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.