Peace in our time

I made time recently to read about evolutionary psychology (EP). Thoughts were thus with my ancestors in the early days of foraging in relatively small groups in the long human period before the sudden blossoming of language. The Bible reckons that “in the beginning was the Word”. But there were many new beginnings, many new doors were opened, and a small bands of seekers rushed through.

There have been many paradigm shifts in human evolution. There has been a long series of old endings and new beginnings - foraging, settled agriculture, city states, empires, nation states, transnational corporations, globalisation. The only constant thing is change. The only certainty is doubt. “Change and decay in all around I see.”

But most people desire unchanging certainty and that the eternal verities should all be the same in a hundred year’s time. True believers. Effectively encultured and brainwashed. Parochial xenophobics. Small minded wimps on frantic retreat from existential nihilism and from acceptance that there is no real reality out there.

Evolution doesn’t concern itself with abstract reality and truth. But ordinary people do. The major world religions are relics from pre-modern times. They are rooted in myth and magic from the iron age. There are still thought to be Gods who are omniscient and omnipotent father figures who operate in mysterious ways. And this remains the truth for the majority of people despite the major paradigm shift to meditation and mindfulness during the Axial Age from 800-200 BCE.

Mindfulness meditation involves giving non-judgemental attention to the thoughts, feelings and moods that are created in the ongoing, unconscious churn. The idea is to achieve enlightenment and liberation and thus to be able to operate in non-egoic flow.

The premise of meditation is counter intuitive but it holds the promise of peace of mind. When institutionalised there is often a pulling back to ensure that the peasants are kept in ignorance. But the up to date genie has recently been let out of the bottle thanks to the researches of the neuro scientists with their brain scanners. What was once mysterious and mystical is now a reasonable and objective target of the people in white coats. There is neural plasticity on the road from womb to tomb. By taking thought people can change the structure of their brain. If only enough people accept the existential challenge there may be peace in our time.

Mental noise

In the cafe there was the notion of mental noise. I hear it and so do other people; and we are all different at the detailed level. This is because we are as we are as a result of the interactions between our nature, nurture and a wide range of serendipitous happenstances.

But if we stand back from the details it is easy to see that there are types of human beings making different types of mental noise. Male and female, old and young, haves and have-nots. Those who are loud and forever active in groups, (the extraverts) and those quiet ones who prefer their own company (the intraverts).

In recent times Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) mapped the notion of introverts and extraverts. The typology was refined and developed by Isabel Myers (1897 – 1980) and her mother Katharine Briggs (1875 - 1968)  – and is known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator -  MBTI.

“The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is an introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions … The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is an introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.”

David Keirsey (1921-2013) was an American psychologist and the author of several books. In his most popular publications, Please Understand Me (1978, co-authored by Marilyn Bates) and the revised and expanded second volume Please Understand Me II (1998), he laid out a self-assessed personality questionnaire, known as the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, which links human behavioral patterns to four temperaments and sixteen character types. Both volumes of Please Understand Me contain the questionnaire for type evaluation with detailed portraits and a systematic treatment of descriptions of temperament traits and personality characteristics. I am an INFP.

Susan Cain (1968 – xxxx) is a recent champion of the quiet intravert. She writes and speaks (twice in TED) in a user friendly way.

This topic often adds to my mental noise. The following list points to some of my earlier coffee fueled attempts to map the field.

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/different-strokes.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/quiet-introverts-1.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/charting-oneness.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-source-of-stories.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/think-for-change.html

Administrivial attention

Sunday. No traffic. Office phones are asleep in their cradles. No tight calls on my time. I am footering.

There are many categories of stuff claiming attention (thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM)). In my case these include the major themes listed below. They are continually interacting in response to immediate inputs from the sense organs, and historical inputs from memory. I note that each major theme is substantiated by large numbers of middle level themes which in their turn are founded on a seemingly never-ending stream of micro perceptions.

>>>>>>>>>> 

• shopping (functional for groceries (Coop and Tesco) – foraging instinct)
• being a consumer that does not consume – watch what grabs my attention (online esp. Amazon)
• cooking (have new equipment (eg food processor))
• gardening (mow grass and prune bushes)
• managing the cottage (cleaning and paperwork)

• reading (instruction manuals, cutting edge non-fiction)
• writing (diary, blog, Banffie)

• doodling (becalmed and non-egoic – about 30 minutes – more creative than colouring books)
• just sitting (mindfulness)
• dosing – (there has been more memories of foreign places)

• email and social networking (analogue and virtual)
• media (radio and TV)
• music (especially learning how to use the Zoom16 and Cubase LE8, and connecting the keyboard by midi. I have not kept up to date with the technology)
• ICT (FTP and web sites. I have not kept up to date with the technology)

>>>>>>>>>> 

In terms of TFM there are two supermajor categories – (a) the non-egoic Oneness which is the guarantor of bliss and (b) the egoic multiplicity which calls up stress, depression, anxiety and panic (SADAP?) There is an acceptable urge to have more of the former and less of the latter. But both have their uses and the real task is to have them in a wholehearted balance.

Jack Kerouac reckoned[1] that “the passer through everything must feel good about everything that happens – the lucky exuberant bastard”. 24/7 monks and nuns aspire to perpetual bliss. I don’t know about bliss but I spend most of my days in equanimity. A variety of worrisome TFM appear but they do not take over the whole attention centre. The witness appears and by being an audience takes the sting out of the mind stuff. Neural plasticity operates even amongst the instincts and reflexes of the hard wired, old brain. The Zombie switches off the autopilot and the authentic existentialist takes over.

I get my jollies from being non-egoic and post-existential. It is therefore important that administrivial attention (see most of the above list does not commandeer the mindbrain.

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[1] The quote is from memory and may not thus be accurate. If you know the source please leave a note in the comments box.

A five part life

I have been chatting with various people these past few days. They all have idiosyncratic ways of understanding their culture.  These ways are determined by the totalising trinity of nature, nurture and serendipity. There are of course individual differences in the details but, by doing a helicopter, five common processes emerge :-

Parenting --- schooling --- working --- playing --- dying

I don’t remember much about my parenting and schooling nor about the working which was in six countries. I am now in my mid sixties, retired, and with Parkinson’s Disease. My present ‘playing’ is a modified version of long standing ‘lesson preparation’. If a story is to be written, (eg a biography or autobiography) the following table can help to make the research systematic. 

                                                                                                                                                                             

The story can be understood by looking through different lenses eg neuroscience, anthropology, sociology and psychology. The latter can be of a positive or evolutionary orientation.

As an author you can hang around waiting for ideas to emerge. When you are blocked it is useful to have some tools to fall back on eg

• the above table.                                                      
• My six good friends are with me now - who why what when where and how.
• The five whys. Ask a question and turn the reply into a why question.

(More: Knowledge in a nutshell - http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/

Existential wimp

Yesterday in a coffee shop in Inverurie attention returned to the deep question captured in the lyrics (by Hal David) of a soundtrack to the 1966 movie “Alfie.” “What’s it all about Alfie, is it just for the moment that we live?” The traditional, academic approach to finding, or not finding, an answer lies in philosophy and religion.

Some key western philosophers who tackled the topic include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Jean Paul Sartre. The essence of the idea is captured in this quote from Wikipedia:

“While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.”

I first locked horns with the problem in the late 60s and this prompted my credos:

• ·         The only certainty is doubt.
• ·         The only constant thing is change.

·          

These made me aware of the huge numbers of “neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums”. Monty Python captured the essence of the ego problem in the “Life of Brian” where a multitude was chanting, “we are all different”, and a little man noted that he wasn’t. The Western cult of the individual. Fanatical followers of frivolous fads and fashions.

So I spent a few decades with the Eastern way of thinking, doing and being. Lao Tzu captured the essence with the notion that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality.” Language is recently evolved and it is limited about what can be spoken. “He who knows does not speak and he who speaks does not know.” (Lao Tzu again.)

Then along came meditation. Being still. Just sit and “drop off body and mind”. (Dogen Zenji). And thus know that the mind has a mind of its own – in fact it has several ‘minds’ that have been shaped by nature, nurture and serendipity as you make the journey from womb to tomb. What is the structure, function and location of “me”?

One of my early moves away from 20^th century Scottish Presbyterian was towards eastern patterns of thinking - mainly Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen. I read many of the classic texts, and many comments on them from both eastern and western gurus. I also made time to sit by myself, and with a Thich Nhat Hahn sangha in Findhorn once a week for almost 10 years.

Then along came Jon Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR). This is Buddhism without the toot and it is now racing around the western world. It is not thought of as a religion but rather as a branch of positive psychology. The idea is to set aside quiet time and to witness what goes on in your mind.

Then along came the evolutionary psychology crew and the realisation that your various minds have evolved and are there for a purpose – even the negative ones.

Then along came the scanners of the neuro-science brigade and the discovery that the mind can change the brain and vice versa. There is neuro plasticity. David Eagleman tells the tale with effortless erudition and humour.

SO?  All our thoughts, feelings and moods are mind-made. And their origins are in our nature, nurture and serendipity. As evolved entities we are located in cosmic time and space. We are part of an ongoing serendipitous process that is not planned in advance. In retrospect we can see what looks like ‘progress’. But who is the ‘I’ that ‘sees’?

Six tables in the Inverurie coffee shop were occupied - mainly by chattering couples. Several were Teresa May look alikes – unreformed Tories – Nasty?

I do not know what they were chatting about. I was inclined to feel that they were unreformed existential wimps - parochial and xenophobic - and immune to the meaningless absurdity of it all.

But a more positive and wholesome “existential attitude” has evolved in recent times. There is no forward planner or plan but some awesome stuff is happening at all levels of cosmic space and time – and this includes what happens inside your brain. It seems reasonable to be amazed and grateful and thus to have ‘peace of mind’ more often than not.

“Sitting quietly doing nothing
Spring comes and the grass grow by itself”

Be still and know.

It’s never too late to change your mind.