Witnesses – outer and inner

Human beings are social animals. We evolved to operate in groups of about 50 to a 100. Our brains and nervous systems are hard wired with meta-cognitive instincts and intuitions (nature) which provide a skeleton to be fleshed out by enculturation and education (nurture).

There are as many patterns of culture as there are cultural groups. So there is plenty of variation on which natural selection can operate. The groups that survive are those where the members, on the whole, are committed to the status quo and buy into the notion of us (good) and them (bad). Success will be built on parochial xenophobia associated with territorial control of resources.

If there is to be long term sustainability of the cultural group there is need of a lunatic (paranoid?) fringe of creative revolutionaries to bend and twist the traditional ways of doing things. They will be effective as norm crackers and paradigm shifters. The hegemonic elites will seek to maintain their privileged positions using systems of brutal or elegant power to deal with the expanding horizons of citizens in this increasingly globalised world.

In these modern times we are all members of several cultural and sub-cultural groups. We are hard wired and socially encouraged to fit in and there are forces that help us along the way. One of the main forces for conformity is the authoritative witness. The idea is that there are people (forces) watching and judging (witnessing) all our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. The thought police!

When we are infants our parents and siblings are outer witnesses. Then there are your neighbours – with rural and urban variations. And, as we spread our social wings, there are many more real witnesses and potential judges - doctor, minister, teacher, policeman, bouncer, councillor, counsellor, therapist, social worker and lawyer. And, if you have been conditioned to being Christian, there will be the imagined Jesus and his Dad and maybe a host of angels or devils. At a more mundane level there is CCTV almost everywhere. Big brother is watching you.

And then there are two types of inner witness.

You can always imagine what the outer witnesses might be thinking and be channelled this way rather than that as a result. In extreme cases your can have your long dead mother whispering in your right ear and the omniscient God or devil whispering in your left ear. These tend to be conservative forces that confine you to a relatively parochial world view.

The other type of inner witness presents the possibility of existential enlightenment and freedom from parochiality. This inner witness is associated with mindfulness meditation. It is ‘as if’ there are three ‘yous’.

• The first is the unconscious source of the thoughts and feelings that are projected into the attention centre. The mind that has a mind of its own.
• The second is the self-conscious you (self or ego) that experiences the thoughts and feelings and can be overwhelmed by them.
• The third is the witness who is cool, curious and non-judgemental and notices what is going on. This inner witness knows that the thoughts and feeling are mind made rather than objectively real. This allows a blissful state of non-attachment to develop.

While we are awake our sense organs are busy ‘noticing’ what is happening in the external environment. Having noticed things and events we can then judge them as good (eg food), as bad (eg predators) or as neutral (neither good nor bad). And we can then react or respond by seeking to acquire or avoid the thing or event. (the fight or flight response). The process can be captured in four linked action verbs:

When there is ‘noticing’ there are limits. For example, as humans, we cannot physically ‘see’ beyond the range of visible light and we can be mistaken in what we think we see (eg a snake which turns out to be a rope.)

There is also the problem that it is not the eye that sees. The many light sensitive cells in the retina react to different aspects of that which is ‘seen’. That which is sensed is coded into on/off electrical signals which are routed to a part of the brain that can decode them. And there are associated signals passing between the visual part of the brain and other parts – especially memory.

‘Judging’ implies comparison, is a key aspect of ‘learning’, and involves memory – short, medium and long term. Sights, sounds and smells etc are relayed by electrical code to their specialist modular areas such that, following an inter-modular synthesis, a ‘situation’ can be identified. It will be holistic and multi-sensory. This situation can then be used as a search template which highlights similar items from the various memories. A comparative judgement can then be made about whether the present situation is good, bad or neutral.

Reactions are fast and do not involve much cognition – act first, think later. Responses are slower and involve a more thoughtful review of the evidence before reaching a conclusion and developing an action plan – please engage brain before opening mouth. In either case the result involves electrical signals influencing the contraction of muscles and the release of a wide range of chemicals.

Elegant power happens when the ruling elite convinces the subservient masses that the inequities in the system are due to a law of nature or an act of an omniscient supreme being who works in mysterious ways. It is not so long ago that people believed in the divine right of kings (and queens?). There are still people who are conditioned to believe in supernatural beings. That is the outdated stuff of myth and magic. In that way lies inflexible and small minded bigotry.

But there is an increasing number of open minded world citizens who bear compassionate witness to what goes on in their mindbrain. It is a mode of thinking, feeling and being that goes by many names. A useful name is mindfulness. And the essential force lies in cultivating the inner witness who finds liberation, flexibility and peace.