Matter or mind?

Sweet are the uses of siren song, particularly when it helps you to open cash registers . This explains why Pirates of the Caribbean exploits the theme just as Homer did in his immortal classic, The Odyssey. To the ancients, the sirens were muses of the lower worlds.

And their song, though irresistibly sweet, lapped both body and soul in a lethargy that was supposed to be the fearful forerunner of death and corruption. It takes a hero like Odysseus to question that logic: since Death (not taxes) is the world’s oldest certainty, why not savour the sirens’ song and enjoy the ride to the inevitable end? So, Odysseus has himself strapped to the mast as he makes his sailors stop their ears with wax. That way he can have the song without the death dance! Purists might find such reasoning specious (“ I did not inhale !”).

But it’s the code that empowers survivors such as Odysseus or Jack Sparrow! Dan Ariely, Duke University professor of psychology and behavioural economics, cites the Homeric hero’s strategy approvingly in his analysis of how our self-control works. So, self-control is “less connected to a natural ability to be more Zen-like in the face of temptations, and more linked to the ability to reconfigure our environment (tying ourselves to the mast) and modulate the intensity by which it tempts us (filling our ears with wax),” Dr Ariely writes. So, is it all about matter on mind? Kids who passed such tests successfully, simply sat on their hands; or tried to redirect their attention by singing , talking or looking away

(from ‘siren’ marshmallows)!