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Two of me

While flat backing this morning the attention centre was preoccupied with the home improvement project. To change the focus I tried a breath count to ten - but there were many restarts.

There was an unconscious cognitive hijack.

Part of the mindbrain (conscious and rational) would rather that the topic be dropped but another and more powerful part (unconscious and intuitive) ensured that the topic remained the centre of attention. It was thus very clear that there were at least two of ‘me’.

And I am not alone with that duality. It is now well established in behavioural psychology as part of the “Heuristics and Biases Approach”.

“In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, (rules of thumb) learned or hard-coded by evolutionary processes, that have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems - typically when facing complex issues or incomplete information. …These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic errors or cognitive biases.” (Wikipedia)

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in economics for his work in this area and his 2011 book “Thinking, fast and slow” is an international best seller. He recognises two ways of thinking – System 1 (fast and automatic) and System 2 (slow and reflective). Thaler and Sunstein use the dual system in their 2012 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness”. The following table lists some key features of the two systems.

SO – this morning, System 1 was holding attention on the home improvement project while system 2 was trying to shift attention to the breath. Neither won. I got up, washed, dressed, took breakfast – and, as usual, a wide range of other thoughts and feelings flitted through the attention centre.

Then I sat down at the computer and attended to the email and social networks. And, while dealing with the routine stuff, the theme for this blogpost came to the attention centre. Since then there has been writing in peaceful but productive, non-egoic flow.

Most of the ideas came from System 1 and System 2 acted as a heavy duty editor. The mindbrain will now turn to other things - maybe the home improvements project! But I will leave this file open so that it can be fine tuned before publishing.

Exploratory talk

Beyond the idle chat of ordinary folk lies the exploratory talk of super-ordinary folk.

When the hubble and bubble of idle chat fills the attention centres of the talkers and listeners then nothing important is likely to be said. And there will be no rocking the boat of parochial enculturation.

When the considered cerebrations of exploratory talk fills the attention centres of the talkers and listeners then new thoughts and feelings will arise. And there will be cracking of norms and shifting of paradigms as new cultural forms are created for the spiritual journey.

So how might the balance be shifted? By promoting stillness and seclusion?

Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) famously said "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I feel inclined to upgrade this to, “A person must be of independent means and have a room, if not a house, of their own if they are to write about what passes through their attention centre.”

But cognitive bias is in action! I live alone and work from home. I enjoy my solitude. I thus perhaps deviate from the norm. Other people live with other people and travel to their daily 9 to 5 jobs. They have limited freedom from idle chat other perhaps than when attending to their ablutions and during the anonymity of commuting.

But I am not alone. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) reckoned that “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” It is perhaps no coincidence that Pascal also reckoned that “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing about.”

Earlier, in Ancient Greece, Socrates (c. 470 BC – 399 BC) had reckoned that "An unexamined life is not worth living". And this linked to an aphorism inscribed above the door to the temple of Apollo at Delphi – “Know Yourself”. Aristophanes (c. 446 BCE – c. 386 BCE) responded, "And you will know yourself, how ignorant and stupid you are."

But that kind of talk is old paradigm.

These days we have the new sciences of evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics linked in consilience with the fast expanding field of neuroscience and the concept of neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC)

It gets increasingly obvious that “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing about.” This can now be restated as “instincts and intuitions which are fast and adaptive can manage reactions to external stimuli using only the unconscious - and it is some time later that the conscious operator gets to know about it”.

My mindbrain works well on its own. It flows while finding ideas and writing them down. I am increasingly easy about trusting that the unconscious will generate sensible ideas and join them into stories.

But I am not in numinous flow all of the time.

Sometimes the ‘self’ comes back into focus complete with low self esteem and the associated depressing thoughts and feelings. The attention centre is flooded with negative stuff. The ruminations slip into their habitual ruts and the downward spiral into depression is upon me.

But the downturns are not as deep as they used to be. When the ‘witness’ is awake the storm clouds can be sensed approaching and this helps to defuse them. Three deep breaths bring the mindbrain back to equanimity in the present moment - more often than not!

But, whether or not I am equanimous, the idle chat v exploratory talk continuum takes different forms depending on whether I am talking to myself, with one other person or with a group.

There can be self talk when I am alone. It can be anywhere on the continuum. Sometimes it is amazing and inspiring – at least to me. Sometimes it tripples with trivialities. It is useful to think of two ‘agencies’ – (a) the ever busy ‘unconscious’ which is the source of the stuff that appears in the attention centre and (b) the unattached and non judgemental ‘witness’ who calmly notices what is going on and knows it to be just mind stuff.

Talk with other individuals tends to be trivial at first but it can quickly get heavy – especially with like minded souls. But ‘those who know do not speak’. Sometimes there can be a sitting silence.

Things can get quite difficult when communicating in groups. Even when the group is broadly like minded the individuals will have different world views - and it can therefore be tough to log in to what they are all saying. There is the danger of creating a ‘crowd’ driven by group-think with rituals and nick nacks. On such occasions it is better to ‘go lonely as the rhinoceros’.

Another agentic variation involves the media – text, audio and video. Most of that stuff does not involve mindfulness of the present moment. Instead there is rationality that promotes the intellect rather than stillness. Such talkers thus miss their subjective experience of peaceful compassion and the beginnings of wisdom. They would do well to heed the Diamond Sutra:

Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

And Thich Nhat Hahn fleshes out the implications in his Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings – the first three are:

The First Mindfulness Training: Openness

Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist teachings as guiding means that help us develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for. We understand that fanaticism in its many forms is the result of perceiving things in a dualistic and discriminative manner. We will train ourselves to look at everything with openness and the insight of interbeing in order to transform dogmatism and violence in ourselves and in the world.

The Second Mindfulness Training: Non-attachment to Views

Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. We are committed to learning and practicing non-attachment to views and being open to others’ experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.

The Third Mindfulness Training: Freedom of Thought

Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are determined not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever – such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination – to adopt our views. We are committed to respecting the right of others to be different, to choose what to believe and how to decide. We will, however, learn to help others let go of and transform fanaticism and narrowness through loving speech and compassionate dialogue.

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AND SO: Beyond the idle chat of ordinary folk is the exploratory talk of super-ordinary folk. And there will be cracking of norms and shifting of paradigms as new cultural forms of stillness and seclusion are created for the spiritual journey.

Slow communication

Recently I have noticed a problem with focusing attention when I am with more than one other person. For example:

(a) While sitting in committee I tried to add comments to a form while several conversations were going on around me. Attention was given to the conversations rather than the form. I have lost the knack of rationing attention when in company.

(b) While sitting in a group of three attention was with one at a time but, while I listened to A, I forgot about Bs point of view and vice versa. It was a fast moving conversation and I had a hard time keeping up. I paid attention to point X and spend time thinking how I would respond to it but this meant that I failed to pay attention to points Y and Z. I have the impression that my ability to pay conscious attention to 7 (+/-2) items at a time is getting less.

(c) While with only one other person I do not have a problem paying attention to what they have to say. I am a good listener but I do not often remember very much. I practice what might be called conceptual listening. I remember that they are angry or joyful or whatever but the fine details drift away.

The inspiration for thinking about attention comes from Goleman’s “Focus – the Hidden Driver of Excellence, and Kahneman’s  “Thinking, Fast and Slow”

Goleman noted “That focus in the midst of a din indicates selective attention, the neural capacity to beam in on just one target while ignoring a staggering sea of incoming stimuli, each one a potential focus in itself.”

He also noted that “This is what William James, a founder of modern psychology, meant when he defined attention as “the sudden taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought”.”

Kahneman’s “book's central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: System 1 is fast, instinctive and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking … From framing choices to substitution, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgment.”

My present ‘problem’ is that I have lost confidence in human judgment – particularly my own when I am being self-conscious ... But, simultaneously, there is increasing confidence in the effortless productivity of the unconscious (wu-wei).

I have an ongoing interest in the source of agency with intention. What is the purpose in life? Why do I bother getting out of bed in the morning? The answer lies in my conditioning – nature, nurture and serendipity acting to integrate, harmonize and channel the unconscious, conscious and self-conscious entities that make up ‘my’ mindbrain. The environment is scanned continuously to identify food (approach) and predators (retreat). People who make the correct decisions survive those who don’t don’t. So has it always been.

My childhood norms have been cracked and now the paradigm is shifting. This is probably due to a combination of factors which include retirement, old age, meditation, Parkinson’s Disease and its medication, exposure to the media, living alone and working from home, being a member of local groups, and keeping a journal.

These days Kahneman’s cognitive biases in systems 1 and 2 are less on automatic than they used to be. But they are noticed more often than before. I am inclined to audaciously claim that the ‘muse’ has commandeered the unconscious elements of system 2 and that the stories that are produced are insightful and robust despite, or perhaps because of, their being subjective in tone.

But anyway the result is that fast and automatic mindbrain activity is now less and there is more thoughtful slow communication. Praise be.

Homage to ICT

In 1984-85 I wrote a Biology Textbook and Teacher’s Guide using a typewriter and the limited set of references that were available in the South Sudan at that time.

In 1985/86 I wrote a set of dissertations using Locoscript on an Amstrad PCW, and the resource materials available as hard copy in the University of Sussex.

From the late 1980s onwards my word processing was by Word Perfect and then MS Word - and my research was limited to what was locally available in Portsoy, Belize and Lesotho.

The move from typewriter to word processor was a sudden, radical and greatly appreciated technological innovation. But the computer was a large standalone box that took up a lot of space on my physical desktop.  This hard technology problem was to be solved by first laptops and now tablets.

But – the real earth shattering innovation was online access to the internet. For me this happened in the late 90s and it has been growing ever since. This morning, however, I noticed that I take a huge amount of stuff for granted. So this blogpost is my homage to a few individuals and organizations whose visionary technology have facilitated and changed how I work and play in the knowledge industry.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google (1998)
"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil".

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia (2001)
“the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.”

Chris Anderson of TED (2001)
“Fostering the spread of great ideas”

Is human nature Buddha nature?

This essay was inspired by a sharing session at the Sangha. This question arose - Is human nature the same as Buddha nature? My gut reaction was that the two are the same. But this raised issues. 

What about the nasty stuff - exploitation, genocide, warfare, anger, lust, greed etc Are these built into human and Buddha nature or are they due to aberrations in post hunting and gathering  social systems where the essentially ‘good’ nature is buried?

I was inspired to approach the topic from several different directions. I have not yet figured how to tie all the loose ends but the process of writing has helped to clarify things.

>>>>> 

The mindbrain of a particular human being is conditioned in part by its nature, in part by its nurture and in part by serendipity. (for optional patterns see here )

The conditioning process ensures that the individual grows and develops in a way that fits him to behave appropriately in a particular physical and social environment.

‘Nature’ provides some hard wiring in the form of instincts and intuitions – eg the adrenalin based fight or flight syndrome. In many cases this allows a person to react quickly and to delay thinking about it till afterwords. He who hesitates is lost! 

More, and more sophisticated, instincts and intuitions are being identified daily (see the work of Kahneman et al). The date of evolutionary origin of particular examples is not always clear but, given neural plasticity, there is likely to be a lot of tweaking of old patterns to suit us for life in the globalised and fast changing computer age.

‘Nurture’ provides learning experiences. It puts environmentally appropriate flesh on the hard wired skeleton – eg it is in our nature to learn a language but it is our nurture that determines which language we learn. 

Other names for the nurturing process include enculturation, programming, indoctrination, brainwashing, education, training, and coaching. At issue is the creation of a pattern of belief and actions that ensures survival of the individual, her family and her hunting and gathering group. The group would have been made up of about 50 individuals that were ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’.

Evolution is a tinkerer for whom good enough is good enough. ‘Truth’ is not part of the early pattern of believing and acting. There are records of many myths and patterns of magic that are farcical by our modern standards - eg human sacrifice to the gods; virgin births etc - but they served particular cultural groups well enough to survive into the 21^st century.

The enculturation process can be viewed from two sides. On the positive side it allows for the preservation of useful cultural products - eg stone hand axes, young males organised in bands as warriors. On the negative side it tends to reify ‘tradition’ and thus to limit the conceptual horizons of its members. Humanity was very conservative for most of its history of hunting and gathering.

The limited horizons of ‘them and us’ thinking is alive and well in our present times. There are zealots who are parochial and xenophobic and who are fairly easily and quickly convinced of the demonic qualities of the enemy (ie ‘them’) and the need for genocide and thus a holocaust.

SO – what is human nature?

Human nature is demonstrated as patterns of beliefs and associated actions. Anthropologists have tried to isolate and classify these to determine which are common to all human cultures and are thus likely to be due to nature rather than nurture. The following table is based on Kluckhohn and Strodbeck (1961) (for later developments see (ref ‘culture and values’  ))

variations in value orientations

A useful metaphor is of a huge mass of unconsciousness modules topped by a small lump of consciousness modules and by an even smaller lump of self-consciousness modules. This image supports the notion that the ‘I’ concept is not all that it was once cracked up to be.

The concept of ‘Flow’ is now well accepted (ref Csikszentmihalyi). It links to the idea of the musician in the groove, the athlete in the zone, and the poet being a channel for his muse. Time, space and self consciousness fade away and the mindbrain is in a creative and non-egoic state. No self, no problem. Excellent work gets done. Something apparently comes from nothing.

But flow is not magic. It is just the conditioned unconscious involved with tasks that are deemed culturally important. But this need not always have desirable outcomes. The prison guards at Auschwitz and the warriors of Genghiz Khan  might well have been in flow. At best this might be viewed as a branch capability of the mindbrain.

A common Eastern theory is that there are 8 consciousnesses. The storehouse consciousness is the vast foundation upon which the lesser consciousnesses rest.

• Five sense-consciousnesses
•  Mind (perception)
•  Manas (self-consciousness) 
•  Storehouse-consciousness

Thich Nhat Hahn uses the image of store consciousness. This contains many seeds. Some good and some not so good. There is the option of watering the good ones so they expand and keeping the not so good ones relatively dry and wizened.

The word ‘mindbrain’ helps us to remember that there are always neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC). These can be thought of as a range of special purpose modules linked by neural pathways. BUT - very little is set in stone. There is neural plasticity – it is never too late to change your mindbrain.

So we now have an image that could be referred to as ‘human nature’ as well as ‘Buddha nature’. The  human mindbrain has evolved with a set of thought/ feeling/ action seeds (its nature) whose flourishing depends on focusing attention on specific modules of the physical and social environment (its nurture).

Throughout human history there has been a minority of mindful meditators who for some reason came to realise that there were better ways to be human; better ways to inhabit the planet. But they were limited to using particular languages with distinctive vocabularies and their thought about patterns and agencies were in many cases linked closely to myths and magic. They served their immediate communities as shamans and witchdoctors who provided treatment and sometimes cures for physical and mental health problems.

However, around 600 BC, there was a global ‘awakening’ when several of the founders of key religions were active. Characters such as the Buddha and Mahavira began to sit quietly and notice what they were noticing and to think about what and how they were thinking. Their activities were precursors to what in our present times are the scientific disciplines of evolution, psychology, and neurology. 

The foundation of the practice is to look inward and thus to know that your cultural conditioning sets unnecessary limits on your manner of ‘being’ in the world. The practice of ‘mindfulness’ is becoming more popular in the West. And, given ICT, the potential for its expanding, even for going viral, is enormous.

SO – is human nature Buddha nature?

YES – warts and all!

And in both cases there is need to practice using your mindbrain in a sometimes counterintuitive way where the principle is to promote the positive and demote the negative so as to generate compassion,  wisdom and peace in your self and in others.

Captured attention

We can think of the mindbrain as a collection of specialised but interconnected bits most of which are in constant churn.

The purpose of the churn is to interpret and monitor inputs from the sense organs and estimate how they match up with memories of stuff that happened in the past. 

The purpose of this monitoring is to decide whether to approach, ignore or avoid the thing or event that is immediately present.

The mindbrain has evolved to deal with the immediate present. And ‘immediate’ can be very close – to within a fraction of a second when avoiding predators. A variety of instincts and intuitions have evolved to ensure that there is no paralysis by analysis. React first and think about it after. 

It might be argued that the hard wired stuff evolved to suit us to life as hunters and gatherers and that it is no longer relevant. This is the idea of a stone age brain in a computer age world. But, given that much of the mindbrain activity deals with hierarchy, status and relationships, things might not be all that different. 

Some of my recent inputs have involved human groups of about 20. One group was of meditators trying to be more ‘mindful’. The other group was of poets and songwriters creatively engaged in producing works of art.

Both groups were involved in changing minds. In both cases the task involved shutting down the ego-centric, self-ish, chatterbox, monkey mind. The implicit assumption was that when there is stillness and peace the muse, who resides in the unconscious, would be better able to capture the attention centre and commandeer it for operating in ‘creative’ mode. 

The output and product of the meditators would be a wise, peaceful and compassionate state of mind which would lead to more peace in oneself and in the world as a whole. The output and product of the poets and songwriters was lyrics and tunes and it was accepted that the muse is a fickle beast. Sometimes she (the muse is usually thought to be female) churns the stuff out and at other times she is silent. As it happened about 40 person days generated 10 new songs.

Other recent inputs to my mindbrain have come from reading about consciousness and the muse. The source has been the Scientific American Editors (2013-11-18) who have compiled a book of essays about “The Secrets of Consciousness” (Kindle Edition.) It is cutting edge and highly quotable.

“In everyday life, our brains perceive and process a great deal of information that never reaches our consciousness. Neuroscientists refer to these subconscious data as implicit perception and implicit learning.”

The creative meditators, poets and songwriters were all familiar with the idea that the mind has a mind of its own and that the muse does a lot of her work in the unconscious and deposits her creative results in your attention centre long enough to allow it to be transcribed.

“Attention is an important feature of consciousness. Events that do not command our attention hardly exist for us, even if they influence how we perceive, feel or react.”

People with chatterbox monkey minds clutter up the attention centre and leave no conscious space for the Muse to occupy. Creative types tend to develop ‘tricks’ to enable the muse to work her ‘magic’.

“The mind has many nooks and crannies; some— probably the minority— are consciously accessible, whereas most are hidden from introspection, lost in the vast catacombs of the brain. Yet they can powerfully influence your behaviour, making you do things without knowing why.”

I cannot speak for the other group members about this. But I am increasingly coming to the conclusion (in both head and gut) that I am never going to be a totally rational person. That of which I am conscious is a tiny part of the mindbrain. The good news is that I am now more relaxed about, and comfortable with, the idea that the unconscious churns out a never ending stream of interesting stuff. ‘I’ simply bear witness.  

My muse seems to be bi-polar. Sometimes she is overactive and at other times she withdraws into herself. My interactions with her were mainly as hobbies although she also contributed to many of my work projects. Here are links to some of my creative outputs that are on line.

Songs and tunes

•   Toonloon Tunes (75 tunes in 1994)
•  Cure for the Blues Album (songs from 1970s and 1990s)
•  Never Ending Highway Album (songs from 1970s and 1990s)

Dharma stories (with compilations)

•  The essence of faiths – Whispers from Everywhere (18 stories)
• Let it begin with me – A rough guide to mind training and meditation (66 stories)
• Existential soft rock – mental re-construction through just sitting – be still and know (507 posts)
• Changing minds  – our own and other people’s. (223 posts as at 20 Feb 2014)

Photographs

• Flickr
• Picasa