On sheep and sentience

I've recently come to the realization that sentience is not an inherent human trait. It is quite possible to be biologically human while still lacking the qualities of self-awareness and self-ownership.

This line of thinking began when I first joined Mensa. The first newsletter I received contained an article about a fascinating informal experiment carried out by the author.

With this experiment, the author was trying to determine if there was a correlation between the advertising budgets of large breweries and the relative popularity of their products. The methodology was quite simple. He selected test subjects with proclaimed preferences for one brand or another and had them taste-test several brands without knowing which ones they were drinking. The idea being to see if their actual preference matched their stated preference or whether their stated preference was a product of external influence.

Not surprisingly, he discovered that the subjects' actual preferences did not always fall into line with their stated preferences. This is to be expected. If somebody has always drank the same brand they may be unaware that another brand is more to their liking.

But what was surprising, and what led to my current thinking, was how some of the subjects reacted to the outcome of the test. You would expect a sane person, on discovering they like the taste of A better than B, would then switch to drinking A. But not all of the subjects did. Even after finding their stated preference was less desirable than one of the other options they decided to keep following their original preference. In other words, the brewer was controlling them and getting them to consume the brewer's brand in spite of the fact that the subjects' actually thought another brand was better.

Think about this for a second. If you really like vanilla ice cream, but somebody tells you to eat chocolate instead, would you? When you walk into a restaurant, do you ask the chef what you must eat? That is exactly what some of the subjects of this test did. They knew from their own experience that they liked the taste of one product better than the other. But they insisted on staying loyal to the inferior product.

This caused me to start paying closer attention to the world. I began looking for similar signs of people allowing external control to override their own desires. It was not difficult to find examples. In fact, it's the rule rather than the exception. And it isn't just advertising that causes this peculiarity. Peer pressure and societal taboos are major causes.

I also noticed a similar symptom. People who's actions clearly show their desire for a certain outcome even though their words claim they seek a different outcome. I'm not talking about liars. I'm talking about people who don't even realize they are saying one thing but doing the opposite. A prime example would be people who claim they want to get rich, yet they are spending what money they do have on beer and lottery tickets instead of books or classes that could help them move up the ladder. This is a complete lack of self-awareness.

There are many people who fall into the sub-sentient category. Religious believers controlled by the words of their cleric are hardly fully sentient. Those who turn to government for guidance and support fall short of self-ownership. People who look to celebrities to see how to dress and style their hair are decidedly non-sentient. You can't be self-aware if your entire life is based around somebody else or if you aren't *aware* that your actions are not consistent with your desires.

The good news is that sentience is attainable. Like anything else, you have to first want it. Conveniently enough, the very act of pursuing sentience displays a large degree of sentience. It's a process of introspection and analysis; removing external influences and focusing on your internal motivations.

The catch is that sentience also requires maintenance. You have to be constantly wary of the intrusion of external forces into your psyche. You have to be aware of your self in order to possess self-awareness. That seems like a pointless sentence at first glance, but think about it.