Rats and cheese analogy taken from The book of Est by Luke Rhinehart
If we put a rat in a maze with four tunnels and always put cheese in the fourth tunnel, after a while that rat will learn always to go to the fourth tunnel to get cheese.
A human will learn to do that too. You want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel, there’s the cheese.
Next day you want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel and there’s the cheese.
Now after a while the great god in the white suit moves the cheese to another tunnel. Zip, zip zip goes the rat to the fourth tunnel. The rat comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Eventually the rat will stop going down the fourth tunnel and look else where.
The difference between rats and human beings is simple.
THE HUMAN BEINGS WILL GO DOWN THE FOURTH TUNNEL FOREVER! HUMAN BEINGS COME TO BELIEVE IN THE FOURTH TUNNEL. Rats dont believe in anything, they are interested in cheese. But human beings develop a BELIEF in the fourth tunnel and they come to MAKE IT RIGHT TO GO DOWN THE FOURTH TUNNEL WHETHER THERES CHEESE IN IT OR NOT. Human beings would rather be right than get the cheese.
That’s why for a long time now you haven’t been getting any cheese and your lives aren’t working. You’ve got too many beliefs in too many fourth tunnels.
That’s why you’re here. To blow up all your life-denying, cheese-denying beliefs.”
Your whole life is based on the principle that you’re right.
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"Almost any belief, whether an idea uncritically accepted from another or an idea that one has, through repetition, convinced oneself is true, will have a hypnotic effect on one. Many people lead their lives in servitude to such beliefs and suggestions – and live as if entranced. A young woman, for example, may in a moment of stress say “I’ll never love anyone again” or a child may say “I’ll hate so-and-so forever.” Such a declaration can gain as much unconscious command value as any posthypnotic suggestion made by a professional hypnotist. It can run, and ruin, the life of the person who has made it."(Werner Erhard in WE, 81.)
