for a million dollars, then it's a lot easier to get to the maybe X amount that I want, as opposed to if I just asked for a thousand dollar raise. Um. So what you see is that they exhibited a psychological tendency to reciprocate the requests concession that change from a relatively unreasonable request to a more moderate request. So one of the other more striking findings was the effect of what they call the d I t F technique, which

it was during the face. This is the way that they made the request was significantly reduced when the requesting avatar was dark toned. The white avatars and the d I t F experiment received about a increase in compliance with the moderate request. The increase for the dark toned

avatars was eighty. And again, this is a virtual world, so there's there's no telling on the other side of a virtual character if they are black, if they're white, if they are male or their female I mean in second life you see people going around is like you know, monkeys and cats and dogs and stuff, and you know, and there are various other examples of people playing you know,

very inhuman characters. So on some level we know that the person and they decide can be any thing, but we still ended up end up buying into the vision that is presented to us. Yeah, we're still tether to some degree to our our prejudices and that the social

construction in our mind of what we think the world is. Um. So I thought that was interesting that that still what it boils down to is that even though you've created this avatar and uh it's supposed to represent this duality within yourself, you're still you're still socializing and cooperating or not cooperating in the same sense that you would in your life. And of course another thing to keep in mind with all this is that in these video game interactions,

you're of course not making eye contact. Now. I like to think of a of a of a future time when our video game characters we will have our actual eyes. I think that could be. I think that would be really cool. Yeah, but for now, they most characters and video games have just the dead soulless eyes of the Uncanny Valley. Um. But but one of the studies we were looking at, and this was where was this from?

This was from the University of Haifa in Israel. Yeah, So they asked seventy one pairs of college students who did not know one another to debate an issue over instant mass messenger and try to come up with an agreeable solution. And they did a couple of fasces of this.

But the ultimate finding was that when their eyes were hidden, the participants were twice as likely to be hostile because they had and some of the the the the subjects were were you they're reasoning like a skype webcam technology so that they can they can make eye contact during these interactions and others not. And so when the eyes

are hidden, hostility is more likely to occur. Which is again, you know you're you're outside of the social contract, right, because the way that you know that you're in a social contract is by witnessing the other person's reaction to you, all the non verbal gesturing that gives you an indication

of how they're feeling. So if you can't see that, then it makes sense that you would miss those cues or that they just wouldn't be present and enough to sort of get you to line up with acceptable behavior. So this, of course is one of the reasons why

we see rude behavior running rampant online. Yeah, that's why you see like these outrageous examples of trolls, you know, where someone's just out there just being completely awful, and you know they whenever they're eventually exposed there you know, or not allay, they're not eventually exposed, but in the cases where they're exposed, you see, oh well, this actually seems like a fairly normal person. How are they that

awful online? And you know it's because they're they're on some level, they're not they don't see themselves as interacting

with real people. They're just kind of interacting with automatons. Yeah, so I think they'll be interesting to see if the shadow self, this sense of shadow self, becomes more acceptable as we continue to communicate online and that we this this duality maybe disappears a bit, because again, we we think of ourselves as this continuity, right this script director, and our our brain saying you are this, You're a good person, you have integrity, you moved throughout the day

in the following ways, but then we act another way when nobody is looking. So how much of that will you know in the future be acceptable or not acceptable? Yeah. Finally, the world of fiction, which we've talked about this before, the story of the power of storytelling, the power of fiction.

But there was a little study that we ran across that that ties in nicely with what we're talking about here, and this is from Brigamany Young University research team led by Sarah M. Coney, and she writes up in this instance for the British Journal of Social Psychology, and she was looking at how exposure to aggressive behavior in literature

has a psychological impact on readers. So in this case they had to the test subjects read two different versions of a story, like some people will read a story where the outcome is that the conflict is solved with violence, and in the other the conflict is not solved with violence. And in both the cases they found that provoked people who were given the opportunity to engage in the pacifics civic form of rertalatory violence were more likely to do so if they had just read a fictional account of

similar activities. So, in other words, the individuals who just read this thing where someone solves a problem with violence.

If they are then if they then encounter a real life conflict, they're more likely to be aggressive in that that incident, which I I hadn't stumbled upon that study until we started doing research on this, because we, like you said, we've done We've covered this subject quite a bit in the ability of the reader to take on the persona of the character and also mirror neurons, uh, you know, firing at the same time that a character

is throwing a ball in a book. Right. But to see this, this concrete manifestation of the abstract aggression is pretty amazing. And then I think that it points to this idea that this again, that self is a very tenuous thing, that this consciousness, this continue a d factory that we try to have in our head of turning out this idea of who we are isn't quite as solid as we think it is. Yeah, And then then

we had this other study. We looked at researchers from Ohio State University and they conducted like six different experiments on about five different participants, and they found that stories written in the first person can temporarily transform the way

readers view the world, themselves and other social groups. So, for instance, they that they were particularly interested at one point in what would happen when individuals were reading about a character and then that character was then revealed to

be homosexual. This particular experiment, they had like seventy heterosexual males and that they read this story and uh, they found that it depending on where in the narrative the revelation was made, it it had a big impact on how they, uh they felt about the protagonist being gay, and and also how they just envisioned that character. Like if if it was revealed early in the story, then they brought in a lot of baggage and a lot

of conceptions about what a gay character should be. But if they revealed it later, then then all that stuff wasn't necessarily thrown into the mix because they had a chance to try to occupy that person's Yeah right, yeah, very cool stuff. Yeah, it really makes you think about the power of first person narratives, Like I instantly started thinking about um Joyce Carol Oates book Zombie, which is the first person perspective and the character is based loosely

on Jeffrey Dalmer. So you have a very dark and troubled individual and you and and then I think that's maybe the thing that's so you know, narcotic about text like that is that it puts you in the mindset of this individual. It is seemingly far removed from who you are. But then ultimately you have to act yourself how far removed if I'm able to embody that person when I read this you? Uh, that was in the

book swap right for our early holiday gathering. Yeah, Lauren the new co host on Tech Stuff, got that one. So so right now she is her nightmarage. She's having nightmares in the corner Jeffrey Dahmer. I'm just I'm gonna throw some subluinal things out today Jeffrey Dahmer and just

see how she reacts. Wow. So um so, like I say I said earlier, it makes me think about avatars, not only in the in the the online avatar sense, but in the the the old idea of the avatar, which is steeped in Hinduism, comes from the Sanskrit word avatar, which means descent, and the idea here is that you have a god um and that God is just immaterial and just completely separate from the physical world, and then to descend to the physical world, the god has to

take on a form uh that can be understood by the physical world and that can interact with the physical world. For instance, Vishnu has ten different avatars, and they range from there's a fish, there's a tortoise as a bore, there's a dwarf, there's a and then and then there's Krishna, and then there's Buddha, and then there's a pen the avatar that's uh the form of a white horse with wings, and it's a destroyer that will come at the end

of the world. So can I really like this this uh, this metaphor for ourselves and the various selves we present, you know, think of your your your ultimate inner thoughts and everything that's going on inside you. You're kind of like this vision of this this formless thing. And then to interact with the physical world. To descend to the physical world, you have to take on these various forms, and they need different things and they have different applications

in different environments. Right, So that the type of self that we roll out really sort of depends on which avatar we need at the moment. Uh. You know what one of my avatars is what's a duck? So Julie takes on the form of the duck and uh, and how do you use that avatar? Well, it doesn't really speak, so I don't know. Alright, Shall we bring over the robots. Let's call the robot over here and we'll do a

couple of quick listener mails. All right, Well, we've heard a lot of great comments on our episodes on mazes and labyrinths, and we heard from Andrew. Andrew writes and this says, Hi, guys love the podcast and especially love the episodes dealing with mazes and labyrinths. I think it is noteworthy that modern psychology has been applied to the construction of malls and shopping spaces that specifically create maze or labyrinth like environments. Have either of you ever been

to Ikea? Of course we have because we live in the same city as one, so everyone has to go. It's it's a lot of mandatory. Um. The place is a labyrinth, no two ways about it. You walk in and you follow a path of consumption uh and leave next to the entrance. Uh. This psychological tool of peace and religious expansion is being used to proliferate consumer culture. Uh. And then he goes on to say, you know, it's rather different inside of a mall environment, where it's just

it's like a maze. There are all these like how do I get out of here? How do I get to the store I want to go to? How do I escape the horrors of the food court? All these questions come up, whereas indeed, I kea is so well laid out and o versed in design that there's a path, you flow, it's it's at least for the first hour, it's a calming experience. Um and uh. And the book that we we discussed in in in Maps and Labyrinths also makes that point in regard to to hospitals and

similar environments. One of the problems there, of course, is that you end up with a maze like hospital because in many cases that you build part of a hospital and then you build another wing onto it, and there's another wing here, so you have all these layers coming together to form this this this thing where there's no cohesive design in place, which heightens your anxiety, particularly if you're at the hospital to visit someone or you yourself

checking in. So not necessarily this sort of design that

you want this. The book is called Healing Spaces. Healing Spaces. Yeah, and and and we were talking about government buildings just yesterday and how it has like this, you know, Kafka bureaucratic layering of of as, like uh, ways to get to where you need to go, and almost seems intentional, like we're gonna make you go down this a mile long hallway and then we're gonna give you directions that are you know, twenty different directions on top of that.

Um so, yeah, all right, well, here here a couple more that. This one is from Jill Jill Wrightson and says hello, thanks for the fantastic podcast. Labyrinth have become close to my heart over the past few years. After my husband and I eloped to San Francisco, we had a marriage blessing at Grace Cathedral where I saw my first labyrinth. He walked it and it was beautiful to

see every step really count. I was not comfortable to have a prayer for or meditative practice in the open, but I did find this box and book picture below, and she included some some very some excellent to photographs that there of labyrinths. At Christmas this year for my own practice, the tracing and breath are a good connection for me. I completely agree with what you said about the mazes. They're frustrating and I don't know why they were included in this pack. She's referring to the pack

of Mazes laborage. Yet meditative maze did prove to be an oxymoron because the flas we discovered's nothing meditative about being lost. Thanks again for all you do. It is appreciated down here in Orlando. And then we also heard from Kelly Kelly Road and said, hello, I just finished listening to the Labyrinth episode and wanted to thank you for all the interesting facts. I am actually getting married

in a labyrinth this August. My husband and I were legally married last March, but postponed our larger ceremony and reception as I was nine months pregnant and couldn't see my feet. Now that our beautiful baby boys here, we are renewing our vows and having an actual ceremony and reception. Our ceremony is being held here in the center of a labyrinth, which is set in the woods here in Illinois where we live. We like the idea of the

ceremony being a meditative experience. I plan to have a sign near the entrance offering a brief explanation and history of labyrinth and inviting people to sneak away from the reception to try it for themselves. I will definitely use some of the facts you've covered in the show. Thanks again for a great episode, and if you read this on the show, I just want to say thanks to my has been chat and my son's Kaden and Silas for being the three most wonderful guys on the planet. Kelly, Yeah,

that's sweet. I think it's very cool to have a ceremony and elabyrinths. It is, yeah and yeah interesting to see to hear from two different listeners who have employed labyrinths in their their ceremony. All right, well, if you have something you would like to share with us, be it about mazes and labyrinths, or be it about the shadow self? Um, actors, I know we have some actors out there. Uh, let us know how that works in your mind? What's it like to take on a character? Uh?

And you know, do you use the method to to any degree? Um? If we have anyone who has done any kind of undercover work, be it like official, you know, hard and gritty, undercover work or something a little more mundane. Uh, you know, some sort of like even public performance kind of thing where you're having to put on a character to deceive people. Uh, don't tell us, don't you know.

But but but seriously, if you've engaged in anything like that, we'd love to hear some more inside on how that feels and how you feel yourself embodied in the character that you're being, or how you feel that character affecting you. So I'd love to hear from you about any of that. You can find us on Tumblr and you can find us on Facebook. We are stuff to blow your mind on both of those, and you can also drop us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com

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