EOT extra-ordinary thinking

The idea of ‘religion’ has a mixed history. Any given version of it is linked to the political power mongering within a city or nation state. The idea is encultured in the citizenry as part of the hegemonic system that holds the people in check – both the leaders and the led.

Few people take their religion ‘seriously’. It reduces down to a few ‘oughts’ that standardise beliefs and behaviours. Let the rich get richer in peacetime and let the poor be the cannon fodder during wars. There is no truth, only propaganda!

Underpinning ‘Religion’ is a ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ way of extra-ordinary thinking. Let us call it Eot so we don’t have to use the confusing language of myth and magic.

Arguably the Eot is hardwired into the human brain but it is not normally switched on. But when it does get switched on the changed mind is the same no matter the cultural time and place of the thinker (Eoter). The Eot is in essence a psychology of perception and it can be triggered in people who make time to sit still (ie to meditate). The process can  be catalysed by hallucigenic drugs.

Eoters come to realise that ‘reality’ is mind made. They can thus become peacefully unattached to their given cultural world view for they know that ‘the reality that can be described is not the real reality’. Enlightenment, liberation, release

Eoters also come to include the idea of self or ego amongst the unreal. When there is no self there is no problem. The thinking power of the unconscious can be harnessed in a state of ‘flow’ which is non-egoic and outside of space and time.

Meditate and flow – the easy way to go.

Recommended reading:

• William James (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Joseph Campbell (1949) The hero with a thousand faces
• Aldous Huxley (1954) The doors of perception
• Huston Smith (1958) The world’s religions – our great wisdom traditions
• Pascal Boyer (2001) religion explained – the human instincts that fashion gods, spirits and ancestors

Different strokes

Each individual human being is unique. We are all different. So there is an enormous amount of variability for natural selection to work with and to ensure the survival of the fittest individuals and groups.

But we evolved to exist in groups of 50 to 100 people. Our brains are not wired up to deal with larger numbers. This sets a baseline for types of people – them and us. And the rules for interaction are different for the two groups.

Modern people do not live in cities. They live in sections of cities that can be thought of as neighbourhoods (slang = the hood). These work best when the population is about 100 and the territorial boundaries are well marked (eg by cartoons on walls). Think of inner city youth in their dilapidated hoods. Then think of affluent, middle class housewives in their suburban dream homes.

We are social animals. There is division of labour and hierarchy. Some jobs (eg being a Pharaoh or Shepherd) carry more status and power than others (eg being a slave or a sheep).

We are team players. Teamwork involves different individuals performing different tasks. Different theories suggest 2, 3, 9 and 12 team types. (for details see http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/people.htm)

There are those who think that 'team leader' is just another name for 'the boss'. Such people are in serious need of cognitive re-programming! (For details see http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/leaders.htm )

We can be divided into personality types. There are many alternative models eg 3,4,5,8,16 types (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type#See_also .

The Kiersey Temperament Sorter is based on the Myers-Briggs system which in turn borrows ideas from C G Jung). The Kiersey web site provides a free questionnaire to gauge your temperament and a lot of background information on how different temperaments interact. (Ref http://www.keirsey.com/) (I am an INFP. What are you?)

Note that I gathered and edited a large amount of training materials on leadership, management and administration while helping to establish an Educational Advisory Service in Lesotho. (Ref http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/  )

I reworked the Lesotho material for use by The Banffshire Partnership Ltd Access* Project (*Advancing Community Capacity for Enterprise Sustainability and Support.) The title of the training course was “Community Economic Development (CED) A Staff Training program for the required Attitude, Skills and Knowledge (ASK)”. (Ref - http://www.srds.co.uk/cedtraining/ )

“different strokes for different folks - proverbial saying, late 20th century, meaning that different ways of doing something are appropriate for different people (the saying is of US origin, and strokes here means, ‘comforting gestures of approval’). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-differntstrksfrdffrntflks.html”

Café containment

“Ain’t it funny how time slips away”.

I aspire to produce at least one blogpost about changing minds every other day. But ‘stuff’ turns up and hauls attention to other things.

Some of the stuff is from the outside and involves interacting with people - including the social networks and the media – especially radio and TV. And a lot of the stuff comes from inside – ie from the unconscious - and it involves egoic rambles in the past and future.

There is therefore need for ways of containing the chit-chat of monkey mind. Here is one.

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Technique  - café containment

Most Wednesday mornings I sit in one of several cafés in Inverurie. On the table is an espresso, a notebook and a pen. Attention is with the witness who writes down any non-trivial facts, feelings or moods that are present in the mindbrain. 

The unconscious muse generates a stream of mini stories and the witness records them. Sometimes there is an obvious way of joining the bits, sometimes there isn’t. So the editing is sometimes very light and at other times quite heavy.

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This blogpost has been built using some of the ideas that appeared last Wednesday. The metacognitive issue is the need for training when changing minds – and it takes time.

The doodle focus

There is focus when I doodle. The chit-chat of the monkey mind fades away. The unconscious occupies the attention centre and makes the decisions about what is to appear. I am fond and in awe of the process. Where does the stuff come from? How are priorities set?

There is a doodling frame of mind. But it is not unique. It is similar to several other frames of mind – for example what I am presently writing - a flow of consciousness. I just sit and stuff appears in the attention centre so I write it down and edit it.

At the moment there is some mild, egoic anxiety. Doodling is abnormal; especially when it occupies time slots that could be used for domestic chores. There is guilt because I am irresponsible and strange.

The desire to be ‘normal’ is presumably hard wired. Socio cultural cement. What will people think and what will they say? But which people and in what circumstances? Perhaps the sternest and most watchful witness is my own unconscious. It is active 24/7 (Yup, even when I am asleep) And it involves the monkey mind swinging from topics for fractions of a minute at a time.

The skittering nature of the attentional process is presumably adaptive. Incoming stimuli have to be checked against reflexes and instincts and also against learned behaviours that have proved effective or otherwise in times past.

… next morning

I woke and rose at 05:00. The early shift. Some half hearted calisthenics – with grudge rather than grace. Then two doodles arrived effortlessly. And now I am capturing text in a flow of consciousness. I could write against the clock in a disciplined Brande flow but I cannot be bothered (CBB).

There is grudge when the intention comes from the ‘self’ and is imbued with thoughts of ‘ought’. These are to be ignored such that the voluntary will to action is free to operate. But this may result in abnormality.

What will people think? I associate the phrase with my mother. It dominated her every thought, feeling, mood and action. She could prevent the action but not the other stuff. She was encultured to be a wife and mother and this involved thousands of ‘oughts’ that she accepted - but with a grudge. They also formed the yardstick with which she judged the actions of other folk – especially her daughters and grand-daughters. Presumably she inherited the mind set from her mother.

I am a consequence of my idiosyncratic ancestors. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents and a host of more or less normal sisters and cousins, uncles and aunties, nephews and nieces. My elder sister has worked on the family tree. But it does not reach back to the hominids, primates, mammals, reptiles and fish!

The known maternal line goes back three generations (154 years) and is rooted in Portsoy. Both my mother and her mother were pregnant when they married. My grandfather disappeared leaving my granny to bring up four children on her own. These events presumably influenced the enculturation of my mother and her three siblings.

The paternal line includes my father’s three elder sisters who were spinsters. The oldest one, Nan, was a primary school headteacher and was influential in my upbringing. She taught me to cook, knit and sew and kept me supplied with relevant reading material.

…oooOooo…

Some references to the family:

“I share parents and ancestors with my sisters ... Quirks of parenting reproduce themselves through the ancestral lines.” http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/wounded-ancestors.html

“Portsoy roots since 1900”. Article for the Banffie - Portsoy ancestors –

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There is a massive amount of mental stuff being continuously churned in the unconscious and bits of it are sometimes exposed to attention. Most of it passes quickly but sometimes it lingers and claims all attention to itself. So there is rumination and the ever present possibility of anxiety, stress and depression.

Rick Hanson reckons that, for reasons steeped in evolutionary psychology, the human mindbrain is Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. The negative nature of the chit chat is adaptive and has evolved. It is mainly downbeat stuff and this is presumably adaptive – better a live pessimist than a dead optimist.

But Hanson also reckons that things need not stay that way. Self-directed neuroplasticity is an ever-present tool for enlightenment. By taking thought we can accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. We can thus overcome the downbeat stuff and highlight the peaceful, easy nature of the essentially self-less unconscious. “Always look on the bright side of life!”

Martin Seligman is the father of positive psychology. He notes that traditional psychology uses drugs and talking therapies to make subnormal patients normal. But we can aspire to be supernormal and this calls for elevated insights and techniques which have been isolated by studying supernormal individuals. The move from subnormal to normal calls for theory and practices that are different from those leading from normal to super normal.

For several weeks I have been doodling as an alternative to sitting in meditation. The content and techniques are evolving but ‘control’ lies with the unconscious.  The physical techniques are open to objective observation and analysis. A seed may have been planted. It may germinate in the next few days.

Mao, Marx and modernity

Mao Tse Tung (1893-1976) was a fan of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and both had very modern sounding ideas about how to change minds. Some of Mao’s thoughts were captured in the “Little Red Book”.  I have selected a few timeless quotes which illustrate the point

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Foreign Languages Press (1976) Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung; Peking https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/

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“There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. With great determination, he led his sons in digging up these mountains hoe in hand.

Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains."

The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?" Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction.

This moved God, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs. Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism and the other is feudalism. The Chinese Communist Party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we, too, will touch God's heart. Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can't these two mountains be cleared away?”

"The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains" (June 11, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 322.

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“Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice and from it alone. They come from three kinds of social practice: the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.

It is man's social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world.”

“Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.”

 “In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures.

Countless phenomena of the objective external world are reflected in a man's brain through his five sense organs - the organs of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness, from existence to ideas.

Whether or not one's consciousness or ideas (including theories, policies, plans or measures) do correctly reflect the laws of the objective external world is not yet proved at this stage, in which it is not yet possible to ascertain whether they are correct or not.

Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man's struggle with nature.

In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later.

Man's knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth.”

Where Do Correct Ideas Come from? (May 1963), 1st pocket ed.

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“If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice.

After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit".

"On Practice" (July 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 296-97.

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Interacting mindbrains

No blogposts these last few days. There have been visitors. So there has been an exchange of world views. Interacting mindbrains. Mutual sharing of mental chatter. Or, as they describe it in the Sangha, “talking and listening from the heart”.

The Sangha uses a talking stick. A person who feels moved to share picks up the stick, holds it while they speak, and lays it down again when they are done. Other people in the circle listen without expressing or even making judgements. It is enough to realise that most people are suffering most of the time. After the formal meeting we go to the café and revert to customary, cultural chit-chat.

Some of the recent visitors were on their own, some were couples. All were skilled at chit-chat such that there were no awkward silences - and relatively few enlightening ones.

When on my own I often catch myself paying attention to my inner, idle chit-chat. The response is either to ‘just sit’, or to focus attention.

Dogen Zenji recommends that we ‘just sit’ and ‘drop off body and mind”. Meditate while facing a wall and the chit-chat of the monkey mind fades away. Then there is peace.

I can focus attention while philosophising or when washing the dishes. The goal is to operate in a non-egoic ‘flow’ state which is outside space and time. These days I often focus attention on reading about the modern dharma, writing these short stories, and doodling.

As with a singular mindbrain, so with two or more interacting mindbrains. There is the possibility of doing it with grace and without grudge. ( Ref http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/grace-and-grudge-revisited.html)

Focus, flow and flourish. Ref Goleman, Csíkszentmihályi, and Seligman in turn.

Life stage culturing

I have been re-reading Erich Fromm’s (1900-1980) 1942 book “The Fear of Freedom”. The margins are heavily marked from previous readings. He reckons that modern human beings are no longer automatically driven by unthinking instincts. Instead people have to self-consciously learn how to be in a culture in the world.

There are many possible cultures, and individuals and groups are ultimately free to choose which of them will guide their behaviour. But the freedom creates existential crises which are uncomfortable and thus feared and avoided by most people. I am minded of a phrase from a Sunday newspaper in the late 1960s – “neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums”. They crucify themselves with the question “Why exist?”

In different ways at different life stages individuals are encultured into believing that some magical myth offers an answer to the existential question. They then have a world view to kill and die for.

The following table and notes outline what I feel to be some of the major elements of the enculturation process. The driving force for the process is part nature and part nurture; the source of enculturation includes parents, family, community and culture; and there are eight life stages.

• The process is circular with maturity creating fertilised eggs – courting and mating rules
• When the source of enculturation is the wider community and the cultural institutions (eg schools), things tend to go well. When the source is the parents and the family there is a chance that things will go wrong because of the idiosyncrasies of individual parents and family members
• Lower animals are born hard wired with instinctive reactions to common stimuli. They do not have to learn how to behave – it is in their genes
• There is ongoing debate about the extent to which human behaviour is governed mainly by instinct (nature) or by learning (nurture) (See http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/nature-nurture-options.html )
• The move from adolescence to maturity is a move from hormones to intellect – discuss!
• Childhood and adolescence are generally rebellious while maturity and old age support the status quo. Variety is needed as the basis for natural selection and therefore adaptation to a changing world
• A child’s world view will have an expanding horizon as it moves through inputs from parents, family, community and the wider culture. It involves belonging within boundaries that range through me, us, them, environment, planet, cosmos. Ken Wilber has theorised a transcendent state of ‘no boundary’. This accompanies the feelings of oneness and inter-being reported by mystics of various times and places (see http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/expanding-horizons.html
• In many cases the enculturation of the youth is managed in large part by the culture’s good and great. Both Confucius and Ignatius Loyola have been credited with the saying, “give me the child till he is five (or seven?) and I will give you the man”. Modern children are schooled for ten years or more in same age cohorts wearing school uniform and changing their thought trains every 40 minutes when a bell rings.
• Most cultures have ceremonies to help people cope with death
• In many cultures  the post-maturity individuals are a valued repository of learning and wisdom
• Western cultures have increasing numbers of old people many of whom suffer physically and psychologically. Care of the elderly on a large scale is a major contemporary challenge

So life stage culturing makes it possible to avoid developing an existential crisis and a fear of freedom. Belief in myth and magic can be enough to avoid uncertainty and to ensure cohesion. Most people seem to act as if good enough is good enough. That may be (a) pragmatic and (b) the way that evolution works. So who am I when calling for change aiming at some kind of perfection and eternal truth? Like everyone else I am a product of life stage culturing.

Olympic mindbrains

Imagine a gathering of obese people watching an Olympic athlete performing floor exercises, or listening to a world class pianist playing a Chopin prelude.

A continuum suggests itself. At the obese end are the undisciplined and unfit characters whose lifestyles demonstrate what happens when a stone age brain encounters the 21st century. At the Olympic end are the self disciplined and enormously skilful experts who have mastered a specialised area of competence.

Note that most experts perform best when they are in a flow state. After years of practice they perform best when they are focussed in the present moment and are thus in a non-egoic state and are outside space and time. The musician is in the groove, the athlete is in the zone, and the man in the street rides his bicycle without thinking about it.

Back to the continuum but now with the mindbrain as the topic of concern. After many years of evolution the human mindbrain is now a top of the range sports car. But at the obese end few people ever get the car out of first gear, out of the drive, or even out of the garage. Meanwhile, at the Olympic end, the experts alternate high speed cross country races with quiet periods of stillness.

I like to think that it is easier for a person to undo the obesity of his mindbrain than of his body. Many statues of the Buddha show him to have a well developed pot belly. Who amongst you feels the need of an Olympic mindbrain?

more unconscious

In the last few blogs ‘I’ have been trying to develop a subjective impression of what the unconscious is good for.

The first idea is to drop ego or self-consciousness and thus to let the unconscious have a free hand to continuously churn.

The second idea is that sometimes the churn is channelled into tangible conscious outputs that derive from such thoughts, feelings and moods as are routed to the attention centre.

‘My’ creative outputs have taken various forms through the years. The underlying process is usually driven by a mix of egoic (conscious) and non-egoic (unconscious) factors. The best results arrive when the ego is quiet and the unconscious ‘muse’ is thus better able to let the ‘inner voice’ be heard through commandeering the attention centre. The outputs are:

• Doodles
• Six word stories
• Brande flows (formal flows of consciousness)
• Daily diary entries (informal bits and pieces since the 1960s)
• One-pagers – recent ones posted on the blog; earlier ones at http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/
• Poems (mainly from adolescence)
• Songs (two albums online) http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-music.html
• Tunes (75 tunes also online) http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-music.html
• Websites for many of the above
• Social Network stuff
• Photos

Dictionary definitions for conscious, self-conscious, sub-conscious and un-conscious and their ‘nesses’ tend to be long because of the difficulties of dealing with the different shades of meaning that exist. My continually evolving thoughts on the subject are captured in the following list:

• A thing is conscious if it is able to sense and react appropriately to changes in the environment. This is a basic factor in being alive and includes plants and single celled animals
• If there is consciousness there must be that which is conscious – therefore self or ego consciousness as a product of the mindbrain.
• A thing is self conscious if it is aware that it is able to sense and react appropriately to changes in the environment. Conscious of consciousness.
• When a person is in ‘flow’ they are in a state of non-egoic non-self consciousness which, by definition, must be the unconscious.
• If a thing is not aware that it is able to sense and react appropriately to changes in the environment then the sensing and reacting are said to take place unconsciously ie in the unconscious.
• Of all the mental activity taking place in a human being the vast majority is in the unconscious.
• Most of what appears to the self conscious is a pale reflection of what had previously been happening in the unconscious. The (conscious) mind has an (unconscious) mind of its own.

 
There are cases of the muse spilling out word perfect stories that do not need editing. The author is then like a copy typist. In other cases there is an interplay between the muse and the self conscious intellect of the author. (Ref – the Judith Spelman interviews https://www.writers-online.co.uk/ )

My muse comes and goes and is sometimes more or less in control. The present spate of doodles are close to 100% unconscious but they are about visual patterns rather than about words and ideas.

As far as I remember the tunes and songs in the 1970s and 1990s were mainly non-egoic. The present set of blog posts are usually sparked by the unconscious but they usually need some rational editing.

SO –there is a feeling of getting something for nothing. Just drop the ego illusion and go with the flow. No self, no problem.

But there is a guilty feeling. ‘I’ do not have to work hard. But no pain, no gain, and the devil finds work for idle hands.

Then there is the gateless gate. It seems enormous and impenetrable as you approach it but once through and looking back it does not exist.

Then there is crossing the river on a raft. Once across you no longer need the raft. So you can lay down those illusory burdens of space, time and ego.

And it all comes to pass if you just sit.

Unconscious patterns

Michael Shermer defines "patternicity" as the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/shermers-patterns-and-agents.html

In an earlier post I demonstrated how to use doodles as a means of evidencing dynamic but meaningless activity in the unconscious.

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/meaning-in-doodles.html

A couple of years ago I demonstrated how easy it is to make patterns from a random selection of seven words.

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/seeing-patterns.html

Other posts dealing with unconscious patternicity include:

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/flow-in-passive-voice.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/agents-make-things-happen.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/doodles-so-what.html

Meaning in Doodles

Four weeks ago I fell and wraxed my back which made it difficult to sit at the computer. But it was OK for doodling. So I produced over 100 A4 doodles, and gave some thought to what might be involved in their production in the unconscious.

The inspiration and motivation came from the unconscious in terms of what might be called serial micro intentions. There was very little by way of conscious forward planning; it was a matter of one tiny step at a time. By definition there is no awareness of unconscious planning; and the up front consciousness was kept as empty as possible of ego, space and time. The steps were done in ‘flow’.

It is easiest to talk about serial micro intentions using an actual example (see opposite). The first four decisions included

• Where to begin – 4 corners or sides, or middle?
• Which pen – thick to thin?
• Curves or straight lines for the initial frame work?
• Realistic people and places v patterns?

In the example I began in the top left hand corner using a thick black pen and drawing curves. The eventual first image would be a pattern based on the three letters DOD.

The decision to use the word DOD was made a fraction of a second before it happened. Other fast decisions were made to disguise the letters eg the hoop at the top right

• Elaborate on the frame using lines and surfaces.
• Option – notice and exaggerate faces – eyes, nostrils, lips and teeth – and other body parts.

The example uses a very limited range of lines and surfaces eg solid and stitch lines, and short line shading. There is a simple female form in the bottom centre and a foot with a short sock pointing to the bottom left corner.

I am not aware of what a doodle is meant to mean while drawing it. Having completed it I can sometimes see patterns and possible meanings – but these can be different at different times of looking. And other people see other patterns and possible meanings. And often there are patterns to be found when the image is rotated (see below).

Immediately before its creation a doodle is non existent. After its creation a doodle is a product of a producer. What did the producer have in mind before, during and after the production process?

When in flow the producer has nothing in conscious mind but there will be all manner of churn in the unconscious. There is an ongoing unconscious review to decide what to do next and this continues till an endpoint is reached. After the endpoint of production there is the never ending possibility of reinterpretation by strangers. So there is no fixed meaning in the before, during and after. The meaning of a doodle is supplied from the mindbrain of the beholder.

90 degrees Motorbike

180 degrees Samurai warrior

270 degrees Lapdog

Reflections on cultural development.

This article offers some ideas about cultural development which can be thought of as having at least eight subtopics – social, technical, environmental, economic, political, legal, ethical and spiritual - STEEPLES. (Ref url 1)

These days I give most of my attention to the eighth topic – spirituality. I have reservations about using the word as it means different things to different people. But at root the topic is about changing minds – my own and other people’s.

My underlying idea is that the full potential of the human mindbrain has very rarely been realised – at least in modern times. Human evolution has cruised on a dilute soup of serendipitous and amoral ‘good enough’. However, given globalisation, ICT, and the new neurology, I feel that now is the time for a widespread awakening (re-awakening?) to, and management of, the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious aspects of the mindbrain.

There are options for cultural development and there is now the possibility of consciously choosing this way (eg green and equitable social democracy) rather than that (eg plutocratic, freemarket neo-liberalism).  (Ref Naomi Klein as an optimist regarding bottom up policy making and funding.)

I sometimes wonder (a) if the ancestors’ rural world views were indeed primitive, parochial and out of touch with the Oneness and (b) if the mainstream, modern, ungreen, urban world views can be said to be like that. That simplistic line of dualist thinking raises echoes of the 17th century concept of the ‘noble savage’ and a ‘fall from grace’ into ‘dark satanic mills’. But there is also a hypothesis that we had to wait till the Axial Age (800-200BC) for the first flourishing of spirituality and of the mainstream religious movements.

In brief, we can imagine that human nature evolved (is hard wired) to be

(a) spiritual - but there was a fall into the secular as we evolved beyond foraging

(b) secular - but elevation to the sacred is possible through institutionalised religion based on the ‘insights’ of charismatic individuals.

But this may well be a false dichotomy based on ‘points of view’ that are founded on intuition and bias rather than on the ‘facts’ observed by anthropologists. The issue is not either/or but rather both/and. For a matrix showing variations in cultural values see url 002.

The downside default

Most people adapt more or less comfortably to the cultures in which they grew up and now live. They therefore have a concept of what is normal for ‘me’ and ‘us’ and what is different about the cultures of ‘them’. 

Individuals have a more or less robust worldview (Weltanschauung) with a host of lesser points of view made up largely of intuitions and biases. And these are what we assume to be ‘reality’. [Note – many cultures have coming of age ceremonies to mark the shift from child to adult]

On the positive side the assumed reality allows for peace of mind and thus ease about being in the world – at least as this is understood by your natal group. 

On the negative side this allows for uncertainty and thus for the dis-ease that shows up as narrow mindedness and often as a lethal fear of strangers (xenophobia). ‘You are either for us or against us.’ Lethal xenophobia is rarely far beneath the surface.

Most ‘reasonable people’ displayed horror about 21 recent beheadings of Copts by Islamic terrorists. But that is insignificant compared with for example (a) the French revolution that used the guillotine to implement the policy of “off with their (aristocratic) heads” and (b) Genghis Khan’s habit of making mountains of the skulls of those who thought to oppose him.

And - still within living memory- there is Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Ruanda, WW1 trench warfare and the holocaust. This shows that modern humans are still easily swayed by propaganda to demonise the enemy, to kill those who stand against ‘us’, and to proudly accept a medal for having done so.

And there is slavery, exploitation of the workers in sweat shops, environmental pollution and innumerable etceteras demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man when the rich and powerful (the elitist 1%) can avoid checks and balances to their unscrupulous ways.

The French Revolution (1789-1799) put a stop to the cultural notion of the ‘divine right of Kings’- “Off with their (aristocratic) heads”. This laid the modern foundations of democracy’s quest to ensure the greatest good of the greatest number through – “liberty, equality, fraternity”.

But, arguably, we have moved to the divine right of the super rich individuals and corporations in their gated communities. (Ref: TTIP) And, arguably, when exposed, the rampant inequities are causing the exploited worms to contemplate turning with pitchforks on the plutocracy. (Ref url 3 and 4)

It is interesting to consider why so many inbuilt and readily activated thoughts, feelings and moods should be unpleasant or even painful eg angst, anomie, fear, anger, stress, anxiety, depression and panic etc. It might be a homeostatic feature. Nothing lasts forever - especially thoughts, feelings and moods. There have to be changing reactions to a changing environment. But we must avoid paralysis by analysis. It is insane to be well adjusted to an insane cultural world view. So the various neurosis and psychosis that are especially prevalent in modern cultures might be viewed as highly evolved cultural feedback control mechanisms. (Ref  - R D Laing)

A bigger picture

We can view cultural development from a larger perspective by borrowing some thoughts about time from the Big History Project and from Evolutionary Psychology.

The big bang was about 13.9 billion years ago and planet earth came into existence about 4.54 billion years ago. Mammals first appeared about 200 million years ago; primates about 60 million years ago; hominids about 20 million years ago and modern style humans about 200,000 years ago.

Most primates are social animals and group selection will have driven the evolution of increasingly complex cultural systems. It was a slow process in the beginning but it changed gear about 100,000 years ago with the evolution of language and thus of collective learning and of creative and abstract thinking.

There is no forward planning in evolution nor building from scratch. Systems that work are tweaked through selection of the fittest of the random mutations. There is an ongoing play-off between what is best for an individual and what is best for the group to which the individual belongs. (Ref – group selection). Neighbouring groups are in ongoing competition to effectively use or avoid environmental resources. There is thus the deep seated notion of them and us and usually different codes of conduct regarding how to behave in the in-group and the out groups.

There is a serendipitous aspect to (a) the mutations that allow for evolution, (b) the cobbled together nature of innovations, and (c) the multi-cause and effect arrangements within the mindbrain modules and networks. It is thus no wonder that the mental control systems that neurologists have recently discovered are as subtle and complex as they are. (Ref neural plasticity and brain scans of experienced meditators)

States of mind

We presently live with mindbrains that evolved to allow our ancestors to survive in groups of 50-100 as hunters and gatherers in the African savanna.  For most of that time we were without language and cultural evolution was mindbendingly slow.

Try a thought experiment – imagine sitting around a fire at night after a successful day of foraging with the group – but language has not yet evolved – what would you be unlikely to not talk about? Note: think about domestic pets.

Then about 100,000 years ago language evolved with associated changes in the structure and function of the pre-frontal cortex - notably the ability to be conscious of being conscious, and to notice what we notice. Cultural evolution blossomed exponentially in the last few thousand years and moved rapidly through settled agriculture and into the bronze and iron ages with hierarchical city states and highly developed division of labour.

If evolution cared about tidiness then it would sweep the no longer useful stuff out of the mindbrain. But it doesn’t, so it hasn’t, so we live in the modern world with the instincts, intuitions and biases of a stone age mindbrain. The good news, however, is that we can, if we are so minded, by taking thought, identify and largely neutralise some of these anachronisms.

Here for example are five states of mind that often appear in my mindbrain:

• Standard = Lots of stuff passes through the attention centre. ‘I’ am on autopilot and thus driven and directed by the unconscious stream of thoughts, emotions and moods which are more often negative than positive. The mind has a mind of its own which tends to demonstrate a negative bias (ref – Hanson). Monkey mind.
• Just sit. Drop off body and mind. Know the silence. Zazen.
• Numinous – the world seems to radiate beauty and spirituality – There is the interconnected Oneness
• Non-egoic flow - in the groove or zone – beyond space and time - no self no problem – wu-wei (non doing but nothing is left undone).
• Mindful witnessing = non judgmental - think about thinking, notice what is noticed – become unattached to thoughts, emotions and moods – insight meditation

This story has been longer and more garrulous than has recently been my style. I note some common themes:

• Wilber’s ‘No boundaries’ to the self – be the Oneness
• Self consciousness and neural plasticity – mind over matter – and viceversa
• Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”
• Cutting edge understanding of the unconscious.
• Waken up – Move beyond natural selection – intentional selection under domestication
• Group selection – memetics – gratitude to our ancestors
• The radical potential of mindfulness meditation – be still and know
• the interplay between the conscious (1%) and the unconscious (99%) aspects of the mindbrain
• cultural development involves changing minds and the process can be elucidated through neurology and evolutionary psychology

….ooOoo….

[These reflections are subjective and based on how my mindbrain has been, and is still being, conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity. I have not bothered too much about footnotes.

Briefly I am a left of centre introvert who trained as a Zoologist and lived and worked for many years in the tropics as a teacher, education advisor and plain language editor. I was conceived in 1948, never married and I have no children. I am now retired from the institutions and on retreat in the Scottish fishing village in which I grew up.]]



url 1 - http://sites.google.com/site/steeplessrds/

url 2 - http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/values.htm#var01

url 3 https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming?language=en )

url 4 - https://www.ted.com/talks/chrystia_freeland_the_rise_of_the_new_global_super_rich