Book Review: "Derren Brown: Tricks of the Mind"

Genre: "Religion and Philosophy... and Magic? Fuck it, I don't have a damned clue."
     Non-fiction... and Fiction? Shit.

Imported from England only
took two days!

Good news everyone!
I'm back, with an enthralling review of the ever-affable chicanery-connoisseur Derren Brown's book, "Tricks of the Mind"!
"Certainly", you say, "a book by a magician! How could you stoop so low!", but since so many of you are from Eurasia and other neighboring/slightly distant states, I'm sure you know exactly what Brown revels in.

Now, Derren Brown is a master of the countenance, seduction, illusion, and the mind, but one lovable trait he shares with both Penn & Teller is his sense of humor. It's not often one laughs out loud while reading a book, but I have committed the act multiple times whilst reading this tome. (And I'm not completely finished yet, so more out of obligation than for volition I will omit the last set (which is kind of dry anyway), as not to lie to you, my clever and unbelievably magnanimous readers).
One of my favorite bits that he's done was his "Russian Roulette" segment, shown live on British Television, where he influences someone to place a live round into a chamber numbered "One" on a revolver (also because he got away with saying "fuck". That might just be my American FCC experience, though), and then proceeds to fire the chambers at his cranium.


Now, I will provide an entertaining, yet 100% accurate pictoral representation of how this book's readership feels afterwards, based off of AskMen's "article reviews":

The "Furious" and "Sad" people
are obviously fundamentalists.

Now, for the actual book:

I have to admit, this book has one of the funniest/most interesting premier lines I've ever seen, "The Bible is not history." Now, I know what you're thinking, "Well of course not, I know that because I'm not an American", or for the Americans, "Well of course not, I know that because I'm not an imbecile!"; now, I loved this opening since it was such a "draw-in", per se, as a son of a marketer, I appreciate the finer things meant to attract attention, "Angry listeners are good listeners" (Or something like that) as the protagonist in "Pontypool" responds to the executive of the station impugning his jests at the citizens' drunken incidents.
Brown goes on to introduce himself as a former-fundamentalist (The U.K. still has those, apparently), and divulges his deepest secrets of his experiences of the abhorrent lifestyle. Of course, Derren Brown is now an "outed atheist", joining in the New Wave of Atheism and more specifically its newfound hobby of impugning ludicrous practices such as homeopathy (I'm sure you've experience with the absurdity) and "crystal healings", as well being as an illusionist himself. He reveals that it was actually his pursuit of the art of magic that eventually led to his self-condemnation, and hilariously so.
As I'm sure there exists those of you who have participated in the experience of Disillusionment (Title of first part, actually) , and there are those that haven't/have no interest in hearing about it, I will omit the major point of his experience and simply state his involves hobbies growing into professions, hypnotism, illusion, "peripheral seduction", telepathy, telekinesis, (sometimes) prescience, and other feats of human capacity that most people don't know are possible. Now, one thing you will notice whilst reading his book is that my writing is very similar to his, an unnecessary (his is less unnecessary than mine) amount of larger words, coy remarks toward(s) the readership, and hilarious digressions. (Digressions ranging from the "civility" to the "jubility", such as his account of leaving for a filming from his apartment: "A neglectful resetting of my lower garmenture after a last minute wee-wee had left the trouserly copula less than interdigitate, but I was manifestly unaware of my manifest underwear.")

Magic:

As I said before, and you, I am sure, my wonderfully illustriously astute readers have grown tired of me repeating myself, Derren Brown is a "Magician", of course, he refers to himself as an illusionist, and aptly so (of course, the skill-set he possesses extends well beyond the archetypal "illusion" domain, it is egregious of me to limit him to such a simplistic and limited term).

 The Coin Trick, Card Manipulation, Ouija Boards, and "Real Magic" 

Derren begins his literary journey with rather simple, fun tricks, a coin trick, to exemplify; it's simple, simply moving a coin off of a table with your hand, making it appear to still be in your hand, WHEN, REALLY, IT'S IN YOUR LAP. However, Derren Brown knows this trick is simple, and begins expounding on methods to intensify, stupefy, and magnify the reactions of your audience, "where the real magic happens". It eventually got so convoluted I got lost, again. Now then, it is in the first passage that the true intention Brown has for his book is partially revealed, a message can be gleaned then through his explanations and directions for this trick, magic is really in the audience's perspective. Simply dropping a coin into one's lap, whilst acting like it is in one's hand, and casually showing its absence isn't any fun. You have to prevaricate both your intentions and what exactly your attempts are.
And of course, Brown posits hilarity in wit regarding your actions of succeeding in any kind of deception you achieve, of which, I cannot ruin, that would be truly odious of me, I would cry myself to sleep another night, alone, for such a terrible act of double-think.

"The coin is in your kidney!"

The next trick epitomized for deception and mental convolution, is a simple card trick, the typical, "Is this your card, you fat, drunken excuse for a human being?" 'Tis really a simple trick, at least through Brown's explanation, you simply, whilst during a certain exercise of positing the cards for your audience to see, glimpse a card on the bottom of the deck, unbeknown to the simpletons surrounding you. This becomes the card you wait for, whilst revealing cards one by one from the deck, for the card after is the card they chose (because of how you split the deck, the bottom card, once the deck is split into two halves and switched, becomes the card most proximal to the chosen card).

As I'm sure you're all aware, Ouija Boards are bullshit. No, that's not a link, because this is axiomatic, for you, my unbelievably brilliant and talented readers.
It is a result of (some scientific jargon I can't remember, but basically:) unconscious movements of the muscles, of which can be manipulated in other activities. All one has to do, is simply think of something, and the brain will begin to evince activities in the exterior muscles in order to approach the end-goal, e.g. spelling a name or creating a message.

Memory

As a budding, strapping young psychologist, I know everything about the human mind, because I am an adolescent prodigy; however, I can only partially elucidate my knowledge on the subject, for fear of losing meaning and your sanity. Now then, memory, as you all know, is a very finicky thing, at times it amazes us, at other times it inactively prevents you from pulling your pants up or remembering where you put that goddamned remote. The main problem with memory, however, is how inefficiently people use it. We always try to remember phone numbers by repeating them constantly, or writing things while listening to people talk, and eventually getting lost or forgetting half the sentence, the reason for these things, is that both written numbers and words are a rather recent invention, in terms of Homo Sapien's existence. 

Oh my.

Now, what is it that people remember best?

Smells? Of course, the nose is one of the closest things to the main memory center of the brain, with a direct line to it as well, a trait not common to other parts of the body (most have an "interpreter" through specific parts). 

Tastes? Since taste is primarily smell as well, of course!

Sounds? Of course! This is obviously an evolutionary advantage for survival, especially sensitive ones. We have to remember dangerous sounds, e.g. rattlesnakes, cobras, lions, tigers, and bears.

Sights? Of course! Vision is actually a primary factor in perception, so much so, that it sometimes overrides other ones, e.g. when one sits at a stoplight and sees another move forward, and it feels like you are moving backwards, even though you are not moving at all.

Touch? I would honestly say this is the one that is less memorable, usually, pain is simply registered as "generic pain", of course, there are no exceptions.

To take true advantage and control of your memory, you have to incorporate the most powerful of your senses and use them in creative ways. Such as associating words with pictures, and connecting them, as well as doing the same things with numbers, There is also the Method of Loci, useful for memorizing lists. 

Words

Let's do an experiment: I am going to read off the example list Brown uses as his experiment to show you how powerful and useful these tricks are. Here is a twenty word list that he has engendered, that I will write from memory, I swear to you, on the oath of my veracity, I will not look at the book, the list is as follows:

1. Telephone
2. Sausage
3. Monkey
4. Button
5. Book
6. Cabbage
7. Glass
8. Mouse
9. Stomach
10. Cardboard
11. Ferry
12. Christmas
13. Athlete
14. Key
15. Wigwam
16. Baby
17. Kiwi
18. Bed
19. Paintbrush
20. Walnut

Ha! I still remember nearly a year after reading it.
Now, what is so fantabulous about this trick, is that I can now do it backwards just as easily, that I won't do in text since the list is right there.
The instruction:

• Look at the first word. Create an image of a telephone in your head, the more ludicrous or silly, the better. Brown suggests an old rotary phone. 
• Connect the second word to this word. In this case, sausage, once again, the more ludicrous or silly, the better, so, imagine, for example, trying to dial a number using a sausage as a "finger". Silly, right? EXACTLY.
• Now do this with the rest of the list. I followed Brown's example, and memorized it best from that.

Numbers

This is more difficult, because you've already a set list of numbers, which, unfortunately, changes per language, so Ett, Un, Ein, One, واحد, один obviously don't correlate very well. I'll try to do a universal set.

What Brown does is associates, for some numbers, the similarities in appearance to a letter, others in the sound the numbers make (the one more difficult for me to exemplify for you non-English speakers, unfortunately), and some that are just arbitrary, it looks like, and then associates those letters with generic and memorable words.

1. l: since it looks like an 'L', so "ale". The 'l' sound.
2. n: two downward strokes in a lowercase 'n', so "hen". The 'n' sound.
3. m: this one is explained by turning the '3' sideways, to make an 'm', or three downward strokes in a lowercase 'm', so "ham". The 'm' sound.
4. r: this one explained by the sound it makes, so "whore". The 'r' sound.
5. f/v/: simply the sound related to the word, so "hive". The 'f'' or 'v' sound.
6. b/p: the appearance of the '6', like a 'b', so "bee". The 'b' or 'p' sound.
7. t: the appearance of the '7' if drawn oddly, so "tea". The 't' sound.
8. ch/sh/j: I don't know exactly his reasoning for this one, but I think it is the odd spelling, so "shoe". The 'sh', 'ch' or 'j' sound. (Not the native German "ch" sound, unless you speak Southern German)
9. g: the appearance of the '9', like a 'g', so 'goo'. The 'g' sound.
10. l - z/s: now, since I can't get the formatting to start from zero I'll put it here, the zero correlates to the 'z' or 's' sound, his example is "zoo". Now what occurs here is the concatenation of the two letters/sounds used. When you approach the double digits, you associate them together to make their words, and then images. So here, "lice".

Miscellaneous: Card Decks, Scores, Names, and The Memorization of the Entirety of Shakespeare's Works in Chronological Order.

Brown then goes on to list his methods for memorizing decks, associating the numbers avec the letters of the cards (Hearts: 'H', Clubs: 'C', Spades: 'S', Diamonds: 'D'), and creating "peg words", i.e. creating a word of these, and then using a similar method to the aforementioned "Numbers", how to memorize their place in the deck.

Now, I was rather lost on the next part, since I don't pay attention to sports, specifically team sports, as well as being an American, "Soccer" or "Football" is not an interest to me. Using the amalgamation of the sciences above, Brown extends his example of how he memorizes the scores of the FA cup finals from 2005 to 1984.

I'm terrible with names until the second meeting, as are most people, so Brown uses an association method, associating one person with another well-known person, in some odd way, as to remember the name vicariously.

For some hilarious reason, Brown has the entire works of Shakespeare memorized chronologically, utilizing a "Memory Palace", such as Hannibal's, in "Silence of the Lambs", which is basically a more centralized and labyrinthine Method of Loci application. Brown associates particular events in a pathway through a building he has explored thoroughly, in order to prevent serious memory usage, going through particular events with names attached to the event.

Hypnosis and Suggestibility

I can't talk about this because I have been hypnotized.
But seriously, this section is dedicated to the power of unconscious and conscious manipulation through language, visual imaging, and pacification.

Bane and Joakim would be disappointed.

Have you ever been watching a movie, such as... the recent "Dark Knight" trilogy, and just suddenly had to masturbate to the sounds of Bane's voice? Well that's the power of suggestibility. Suggestibility is basically the non-obnoxious way of nagging somebody until they do something, most likely a way they or thing they never intended or wanted to do.
Hypnosis is almost entirely psychological. I say almost because I don't want you to think I know everything (even though I do). It is basically pacification with suggestibility woven into it. It is the process of making someone do something, with little to no resistance to the suggestions or "orders".
However, many people hold the misconception that they've a large penis. A common misconception about hypnosis is that it is extremely powerful, it is instigated by droning on with an annoyingly smug voice, or conducted by simply waving a watch as a pendulum. The process is really just gradually wearing down one's mental bulwarks of common thoughts and conscious processes.
The major focus and power of suggestibility lies in superficially innocuous repetition, and using key words. I mean, that's pretty much all I can give you.
Because I've been hypnotized to say no more.
There is, however, a portion of this section dedicated to motivational and self-help methods, such as confidence, phobias, fears, and anxiety. Focusing on how to present yourself, to yourself, who better to make you a better person than yourself? The answer is me. But unfortunately, teleportation and mass-telepathic RSS feeds don't exist yet. Yet.

Unconscious Communication

Now, I'm sure you all know, body language is a very revealing and sometimes annoying beast. Sometimes, simple gesticulations can lead to eventual capitulations, evinced countenances can lead to completely unethical workplace behavior, and sometimes body language can help you seduce that pelican you've been watching ever so closely at the zoo every Friday. The real "annoying" part of body language is the unequivocally convoluted and specific gesticulations for each person (and sometimes universal ones, I'm quite certain a fist placed on one's face forcefully is usually a bad happenstance), and the fact that a majority of it is completely unconscious.
"Does that girl like me? She keeps making eye contact..."
"Why the hell does that guy have a pelican on his shoulder?"
"SCREE SCREE"

"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an Alpaca!"

See how complicated body language can make things?
I believe this to be a very important note, one that is actually applicable, and serious:
I'm sure you men can sympathize with others who believe women are confusing.
And I'm sure you women can sympathize with who believe women are confusing.
Well, I, Dr. Albino Psychomantis, am here to help.
You see, in situations where "communication is key", what multitudes of people omit, is how the communication is conducted, through what medium? This is the key. I will present Brown's example.
In a land across the pond, a man is growing frustrated with his wife, whom says she doesn't hear him say "I love you" enough. The man, of course, is frustrated by the fact that he believes himself to be a very dedicated and giving husband, he brings home gifts of affection much more than any man in a serious relationship he knows, e.g. flowers, chocolates, etc. So what is he doing wrong?
Well, what he is doing wrong is communicating in the wrong way, to show his affection. He is showing her his dedication, but she wants to hear his dedication. Savvy? I didn't know this beforehand. That was before I was a doctor. Which, in chronological accordance, would be about a week ago.
But you can trust me, I'm a doctor.

Anti-Science, Pseudo-Science, and Bad Thinking

Goddammit, he even looks
like a stupid fuck.

This section of the book, of which I'm almost through reading (but I've read enough books with this as a dedicated section, so I know all the examples already) is expounding on how humans think, but in irrational, and non-holistic ways. It is primarily focused on percentages and math, fortes most people don't have. Unlike myself of course, for some reason I've memorized all the squares up until 25, I wait for the day that someone asks, probably won't happen in Psychology courses, where math-illiteracy seems to be a requirement.
That digression aside, a major portion of this section is lionizing and demonizing common human rationality.
Like the MMR vaccination insanity, a result of "fright sensationalism" (papers writing shock essays for more subscribers and other nefarious, short-sighted purposes).
So, how about that homeopathy? Yeah. You spray water and suddenly, your convalescence is either accelerated or spontaneously appears! My god, no wonder Africa is in such terrible shape! They've no water to spray into the air!
Crystal Healings, the fuck is that about? If crystals really had the chance to heal, then coal miners wouldn't need to wear masks, and would practically be invincible.
"Alternative Medicine". There's medicine, and there's not medicine. If something is an "alternative medicine", and it works, it becomes medicine. "Alternative Medicine" is the universal moniker for palliatives. (HOLY SHIT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO REMEMBER THAT WORD FOR OVER THREE WEEKS.)
Then, "anti-science", people claiming atheism, science itself and other secular institutions "religions" themselves.
Atheism: The lack of belief in gods.
Science: The rigorous testing and analyzing of phenomena. There's no 'belief' directly involved. Objectivity is pretty much its reason for existing.
Secular Institutions: The end goal is to completely separate religion from the political sphere, it's the "politically correct" "anti-religion".

Finally,
My Bit:
I have to say, I honestly didn't know what to expect when I ordered a book from Derren Brown, I vaguely remembered him from some illusionist show he did on the tele in America (as to deceive people with the aid of anonymity), as well as seeing some interviews with Dawkins. But I was very pleasantly surprised immediately when I started reading it. Derren Brown's writing is the epitome of a British Bill Cosby, but yet, instead of family-oriented humor, we've humor meant for intellectuals, meant for skeptics, meant for the iconoclastic contrarians who spend their spare time improving their affability and ability to interest and seduce people with coin tricks. 


6 788 arbitrary things out of 6 788 arbitrary things.


Witty Catchphrase