Okay, so I'm tossing all formality out the window and writing this casually... It's a freaking blog!! So the experiment was to take a shower in the dark. It makes you feel vulnerable. Let's face it, you're naked, it's dark, no where to run, it can be quite scary for some. It's really a psychological experiment testing the mind and what happens under situations when one feels they're vulnerable. There's usually two choices, which are to either stay calm or to panic.
Experiments #1 and #2 were the same, but the lighting conditions were different, it was less psychologically thrilling. Light leaked under doors and partially illuminated the area. After being in for five minutes, one's eyes adjust and you see, very vaguely, what's around you. It makes you feel a little less defenseless and a little more in control of the situation since you can ever so slightly see around you.
Let me describe the layout before I describe exp. #3. There's the core shower area and it has two entrances/exits. Basically, it's a "Jack and Jill" bathroom if you know what that is. If you don't know what it is, then you're probably bad at paying attention in life! Hah, just kidding, I really don't care about you, so BACK to the story. There are these air-lock kind of things: if you go one way there's a sink area and yet another door. The same applies if you go the other way. What can be done here is all doors can be closed and lights turned off in the "air-lock" areas to allow less reflection of light and therefore I can make the core shower area 100% dark, and that's what experiment #3 is, complete and total darkness, allowing for the most sensitive psychological things to happen.
So I'm in this shower and it's absolutely dark, the meaning of not being able to see my hand in front of my face was literal. At first, I thought "I wonder if blind people take showers alone?" I have a shower ritual so it wasn't hard for me to move around and find things, as I can practically do it with my eyes closed. (By shower ritual I mean I do the EXACT same thing, my products have an exact location they sit, and I return them to that exact location, even parallel to the wall they sit in front of... I'm weird, I know.. and ocd.) So back to the experiment. My theory is that people react to certain situations in fear and they usually take the route of chaos, and not the route of control and staying calm.
The amygdala is a part of the brain that controls emotions, one in particular being fear. This part of the brain has a huge role in our dreams. Dreams are mostly emotional and junk. So the thing is, when being in this situation, I found it very easy to create monsters and bring them to reality. While I was in the pitch black environment with the warm water flowing over me, it became very easy to escape reality and create my own world. This relates to the real world when douchebags think they're going to have a little scare and go into an abandoned house or some other ramshackle piece of junk. They become hyper-reactive to their surroundings as the amygdala is working like a poor, little Chinese kid producing trade goods for stupid corporate America. The human body fabricates this illusion and the person becomes just another kid from Elm Street. It's kind of like the bad guy from X-Men, "The Illusionist," where he makes illusions and stuff!! O.o
So basically we have a choice to be scared. The thing is that we have conditioned ourselves to make these dreams a reality and actually be scared. However, the actuality is that we're just little ignorant animals struggling to get our bone back, even if it means bleeding to death in a barb wire collar. I myself liked the dream world though, and since I'm really freaking weird, will probably take a few more "dark showers."
Experiments #1 and #2 were the same, but the lighting conditions were different, it was less psychologically thrilling. Light leaked under doors and partially illuminated the area. After being in for five minutes, one's eyes adjust and you see, very vaguely, what's around you. It makes you feel a little less defenseless and a little more in control of the situation since you can ever so slightly see around you.
Let me describe the layout before I describe exp. #3. There's the core shower area and it has two entrances/exits. Basically, it's a "Jack and Jill" bathroom if you know what that is. If you don't know what it is, then you're probably bad at paying attention in life! Hah, just kidding, I really don't care about you, so BACK to the story. There are these air-lock kind of things: if you go one way there's a sink area and yet another door. The same applies if you go the other way. What can be done here is all doors can be closed and lights turned off in the "air-lock" areas to allow less reflection of light and therefore I can make the core shower area 100% dark, and that's what experiment #3 is, complete and total darkness, allowing for the most sensitive psychological things to happen.
So I'm in this shower and it's absolutely dark, the meaning of not being able to see my hand in front of my face was literal. At first, I thought "I wonder if blind people take showers alone?" I have a shower ritual so it wasn't hard for me to move around and find things, as I can practically do it with my eyes closed. (By shower ritual I mean I do the EXACT same thing, my products have an exact location they sit, and I return them to that exact location, even parallel to the wall they sit in front of... I'm weird, I know.. and ocd.) So back to the experiment. My theory is that people react to certain situations in fear and they usually take the route of chaos, and not the route of control and staying calm.
The amygdala is a part of the brain that controls emotions, one in particular being fear. This part of the brain has a huge role in our dreams. Dreams are mostly emotional and junk. So the thing is, when being in this situation, I found it very easy to create monsters and bring them to reality. While I was in the pitch black environment with the warm water flowing over me, it became very easy to escape reality and create my own world. This relates to the real world when douchebags think they're going to have a little scare and go into an abandoned house or some other ramshackle piece of junk. They become hyper-reactive to their surroundings as the amygdala is working like a poor, little Chinese kid producing trade goods for stupid corporate America. The human body fabricates this illusion and the person becomes just another kid from Elm Street. It's kind of like the bad guy from X-Men, "The Illusionist," where he makes illusions and stuff!! O.o
So basically we have a choice to be scared. The thing is that we have conditioned ourselves to make these dreams a reality and actually be scared. However, the actuality is that we're just little ignorant animals struggling to get our bone back, even if it means bleeding to death in a barb wire collar. I myself liked the dream world though, and since I'm really freaking weird, will probably take a few more "dark showers."
