online shopping glitch

An online shopping glitch has caught my attention and occupies my mind. I have just put the ball back into ‘their’ court. In theory I can therefore drop the issue while waiting for a reply. But dropping the issue is easier said than done.

Fortunately I can find relief by kicking the brain upstairs so as to get things in a larger perspective.  This involves imagining ‘doing a helicopter’ or taking a ‘cosmic zoom’.

Online shopping is a buying/selling process and therefore involves division of labour. It could be a barter situation (I will teach your kids if you will build my house) but in fact it is an exchange of goods for cash. It could be done face to face with known members of the community (my granny knew your granny) but in fact I am dealing with strangers or with their machines and databases. I am hard wired to be suspicious of ‘them’. (Beware of strangers.)

I do most of my online shopping through Amazon and I use Paypal to oversee the process of shifting cash from my bank account through my credit card and on to the seller who contracts a courier to collect and deliver the goods. Trust is an issue which merges with the ‘good name’ of the seller. This can be measured through customer feedback entered in a database.

Lots of stuff comes from Chinese factories on giant container ships which are filled and emptied in deep water ports which bristle with giant cranes. Large, articulated trucks then deliver the containers to the distribution hubs of the mega stores.

There is something pleasing about seeing the big picture. It frees the mindbrain from churning the intimate details. The ego-aware and parochial points of view have their uses, but it is good to get away from them now and again. This can be done by highlighting alternative and superior non-egoic themes.

SO – it worked. Before – there was the egoic and anxious mood related to the intimate details. After – there was a relaxed mood related to global economics and to a non-egoic frame of mind.

I am amazed and grateful that the process of buying and selling has evolved to its present level of sophistication. The glitch that initiated this essay is most unusual. There are few problems. The idea of an awesome set of miracles lingers on the margins of consciousness.

‘I’ have three university degrees and I taught science for 20 years but ‘I’ still occasionally lean towards the myths and magic of my ancestors. These go back 100,000 years to the time of foraging and before language. It is hard to calmly comprehend the speed and sophistication of evolution and ‘progress’ - especially over the last 3000 years which is no time at all by geological standards.

SO – a pernicious online shopping glitch in the here and now led to inspirational thoughts about the ‘magic’ of human evolution. Cool!

Default mode network

I am often ‘sitting quietly doing nothing’ other than noticing the breathing. It is then obvious that the unconscious is active because it inserts units of thought, feeling and mood (TFM) into the attention centre. The unconscious appears to have a mind and an agenda of its own although it is not always clear what these are.

When tightly focussed on a particular problem or activity I often experience an existential peacefulness due to being non-egoic and outwith time and space. There is ‘flow’ in the ‘zone’ regarding a topic. A form of non-self-consciousness is in control.

But, most often, there is the default monkey mind where the Zombie follows an autopilot programme put together in the unconscious.

For some time my image of the mindbrain has been of an iceberg - with consciousness as the small bit above the surface and with the unconscious as the huge mass beneath.

The feeling was that the conscious bit was reasonable and rational, and that it dealt well with the high level executive functions. The unconscious bit served to match up and evaluate incoming stimuli relative to memories. This set the feeling tone as positive, neutral or negative.

Note that this matches with Kahneman’s two systems of thought – fast, intuitive reactions v slow, rational responses.

From a survival point of view there would be need for fast reactions in life threatening emergencies and for slow responses in intellectually challenging situations. The fast reactions often happen before consciousness kicks in.

The above model assumes that the ongoing churn of the unconscious is foundational and that now and again it channels some stuff to consciousness for higher level processing.

HOWEVER - Recent research offers some fine tuning on the above model; this includes dividing the unconscious into networks which are made up of centres and associative areas.

The Default Mode Network (DMN) is different from other networks in that it is most active when the rest of the mindbrain is at ease, and least active when the rest is most active. The DMN consists of six areas of the cortex that are most active when no external tasks demand attention; and the DMN responds by going back to a high default activity level

Earlier thinking was that when we are not busy doing demanding things, our brain is “free”, or more passive; and we automatically think that we mainly use the brain to solve difficult tasks, or control goal-directed activities. However the new thinking is that the DMN occupies a substantial part of our cortex and spends every free moment on things other than being involved in external tasks.

There are three main DMN functions. It helps build our self perceptions; it builds a dynamic store of autobiographic episodic memories; and it integrates memories from our lives in a self-relevant way. This subjectively feels like mind wandering, daydreaming and reminiscence. These play a role in making a model of the world in which we live, and in predicting the future. They are also a source of creativity and of spontaneous thoughts about interesting problems.

The DMN includes five cooperating areas of the cortex. Two other networks in the association area are the attention and salience networks

The attention network controls how well we attend to specific tasks. Studies indicate that certain areas of the cortex have increased activity when we perform tasks with the attention focused in a specific direction or on specific aspects of the task.

These areas are active all the time, no matter what we are doing. But their activity increases, as does their impact, when we focus on distinct tasks. This feels like losing yourself in your task or work, and you just focus on what you are doing.

The salience network helps you to figure out how relevant a particular piece of information, or a thing you are looking at or thinking about, is to you.

To summarize:

• the attention network makes it possible for us to relate directly to the world around us, i.e., here and now,
• the default mode network makes it possible to relate to ourselves and our memories and previous experiences, i.e., the past and future.
• the salience network makes us switch between the two others according to our needs.

This brings us closer to the perception we have of how we integrate information from the world around us with ourselves. We must be capable of relating to the external world, as well as our bodies, with some sort of self-image. Something could be important to you because you like it, or because you don’t like it and it is potentially dangerous. Those are critical decisions for survival.

New knowledge about the default mode network and the self-reflecting thoughts that it stimulates may help us to understand how we get by in our daily lives.

Ref: http://www.themeditationblog.com/the-brains-default-mode-network-what-does-it-mean-to-us/    Marcus Raichle interviewed by Svend Davanger on March 9, 2015

Productive diversions

There is anxiety. Part of my online shopping has been misdirected. I feel the need to be in the house when it eventually arrives – five litres of weedkiller and a tripod support for my Tablet.

So things are not going according to plan and thus - uncertainty – dis-ease - panic - an adrenalin rush. Unspecified dread about possible futures. An unhinged mood.

But - it is just mindbrain biochemistry. It need not command all the attention.

Therefore – diversion. “Stop the mind from wandering”.  Concentrate the mindbrain on something else. Read another chapter of the book about epigenetics. Doodle. Write this essay.

There could be a photo shoot in the garden. The photographer’s gaze is a powerful diversion.

Before the problem with my hands and voice I would sing while playing guitar or keyboard - and there were phases of writing tunes and songs. To be in a musical groove is a powerful diversion.

And there are the practical diversions of finding food, clothing and shelter; and of attending to domestic tasks in the house and low-maintenance garden. I aspire to tackle these with grace rather than with a grudge. I have no wife or kids. They presumably would be a powerful source of often unproductive diversions.

Aha – I am dosing in front of the screen and the mindbrain is wandering all over the place. ‘I’ cannot remember the details of the thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) that occupied attention more than a few seconds ago. The mind has a mind of its own and is constantly churning out stuff for the robot on autopilot.

I wrote about this back in April/May when I gave names to thinking processes eg William the witness, Zorba the Zombie etc. The essays make the point that mind watching can be a productive diversion.

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/head-voices.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-writing-dialogue.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/being-non-egoic.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/churn-and-changing-mind.html

Diary Records

I have the option of looking up my daily diary records for what was happening on this day for each year going back to 1968.

But why might I bother?

The past is gone other than for a few memory items; the future is pure imagining; so all that I have is the present moment.

But how long is the present moment?

On the cosmic zoom the present moment ranges from subatomic nanoseconds through to historical, archaeological, paleontological, geological and astronomical scales.

Less ambitiously I could look up what was happening on this day in ten year lumps. That would be on the 20th July 2015, 2005, 1995, 1985, 1975, 1965.

Such an exercise would be possible because there are 37 ring pull folders  of diary entries covering 1968 to 2000 on the bookshelves; some are hand written, others are typed, and the more recent ones are word processed using  Locoscript, Wordperfect, and MSWord. There are digital copies from October 2003 till present. There is a gap from January 2001 till October 2003; I assume the records will be in the digital archives! But the motivation to dig them out is not high.

I am not much concerned about the detailed minutiae of my life. But I have considerable interest in the metacognitive big picture, the existential conundrum. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? What lies beyond soap operas, stamp collecting and personalising my cave?

When I was younger, attention was captured by work. This involved getting paid for servicing someone else’s agenda. The main theme was education: teaching science and biology in the early stages and advising on leadership and management in the later stages. In five countries.

But I came to realise that ‘one size fits all’ educational development did more harm than good; it fails to adapt to the many different cultural contexts that exist. So I gave that up and became a free lance plain language editor of development literature. “Digested material gives power to the people.” But well edited bullshit is still bullshit. So I gave up freelancing and took up meditation.

And I have now been in retreat for more than ten years. Attention is focussed on rationally knowing and emotionally experiencing neurology, evolutionary psychology and mindfulness in the on-going present moment.  My diary records are therefore as much use as the Logoscript that once recorded them. The only constant thing is change so I follow the flow of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM).

Notes:

• The basic diary pages are splurges with little thought given to their structure. Should I wish to dig into my past the pages would provide reminders of topics that would otherwise be lost. But there is no feeling or mood to produce an autobiography.
•  The Brande flows are a variation on the basic theme. The idea is to write whatever comes into my head for 20 minutes non-stop. It was flow of consciousness stuff. But it was usually uninspired and disappointing. Pass the ball to the unconscious and it does not bother to do anything with it.  I rarely use this technique these days because typing is now very slow and inaccurate because of loss of fine motor control in my fingers. (Parkinson’s Disease).
• In Lesotho I edited more than 600 one-pagers which summarised work related ideas. When working with Hakikazi in Tanzania and with the ILO in Geneva there were many more giving instruction in the plain language process. Since retiring I have written well over a thousand one-pagers dealing mainly subjectively with the topics mentioned above. Most of them are used as blogposts which may help to promote and sustain the move towards humanity’s emerging ecological and non-violent world view.

Obsessive diary

I used to be obsessive about the daily diary. For several years there was a new file every day. Sometimes it would be linked to Brande flows of consciousness against the clock, and to one-page essays.

But the pattern is changing. Over the last few weeks attention has been grabbed by social interactions, a Samsung tablet, and Windows Moviemaker - with gaps filled by doodling.

There is also the ongoing stream of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). There is an option on how much of this to record. It can be left to pass away (the 0% option) or every detail can be captured and analysed (the 100% option).

The 0% option supports the autopilot Zombie. My nature and nurture have re-created a world view in my mindbrain which is individual but socially delimited. The programming/education/enculturation includes a version of the Protestant work ethic where the devil finds work for idle hands to do and where, if there is no pain, there is no gain. Dreech workaholism and wage slavery.

The pure 100% option is aspirational but unachievable. If I spend all my time capturing and analysing every passing thought, feeling and mood there will be paralysis by analysis. So – there is need to prioritise and to focus attention to maintain mindful mentation.

For example, between the last paragraph and this one I (a) drove to the bank in Banff to deposit my two premium bond cheques, (b) shopped in Tesco, (c) began to open a parcel that arrived while I was away until I realised that the wrong thing had been sent and (d) interacted with Amazon about the parcel.

Monkey mind added various streams of detailed TFM related to the above topics but there was also many other fleeting bursts of TFM whose links to the main themes was not immediately obvious. The ephemeral stuff is created by the continuous churn in the unconscious which serves to monitor and assess the relevance of new material stimulating the sense organs.

Perhaps there was need for hyper-vigilance during the foraging days of the ancestors. You had to be awake to lethal dangers 24/7. Life is softer and safer in these modern times but the hyper-vigilance of the monkey mind lingers on. I try to witness and understand the process as much as the product.

There is still the churn of the monkey mind which directs the Zombie on the busy autopilot. And, increasingly, there is the delightful fact of non egoic non action where the unconscious gives rise to doodles and to these one-pagers.

It feels comfortable to note that the one-pager habit has come back. It helps to enliven the ancient Greek injunction to ‘know yourself’ and the Buddhist one to ‘work out your salvation with diligence’. The daily diary may be a spent force. Hey ho. The only constant thing is change.

more passing thoughts

I am missing the target of a story every two days. Various social interactions and new bits of ICT have commandeered attention. Life’s rich tapestry with mindbendingly detailed stitches has silenced the witness. There has been little time or inclination to notice what is being noticed and to think about the thinking, feeling and moods. I have been cruising on autopilot. Zombie.

This morning, however, there was a minding that the mind has a mind of its own. A search in my two blogs for ‘many passing thoughts’ created a list of eleven short articles between February 2008 and January 2015.

There is the option of producing a compilation that includes an annotated contents page. But, for the moment, I will blog the list and thus give some kind of ongoing reality to what would otherwise have been a passing thought.

http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/many-passing-thoughts.html

http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/lamplight-of-we.html

http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/m-b-and-c-flows.html

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

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/intellectual-or-other-wise.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/all-that-we-are.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/human-writes.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-quantity-of-conscious-thought.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/witnesses-outer-and-inner.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/morality-memes.html

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/with-mind-in-mind.html 

Biological bohemian

Yesterday I said that “I aspire to a 400-600 word essay every two days and as many doodles as happen to arrive. There is still an appetite for doodles but the essay urge seems to have dried up for a while. This is a mild source of guilt but mindfulness wipes it out.” Today, on reflection, the idea is that it is not so much mindful-ness that wipes out the guilt as busy-ness.

The vagabond poet asked, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.” But there are more or less helpful ways to stand and stare.

According to Jon Kabat-Zinn , "mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non judgmentally." Dogen Zenji recommends that you “just sit” and thereby “drop off body and mind”. “Busy doing nothing”.

Recently there have been assorted bits of busy-ness which included watching the last of a three part documentary about “How to Be Bohemian with Victoria Coren Mitchell”

A bohemian is somebody, often a writer or an artist, who does not live according to the conventions of society but who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices. Other labels for such colourful characters would include outliers (outsiders), the vanguard, freelance philosophers. heterdox hippies, and eccentric nutters.

Some of my relatively mild Bohemian unconventions include:

• If someone gives me cut flowers in a vase I leave them to wilt and rot so that I remember about the impermanence of all created things.
• I spend a lot of time reading non fiction, doodling, and writing serious essays. This constitutes my ‘work’ and I see it as preferable to stamp collecting. I am justified by having tangible product.
• I ‘believe’ in neurology and in evolutionary psychology.
• I live alone and work from home. This cuts down on distractions such as idle chat, paying attention to what goes on in other heads, and generally servicing other people’s whims. “Go lonely as the rhinoceros”
• I have been serially promiscuous.
• I committed to zero population growth in the early 70s.
• I lived and worked in five different tropical countries.
• I leave washing up for several days.
• I change the bed clothes every 6 to 8 weeks.
• I run a very low maintenance garden.
• I possess only one pair of shoes at a time.

This morning I woke at 6am, doodled and then dosed on a chair. There was a change of mood and of focus followed by a gathering of thoughts about evolutionary psychology. There was a minding about the project of letting the unconscious emanate cognitive and emotional outputs.

“Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.”

“Evolutionary psychology is founded on six core premises.

• The brain is an information processing device, and it produces behaviour in response to external and internal inputs.
• The brain's adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural and sexual selection.
• Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanity's evolutionary past.
• The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms that were designed for solving problems that recurred over deep evolutionary time, giving modern humans stone-age minds.
• Most contents and processes of the brain are unconscious; and most mental problems that seem easy to solve are actually extremely difficult problems that are solved unconsciously by complicated neural mechanisms.
• Human psychology consists of many specialized mechanisms, each sensitive to different classes of information or inputs. These mechanisms combine to produce manifest behaviour.”

SO – there is the self image as a biological bohemian who is bothered that there must be better ways to be human.

• But what constitutes ‘better’?
• Peace of mind as an outcome of individual and group mindfulness.
• No eternal verities and no zealous attachment to world views.
• Give quality time to just sitting and to dropping off body and mind.
• Be a witness to the stuff that appears in attention centres. Watch the thoughts, feelings and moods come and go. On purpose, in the present and non-judgementally.

There is the possibility of being normal and of running on autopilot and according to cultural conventions. Run of the mill Zombies.

There is the possibility of being abnormal and running on meta-cognitions which generate uncommon sense and counterintuitive ways of thinking, speaking, doing and being. Top level nutters.

I am easily swayed. When I hang out with Zombies I become one. When I retreat into my little house there is time and space for essays and doodles and to virtually hang out with exceptional thinkers and biological bohemians.

Howsabout yourself?

Where are you on a scale from 1 (zombie) to 10 (nutter).