Phantom Mind
This is a stream of consciousness type essay, "[My] Phantom Mind". Well, it is more like a very rough draft. However, it should still be (barely) readable so I'm putting it all here. Sorry in advance, I really just wanted to do a quick update but got carried away. Moral of the story: don't follow an insomniac going for a short walk, unless you're wearing hiking boots.
One of my favourite TV Shows is House, M.D. (not that I would admit to watching television... it's just not cool nowadays, is it?). A recent episode [nts: update episode number here] featured a guy with a left hand that had, as it were, a mind of its own. That came to mind when I was thinking about how things like prejudice and sucidal ideations get active in people's minds so commonly nowadays.
Although there's a complex now based on mental health, ranging from therapist to talk to on the one side, to psychatrists (sp?) to give you medications which (alledgely) balance your neurotransmitters ior help tropic to spur neurogenesis, to cultlike organisations devoted to destorying them, and cults looking to take advantage of people who might benefit from them, the mind is still something that's sorta taken for granted.
The assumption which everyone holds is that "my mind is my own" and "it's just in the mind", when it comes to self-image and emotional problems.
However, mental problems require physical effort to solve. Not the quasi-passive physical effort of reading a book, although that can be a good starting point. Neighter does the imaginary effort of "figuring things out" or "thinking things through" help. These things may help in the very short term, and give a feeling of elation, but there is more that follows afterwards, or else, the cycle repeats itself and the situation worsens.
There's a crackpot that wrote a whole set of stuff about how society causes people to be stupid. I think the last iteration was called "Third Age of Man" or something, [nts: look up links to this], but they were several points that I'll distill and repeat here (it'll soon become clear why I'm citing a random crackpot):
The point is that attention leads to declaring war, but concentration leads to Japan, and the Internet, and Jim Henson productions, and all of the other great creations of manking (yeah, I know, modern day Japan is the result of a war, right? Well, more like, the result of what happeend after the war stopped).
The other point is that I didn't have a conscious idea of how what I was writing was in any ways related to anything else. So when I said "I'll tell you why I'm citing a crackpot", I was following a conscious clue that came from my subconscious mind tell me that there was indeed a solid reason for me to be doing what I was doing.
This isn't a left brain/right brain seperation... but it is like having a phantom mind.
And that rather disturbs me, even if it works reliably and helps me to write well.
So, after my good blue friend ( sakuya-kusanagi.livejournal.com/ ) recommended that I re-read what I wrote, I went like "duh, why don't I do that?" and I did for a while, and then I went like "who the fuck is writing all this stuff? is that really coming from me? why don't I talk like this all the time? wait, maybe I do, but never noticed. how could I not notice? how can I be so out of touch with myself?"
... and before I could glance around twice, I was deep in this introspective vortex of information....
So, being the rationally trained person, or something, I created a system. I mean, systems solve everything, right? (The M0 thing is a system which solves the problem of how to keep a large population under self-sustaining control, esp. to their own disadvantage). It took several tried before I actually remembered I had a system, and several dozen times of re-writing it from memory before I remembered that I'd written it down before, and several dozen times of reading it in astonishment before I actually used it at all.
In any case, the system itself wasn't necessary, but what was necessary is that I used a method to engage my conscious mind in communicating with my sub-conscious mind... the aim was, and is, and forever more will be, to get them both "on the same page"... if there's great writing skills hidden in the deep parts of my mind, then I want to unhide them... and if there's something I decided to do consciously, then I need to know if there's a deep-seated island of FUD waiting to fubar my attempts.
Well, that's my unrehersed story about the Phantom Mind.
And, btw, I don't really consider Alan G Carter a crackpot. His writings helped to explain in detail exactly how societies go through cycles of destruction, and on a more personal level, by knowing what to be aware of, they've helped me to overcome some of the pitfalls... but they are also written in extremely dense language that reminds me of the days when I used to read the book of Proverbs every day... you know it's good for you but it still forces you to think so much that it can feel disorienting.
...but Proverbs is much easier to read.
(note to self: read this sometime to see if it makes any sense. oh, and, remove these "notes to self"...)
One of my favourite TV Shows is House, M.D. (not that I would admit to watching television... it's just not cool nowadays, is it?). A recent episode [nts: update episode number here] featured a guy with a left hand that had, as it were, a mind of its own. That came to mind when I was thinking about how things like prejudice and sucidal ideations get active in people's minds so commonly nowadays.
Although there's a complex now based on mental health, ranging from therapist to talk to on the one side, to psychatrists (sp?) to give you medications which (alledgely) balance your neurotransmitters ior help tropic to spur neurogenesis, to cultlike organisations devoted to destorying them, and cults looking to take advantage of people who might benefit from them, the mind is still something that's sorta taken for granted.
The assumption which everyone holds is that "my mind is my own" and "it's just in the mind", when it comes to self-image and emotional problems.
However, mental problems require physical effort to solve. Not the quasi-passive physical effort of reading a book, although that can be a good starting point. Neighter does the imaginary effort of "figuring things out" or "thinking things through" help. These things may help in the very short term, and give a feeling of elation, but there is more that follows afterwards, or else, the cycle repeats itself and the situation worsens.
There's a crackpot that wrote a whole set of stuff about how society causes people to be stupid. I think the last iteration was called "Third Age of Man" or something, [nts: look up links to this], but they were several points that I'll distill and repeat here (it'll soon become clear why I'm citing a random crackpot):
- society coerces people to be homogenus. Not the same in specifics per se, but the same in general behaviours (e.g. religion, values) [ he called this "M0" or "monster zero" ]
- one of these values is the concept of "paying attention (to an authority figure)" as opposed to "concentrating on what interest you"
- the human brain can get locked into a loop where it seeks attention endlessly, and forgets how to concentrate
- some people are somewhat immune to this (there was a genetic theroy involving neuro-receptors and such), and they tend to be good at math and programming (which both need concentration)
- the collapse of society happens when the authority figures make everyone (or, the vast majority) pay attention to destructive things. That's called a "Marching Point" because it often leads to a literal war.
The point is that attention leads to declaring war, but concentration leads to Japan, and the Internet, and Jim Henson productions, and all of the other great creations of manking (yeah, I know, modern day Japan is the result of a war, right? Well, more like, the result of what happeend after the war stopped).
The other point is that I didn't have a conscious idea of how what I was writing was in any ways related to anything else. So when I said "I'll tell you why I'm citing a crackpot", I was following a conscious clue that came from my subconscious mind tell me that there was indeed a solid reason for me to be doing what I was doing.
This isn't a left brain/right brain seperation... but it is like having a phantom mind.
And that rather disturbs me, even if it works reliably and helps me to write well.
So, after my good blue friend ( sakuya-kusanagi.livejournal.com/ ) recommended that I re-read what I wrote, I went like "duh, why don't I do that?" and I did for a while, and then I went like "who the fuck is writing all this stuff? is that really coming from me? why don't I talk like this all the time? wait, maybe I do, but never noticed. how could I not notice? how can I be so out of touch with myself?"
... and before I could glance around twice, I was deep in this introspective vortex of information....
So, being the rationally trained person, or something, I created a system. I mean, systems solve everything, right? (The M0 thing is a system which solves the problem of how to keep a large population under self-sustaining control, esp. to their own disadvantage). It took several tried before I actually remembered I had a system, and several dozen times of re-writing it from memory before I remembered that I'd written it down before, and several dozen times of reading it in astonishment before I actually used it at all.
In any case, the system itself wasn't necessary, but what was necessary is that I used a method to engage my conscious mind in communicating with my sub-conscious mind... the aim was, and is, and forever more will be, to get them both "on the same page"... if there's great writing skills hidden in the deep parts of my mind, then I want to unhide them... and if there's something I decided to do consciously, then I need to know if there's a deep-seated island of FUD waiting to fubar my attempts.
Well, that's my unrehersed story about the Phantom Mind.
And, btw, I don't really consider Alan G Carter a crackpot. His writings helped to explain in detail exactly how societies go through cycles of destruction, and on a more personal level, by knowing what to be aware of, they've helped me to overcome some of the pitfalls... but they are also written in extremely dense language that reminds me of the days when I used to read the book of Proverbs every day... you know it's good for you but it still forces you to think so much that it can feel disorienting.
...but Proverbs is much easier to read.
(note to self: read this sometime to see if it makes any sense. oh, and, remove these "notes to self"...)