PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

10. IF I CAN, I WANT
ingredient to life. 1 He classifies fundamental needs according to how
much we depend on them. He considers ordinary food the least significant
need since one can survive up to a month without it. Water is a
more fundamental need because without it we can live for only a week.
A still more essential need is air (oxygen), without which we die in a
few minutes. Ultimately, the most refined and most essential “food” of
all is impressions composed of a variety of external stimuli. Ouspensky
claims that one may die in a matter of seconds if deprived completely of
all sensory impressions.
It is difficult to verify practically the validity of such a hypothesis.
There is some evidence that points in that direction. In sensory deprivation
experiments, for example, subjects wear gloves and are left to float
on water in a dark, soundproof cell. In a matter of hours they enter a
temporary catatonic state, a condition similar to being unconscious,
half-dead.
Further proof may lie in the fact that repeated identical stimulation
(lack of variety) deadens sensitivity. Pickpockets put this into practice
when they find ways to stimulate the wallet region of their victims before
they pull the wallet out. Soon after putting on perfume, you no
longer smell it because you have become accustomed to it. The iris of
the eye oscillates rapidly and continuously to avoid stimulating the same
cells on the retina. Looking at a uniformly blue sky can produce a sensation
of blindness. The same effect is obtained if you cut a Ping-Pong
ball in half and cover your eyes so that all visual stimulus becomes undifferentiated.
Finally, it is common knowledge how easily young children become
bored. In urgent need to be nourished and grow, children seek new impressions
ravenously. The more possibilities a toy offers, the longer they
will spend with it, but they soon will turn elsewhere for more new impressions.
Older people, on the other hand, do not search quite so
insatiably for new impressions. Many prefer more meditative activities
and a state of mental tranquility rather than continual sensory stimulation.
For an older person, an impression may no longer be new.
Nevertheless, the person must still be nourished to stay alive and in
good health, so a need for some form of sensory stimulation and new
impressions continues throughout life.
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