Thanks to Twitter, I've stumbled upon two must-watch videos that reveal a very important aspect of human minds that we often ignored. The brain's purpose is homeostasis, but what happens when we lose this purpose?
In the first video, Jill Bolte Taylor describes her experience when a stroke damaged the left hemisphere of her brain.
It is important to watch that video before proceeding. In the next video, the author describes his experience with a syndrome described as 'depersonalization'. aeon.co/videos/the-dar…
Einstein in his General Theory of Relative performs what can be described as an inversion of logic. Rather than saying that mass curves space, he takes the framing that mass is a consequence of the curving of space.
Western thinking has always been perplexed with the notion of free-will and consciousness. This confusion is a consequence of a bias towards a Cartesian mind and thus a model where there exists a conscious governor.
The logic of this model goes along the lines that consciousness is in control of the self at all times. My alternative model, that with inverted logic, is that the conscious is a manifestation of the unconscious (i.e. intuition).
More specifically, our intuitive mind is constantly performing an unconscious balance between its inner self and the world it is emersed in. medium.com/intuitionmachi…
I'm not a psychiatrist and I've never been fascinated by deviant psychological behavior. I'm not a fan of psychological thrillers. I am however extremely fascinated with the psychology of well-being. The psychology of the normal.
Many people struggle today with the exponential pace of modern society. This is most acute with older adults that have lost plasticity in their thinking. To make matters worse, it is these adults that believe they've accumulated the wisdom to guide younger generations.
Fear is that emergent realization of the potential dissolution of self. As biological creatures, we are tuned by billions of years of evolution to be aware of this potentiality.
Fear is what drives conspiracy theories and the zeal to avoid the notions of our selves slipping away. For the conservative mindset, the kind that has a narrower view of self, this fear is most real.
Haidt (In the Righteous Mind) describes the conservative's morality as revolving around authority, sanctity, and loyalty. These are models of self that encompass a narrow social grouping.
This is in contrast to the liberal and libertarian which value cair, fairness and liberty. Features that transcends cultural groupings. Certain preferences have a better ability to adapt to change because their notion of homeostasis is much wider.
I find it beneficial to consult Robert Kegan's constructive developmental theory to understand how different minds have different models of self. The mature mind always evolves to a more complex and larger notion of self.
Our futility of convincing other of our political views is a consequence of having very different mental models of the self. In Kegan's theory, those at a higher stage are also capable of thinking at a lower stage. But not the other way around.
In the French movie above about depersonalization (spoiler alert if you haven't watched it... stop here), the primary character resolves his dissolution by discovering a self much larger than his own.
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