How Do You Know You Became a Real Writer?
In your article writing career you will wake up many days and think: Who am I to write such things? I am nobody…
Well, as soon as you find yourself consulting your own articles and searching your own content for information, you have become a real writer. Today I wanted to find out more about LTP or long term potentiation and the reason why people lose interest gradually on things they thought that were interesting a few days before. Long term potentiation means the brain adapts itself to the new environment and the same stimulus no longer produces the same effects (good or bad) in your brain like they did before. Take the example of a music, the first times you listen to it you maybe be mesmerized by all the new tones, however after a few days listening to the same music the changes become permanent, you stop getting the same amount of pleasure… forever and you need new music get the same stimulus that lasts again only for a few days. This knowledge applies to almost everything: Books, sport, movies, people (yes, this is why romantic relationships fail, you lose the stimulus you had in the past, sue your brain). However this trait has more advantages than disadvantages. It allows you to get saturated of old things, making you advance in your pursuit of knowledge for example. Imagine if you got always the same pleasure of reading the same book over and over again, you would read no other book, you would get no more knowledge. You would listen to no new musics, videos, games… you would meet no new people, you would never go, be or do anything new.
Should you still blame your brain?
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November 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Very thought provoking. BUT to counter your statement that things constantly repeated result in lack of interest, and you refer to relationships, certain negatives can be turned into positives. For instance if you have a certain fetish, (It does not have to be sexual), you and your partner can work on it together, until you both achieve the best result for both of you, and, once you have scored the perfedt 10, repetition is just perfect heaven, and a point you would never have reached without constantly trying!
Thank you for sharing.
Nadine
November 11th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
This was a very good piece! Thank you for sharing this
November 11th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
That was certainly not what I thought was going to be written. Interesting thoughts.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
It’s perfectly true that “the eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing”, but the Preacher who said that (in Ecclesiastes) also advised that one live joyfully with the wife of one’s youth all the days of his vain (temporary) life that God has granted him under the sun. So there is something fundamentally wrong with your argument. It doesn’t universally apply.
People don’t tire of relationships because they get satiated. They get tired of relationships because one or both never grow out of their own self-centeredness. Selfish pleasures have that very defining characteristic of the Law of Diminishing Returns. That’s why (for example, again from Ecclesiastes) “he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth, with gain; this also is vanity.”
But the beauty of a proper, giving relationship is that it never stops growing. Never. Old pleasures are brought to their maximum potential, and new ones keep on being discovered. The tragedy is that so many people don’t realize what genuine commitment takes and what rewards it can bring.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
To be fair, I don’t think this article was meant as a be-all, end-all commentary on all romantic relationships. Nor does it read as a definitive commentary on marriage. In point of fact, it serves to explain why some successful couples spend the amount of time they do trying to learn more about each other. In the attempt to maintain the brain stimulation, people will explore their partner’s complexities more deeply.
Moreover, there is has been nothing offered to refute the basic assertion that this phenomenon contributes to the failure of short term relationships, which seems to be the only type of relationship that the article was actually discussing.
November 18th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Really? That’s something to think about.