How does the river mind look like?
by phil on Wednesday Nov 12, 2003 12:05 PM
self-programming
So, let's look at mental objectives in the mind and see what colors they have
I'm casually speculating on three sliders on this palette of mental desire, or mental movement, mental go go go, or whatever.
Stiffness, Locality, Visibilty
Here's how it works...
First, determinism is accepted a priori. That's the assumption I'm making. (probably, if you think about it more, it doesn't matter)
Locality - This is where the desire is aimed at with regard to time. In the shortest-term this could be any of the following: to be natural, to let yourself go, to suck it up, to see what happens, to be cautious. In the longer-term: to be wealthy, to be happy, to do good for society.
Stiffness - How flexible can this desire be tweaked? Some things are habits and hardwired, like sex drive. Others are arbitrary, like whether you go for a walk on Tuesdays.
Visibilty - How visible are the underlying desires? Things like the selfish gene are invisible to many because they all espouse altruism in contradiction with what statistical analysis shows. Others are highly visible: "I can see that I'm doing this because of these reasons."
One who feels he is in control of his life could potentially have all the things that are stiff about him invisible. Everything that he does out of habit doesn't appear as such to him, and instead he finds himself making pure arbitrary decisions everyday... wheeee this is the life of someone who believes in free will.
One could have all of his objectives visible, even his stiff habits. Now if he has a stiff desire to change those habits, then tough luck, this guy's going to be frustrated all his life. This is me. I can see the deterministic habits and underlying mechanisms (thanks to studying psychology, ugh), and I also have a stiff desire to change those habits.
This kind of conflict, of stiff positions intersecting with each other is the kind of thing that makes long term depression or makes someone generally frustrated all of their life... (pure speculation here)... supposedly, so I have heard, as you get older, these impasses get opened up and eventually something gives way. You accept yourself, let's say, or one of the stiff habits goes away, or you deny yourself visibility of yourself (aging close-mindedness, *sigh*). So life doesn't suck forever (alternatively, new walls could spring up as well)
Now, relating this to the river and the kayuk that is your inner-mind or whatever, you are on this river surrounded by canyons, waterfalls etc. The stiffness of various movements determines how binding the canyon walls are surrounding you. The visibility of these things tells you whether you can see the walls or not. If you have no visibility, then you're most likely moving based on the flow of the current. And then locality is how your movement is ordered. In the short-term, things are usually pretty arbitrary, so you can move all over the place, but in the long-term, there are various stiff directions that are pushing you one way, and then there is your will to go in another way. If your will for x is stiff, then it's a wall, if it's flexible, then you can move in that direction (no wall).
The crags and terrain is life, the emotion, what you encounter.
The current is kind of is a natural guide, and if you stop rowing, your stiff constraints will direct you around. The benefit though, is that sometimes following the current can keep you away from places where there's too many rocks, or away from the walls, or keep you from stressing out (be natural).
The superman, maybe Sarte, would be like this: he would have no stiff constraints. You can't avoid all rough terrain, but if there are no walls, then you are truly free, truly arbitrary.
...
And this is some notes I was writing b4 I wrote this...
Well, of course, the self-confuser that I am I am trying to figure this thing out more... this certainly dropped the bomb, it involves looking at the mind more like a scientist, rather visualizing, so that my system is better informed.
In the instant, there are many things that happen, but you can also invoke anything, in fact there's no reason why you wouldn't you know, have a dialog with yourself, repress, act forward, there are many things to do.....
and then there are many "strategies" or things that represent a set of actions to do.. the pre-instants....
then there are even higher level strateiges.
