influencing the unconscious will

inputs through the sense organs

Presumably the unconscious will can be influenced by inputs through the sense organs. These inputs trigger the unconscious patterns to follow this way rather than that. But how are the influential inputs chosen? What agency is involved? 

Serendipity plays a part (see box). For example I have just finished scanning the email, FaceBook and a couple of online news sites. This generated a range of minor stimuli whose influence is largely unconscious and presumably relatively slight. But ‘I’ have little control over the quantity and quality of inputs that were delivered.

There is also serendipity concerning the narrow and more wide ranging geo-historical happenstances that have been and are shaping what passes for ‘me’. Those can be thought of as my nurture. There will also be particularities concerning my nature – my genes.

So is it all serendipity, all accident and chance? Is my life a snowball rolling down a mountain: something initially very small (with some hard wired instincts and frameworks) that grew by picking up bits and pieces of stuff (eg food and knowledge) that happened to be in its way?

Like a snowball down a mountain

That makes the process sound emergent rather than deterministic and that brings pleasure to this vital churn of matter that is me – a zoologist by basic training. 

Determinism is about conscious design and blueprints in advance; about planning for the future in the belief that the evidence supports pursuing this policy and plan rather than that one. But as Robert Burns pointed out, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agleigh”. 

Emergence involves going with the flow. Cause and effect are still the basis for everything but the complexity of multi-cause and multi-effect means that the ability to predict the future is severely curtailed. Meteorologists know this only too well. 

Development planners take note – humility and holism are the order of the new day. Determinism has its uses when planning the creation and maintenance of physical infrastructures such as water, sanitation, roads, bridges etc. Emergence is more useful in dealing with social infrastructures such as health, education, land tenure, culture and governance[1].

press button people

But what do ‘I’ think? What is ‘my’ opinion? A lot of Pavlovian buttons[2] have been built into my brain by nature and nurture. There is thus reaction to particular stimuli in particular ways. But few of these are freely chosen by me. They snuck in by various back doors. They are not thus the conscious me. They might be the unconscious me but ‘I’ do not know that consciously! Either way, there is the option of being aware of what is going on in consciousness and also in the unconscious. Where the latter is done indirectly by noting what the unconscious throws into the attention centre and how this affects the body in terms of hot flushes and cold sweats etc.

But, to get back to the earlier question, “is it all serendipity, all accident and chance?” The temptation is to say yes. 

metaphorical parent

A key concept is ‘agency’. Our brains seem to be wired linguistically to make sense of the world by perceiving patterns and agents. The ‘agents’ are responsible for making things happen, they are causal agents. And language continually evolves to map ‘reality’ - and it uses metaphor to explain the unknown in terms of the known.  

The known agents are ourselves and we have intentions, motivations and moods.  There are unknown agents responsible for thunder and lightning, droughts and floods, feasts and famines. But these unknown agents are like people – they have intentions, motivations and moods. They need placating. They become the gods, ghosts and ghouls of magic and metaphysics. The exact nature of the metaphor varies through time as indicated in the following list.

·         The pantheon of many nature gods. ·         The ghosts of the ancestors. ·         The omniscient God.   ·         The Satanic Devil. ·         The infallible Pope. ·         The Divine Right of Kings (and Queen’s). ·         The Glorious Leader.

·         Our Elders and Betters. ·         The Good and the Great. ·         The CEO (Boss, Leader) ·         The community. ·         The nuclear (?) family. ·         The Individual.

And so… the unconscious will is inevitably influenced by inputs from the sense organs and by memories. It is not easy to pin down the agencies for choosing influential inputs. But there is no need to impute magic or metaphysics. The multi-module mind is in a continual state of flux with much ongoing and speedy creation and destruction. Sometimes there is ‘will’ in the attention centre and sometimes something else. It is a case of self regulation in complex systems.

Box: Serendipity

Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The first noted use of "serendipity" was by Horace Walpole (1717–1797). He formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". Ikujiro Nonaka points out that the serendipitous quality of innovation is highly recognized by managers. It links the success of Japanese enterprises to their ability to create knowledge not by processing information but rather by "tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees and making those insights available for testing and use by the company as a whole". William Boyd coined the term zemblanity to mean somewhat the opposite of serendipity: "making unhappy, unlucky and unexpected discoveries occurring by design". A zemblanity is, effectively, an "unpleasant surprise". Source: Wikipedia

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[1] I have developed a holistic acronym – social, technical, environmental, economic, political, ethical and spiritual – STEEPLES http://sites.google.com/site/steeplessrds/

[2] http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/push-button-people.html

future evolution - nuanced and thoughtful

mental modules

The story line in this article emerged from the unconscious. This is because the inner mental mechanism keeps churning and tying bits and pieces together. Immediate inputs from the sense organs are merged with the pros and cons of the facts and feelings held in memory. Patterns and agents are thus created and there is a reaction – fight, flight or freeze. These products of deliberation can then be rated using feedback on the extent to which they are ‘useful’ and ‘good’. 

Some of the mental churn gets into the conscious attention centre as past and present oriented ‘facts’ buoyed up by mood music rooted in feelings and emotions. But, as part of being conscious, the space between the stimulus and response opens up. This allows for more nuanced and thoughtful responses to stimuli as opposed to simple and thoughtless reactions. 

The capacity for nuanced and thoughtful responding has evolved and is still evolving. As human beings we are capable of thinking about our thinking and of noticing what we notice. We are capable of being conscious of our consciousness and therefore, potentially, capable of determining the course of our future evolution.

But, as yet, most of us are not truly capable of realising that potential. This is because most people hypothesise a pattern and agency that we call ‘self’ or ‘ego’. This is a mind-made, mental illusion and delusion. It is an aberrant hypothesis but it is widespread in the human population and must therefore have survival value. It can be useful without being true. And, in evolution, the concern is not with perfection but only with good enough to beat the competition. 

The key concept is ‘survival of the fittest’. And in our present context this involves having more copies in the next generation than your peers. Copies of what? Genes, mental modules, individuals (with thoughts and feelings), local groups (sub cultures), widespread groups (cultures), and planetary ecosystems.

in first gear only

The thoughts and feelings of most people in the world today are constrained by the self delusion. They are not making best use of their brains and minds. It is as if their body was a sports car and they never move it out of first gear. 

 

So is it possible to get beyond the self delusion? Yes. It is our birthright, it is in our genes. It is possible to be self-less and non-egoic. Those who have achieved that altered state of consciousness report wonderful things – joy, bliss, equanimity, compassion, creativity etc. 

Screwed up selfish and egoic thinking was good enough to get us where we are today as rampant, capitalist consumers with an enormous underbelly of exploitation, poverty and mis-use of the environment etc.

So where might we be tomorrow? If we really are to determine the course of our future evolution then there is need to greatly increase our capacity for nuanced and thoughtful responses to the problems that we face. 

Everyday meditation

Are we then to encourage the promotion of enlightened and non-egoic mental churn -presumably by tapping in to the distinctive knowledge skills and attitudes of meditative mystics? What alternatives are there?

philosopher kings with a budget

Obama and the new America?

Man is a social animal and it is thus inevitable and essential that there should be a process of enculturation that, from the outside, might look like hegemonic indoctrination. It sometimes might seem as if there is little space for free-will and individual impact - but there is in fact considerable room for manoeuvre in the details. 

There have been many empires, civilisations and city and nation states. Some have been more peaceful, spiritual and creative than others. Some have been desperately cruel, exploitative and genocidal. What makes the difference? There is no easy answer but some general patterns suggest themselves.

To the extent that a social system was consciously predetermined rather than unconsciously emergent, it will have originated in a human mind and spread from there. It would have gradually come to shape the worldview of the people in a limited geographical area.

Asoka - Buddhist Emperor

In ancient times the various civilisations were cut off from each other. They were thus free to create their own world views. In more recent times there has been an increasing globalisation of minds such that most modern, rational, cosmopolitan people think the same way. 

The dominant, contemporary, world view praises the efficacy of unregulated free market capitalism in promoting economic growth as measured by GDP. The rapid evolution of the mega-rich transnational corporations (TNCs) demonstrates the power of this world view.

Many ‘underdeveloped’ people still cling to older world views and the subcultures to which they belong. But their days are numbered. They will receive development aid that will convert them to true believers in the global, capitalist utopia  (?)

Unfortunately global capitalism is not all that its cheerleaders make it out to be. It has problems – pollution, environmental degradation, global warming, income disparity, greed, exploitation of the workers, and lack of political accountability - to mention but a few. There is imbalance. 

To quote a popular song –

It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor wot gets the blame.
It's the rich wot gets the pleasure,
Ain't it all a terrible shame.

The sentiment is in accord with the Catholic Church which notes that “grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution."

Bill Gates - philosopher king?

And this begs the question of what Plato saw as Philosopher Kings ruling city states - "philosophers [must] become kings … or those now called kings [must]… genuinely and adequately philosophize".

BUT the wealth and the brain power exists to design and propagate a more peaceful, fair and environmentally sustainable way for mankind to be in the world. There is plenty of room for manoeuvre in the details of policies and programmes. The expertise for shaping and controlling what people think and feel is now well developed. All that is lacking is an influential cadre of the good and great with vision, will power and motivation linked to a generous budget.

The morality of busy-ness

Busy-ness is the state of having a long and ever growing list of things to do. The list is so long that “you have no time to stand and stare”. But this is perhaps a good thing as “the devil finds work for idle hands to do”.

But then again "the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." (Book of Isaiah 57:20). So “there is no rest for the wicked”. 

So busy-ness is not a good thing – it muddies the waters? 

But still-ness is a good thing – the mud settles and there is clarity?

“Don’t just do something, sit there.”