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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 24, 2015 - 08:59am PT
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given that most of our thoughts are subconscious, thinking in words appears to be more exception than rule. The end result of much of our thinking is nonverbal feeling.
Makes sense. We had the big brain long before modern language. Was 'nothing going on inside' prior to that invention?
Seems unlikely.
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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Jan 24, 2015 - 09:42am PT
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:)
!!!!111
"Language is all we have, innit."
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 24, 2015 - 09:52am PT
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Watch a little kid rock climb for the first time. Imagine all the words he's thinking while solving each problem...words he doesn't even know yet.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 24, 2015 - 10:48am PT
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I agree with Ward, unconscious sensing and processing was a survival mechanism and in some cases like a dangerous urban neighborhood, still is. I know people will jump down my throat about woo, but there are just too many premonitions of danger that people heeded and survived, to be discounted. Such heightened abilities often run in families, so must be genetic - evolutionary holdovers as it were.
To me meditation and its various techniques, particularly as practiced in the Indo Tibetan tradition with its emphasis on many intermediate stages before nothingness, is a way of getting to know both the conscious and unconscious mind. Someone mentioned up thread that the search for nothingness may be a search for a pre-verbal state of mind. Ironically, the people with the most time to search the unconscious, are those living in safe environments where they need those reflexive skills the least.
On the other hand, advanced masters have demonstrated on brain scans, that when shown disturbing photos of violence or suffering, they have an initial response in the emotion centers, which are immediately transfered to the analytical fore brain. In their case, they immediately counter the emotional effects with reference to Buddhist philosophy.
Another interesting question asked by zbrown is why there has to be only one center of consciousness - the brain and the heart being the two main candidates. It seems obvious to me this is a symbolic reference to the rational vs emotional brain. Either one can be distorted, but wisdom triumphs knowledge according to the past few thousand years of human cultural evolution anyway. That could change however, as survival on our overcrowded planet becomes more desperate.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 24, 2015 - 10:51am PT
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P.S. Nice cartoon fructose.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 24, 2015 - 10:59am PT
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I thought folks were raising more problems than eeyonkee posed by bringing in the idea of agency. Agency implies a principal. Who or what could THAT be with regards to human beings? Maybe Werner or BB would make a suggestion or two. (I don’t want to hit the hornet’s nest.)
Jgill: . . . for all intents and purposes free will exists, even though the brain is subject to the various scientific laws and principles.
It seems to me that this also takes you to places you’d finally resist against. Holding both means trouble. It would look like what Buddhists call the Tetralema:
It is not X OR the opposite of X;
It is not X AND the opposite of X;
It is neither not X NOR not-the opposite of X.
“Cause-and-effect,” “free will,” and “agency” would appear to be pure idioms. There is a natural wont to write and talk in these ways. The terms seem irreplaceably cultural, part of a political project—and hence ideological. They expose authorial intentions rather than truths; there are no intrinsic meanings in them. They are figurative ways of talking.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 24, 2015 - 11:15am PT
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Interesting post about Sam Harris by a buddhist teacher:
In Defense of Sam Harris, Sacred Cow Butcher
Oct 28
Posted by Ron
Something weird is happening in the liberal, interested-in-spirituallity-and-enlightenment world. An in-group purge is occurring that is so ugly and vitriolic that seeing it occur publicly is a bit like seeing a fistfight at a yoga studio. A gathering mob of angry intellectuals and left-leaning public figures is encircling Sam Harris and attacking him with a viciousness rarely seen among progressives.
This got my attention because Harris recently wrote Waking Up, a book about Buddhist meditation and Harris’s own realization WakingUpof non-self through Dzogchen practice. To say I was interested in this book would be an understatement. I’d always felt that of the new atheists, there was something different about Harris. His style intimates an inner contentment that I only see among people who have experienced deep transformation through meditation. So when a friend gifted me a copy of Waking Up and asked that I share my thoughts, I was excited to do so.
But then Ben Affleck happened.
When Harris made an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss Waking Up Affleck was also at the table, and was clearly fuming with hatred for Harris. I never got to hear Harris discuss meditation because Affleck began attacking him before he had the chance. He called Harris a racist for his open (and very strident) criticism of Islam. When Harris calmly responded, explaining that Islam is not a race, Affleck’s anger, now mixed with confusion, only became worse. Everyone watching, including me, realized that they had seen something unscripted and very strange.
But what followed in the days and weeks after Harris was Affleck-ted was even stranger. Religious scholars and public figures began piling on the insults and attacks, and the attacks occurred with such vitriol that it was hard to see this as a debate over ideas. It was a character assassination. A mob of bloggers and celebrities gathered to bring the fear of God to Harris for what essentially amounted to thought crimes.
The event reminded me of something I once witnessed as a child. A boy in my second-grade class who was outspoken and a bit of loner, but who was undoubtedly brilliant, had a habit of hurting people’s feelings with his honesty. He won all the spelling bees and science fairs, got the best grades, and even corrected the teacher on more than one occasion in front of the class. One spring day during recess the most popular, most well-liked, and best-looking kid in the school punched him in the mouth for “smarting-off.” What stands out in my memory is what happened next. The nerdy kids emerged from the gathered crowd and took turns punching him while he lay curled up in a ball. Later, my best friend in grade school called it “the day of the nerd-swarm.” It was primal and startling. The rumor mill ground to an uncharacteristic halt for a day, and no one talked about what happened after school. I think we all felt ashamed.
What is happening with Harris is the grown up version of the day of the nerd swarm. Instead of recess it is Real Time, instead of the popular kid it is Affleck, and instead of the teachers pets and grammer geeks it is progressive religious scholars and liberal pundits. Sam Harris is guilty of the crime of sharing his honest insights whether they hurt others feelings or not, and it is clear that there has been a resentment building against him among the intelligentsia. They are seizing the moment to attack.
Leading the swarm is Reza Aslan. Aslan and Harris, I’ve recently discovered, have a history. They had public debates about Harris’s books on atheism and what stands out about the debates is that Aslan is soundly trounced in all of them. Shortly after Harris’s appearance on Real Time Aslan published an op-ed in the New York Times that, without mentioning Harris, argued against him by asserting that criticisms of Islam, or any religion, do indeed amount to a variety of racist hate because religions are not just ideas, they are identities. And besides, he argues, people believe what they want regardless of their religion.
And this is where I decided to hold off on reviewing Harris’s book and write something of my own to defend him. Not that he needs help from someone like me, but because the things Aslan and others are saying are so egregiously wrong that their views could truly harm people. As my grandpa once said “you’ve got to have a lot of education to be that wrong.” These ideas have a direct bearing on awakening. And I would argue that what it means to be liberated from illusion has a lot to do with how seriously one takes propositions like Aslan’s.
While attempting to brand Harris a racist Aslan seems unaware that he is pointing out the very thing that makes ideologies, all ideologies whether they include the supernatural or not, toxic beyond imagining: they take the healthy psychological process of identity formation and hack it like a computer virus.
One does not just think that it is true that Jesus is the son of the creator of the universe, one becomes a “Christian.” One does not merely think that Mohamed met with an angel, one becomes a “Muslim.” One does not just believe that the proletariate will eventually seize the means of production, one becomes a “Communist.” And in my own little corner of the world, one does not just believe that the Buddha discovered an exit from being born over and over again, had psychic powers or was omniscient, one becomes a “Buddhist.”
If we step back and consider what is occurring here, it is startling. Some ideas, no matter how far outside reality they venture, thrive and spread by convincing those that take the leap of faith and believe them that the thinker has now become the thought. You don’t just think an idea is an accurate reflection of reality, you become the idea. When this happens the idea is sheltered from criticism because to criticize the idea is to attack the person. The person’s sense of identity becomes the idea’s armor from rational inquiry.
It is not overstating the case to say that if we used the same critical faculties to evaluate such claims that we use to choose car insurance, all superstitious and utopian ideologies would disappear in a day. But because these kinds of ideas disrupt the process of identity-formation, taking it over, we refrain from saying, or even thinking, the obvious to avoid offending others or frightening ourselves.
Imagine if we did this with other claims about reality. Is there anyone on earth who has become a “Germian” after accepting the germ-theory of disease? Who changes their identity to become a “Higgsian” after accepting the existence of the Higgs Boson? Where are the converts to Heliocentrism handing out leaflets at the bus stations?
In every other part of our lives we intuitively understand that what we think is true about the nature of reality and who we are as a person are not the same thing. When we operate in this way our internal world is governed by a mix of love and reason. Love in that we recognize in others something real in the here-and-now that is beyond the boundaries of any in-group ideology, reason in that our thoughts are no longer the source of our well being, so we can be free to let them go if they are not true.
But there is a special class of ideas that masquerade as identities, and when we allow them to govern who we are our world is also governed by irrationality of the highest order. It is no coincidence that the ideologies that take over the sense of self are also the most disconsonant with our lived reality. By forcing us to choose the ideology over reality, moment-to-moment, we engage in what psychologists like me call “effort justification”, and reinforce the acquired sense of self. That process is lauded as a virtue by folks like Aslan, who seems oblivious to the terrible nature of the very thing he expertly describes. This process of ideological identity-theft is the reason why Affleck became so confused when Harris pointed out that Islam is not a race. In Affleck’s mind, they are the same thing, and that is exactly how such ideas remain so potent and immune from rational critique.
The truth is this: we are not what we think. We never were. This instant it is possible to be in the world just as you are without being anything in particular except aware. All you have to do is see that you are not what you believe. You simply are. That’s it. To experience this directly and rest in it is to find happiness untouched by the contents of the mind. The closest thing in life people experience to it is being in love.
From a position of just being, without beliefs, it is much easier to think critically about whether ideas are really true. Because you no longer have a dog in the fight, if they are not true, that’s fine. If they are, that’s fine. This is one of the marks of awakening: the contents of the mind are no longer identified with that which holds them.
So, I hope it isn’t taken the wrong way when I say this, but I sincerely hope that Harris continues offending people. By attacking the ideologies that are masquerading as identities, he is, in his own brilliant way, bringing folks a little closer to awakening. And while I didn’t get the chance to hear him discuss his book, I think I got the chance to see him put his realization into service.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 11:28am PT
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attacking him with a viciousness rarely seen among progressives.
I was ready to read the entire thing and then the author has to go and thoroughly shatter his credibility in the first paragraph. Oh well.
"..rarely.." Lol.
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BTW RIP Ernie Banks.
Leo Durocher once famously said: " Nice guys finish last!" but after managing Banks for several seasons amended that with: " Nice guys finish last...except Ernie Banks"
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 24, 2015 - 12:04pm PT
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...but wisdom triumphs knowledge...
An odd statement / claim given wisdom is simply what we make of knowledge + experience. One doesn't 'triumph' over the other - one just acts wisely or unwisely in the face of what we know.
All you have to do is see that you are not what you believe. You simply are. That’s it.
To some extent this does (or should) fall under the category of a profoundly obvious 'duh'.
To experience this directly and rest in it is to find happiness untouched by the contents of the mind.
This is another matter altogether. Associating 'happiness' to this experience seems somewhat over-exuberant from my own practice and experience if not simply missing the point. Then again I suppose it's all a matter of what you're after and what you [want to] take away from the experience.
Again, that one simply 'is' should be patently obvious; what, if anything, one makes of oneself is more somewhat more to the point for myself anyway. Sure, retreating to seclusion and simply 'being' is always an option, just not one which holds much appeal for me. I much prefer attempting to simply 'be' in every moment whether that is the result of a 'wise' or 'unwise' choice on my part.
a.) Basically savor the good stuff and be thankful you're still alive to suffer through the consequences of the bad stuff.
b.) Wake up and do it again tomorrow if you're lucky.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 24, 2015 - 12:27pm PT
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"Sure, retreating to seclusion and simply 'being' is always an option, just not one which holds much appeal for me."
I don't recall the author saying anything about retreating.
"I much prefer attempting to simply 'be' in every moment whether that is the result of a 'wise' or 'unwise' choice on my part."
I Think the author is saying the same thing.
As far as "just being" is "DUH" ; it is DUH only if you are in that POV if you are attached to ID's such as I am a buddhist, then your view becomes restricted . you end up seeing everything through buddhist glasses rather than taking the glasses off and seeing and experiencing things without labeling or reacting to them at first contact. I think that is what he is meaning by "just being", an open view.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 24, 2015 - 12:43pm PT
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I don't recall the author saying anything about retreating.
That was more a general reference to the various references to monks and other folks who choose a monastic / seclusionist lifestyle.
"I much prefer attempting to simply 'be' in every moment whether that is the result of a 'wise' or 'unwise' choice on my part." I Think the author is saying the same thing.
I don't agree. There is a significant gulf of difference between going off and meditating and attempting to find essentially the same thing in every waking moment. In every waking moment you 'just are' in the self-same way and 'being [there] with it' is actually no less challenging a practice than meditating.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 24, 2015 - 01:19pm PT
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Jan said:
I simply wanted to make the point that we have choices at every level from what we eat or drink or smoke affecting our brain chemistry, to the choice of cultures we emulate (that was on my mind having just spent a weekend with Sherpa friends).
I like Jan. I've called her out from time to time, but, let me just say, I like her thoughtful, measured responses. So, I think that her statement above, is false. I think what happens, instead, is that you automatically respond to "an event" or stimulus based on all of your memories and your genetics and your biomes and your recent history. As Graziani suggested in what is a seminal reference for me, your sense of agency happens after-the-fact. It is likely the result of an evolutionary branch that co-opted our machinery for imaging others' intentions into imaging our own intentions.
To me, having free will agency requires something that we do not already know exists in the universe, an agent capable of making decisions, (at least partially) independent of antecedent causes. Deterministic agency, which is I believe all we have, merely requires running a sophisticated algorithm and then having an after-the-fact sense of agency about it. No woo involved.
Let me just say, that as interested as I am in this subject, it is purely for scientific and logical reasons. I'm convinced that, outside of the criminal justice system and mental health considerations, we have to continue to act as if we have free will agency.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 24, 2015 - 01:36pm PT
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"I don't agree. There is a significant gulf of difference between going off and meditating and attempting to find essentially the same thing in every waking moment."
We are probably saying the same thing but with different words.
Meditation is only a tool to allow the participant to observe their thinking and feelings and observing the tendency to grasp after the "good" stuff and push away the "bad" stuff. With a little practice you start to realize the thinking and feelings are not good or bad but just as they are and you can just be with them without reacting. You can actually completely experience them from a different POV.
then you do as you say and when in the non meditative world ie work relationships etc. you make your best effort to do the same thing.
It is often said that true meditation is no meditation; it is just a name for being aware/awake.
The cool thing about meditation is it is a self test to see if you are awake.
You sit down and try to do a very simple thing like watch your breath; and the next thing you know you are no longer watching your breath .I will get swept away by all the stuff going on in my thinking and feelings and not capable of paying attention.
If you don't get distracted by your thinking and feelings, then you are correct, meditation is not necessary to pay attention. But if you do then it can be very helpful to be more observant and aware of you environment.
In every waking moment you 'just are' in the self-same way and 'being [there] with it' is actually no less challenging a practice than meditating.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 01:55pm PT
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Simply reacting to stimuli based on memories emotions ect, vs just being in a non-attatched state of awareness. Which one is preffered? I see spiritual enlightenment in material non-enlightenment.
There is nothing to achieve, only experiences to be had.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 01:56pm PT
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I simply wanted to make the point that we have choices at every level from what we eat or drink or smoke affecting our brain chemistry, to the choice of cultures we emulate (that was on my mind having just spent a weekend with Sherpa friends).
I generally agree with the above comment. I have always found it rather hard to fully believe that every aspect of human behavior has been predetermined by antecedent causes in a causal mechanistic sense. Still, much about human behavior is undoubtedly predetermined ;upthread, drawing on recent brain scan research, I gave an example of just such predeterminations occurring on the unconscious or pre-concious level, and attempted to provide what I considered an evolutionary basis for same. And this is not to mention the wealth of purely inheritable factors that predetermine our individual and collective traits in this regard.
It is a huge leap however to describe all human activity in every special case as a sort of algorithmic outcome of prior determinants. I think human beings make decisions and take actions all the time which amount to inconsistent non sequiturs. I think it is in keeping with the nearly anomalous nature of the human animal to consider that we clearly possess the perhaps unique capacity to fully ignore any and all factors that would have us act or react in consistently predictable ways in any given context.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:02pm PT
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Quoted by PSPP: It is not overstating the case to say that if we used the same critical faculties to evaluate such claims that we use to choose car insurance, all superstitious and utopian ideologies would disappear in a day.
Not quite.
There is a fair amount of academic evidence that there are many so-called “decisions” that people cannot properly answer optimally because of something called “bounded rationality.” There are too many so-called options available, and people do not have the processing power to weigh and calculate all of the so-called variables that influence a given outcome. What people do in highly complex decision making is what Herbert Simon called “satisficying.” That is, they go through typical rational calculations for a long-list of options until they get tired of it. At that point, they make a choice among those options they’ve gone through and let the rest go. A great many everyday decisions would fit this model’s description. Stereotypes, brand, reputation effects, etc. are all substitute indicators used instead by which to make rational decisions in highly complex situations.
eeyonkee: . . . outside of the criminal justice system and mental health considerations, we have to continue to act as if we have free will agency.
Why do we “have to” . . . ?
Do you believe you could show that there is anything that is “necessary” in reality?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:03pm PT
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Simply reacting to stimuli based on memories emotions ect, vs just being in a non-attatched state of awareness. Which one is preffered?
Which one causes more suffering?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:07pm PT
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Given that we are biological information processing machines - decision-by-algorithm is a given. All biological function is governed by some form of algorithm - otherwise, lots of very short lived goo would ensue. Dynamic, imperfect, interactive, iterative algorithms, but algorithms nonetheless. Nothing weird about this - it's all produced by evolution - itself an algorithm.
Most of this process happens in our subconscious - our conscious awareness gets the memo after the fact in the form of feeling, or 'instinct'. That we believe we have more decision making independence than we actually do seems normal - we tend to focus only on our conscious awareness - the tiny, tiny part of all that is going on inside us that we can track (imperfectly) moment by moment.
Conscious awareness is the part we consciously consider 'us', but it is a wafer thin veneer of who we really are.
The above 'choice' of reacting to stimuli versus non-attachment is a false dichotomy. Detachment is simply one of many flavors of being a biological information processing machine - one born of what pre-exists in the brain, same as any other.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:20pm PT
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Looking at things from an eternal spiritual perspective, material suffering is a good thing.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:29pm PT
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Most of this process happens in our subconscious - our conscious awareness gets the memo after the fact in the form of feeling, or 'instinct'. That we believe we have more decision making independence than we actually do seems normal - we tend to focus only on our conscious awareness - the tiny, tiny part of all that is going on inside us that we can track (imperfectly) moment by moment
Yes, this is a theoretical framework which probably characterizes a portion of human consciousness, especially those residing in the lower centers of the triune brain; essentially it is a description of the processing interaction between the lower brain stem , cerebellum ,and the cerebrum. It will be interesting to see if such models are proven by science to be "thee" overall model of human consciousness. My guess would be that it will remain a very partial explanation and that the human psyche is much more complex ,multifactorial, and inclusive.
Conscious awareness is the part we consciously consider 'us', but it is a wafer thin veneer of who we really are.
Well, the cerebrum is pretty damn big. Also "conscious awareness" sure does look , on SPECT and other scans,like it's burning a whole lot of twinkie calories in the ol' stovepipe noggin---and those aren't so-called "empty calories" either. Where there's smoke there's fire.
Now I've gone and made myself hungry. Mmmm , whey protein with pulverized Twinkie.
You know it takes a lot of solar power to make me self-conscious.To make me conscious of me. It's scary actually. Not only hungry but scared now.
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