I used to do a lot of theorizing. Theorizing typically happens from the armchair position. You create a theory, I find, because you are too lazy to test something out in the actual world. I have given up theorizing for hypothesizing lately. The difference between a theory and a hypothesis is that the latter is testable. Not just that it is testable, but that it is designed to be tested. Testing is its whole purpose. An untested hypothesis is an unfulfilled hypothesis.
I just watched the movie Pi tonight. One of the things I like in that movie is how the main character keeps repeating his assumptions. That feels like a good habit to be in. Although any habitual action or response can become its own blind spot. Anyway, my current hypothesis is that if you can become fully proprioceptively aware of all physical processes occurring in your body at once, then something special will happen.
I know it is not as scientific-sounding as I would like it to be either, especially after that rant about the difference between theory and hypothesis. Maybe I should back track and state some of my assumptions. All I can say for my assumptions is that they are based upon experiences I have had over the past few weeks. They may not be universally true and I may be misinterpreting what I am experience. And that is why I am labeling them as “assumptions.” Hopefully, this clarity will enable other would-be scientists embarking on similar experimences to appreciate where I am coming from.
Okay, so my assumptions could potentially be summarized as something like these:
- The brain seems to have a corresponding area (or several) for each sensory data point within the body. By “sensory data point” I mean any area of the body which you can become proprioceptively aware of (feel it from the inside, very concretely).
- With repeated actions, the brain creates shortcuts. That is, if you do something a bunch of times (develop muscle memory), your brain stops seeing it as novel and interesting. It creates a shortcut or a habit. And any time that action sequence is initiated, it perceives the stored value of the ingrained habit instead of the raw sensory data underneath it. (The brain only does this to conserve computing power)
- Habits therefore close off areas of perception within the physical body. Which means either that the corresponding area in the brain for each dormant body sensory data point either does not develop, atrophies, or becomes unbound from its sense point. This means that if we have significant areas of our body we are not perceiving, then we have significant areas of our brain we are not accessing at all, or if we are accessing them, we are doing so in a way that is outside of its natural operating parameters.
- That is, habits create shortcuts in the brain. Creating shortcuts in the brain frees up computing power. Areas of the brain which should be literally mapped to corresponding areas of the body become unhooked or unchained. Their processing power can now be diverted to other tasks.
- This could be beneficial in that it could allow for the development of various types of abstract thought. When the brain is functioning “abstractly” it means that it has been literally unhooked from sensing proprioceptively all possible data points within the body. Abstract thoughts then form, which are further habituated through language - which also further limits your ability to directly perceive things as they are. (This may also be where a lot of our problems like anxiety come from: brain power uncoupled from corresponding body-mapped coordinates are now running rampant in abstract non-body thoughts.
- The layers of abstraction probably correspond roughly to what Leary and Wilson describe with the first four (I think) circuits of consciousness. My guess is that the second octave of four are the experiences one has of reversing back through and deconditioning of habituated thought, emotional and physical patterns.
- This would leave us back in the general vicinity of my original - and poorly phrased - hypothesis: that if we can become propriceptively (from the inside out) aware of every possible sensation and process within our bodies that something marvelous will happen.
Not very concise or elegantly worded, but that gets the general shape of the beast out there in the open at least.
I have seen glimpses, bits and pieces of the above through my own experiences and it is forcing me to revise my model of reality, perception and experience itself. I got very close tonight to achieving awareness of a very large group of blood vessels pulsing in rhythm with my heart and it was an incredibly beautiful and strange experience. I think I kind of see what Alex Grey is getting at in his paintings. The beauty part is, if I’m right about even a fraction of this stuff it is totally repeatable, and teachable and doesn’t require any thing by way of *belief*. You simply try it. You simply develop awareness.
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18 Comments
Like reinforcing bad habits? The drug addicts I’ve met have always amazed me with the energy and creativity they put into their addiction. It seems so difficult. The chemicals and the lifestyle do destroy people but I’ve had a few tell me that their health fell apart after they stopped using. But, then I look at some negative things in my own life and say ‘it’s so difficult’. I think you’re really on the right track with this line of thought. When you take it out of a religious belief system it works better and for more people.
That’s really good. Good assumptions. The third circuit is semantic reasoning and the fourth one has to do with morality and sex, though,maybe you mean the first two? Or the third and forth.
“That marvelous thing” is what I am interested in!
One thing I just realized about tai chi and stuff is that its silent.
This is kind of reminding me of why I initially got so excited about primitivism and “rewilding” because I like to just go out and connnect sensually with the woods. Not think about anything just feast sensually on the wild.
I still like this. Plus I think there are unused parts of our brains that awaken when you track an animal and do different things. I heard that tanning a deer hide awakens fossil memories too.
But not to get off topic.
I don’t think it’s too off topic, you just come at topics from an odd angle. It’s my understanding that semi-wild farm cats stockpile mouse carcasses, bones and skin in bizarre and highly individualistic ways, like little kitty serial killers. Both species do this for some reason, I just don’t know what that reason is.
I talked to this guy at the bus stop yesterday, or rather he talked to me about how he sold the last of his methadone for twenty dollars. Then he proceeded to gloat over how he hadn’t drank in over two years. And then cut directly into how he was “messing with crack” and almost died two weeks ago from an overdose of something or other.
But I could tell it didn’t even occur to him that his pride over not having had any alcohol for so long was kind of meaningless in light of everything else he was still involved with - because his thought patterns were so solidified and habituated that he simply couldn’t see around them.
I don’t bring the point up to be like I’m better than him or something, but to point out that we all do exactly this on different scales with justifications in our lives to prop up irrational behaviors. The addict is only threatening to us because he highlights those hidden aspects of our own lives and hence we try to push him out of our awareness.
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007...ooting-so-called-irrational-behavior/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2003843410_heart19.html
I didn’t see your comments as off-topic at all Ted.
Ted, have you or anybody else ever read David Abram’s excellent Spell of the Sensuous? I think he is tackling this same subject from a different angle, one which may be very compatible with what you’re looking for with regards to re-wilding, natural life, etc. And seriously seriously read Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique
Heres another odd angle:
The Alexander technique Wikipedia entry mentions somthing about people in “western culture” not knowing how to move right.
By my observation that can be translated “white people” because really that would be more accurate and people in different ethnic groups that still live within western culture tend to move better.
I know I am treading on dangerous ground here But anyway, Tim mentioned that disconnecting from direct sensory input through ones body, frees up computational power for abstract thinking.
So let me insert autism. Its more common in certian ethic groups, the same ethnic groups like Jews and Europeans responsible for the bulk of all scientific discoveries.
There is controversy with the relationship between different genetic groupings and IQ. But one counter argument is that there is selection bias and that IQ tests don’t test for intelligence per se but for abstract thinking.
My conclusion is that most white people are slightly autistic an that these genes are present in the gene pool, probably are only partially expressed in most people, but somtimes in a continuum they are expressed more drastically and then you get autistic people, that have serious problems using their bodies correctly.
But there actually is therapy that that when caught early enough can correct a lot of these problems in autistics when caught young.
Another good, if difficult exercise I have found: when you are looking at another person in front of you, do everything possible in your power of awareness to identify that person as you. I have had a couple small breakthrough moments with this, but intend to try it out more.
I also think the exercise I outlined for watching movies syncs up with this as well: as you watch a movie or television, mimic the facial and physical expressions of everyone who appears on screen. You should be able to get it to such a point as well where you can *almost* say with the actors their lines as they are speaking. Try to remove the lag time of your saying lines with them (even and especially when you don’t already know the lines) as much as possible. Just doing this for even a few moments is a tremendous mindfuck.
That’s actually a really interesting set of observations, Ted. Worthy, I think, of further exploration.
Speaking of “white people being lame” I also have another direction I want to take all this, which connects ultimately back up to performance traditions, yoga, circus, etc. Hip-Hop: one of the elements of hip-hop is break-dancing, which is really nothing other than extremely heightened proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness applied through motion to time and rhythm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop
In fact, the four elements of hip-hop, if you wanted to be white and abstract about it, could be broken down into a sort of theory of the mind and self, not unlike the aggregates in Buddhism. A very tentative example which could be expanded and improved a great deal:
Breakdancing - development of proprioceptive/kinesthetic awareness
Graffiti - Re-writing sense impressions through act of will
MCing - Mastering the flow of linguistic thought
DJing - Manipulation of moments of perception
From that article about the dude with the fake heart:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2003843410_heart19.html
The reason his emotions are different is obvious: his proprioceptive awareness was formerly driven by the “pulse” of blood flowing in and out of his heart in almost juggling patterns (I felt this last night, the connection to juggling, but more on that later). Emotions come from MOTION, get it? Emotions are rhythmic responses. If you stabilize those pulses into an omnipresent “whir” no wonder you remove the rhythmic depth of emotionality. I don’t think there is much of a secret here at all.
I own Spell of the Sensuous. I only got a third way into it. At the time I was a little turned off by what seemed to be a materialistic bias, But I’ll take another look at it. When I bought I was more interested in reading about animism from the perspective of an animist.
Those are really good. These are all these are all things that kind of evolve organically over time. Its pretty cool. Totally decentralized. Ebonics is interesting too. All language used to be like ebonics at one time all across Europe. Its sort of that way in India still somewhat with all the “vernacular” regional languages. I mean in the sense that it is a direct product of culture with alternate spellings and so forth. It was never formally taught. Language became “standardized” not until Christopher Columbus time. Two huge things happened at the same time, The standardization of language and the discovery of the new world. I forget the Guys name who wrote about this.
African American culture is in many ways countercultural. Its a folk culture. Most of western Culture is becoming increasingly machine like.
I think in western culture there is some strange interpenetration of people and machines. The machine gets into peoples minds and bodies.
The Guy with the artificial heart really illustrates the huge fallacy of this whole “transhumanism” idea of eventually being able to transfer human beings into cumputers. They call it going from a carbon based life form to a silicon base.
There is somthing irriducible about humanity.
Ivan Illich.
Here is a good link. It talks about Standardized language being the “consort of empire”
http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Vernacular.html#EMPIRE
Rammellzee Letterform War…
That theory about Shakespeare and Francis Bacon etc creating a standardized literature to enact linguistic and perceptual uniformity across populations…