Head Voices

Ian the young interviewer and William the elderly witness personify interactions in the human mindbrain. Oliver the omniscient introduces himself.  

Ian: “Am I a feature of your imagination?”

William: “Yes but then so am I.”

Ian: “So why do you bother to imagine us?”

William: “You - Ian - came into being a few days ago as a literary device. Rather than state my topics in an essay ‘I’ can make ‘my’ points through answering your questions. As William the witness I have been present on and off for several years. The cast of characters that make up the illusion of self or ego could possibly be expanded.”

Ian: “Can you give an example.”

William:  “An obvious one is Ulric the unconscious who never sleeps. He continuously churns inputs from the sense organs together with thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that are stored in memory. This leads to the creation of stories. Most of them are inconsequential but every now and again they will point to things which are rated urgent and important. (Eg a lion looking for lunch) These are passed to the executive functions in the pre-frontal cortex where particular, personal policies, programmes and projects are prepared.”

Ian: “Aha – that’s cute. Ulric the unconscious is a non-egoic, workaholic, maintenance engineer. Who else?”

William: “There is Victor the vital force that gets me out of bed in the morning with my heart pumping blood and passing it through the lungs where carbon dioxide is removed and oxygen is added. Victor also prompts me to find and digest food, to extract the ‘goodness’ and pass out the leftovers as pee and poop. Victor is also in control of many other life processes such as, irritability, locomotion and reproduction. The reproduction process includes transforming a fertilised egg into a baby in nine months. Victor does not say much. He is part of the old, ancestral mindbrain and predates language by a long way.”

Ian: “So we could say that Ulric the unconscious is an upmarket version of Victor and he integrates the modern, human mindbrain with the ancient parts. Victor is the engine and Ulric is the engineer.”

William: “that is cute. Next in the chain is Stanley the story teller who rose to prominence in the days following the evolution of language. He is capable of fast reaction or more considered response to the thoughts, feelings and moods that seep out of Ulric’s churn. Stanley does most of his work in the unconscious but when conditions are appropriate he can commandeer the attention centre in whole or in part.”

Ian: “So there is a chain – Victor the engine, Ulric the engineer, Stanley the PR man.”

William: “Yup – that works. When Stanley commandeers the whole of the attention centre he calls up Zorba the zombie who is blown around like a dry leaf on a windy day. Zorba does not pay attention to what is going on and is infested with monkey mind and the notion that the mind has a mind of its own.”

Ian: “OK - we can add to the chain - Victor the engine, Ulric the engineer, Stanley the PR man then Zorba the dim customer.”

William: “Right – and the story so far is the one that most animals and people use. This is possibly what it is like to have basic animal consciousness.”

Ian: “So – to summarise - non-stop Victor and Ulric churn data so as to have something to monitor in the environment. Stanley then creates stories which guide Zorba’s reactions and responses.”

William: “and the stories cover the idea of there being an abiding self, ego or I. Zorba the zombie runs on autopilot and illusion - but it would appear to be a winning formula – at least thus far – the human population is still expanding.”

Ian: “That feels disappointing. I seem to want to believe that there is some greater purpose.”

William: “No problems - there can be much more. Alfred is awake and aware. He notices and thinks about TFM. He is a learning machine. He is capable of sophisticated insights that go beyond the elemental reflexes and instincts. Sometimes he experiences numinosity and sometimes flow.”

Ian:”Aha – we enter the area of mind training through meditation where there are two tasks – stilling and seeing.”

William: “Yup I am William the witness. I am the cool dude who watches what happens with Zorba and Alfred as they slip across the attention centre. So long as I remember to drop off body and mind ‘I’ operate peacefully and non judgementally and recognise mind stuff for what it is – ie not ‘real’.”

Ian: “You presumably spend a lot of time just sitting and dropping off body and mind.

William: Yup – I am attracted to Zen Buddhism and to Dogen Zenji from 13th century Japan.

Ian: “But calm abiding is not enough. There is need for action, for engaged Buddhism.”

William: “Oliver the omniscient appears after Alfred and William. He knows that TFM is just mind stuff and he has a flexible, liberal Weltanschaung  which is open to ‘meaningful’ TFM. He is rooted in science but transcends academic, western philosophy.”

Oliver: “Hi chaps! I thought to introduce myself. At the mega level I reckon that we are dealing with a psychology of perception. Most of us muddy our waters and lose focus and clarity. If we are to achieve clarity we must sit still and let the mud settle. There are now many developments of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR course. ‘Mindfulness’ is often characterised as Buddhism lite. I have not yet made up my mind (which part?) but there is still energy to keep trying. Do you two feel the energy?”

William and Ian: Yup

Alfred: me too and I can feel bodily stirrings which I interpret as Victor, Ulric, Stanley and Zorba being up for it as well. Coordinated voices – Yoh. If you sit still you will know them.

A writing dialogue

Is it time for a new compilation? What is now different about the thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that float up from the unconscious? Am I whirling on a repetitive circle or am I slowly elevating on a progressive spiral?

A conversation follows between different aspects of my ‘self’ – the inner witness (William) and a neutral interviewer (Ian).

William admits that, “I have been reading kindle books about how to write”. This piques Ian’s curiosity and raises the question “Have you learned anything new and exciting? “Yes” was the reply, “but not as much as I might have.”

“Why not?”

“Because attention wanders and I dose a lot.”

“Sloth and Torpor – one of the Buddhist hindrances - what do you do about it?”

William pauses to gather his thoughts. “The main thing is that I don’t worry about it. My sleep pattern is disturbed by Parkinsons and its medication. So I go with that flow. There are few urgent calls on my time so dosing is rarely a problem.”

Ian is intrigued. “How do you arrange things such that you do not worry about it?”

William smiles. “The one word answer – ‘mindfulness’. The two word answer non-egoic mindfulness. Remember to be the witness and thus take the sting out of the monkey mind’s thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). They then pass away and are no longer a threat to ‘calm abiding’.

Ian: “What happens when you forget to be the mindful witness?”

William: “Ego returns and brings discomforts through putting attention in the past or future.”

Ian: “Does that happen often?”

William: “Not as much as it used to. Practice has paid off. Several days can pass without existential ennui.”

Ian: “What do you do when the ennui appears?

William: “Just sit. Notice it, label it and let it go. Sometimes I put attention somewhere else. Wash the dishes; mow the grass; make a doodle; read a book; listen to a dharma talk – or a TED talk; write a story.”

Ian: “Ah yes – writing. What have you learned from your recent studies?”

William pauses to gather TFM and to focus his reply: “The basic principle is ‘show don’t tell’. Even in non-fiction report writing. Anecdotes and dialogue capture and hold a reader’s attention.”

Ian: “What are your feelings about this piece of dialogue writing?”

William: “There seems to be motivation to read more about it and to develop my skills. The topic might merit a compilation.

War without bloodshed

There are two types of thoughts that can be shared – other people’s and your own.

It is through sharing other people’s thoughts that they become viral and a crowd might form to refute them or to develop and fund them.

In our ever expanding, global democracy there are citizens posting radical thoughts about the future of capitalism, and others posting photos of cute kittens.  An ever increasing host of normal and abnormal people are adding stitches to life’s rich tapestry which is now ICT assisted. Representative democracy is being replaced by more participatory forms.

Normal people are animated by silver-tongued, sub-cultural doses of common sense. Their thoughts feelings and moods (TFM) are influenced by the propaganda of the ruling elite. The various newspapers cater to different audiences and they tend towards bigotry, bias and xenophobia.

Abnormal people are animated by uncommon sense. They are a creative source of alternative world views when the propaganda says there is no alternative. Their thoughts, feelings and moods are critical of the ruling elite. They analyse the evidence and speak truth to power.

I think these things because I live in post-referendum Scotland where most ordinary people are now wise to the lies being spun by the Westminster Establishment. No more business as usual. Withdraw from party political procedures and make space for political entrepreneurs who make effective use of ICT.

There is still a long way to go but the proportion of ordinary people who now get involved with political issues is noticeably expanding. Power to the people. Citizens of the world unite.

…oooOooo…

“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Charles De Gaulle French general & politician (1890 – 1970)

 “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao Tse-Tung
Chinese Communist politician (1893 - 1976)

 “If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.”  Barack Obama (1961 - ), University of Michigan Commencement, 2010.

Where your head comes from

We are social animals. Partly due to nature (genes) and partly due to nurture (learning). There are many ways of being social, and of arranging the nurturing. Amongst these is more or less formal schooling at primary, secondary and further levels. How powerful are these particular enculturation processes? Can the education system be a revolutionary hotbed or is it condemned to reproduce the existing systems? 

In what follows I present five short biographies by way of noting similarities and differences. And I  invite you to sketch your own story. Who was an influence on you, when, and in what way? In short, “Where does your head come from”?

Boris Johnston was a newborn in 1964. His genes set the broad foundations upon which his culture built copies of itself. His influential family would have presented the first set of inputs; then he was banished to an exclusive, single sex, private, boarding school (Eton); then to Oxford University to read Classics and to be initiated as a member of the Bullingdon Club by trashing up-market restaurants and burning a £50 note in front of a beggar. He has since tried to distance himself from the club, calling it "a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness." After Oxford he was a journalist before getting involved in politics (Conservative party) and becoming Mayor of London.

David Cameron was a newborn in 1966. Then he was despatched to an exclusive, single sex, private boarding school (Eton); then to Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and to be a member of the Bullingdon Club at the same time as Johnston. After Oxford he was a researcher and special advisor to the Conservative Party before becoming an MP and then Prime Minister.

Both the Confucians and the Jesuits are quoted as saying, “Give me the child till he is 5 (or maybe 7?) and I will give you the man.” This usually involves removing the child from the family home and subjecting it to Spartan, monastic and often sadistic routines in single sex, private, boarding schools.

I was a newborn in 1949. I admit to bias and stereotyping because (a) I went to the local, co-educational, comprehensive, day school (b) I read Zoology at Aberdeen University and (c) I served as a teacher then as an international education advisor in five countries.

I worked in two rural, co-educational, government, boarding schools in Zambia in the late 70s. The government policy at the time was to deliberately ship secondary school students away from their home areas so as to (a) gain experience of students from different tribal regions of the country and (b) be removed from their traditional tribal roots and thus become ‘modern’ in thought, speech and behaviour.

Mary Ngoroje was a newborn in 1960. She was born and brought up in rural Zambia. She passed the primary school leaving exam and appeared in my boarding school in 1976. I remember her one evening standing at the door of her dormitory switching the electric light on and off in amazement. She had a lot to learn about modernity eg how to use toilet paper, how to obey the clock, and how to study.

Tedson Mphongo was also newborn in about 1960. He was born and brought up on the modern Copper Belt and was bemused to follow his schooling in a rural environment. I remember him on several occasions asking astute questions about the creation v evolution debate. He was playing me off against Sister Caritas, an English Nun who ran the English Department. I imagine that he has done well for himself.

Whilst studying Zoology at Aberdeen I committed to zero population growth. So I have no children of my own. I have, however, spent more than 10 years ‘educating’ adolescents in Scotland, Jamaica, Zambia, and the S Sudan, and another ten years ‘advising’ the governments of S Sudan, Belize and Lesotho on how to manage their education systems.

All cultures are different and most are complicated. There is division of labour and different sets of rules for me, us and them. People argue about status and their place in the hierarchy. There is therefore a need for what is variously called education, training, enculturation, brainwashing, or enlightenment.

SO – where does your head come from, would you rather have a different one, and how would you arrange the change?

…oooOooo…

The metadata for this blog shows that there have been over 18000 page views since Jan 2013 and that there are now about 50 page views per day. The audience is in many countries. The USA and UK stand out but significant also rans include – Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France and Turkey.

It would be interesting to hear about where YOUR head comes from. You can use a comments box at the bottom of this post. Comments on other posts would also be welcome.

Ruling Class and Power Elite

Hunting and gathering groups might have had limited division of labour and been egalitarian - and some of our mindbrain’s hard wiring might reflect the fact. However, with the evolution of settled agriculture and the various cultural forms that followed, division of labour increased and a gap opened between the haves and the have nots; between the wealthy and the cash strapped; between the powerful and the powerless.

In complex societies the wealthy people exercise power by making and enforcing the rules that shape government. Such systems are called plutocracies and the plutocrats form a ruling elite

There is a tendency for the rich to get richer and  the poor to get poorer. This is possible because some ebullient entrepreneurs take possession of the means of production – land, labour and capital – and keep most of the profit for themselves. This glaring unfairness sprouts social unrest. Groups of people who share the same concerns get organised and make changes. The group is a ‘class’ and their revolutionary endeavours are a ‘class struggle’.

There is a theory that after several class struggles fairness and equity will become the norm and peace and love will rule the planet. But there are several steps between then and now. The various stakeholders have to figure how to interact with each other, have to iron out their various claims, concerns and issues, and have to ensure that their class issues are adopted by the younger generations.

Some groups are more savvy than others and these days there can be increased and widespread participation through social networks. More than ever before the crew of spaceship earth is ready to explore the options and "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend (could be) the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land." (Mao Tse Tung, 1957)

Such a procedure will quickly refute the intellectually impoverished notion that there is no alternative to neoliberal austerity and free trade. A wide range of ideas will give cultural evolution plenty options when ensuring the survival of the fittest policies and programmes.

This story is rooted in thought patterns from the 1960s which were in turn rooted in earlier phases of thinking. The immediate stimulus was a re-reading of Tom Bottomore (1964) Elites and Society. At the time there were definitional debates which suggested that the traditional ruling class (landed aristocracy) was a spent force. And, in the last 50 years, the structure and functions of the increasingly global elites are considerably other than was predicted.

Maybe it is a Scottish Presbyterian thing but I am easily upset by elitist abuse of power.

Two notes in passing.

Tom Bottomore was an acquaintance of Ralph Miliband whose youngest son Ed is now leader of the Labour party.

I am alive and well in a vibrantly political Scotland where the shortcomings of representative government are pushed hard in our face by the Westminster establishment and there is a lively and high quality mass of useful stuff pumping through the social networks which are funded by crowd sourcing which ensures that cream rises.

Busy retreat

Today in the post was a replacement credit card and a council tax bill. ‘They’ are tracking me on their databases. But it is impersonal and I’ve got nothing to hide. No problem.

The Amazon database gives the impression of being personal. It uses my shopping history to predict what else I might buy. That is uncanny for books and especially for kindle titles. But the illusion is rooted in the outputs from a programmed database. But I like it. No problem.

Today on the social networks there were messages from two analogue friends. They are both seekers in their various ways. They have been known to flick through my blog. They are not from the village. We have different world views. We share them. No problem.

The individual items are not a problem but cumulatively they eat into the day. They generate busy-ness and distraction. They don’t have too. They could be graciously dealt with in a state of mindfulness. But I often forget to engage the mindbrain.

My intention is to simplify my life and live in retreat. To avoid distractions. I am getting there but it is a sair chav. It is easier said than done. Why is this?  What might Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology have to say about it?

What happens and why?

While cruising the social networks this morning it was glaringly obvious that politicians and media people were obfuscating the contemporary hot topics.

My attention centre reverberated with the idea that ‘stuff happens as a result of agents acting on intentions’. ‘I’ was motivated to unpack those ideas as they feature idiosyncratically in my mindbrain and systematically in academic disciplines.

• An intention is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or actions in the future. Intention involves mental activities such as planning and forethought.
• Obfuscation is to make something obscure or unclear, especially by making it unnecessarily complicated.
• Agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices
• Agents (agentic entities) can be human or non-human
• Non human agentic entities are not aware of intentions - things happen by serendipity or chance, eg droughts, floods, famines, plagues, attack by predators. These happenings can be viewed as Acts of a God who is an omniscient, supernatural being working in mysterious ways and with divinely inspired intentions. But that story line leads to old time religion so we will pass over it here.
• Human agents are culturally conditioned individual persons, groups, corporations, or states (governments)
• Cultural conditioning is an ongoing process. It involves changing minds in advance of changing intentions and thus actions.
• Persons, groups, corporations, and states can have opposing intentions. But only states can legally force their intentions on others. The enforcement process can be more or less elegant.

SO - What happens and why?

The external world constantly changes and human culture patterns evolve to keep up. Adapt or die! There are several types of human agents of change giving rise to intentional variations which are subject to selection and to survival of the fittest.

There is a continuum of ways of changing minds ranging from training (vocational), through education (enculturation) and on to enlightenment (liberation).

Training and education involve rearranging the seats on the Titanic. Those who are enlightened feel no need to cross the Atlantic. They are liberated from their natal cultural conditioning. They witness their thought processes and know that ‘reality’ is mind made – mostly in the unconscious. By sitting quietly they come to know things as they really are, and the peace that passes understanding.

What happens? – I change my own mind and encourage others to change theirs. Why? To cut through the obfuscation and make the world a better place.

Knowing it all

I feel uncomfortable when meditating mystics claim that they have achieved omniscience. They presumably have some special meaning for the word. It literally means all-knowing - and not even Wikipedia claims that.

So what does Wikipedia have to say about omniscience? Aha – since March 2011 “This article needs additional citations for verification”. But it has some interesting ideas anyway -like the distinction between:

• inherent omniscience - the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known, and
• total omniscience - actually knowing everything that can be known.

Total omniscience does not make sense in that there is an infinite amount of stuff that can be known but, to survive, any given individual will need to know only a tiny amount of it. And is it nature or nurture that is responsible for depositing the infinite knowledge bank in a particular mindbrain? I cannot imagine why such a system would have evolved.

It might be useful from a socio-political point of view to imagine that there is an omniscient and omnipotent, supernatural, father-figure as the agent behind acts of God. That line of thinking is the stuff of myth, magic and the divine right of Kings. There has been and still is a lot of it about but it now seems old fashioned and childlike so I will pass on.

Inherent omniscience is ‘the ability to know anything that one chooses to know’. So what might someone choose to know? There is a continuum of possibilities with parochial pragmatism at one end and cosmopolitan abstraction at the other.

Parochial pragmatism involves fitting into your culture and having your basic needs met. You go along with your group’s myth and magic story and take pride in being normal. Salt of the earth cannon fodder in the hegemonic system.

Cosmopolitan abstraction comes in three age related flavours:

• Mildy sceptical and radical, especially when young;
• Strongly critical of the status quo and supportive of reformation, especially when middle aged;
• Acutely aware of what goes on in your mindbrain and knowing that you wear mind forged manacles, especially in the wisdom years.

The first two options involve elementary thinking. There is fine tuning within the pre-existing, cultural paradigm. This is not what I would call omniscience.

The third option is transcendent. More than a change of gear there is a change of vehicle or perhaps the realisation that there is nowhere to go. Present moment, wonderful moment.

I was free to choose to sit quietly to notice what I notice and to think about thinking. Stop the mind from wandering. Focus. Flow. Flourish. The unconscious is constantly churning and dropping mental stuff into the attention centre. Short stories appear and I post them to a blog. Pebbles in other emerging ponds.

Mindfulness makes it possible to know all that matters to be known. It facilitates both WHAT to know (ontology) and HOW to know it (epistemology).

Changing Minds – Yoh!

“That man thinks too much, such men are dangerous"

Unspeakable speech

Words can create problems. This is especially true when dealing with other-worldly, transcendent and abstract stuff. Countless scholars over the last 3000 years in various cultures have been analyzing what goes on in their mindbrains and writing about it. The various literatures from east and west are therefore vast and in most cases impenetrable to plain speaking, ordinary folk.

This problem is seemingly to be expected because the other-worldly ‘truth’ is unspeakable. Languages as they exist today just cannot cope. Taoism reckons that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality.” And it follows that “those who know do not speak; and those who speak do not know.”

For example the Dalai Lama speaks of calm abiding and special insight giving rise to an omniscient state. But this is after you develop the ability to counter disturbing emotions and to discipline the mind. That seems like a fairly digestible couple of sentences but almost every word is a Pandora’s box. The following bullets show the problem. In digesting the first batch of words and phrases a new set emerges to chew over.

• Calm abiding: a term which theoretically includes all types of ‘meditative stabilization’ and refers to ‘a single pointed state of concentration’.
• Special insight: a ‘special wisdom’ which sees ‘the ultimate nature of phenomena’.
• Omniscient state: a condition of knowing everything.
• Disturbing emotions: feelings and moods that spontaneously ‘capture attention’.
• Discipline the mind: stop the chit chat of the monkey mind and hold attention on the topic of choice.

I have taken to inventing acronyms so as to avoid using words and phrases that have many different meanings. Recent ones include:

• KFM = knowledge, feelings, moods. Thinking. The mental stuff that comes from the unconscious and goes to the attention centre for a short while.
• EOT = extra ordinary thinking. Uncommon sense. Counterintuitive. Metacognitive. Non-egoic. Transcendent.
• EOTER = extra ordinary thinker. Cool Dude. Flexible world view. Capable of functioning in non-egoic flow.

My present units of KFM link to EOT focused on ‘changing minds’. I aspire to being an EOTER who changes his own mind such that he can help others to change theirs.

I feel the need to avoid eastern jargon in my spoken and written outputs. To this end I have taken an eclectic, multidisciplinary approach. I am thus developing a highly individualized vocabulary and language. I might at some stage put together a glossary of main ideas.  In the meantime, here is an impromptu list of words and phrases that happened to ‘come to mind’.

• Attention centre
• Beyond space and time
• Big History
• Causes and conditions
• CBB = can’t be bothered
• Changing minds
• Chit chat
• Churn
• Consilience
• Cool dude
• Counterintuition
• Emancipation
• Enculturatioin
• Enlightenment (3)
• Evolutionary psychology
• Flourishing
• Flow
• Foraging, farming, finance
• Grace or grudge
• Know yourself
• Language
• Liberation
• Metacognition
• Mindbrain
• Monkey mind
• Muse
• NCC = neural correlates of consciousness
• Neural plasticity
• Neurology
• Non egoic state of mind
• Paradigm
• Perception
• Post-modernism
• Renunciation
• Retreat
• Spiritual journey
• Uncommon sense
• Weltanschaung
• Witness - imaginary
• World view

There is much more to EOT than what happens in philosophy departments of western universities.

For example Walter Truett Anderson(1996) (Ref http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/third_light.htm) reckons that “we have not one Enlightenment project but three: a Western one based on rational thought, an Eastern one based on seeing through the illusion of the Self, and a Postmodern one based on the concept of socially constructed reality. And despite their many differences, they share the common goal of liberation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the famous revolutionary pronouncement that: "Men are born free, and everywhere are in chains." A couple of centuries later that still holds truth for us, but now we see that the strongest chains are symbolic ones, mind forged manacles."

SO – methinks we are not yet at the stage of EOT conveyed in plain speaking for ordinary folk. My blog unpacks the words and phrases listed above and the number of page views is rising. (There are presently about 50/day)

AND I am still motivated to manage the KFM so as to become an EOTER.

Know yourself!