Ahh, so that’s what those hippie crowns are for!
Here I thought it was an accessory, but it’s really been attached to a brain scanner that lets you know how to be more calm, focused, and serene when your chaotic thought neurons start firing off.
Ah, wait – okay. Nope. Sorry.
Re-reading the article, it’s only this newer Muse headband some chick called Ariel Garten came up with that’ll do it – a kind of “mindfulness” machine you wear around the top of your dome to encourage focus by reading your brainwaves. For all their stinky love-festing, at least the folk in the 70’s did it the old fashioned way – with hard work transcending. And maybe some help from Maharishi.
And maybe a little pot lased with LSD.
But since we don’t have time for any of that shiz or anything at all – whether it’s dropping acid or wiping our asses – this headpiece does the work of meditation and focused awareness for you by measuring the waves you’re giving off in different states, sending them to an app, and barfing back info to you reporting whether you’re having a neural storm or your brain’s tranquil. At first I thought this could be helpful during work. But that actually just set off a whole shadow-boxing concept cascade in my skull.
My first thought was “what if I didn’t work from home and used this?” Can you imagine a boss making this mandatory with access to the readouts and bothering you every time you start future tripping over deadlines, traffic, and how you’re going to surreptitiously abscond with the kilo you hid for Pablo in the ceiling of the bathroom?
Or even just some rando cracking into your internal info to use it against you?
Too much privacy invasion.
Even for someone like me working from home, I don’t think I could hack hacking my own lack of chill. I mean, the thought of being subtly reprimanded by a machine repeatedly goes over as well with me as those cyborg trainers who live in the treadmill at the gym. My homie Bill can testify.
The other thing is that when I start worrying about not being calm enough, it makes me even less calm as I try to overcompensate. That’s the thing about relaxing – you can’t brain strain your way into it. So trying’s futile. Gotta let go.
As I read on, there was a rebuttal to this.
And that’s that it’s like “training wheels for meditation and yoga” – two things that work. On their own. That you don’t have to pay for. Really? I guess the confused dog moment I’m having can be attributed to the fact that I’m the clumsiest person I know and I still learned to ride a bike without “training wheels”. So why should I suddenly need training wheels for a brain I’ve already been tour de Franceing with since day 1? It’s the willingness to stop looking at the distracting landscape of your brain so you don’t have the cognitive crash landing that is loss of focus followed by anxiety. The irony with Muse isn’t just that we’re using technology to clear the mental cobwebs (when it’s often technology weaving them in the first place). Because while I agree that the training wheel meditation machine is better than nothing at all, I do disagree when Garten says, “there are potential places technology can take us we can’t reach on our own”. I mean, yeah. There are places technology can take us – like uploading our heads into bell jars and launching the brainternet when it arrives.
But not within the context of this technology you’re trying to push.
People’ve been doing this on their own for thousands of years. And that’s the more ironic and ridiculous thing. We can get there on our own and it’s free. I’d be lying if I said this thing isn’t intriguing to my science side and that I wouldn’t give it a trial run if I saw it at a geek fair and that trial were free. I totally would. But beyond the novelty, is Muse something worth buying and relying on? Or is it a frivolous cognitive crutch?
I guess the concept just gives me a strange feeling.
The same one I’d feel if Dominion started charging me for ambient oxygen each month.
A simple 100% free therapy’s been complicated so someone could put a price tag on it.