Doodles from nowhere

Doodling is a process that has a product. The physical tools are paper, pens and drawing board. The psychological tools include (a) the ability to use the pen and drawing board, (b) the mood and intention to do so, and, for the best quality work, (c) the ability to shut down the self conscious and thus to enter a non-egoic frame of mind where the unconscious is in charge.

While doodling there is very little forward planning. ‘I’ just sit until the hands move and marks are made on the page. This is what the Chinese call wu-wei or effortless action. At the moment this happens several times a day.

Each doodle has its own page and I note the date of its construction in the bottom right hand corner. Every now and then I scan the new collection and keep the files on a hard disc where they can be tagged and sorted. A while back I created a set of categories: abstract, scenes, and faces (single, groups, abstract). This needs a revisit.

I feel the agentic problem. There is product therefore there must be a producer who is presumably rational and purposive. But the presumption may be wrong – at least in part. In most cases the purpose and meaning of the doodle is not apparent.

Michael Shermer suggests that the human mindbrain is hard wired for patternicity and agenticity.  “Patternicity,” is the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. “Agenticity”: is the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. Together patternicity and agenticity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.

There is the notion that the unconscious is in a constant state of churn.  Mentation lego.  Gobbits of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) being shaken together in a sack. Some are fresh from the sense organs others are from memories of childhood through to what you had for breakfast this morning. A few are grabbed at what seems like random, made into a story by the unconscious, and dropped  into the attention centre  to see what the self-conscious can do with it.

The product is not the ‘truth’. Evolution is not concerned with such a thing. Pragmatism rules. If the story is convincing and ensures the survival of me and my group then we can accept it.

Through the years ‘I’ have engaged with several variations on this theme of giving the unconscious free rein

• Art work in school – got a Higher
• Doodles - ongoing
• Many poems in the late teens and early 20s
• Songs (music and lyrics) in two phases – 70s and 90s
• Journal entries – since the late  60s
• Short essays (one-pagers)
• 75 tunes in the 90s
• Brande flows (writing against the clock)
• The seven word game (see below)
• The seven word game is simple but awesome.  Try it for yourself and see.

SO - process and product:

• The ongoing churn creates units of TFM (aka as ‘facts’)
• The units are arranged to form a pattern (eg a World View or a group of points of view)
• The pattern is championed by a real or  imaginary, intentional agent
• The product is in essence a mind-made point of view but can be substantiated as spoken or written text, as music, or as doodles

SO - some thing from no thing?

• Well over 100 doodles have been produced in the last few months
• When I review them there is no strong message although there is a feeling that there should be
• The abstract ones tantalise because of the details and the ambiguous perspective
• The faces mesmerise even when they are basic emoticons – hard wiring in a social animal
• At least one external viewer finds them scary
• They do not encourage chat – they are pre-linguistic – like cave paintings?
• The mood to produce  them remains frequent and strong

A physical doodle is created. It’s ‘cause’ is ‘activities’ in the mindbrain. The activities include the ongoing churn being fed by sensory inputs and by memories. Patternicity and agenticity are added to the mix. The purpose of the process is monitoring of the external environment to note whether the ‘thing’ is good, bad or indifferent. Relevant reactions and responses result. The fittest survive.

BUT there is a lot of noise in the system of churning. ‘Meaning’ need not always be created. Thus it seems we have doodles from nowhere.

Inviting writing to nurture culture

My blog has had 20,000 page views since January 2013. This averages 690 per month and 23 per day. The averages include low page views in the early stages. Last month for example there were 1240 page views which averaged 41 per day. It is interesting to know that my blog is being visited - but that is not what keeps me going.

I aspire to produce a blogpost every other day. The subject matter is mainly my reactions and responses to ideas about the structure and functions of the human mindbrain. This is a hot topic and there is an ongoing blending of eastern meditation with western neurology and evolutionary psychology.

However, on the downside, I am not officially connected to an institution and I do not have a large number of people to talk with and experiment on; and neither do I have a group of experts to provide peer reviews. But, on the upside, I have internet access to texts, audio and video from the leading experts in the relevant fields, and I have privileged, if subjective, access to my own mindbrain.

My mindbrain is shaped by nature, nurture and serendipity and most of its operations are confined to the unconscious. This becomes obvious when, during mindfulness, people feel that the mind has a mind of its own. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) reckoned that “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”. The insight can be restated as, “the unconscious has its intentions of which the self conscious knows nothing”.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), while sitting in his armchair, reckoned that the unconscious was full of crude animal passions (notably sexual ones) that have to be held in check in civilised societies. However, recent research suggests a more positive view. It is the same nature, nurture and serendipity that shapes the unconscious and the self conscious parts of the mindbrain. So there is no need to demonise the unconscious; both parts have time-tested hard wiring designed to aid survival in small groups of stone age foragers in the African savannah. Some of this genetic programming might be out of sync with ‘modern’ patterns of living but cultural nurturing exists to shape them for the irrepressibly emergent new age.

Like most other people, especially western intellectuals after the European Enlightenment, I was earlier led to believe that the rational and egoic self-conscious should be promoted and the emotional and non-egoic unconscious should be suppressed. But, following research findings, there has been a dramatic turn around. I now view the mindbrain as a massive unconscious iceberg with a tiny, misty fragment of self-consciousness peaking above the vast ocean of reality.

Most of the important stuff happens in the unconscious. Many professional people now realise this and have learned how to exploit it. The trick is to shut down the self-conscious egoic chatter so as not to interfere. Athletes are in the zone, musicians are in the groove, and ordinary mortals operate in flow when they wash the dishes with numinous grace rather than with a grudge.

I am in two minds about my present method of being. I read, write and doodle non-egoicaly with a minimum of forward planning. This goes against my formal training - but that is the point. There is product in the form of stories and doodles that are generated effortlessly and in flow. It is as if something comes from nothing - but nothing comes from nothing. Thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) originate in past times and are tweaked in the present by way of channelling the future. The evolving thought train never stops – not since the Big Bang.

There is need to radically change attitudes concerning ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ ie to change mindbrains. A thought train, which is in fact a TFM train, never in fact stops although many people, once they are culturally indoctrinated, are willing to die to maintain the status quo. We are all born free to be culturally nurtured but we are now at a stage of planetary evolution where more and more people are becoming mindful to the extent of appreciating that ‘reality’ is a mental construct which can be deconstructed.

Authors construct and deconstruct reality using spoken and written language. They come in assorted guises, notably, academics, bloggers, diarists, essayists, journalists, lyricists, novelists, playwrights, poets, scientists, speechwriters, and etc? I consider myself to be an essayist and blogger and I write for myself, for friends and colleagues, and for sub groups of the general public in various countries; there is a strong following in Ukraine and Russia.

There is a linguistic conundrum with the idea that ‘I’ write for my ‘self’. The idea is to park the ego and give my unconscious a free rein. There is an ongoing churn in the unconscious and every now and then a tit bit is directed to the conscious attention centre.

And that seems a good place to conclude with the title to this article - Inviting writing to nurture culture.

The need to know

The need to know – getting my existential jollies

A friend emailed to say that he will not be able to attend a pre-arranged meeting. No problem, I can reschedule my day. I don’t need to know what caused his change of plan.

I wrote the following sentence to send to the BT help desk - “When I am on the BT home page and click the email button the system goes to the login URL but then takes me back to the BT home page without logging in to the email.” But a reboot sorted the problem before I sent the email. I don’t need to know what went wrong.

I don’t need to know lots of things. I don’t bother with the nitty gritties. I get my jollies by wrapping my brain around counter intuitions and uncommon sense.

I suspect that there are different parts of the brain specialised in handling higher and lower degrees of conceptualising - possibly those parts of the pre-frontal cortex that deal with executive functions.

Most people do not philosophise about the grander aspects of their world view. They have been encultured to accept their natal version. They therefore inhabit a predictable, cultural universe which is chock a block with eternal verities:

• The earth is flat.
• Heavier than air machines cannot fly.
• Atoms are indivisible.
• A woman’s place is in the home.
• We share ancestors with the great apes.
• The Pope is infallible.
• Kings and prime minister’s rule by divine right.
• God is dead.
• The war to end all wars.
• Freemarket fundamentalism is the best guide to growing the economy.

My particular nature and nurture has been constantly reworking my world view with its list of verities. I was born into the UK class system as a subservient upper working class, church going, small town lad. But social mobility kicked in through being a boy soprano from seven, participating in archaeology digs from 14 and, studying for a university degree in Zoology from 18. I was a romantic in a tweed jacket who was convinced that the world could be a better place and that there must be better ways to be human. I committed to zero population growth and to experiencing different cultures. The need to know was at its peak.

By my early 20s my world view was informed by three aphorisms:

• The only constant thing is change.
• The only certainty is doubt.
• So – follow the flow.

The western take on the aphorisms drew me to phenomenology, post-modernism and a vision of neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums. All very depressing.

The eastern take on the aphorisms drew me to Taoism, Buddhism and Zen and to a vision of peaceful meditators living and working in non-egoic mindfulness. All very hopeful – at least in theory.

In the last twenty years or so there has been a blending of eastern and western world views and a rethink on the psychology of perception. The common root is an acknowledgement that thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) are mind made mainly in the unconscious, and have no abiding reality – there is neural plasticity. The mind can change the shape and functioning of the brain which can change the mind. I feel the need to know more about this.

Evolution has been fine tuning the structure and functions of mindbrains since they first appeared due to cephalisation in ancient invertebrates. Bits of the ancestral mindbrains are still working in the lower regions of modern people including you and me. There are enduring structures and functions that first appeared in reptiles, mammals, primates, great apes and hominids. There are also new bits in human beings – notably the cortex and especially the pre-frontal cortex.

Since our stone age days of foraging these changes have allowed consciousness to be conscious of itself. And this ability has grown exponentially since language evolved, and it has enabled the growth of the eastern monastic tradition, western science and technology, and the hierarchical division of labour. I feel the need to know more about this.

Neurologists have been studying meditators. Their brains are different from ordinary folk. This is a result of thinking this way rather than that. They sit quietly and practice mindfulness. Amongst other things they bear witness to their monkey mind and, in so doing, calm it. Amongst other things the calmness allows a realisation of the ephemeral nature of their cultural points of view and this enables them to be un-attached from ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and thus to radiate good humoured peace and encourage reconciliation. I feel the need to know more about this.

But who is the ‘I’ that ‘needs’ to ‘know’? And why those needs? And what does it mean to know? And which part of ‘me’ is asking those questions? One of my songs from the 70s has these lines:

“You’ll find plenty question masters
making quagmires of their brain –
The man said, “There is no answer”.
They said, “you are insane.”


I spent many years wallowing in the intellectual, truth-seeking quagmire. But mindfulness arose and with it the pre-linguistic realisation that “the reality which can be described is not the real reality”.  It was therefore arguably permissible, healthy and desirable to be open to change and doubt, to enthuse about counterintuitive uncommon sense, and to get my jollies by ignoring the nitty gritties and by calmly following the high level flow.