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).