Why consumers in a free-market society should meditate?

The mainstream economic models typically assume that preferences or utility functions of human beings are static and unidimensional. Hence, actions of others never influence or change the shape of our utility function. Though exceptions exist, for example, the work on conspicuous consumption by Thorstein Veblen as far back as 1899, and Kenneth Galbraith’s ideas on want creation, most of the mainstream general equilibrium and game theoretic models continue to use static and unidimensional utility functions. For readers with no background in economics, a utility function is just a relationship that tells us the level of satisfaction or happiness derived from a given set of actions, consumptions, or relationships.

In reality, our utility functions behave in a far more complex manner. Our stochastically evolving multidimensional utility functions are influenced by thousands of subtle messages received daily by our brain from our peers, media, and society. In fact, almost every person and institution that we interact with is engaged at some level in "changing" our utility function. Hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions all over the world, are spent in trying to change our utility functions.

Here are some examples:

1. Tapes by Bin Laden are designed to increase hate in the utility functions of extremist Muslims.

2. Ads of "beautiful and cool" people drinking coke or smoking cigarettes are really less about communicating information about these products to our logical upper brain, but MORE about influencing our emotional middle brain (i.e., amygdala, the center of the emotional brain) by associating "beautiful and cool" with coke and cigarettes. Even if we, or our kids, don't think much when we watch these ads, these deceitful ads (ugly people smoke and drink too) succeed in changing our utility function at least at a subconscious level. Empirical evidence suggests that weights related to preferences reside much more in the middle brain than the upper brain (i.e., the neocortex, or the logical brain). The huge marketing industry is continuously targeting the middle brain, using beauty, humor, or anything that works, in the most deceitful ways, as we all know.

3. This type of deceitful advertising is especially troublesome when big pharmaceutical companies like Merck market their drugs directly on TV with images of cures totally dominating the images of side effects. Do these companies ever show someone suffering from the side effects? Basically, these companies succeed in making one give more weight to the cure and less weight to the side effects (which are very often dangerous for many drugs) by using these ads. These companies wouldn't be spending billions on these ads if these ads didn't work to influence the weights in our middle brains. After all, our doctors have all the "logical" information about drugs.

4. When we say a nice Hello to someone without 100% meaning it, we often do this to make sure that their utility function does not alter its weight towards us, and keeps thinking of us in a positive manner. Much social etiquette is designed to help us influence the utility functions of others, to make them think of us in a positive light.

5. Much expenditure we engage in like buying a convertible BMW or a cool looking house is often to influence the utility functions of "others." I am not saying that some of us don't derive any pleasure out of living in a huge house. But much of this pleasure has also to do with making others utility function VALUE us, based on what we own. So much of our unquestioned life style is basically to change the weights in the utility functions of others whom we interact with. This is also called peer pressure.

6. Churches and Temples are places where we are persuaded to change our utility function, by putting more weight to "good" actions, good relationships, and good consumptions, and less weight to the "sinful" ones.

7. Parents, Teachers, friends, society, media, almost everyone is trying to change our utility function.

Despite the fact that almost every person or institution we interact with, is busy changing the weights in our middle brains using subtle ingenious methods, the mainstream general equilibrium and game theoretic models assume static and unidimensional utility functions related to our "small individualistic non-changing selves."

If we already know that part of living with other humans on this earth is to get totally bombarded with everyone's efforts to change our utility function, then we have two choices:

1. Live "unconsciously" so that anyone can enter our middle brain anytime using devious methods and influence us in very subtle, but politically correct ways, which make us think that "we" are in charge.

2. Live consciously by going deeper and exploring our middle brain using techniques such as introspection, meditation, reflection, reading, etc.

If we follow the first method, then we are at the mercy of everyone telling us how to live and how to be happy. If we follow the second method, we can perhaps learn how happiness is always within us if we understood who we really are (the big selves) regardless of superficial changes in our outer circumstances. Then our middle brain learns to follow a utility function that implicitly gives more steady weights to people and things that really matter and remove all the superficial things that it is bombarded with all the time.