Creative, interesting, new projects are not always completely ready delivered at our conscious, creations are made bit by bit and put together from a lot of different insights, all genius were workers, not only unstoppable at thinking out but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, organizing. They used their conscious and subconsciousnes in harmony. Our subconscious is in direct contact with the world around us, we can see reality, the immediate artistic appearance and our conscious is involved from time to time to realize the beauty. Our subconscious thinking is spontaneous, uncontrolled and works through a relaxed mindset, pressure of time or stress blocks our subconscious thoughts. It is particularly useful in situations which are new and complicated, we study the problem, examine all the aspects, leave it when we are stuck, do something completely different so we are not actively busy with the problem, and our subconscious has time to make different connections and generate a solution or new pattern. During this proces it's impossible to think out loud, to speak or articulate what you are thinking, you can only communicate your insights spontanous but cannot say what you are thinking.
With reason we can understand what it means, the underlying scientific meaning, examine the implications and have reasonable communication with others. Our conscious thinking is controled, deliberate and happens by explicitly articulating, thinking out loud is possible. It's espessialy usefull in situations who suppose common sense and reason. We use our conscious thinking for linear mecahnical problems, problems which consist of seperate parts, for organic problems, problems where changing one part has consequences for other parts, we use our subconscious thinking.
When you have to make a choice in relation with your preferences then there is no point in analysing or reflecting your choice, it will only make you doubt but doesn't lead to satisfaction. If you have to make a choice regarding food, woman, music, art then you have to follow your feelings and not the ratio for to make a satisfactory choice. Your subconscious will also take those considerations into account whinch are difficult to put into words, our ratio is overestimating the cognitive factors and underestimating the feelings with the result that our dicision will seem reasonable and functional but will not give a long gratification. After counting all the pro's and contra's you will choose for the middle way which is less satisfactory then choosing for the very best positive points ore the least negative points. Choosing means loosing, we can't choose and -and but or - or, you can choose for the middle way or for the way with the best positives or least bad negative effects, only the last ones will give satisfaction, the middle way will be rational and argumentated but will not give satisfaction. The beauty and quality of events, objects, moments and artistic projects are not the possession of the object or nature but of feeling the intuitive answer.
It's impossible to proceed completely rational without using your intuition but using your intuition is something different then not thinking at all. You can use your intuition only when you know allready something about a problem, your subconscious is working with the information it receives. We gain a big part of our insights, understanding, intelligence by explicite knowledge which becomes implicite know how.
Our conscious steers the subconscious, our subconscious can only pass new found insights on when our conscious is open for it. When we are very active in our conscious it is much more difficult for our subconscious to catapult new information into our consciousness. New thoughts which have no direct link with our conscious thoughts are very difficult to realize when we are thinking consciously, thats why we can walk against objects. Allthough our subconscious is the master we can't functionate without our consciousnes, we live on maximum capacity when we are open to our subconsciousness and keep our consciousnes at bay, using it when it is appropriate and dont think for to think. We will have an overabundance of energy if we think less and live more.
maandag 22 november 2010
woensdag 17 november 2010
hare brain, tortoise mind
Our brain is one of the most amazing gifts we have and at the same time one of the least understood. We all think but still most of us dont know how to think when solving different kinds of problems. Allthough we think on different ways, and we all do this, we sometimes use less efficient or simply wrong thinking patterns for solving our problems.
The big difference in thinking is between our rational and intuïtive thinking, first of all we should try to find the differences between them without falling in the pit traps of new age concepts. There is no superior thinking, only thinking wich is more appropriate for the moment, the kind of problem. We all think intuitively at all the time, it's clearly impossible to think about everything you do when you walk through the house or drive a car, ... we would loose our head if we would try, look at the movement of the leg in slow motion and you will be amazed by the flawless coördination which is happening everytime again. It's not only fysical where our intuition is calling the shots, also intellectual our intuition is busy at all the time, most obvious with processing new information coming from the senses, a proces that we cannot follow let alone steer. We use our ratio for the intellectual problems, if we have a problem we will try to fix the problem by looking at what caused the problem, trying to repair this flaw and hoping that the problem is fixed otherwise we have to think some more and try to fix an other possible cause. Aristotels found this scientific method consisting of 6 steps: describing as vage as possible the problem, describing potential hypotheses about what caused the problem, designing experiments to check all the hypotheses, then we predict the result, make our experiments, write down the the results and try to come to a conclusion for an answer of our problem. For mechanical problems which are not too complex and consist of individual seperate parts, our system works perfect. Although some of these mechanical problems are sometimes difficult to solve cause we make a mistake in the first step, we can never really observe the environment and the information with our ratio, we are not looking, we are searching for something and this is more or less circumscribed so it's based on some premises, we will observe selective which reinforces itself cause everything which fits wich our premises will jump in our perception and what doesnt seem to fit will disappear, so we will perceive what we believe allready.
The real problem starts with the complex, organic problems, where everything is interconnected and influencing one part has consequences for other parts. For this kind we will get stuck and get frustrated most of the time with our model, we will need a different moddel. Here our intuition comes to the rescue, like we saw before, our intuition is working at all the time, it's not resting or out of job when we are thinking with our ratio, it is still busy, only we dont know what it is doing, we can block it. Our intuition is making lots of different connections in different parts of our brain with completely different content and our ratio is more highlighting one area on max capacity, but still even when our ratio is operating at full power, our subconscious is still there, it's still making connections between different parts of our brain, but cannot catapult this information into our consciousnes. We need an open, relaxed mind-set for to be in touch with our subconscious, without being focused on finishing a job or finding the clou or answer asap, we need to feel involvement with what we are doing and have the unschakeble faith that we will find the answer, sooner or later. Involvement with what you are doing is expressed most clearly by enthousiasm, you want to do something good without fixatinig on how to do it or why, inner involvement leads to enthousiasm.
When we are in a patient, relax mood we feel in touch with our subconscious and will handle most activities in synchronisation with nature around us, have thoughtfull insights, funny answers in conversations, so one big happy world, why do we need our ratio then? The big advantage of our ratio is to find concepts, examine the implications, to put new found information and insights into words so that we can use this knowledge for similar occasions and can pas it on to people around us, it's only thanks to our ratio that we dont have to rediscover, with our intuition, how to make fire again in every generation. We can bring insights into words so that it becomes general knowledge, amazing, the strenght of our ratio is to put vague feelings, loosely connected insights into one connected, proven, logical concept. So we dont have to play with all the possibilities, we can find the solution for a similar problem very effective and very fast. The strength of our ratio, to bring insights into concepts by words, is also it's weakness. We dont think in words, we are reasoning, we are thinking in a fixed timeframe, we can think too fast or too slow so that words loose there meaning. With our ratio we are reasoning in a fixed time frame but with our intuition we can truly think much faster or slower, if you look at a picture, you can see much more in 3 seconds then you can explain in words in 3 minutes, so our subconscious is working fundamently different and our ratio is a nessesary ad-on to communicate our thoughts. The rules of reason and reasoning are not made for to think with them, they are made for the art of conversation, thanks to these logical premises we can articulate our thoughts on an efficient way and can we have a conversation in depth without unnessery discussions. Our rational thinking happens in words so we are reasoning and not thinking cause we are not thinking factual but with regard to facts. Our subcounscious thinking happens on different ways, we think visual, in sound, in movement and abstract, it's working at all the time and is in effect calling the shots. For our motoric skills we are completely dependend on our subconscious, thinking about what you are doing when you are doing it has a negative effect. Also our thinking depends completely on our subconscious, we cannot generate ideas in our conscious but our consciousness can determine which ideas are passed on. The state of our consciousness
determines how our brain is working, only in a relaxed, patient mood can there be a good trasmittion of ideas and insights from the subconscious to our conscious. In the same time can our consciousnes be a result of subconscious thoughts, it can pss on some information from the senses that we are not aware but influences our intentions for example, some smells wich give assosiations of good feelings and make you feel better and have more optimistic conscious thoughts.
i found a lot of these concepts explained brilliantly in the book "hare brain, tortoise mind by guy claxton", i can recommend this book since it is going much deeper into the content.
The big difference in thinking is between our rational and intuïtive thinking, first of all we should try to find the differences between them without falling in the pit traps of new age concepts. There is no superior thinking, only thinking wich is more appropriate for the moment, the kind of problem. We all think intuitively at all the time, it's clearly impossible to think about everything you do when you walk through the house or drive a car, ... we would loose our head if we would try, look at the movement of the leg in slow motion and you will be amazed by the flawless coördination which is happening everytime again. It's not only fysical where our intuition is calling the shots, also intellectual our intuition is busy at all the time, most obvious with processing new information coming from the senses, a proces that we cannot follow let alone steer. We use our ratio for the intellectual problems, if we have a problem we will try to fix the problem by looking at what caused the problem, trying to repair this flaw and hoping that the problem is fixed otherwise we have to think some more and try to fix an other possible cause. Aristotels found this scientific method consisting of 6 steps: describing as vage as possible the problem, describing potential hypotheses about what caused the problem, designing experiments to check all the hypotheses, then we predict the result, make our experiments, write down the the results and try to come to a conclusion for an answer of our problem. For mechanical problems which are not too complex and consist of individual seperate parts, our system works perfect. Although some of these mechanical problems are sometimes difficult to solve cause we make a mistake in the first step, we can never really observe the environment and the information with our ratio, we are not looking, we are searching for something and this is more or less circumscribed so it's based on some premises, we will observe selective which reinforces itself cause everything which fits wich our premises will jump in our perception and what doesnt seem to fit will disappear, so we will perceive what we believe allready.
The real problem starts with the complex, organic problems, where everything is interconnected and influencing one part has consequences for other parts. For this kind we will get stuck and get frustrated most of the time with our model, we will need a different moddel. Here our intuition comes to the rescue, like we saw before, our intuition is working at all the time, it's not resting or out of job when we are thinking with our ratio, it is still busy, only we dont know what it is doing, we can block it. Our intuition is making lots of different connections in different parts of our brain with completely different content and our ratio is more highlighting one area on max capacity, but still even when our ratio is operating at full power, our subconscious is still there, it's still making connections between different parts of our brain, but cannot catapult this information into our consciousnes. We need an open, relaxed mind-set for to be in touch with our subconscious, without being focused on finishing a job or finding the clou or answer asap, we need to feel involvement with what we are doing and have the unschakeble faith that we will find the answer, sooner or later. Involvement with what you are doing is expressed most clearly by enthousiasm, you want to do something good without fixatinig on how to do it or why, inner involvement leads to enthousiasm.
When we are in a patient, relax mood we feel in touch with our subconscious and will handle most activities in synchronisation with nature around us, have thoughtfull insights, funny answers in conversations, so one big happy world, why do we need our ratio then? The big advantage of our ratio is to find concepts, examine the implications, to put new found information and insights into words so that we can use this knowledge for similar occasions and can pas it on to people around us, it's only thanks to our ratio that we dont have to rediscover, with our intuition, how to make fire again in every generation. We can bring insights into words so that it becomes general knowledge, amazing, the strenght of our ratio is to put vague feelings, loosely connected insights into one connected, proven, logical concept. So we dont have to play with all the possibilities, we can find the solution for a similar problem very effective and very fast. The strength of our ratio, to bring insights into concepts by words, is also it's weakness. We dont think in words, we are reasoning, we are thinking in a fixed timeframe, we can think too fast or too slow so that words loose there meaning. With our ratio we are reasoning in a fixed time frame but with our intuition we can truly think much faster or slower, if you look at a picture, you can see much more in 3 seconds then you can explain in words in 3 minutes, so our subconscious is working fundamently different and our ratio is a nessesary ad-on to communicate our thoughts. The rules of reason and reasoning are not made for to think with them, they are made for the art of conversation, thanks to these logical premises we can articulate our thoughts on an efficient way and can we have a conversation in depth without unnessery discussions. Our rational thinking happens in words so we are reasoning and not thinking cause we are not thinking factual but with regard to facts. Our subcounscious thinking happens on different ways, we think visual, in sound, in movement and abstract, it's working at all the time and is in effect calling the shots. For our motoric skills we are completely dependend on our subconscious, thinking about what you are doing when you are doing it has a negative effect. Also our thinking depends completely on our subconscious, we cannot generate ideas in our conscious but our consciousness can determine which ideas are passed on. The state of our consciousness
determines how our brain is working, only in a relaxed, patient mood can there be a good trasmittion of ideas and insights from the subconscious to our conscious. In the same time can our consciousnes be a result of subconscious thoughts, it can pss on some information from the senses that we are not aware but influences our intentions for example, some smells wich give assosiations of good feelings and make you feel better and have more optimistic conscious thoughts.
i found a lot of these concepts explained brilliantly in the book "hare brain, tortoise mind by guy claxton", i can recommend this book since it is going much deeper into the content.
vrijdag 29 oktober 2010
to think or not to think
We all had our days that we felt very good, strong and had no obvious thoughts in our mind but just made good decisions with luck on our side. On the other side we had those moments when we couldn't stop thinking about a previous event or mistake and we walked against objects or just had bad luck with all the things coming our way.
This simple thought experiment for which we can all visualize past events, shows us that our state of mind can be our biggest allie or foe. Our brain is working at all the time, even during sleep we have dreams, and also during he day, when we just look out of the window there is a lot of information wich is received, classified and sometimes transformed before we had any conscious idea. All this informaion is simply too much for our conscious, if our subconscious wouldnt make some shifing then we would literely drawn in an over abundance of information, just 5 min of television would be mind blowing if every litle detail would come in our conscious.
Our subcounscious is not a sepperate part of the brain, its the base for wich our conscious is a vital ad-on.
An artist will see a lot of beauty in a waterfall, where a scientist will see mathematical calculations coming to life and a bored person will see nothing at all. This brings us to a first interesing point, our subconscious is receiving and classifiing new information first, but our conscious mind decides what our unconscious mind will let go through, what we can receive. Our conscious thinking will create a mindframe in wich our unconscious mind is locked, it will be busy with much more but cannot show this. Ofcourse its also very helpfull te steer and give direction to the unconscious, without priorities there is no guidance for our subcounscious and the information will come ,in worst case, at random, they call it madness i think.
You receive what you think, and this will reinforce your thinking, this powerful self-reinforcing mechanism is the reason why we are being locked up in our own little world and have such difficulties for truly understanding the view of others. What we believe, our values create a mental frame in which new information will be projected and checked for regularities and irregularities, if the values are strict and rock solid then all the irregularities will be filtered when they are not life threatening and will never come in our conscious.
Our conscious thoughts determine in big lines which information our subconscious will pas on,but also our emotions play a big role, if you are thinking negative you will see more ugliness then when you think positive.
Our values create a mental frame which will filter all the incoming information and depending on our mood we will see the positives or negatives depending on our view of good and bad. That's why you cant change people's mind if they are having a fixed set of principles for a long time, they have already so much experiences in which their principles are affirmed that it becomes nearly impossible for arguments to have any counter weight. We see what we believe and we believe what we see, they reinforce themselves until a point of no return or something truly shocking has to happen to shake up the foundation of principles and values.
This brings us to the point where we have to conclude that we can only have an open mind when we live without fixed values and principles, which is true but at the same time this makes everything completely relative. We need to share basic values if we want to live together and we will need some for to give direction in our lives, but at the same time we need to have them as vague as possible and as few as possible, like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and in general as much freedom as possible with almost no restrictions at all unless there where the freedom of the other person is in danger. By keeping your values vague you will have to question them from time to time and this questioning is the best guarantee for keeping an open mind.
By accepting the premise that its better to have freedom then restrictions and that this premise also counts for all other life around you, then you have a basic line which needs questioning with every big question, but in the same time preserves the integrity and dignity of everything around you, which should be the end goal of every religion, life style.
This simple thought experiment for which we can all visualize past events, shows us that our state of mind can be our biggest allie or foe. Our brain is working at all the time, even during sleep we have dreams, and also during he day, when we just look out of the window there is a lot of information wich is received, classified and sometimes transformed before we had any conscious idea. All this informaion is simply too much for our conscious, if our subconscious wouldnt make some shifing then we would literely drawn in an over abundance of information, just 5 min of television would be mind blowing if every litle detail would come in our conscious.
Our subcounscious is not a sepperate part of the brain, its the base for wich our conscious is a vital ad-on.
An artist will see a lot of beauty in a waterfall, where a scientist will see mathematical calculations coming to life and a bored person will see nothing at all. This brings us to a first interesing point, our subconscious is receiving and classifiing new information first, but our conscious mind decides what our unconscious mind will let go through, what we can receive. Our conscious thinking will create a mindframe in wich our unconscious mind is locked, it will be busy with much more but cannot show this. Ofcourse its also very helpfull te steer and give direction to the unconscious, without priorities there is no guidance for our subcounscious and the information will come ,in worst case, at random, they call it madness i think.
You receive what you think, and this will reinforce your thinking, this powerful self-reinforcing mechanism is the reason why we are being locked up in our own little world and have such difficulties for truly understanding the view of others. What we believe, our values create a mental frame in which new information will be projected and checked for regularities and irregularities, if the values are strict and rock solid then all the irregularities will be filtered when they are not life threatening and will never come in our conscious.
Our conscious thoughts determine in big lines which information our subconscious will pas on,but also our emotions play a big role, if you are thinking negative you will see more ugliness then when you think positive.
Our values create a mental frame which will filter all the incoming information and depending on our mood we will see the positives or negatives depending on our view of good and bad. That's why you cant change people's mind if they are having a fixed set of principles for a long time, they have already so much experiences in which their principles are affirmed that it becomes nearly impossible for arguments to have any counter weight. We see what we believe and we believe what we see, they reinforce themselves until a point of no return or something truly shocking has to happen to shake up the foundation of principles and values.
This brings us to the point where we have to conclude that we can only have an open mind when we live without fixed values and principles, which is true but at the same time this makes everything completely relative. We need to share basic values if we want to live together and we will need some for to give direction in our lives, but at the same time we need to have them as vague as possible and as few as possible, like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and in general as much freedom as possible with almost no restrictions at all unless there where the freedom of the other person is in danger. By keeping your values vague you will have to question them from time to time and this questioning is the best guarantee for keeping an open mind.
By accepting the premise that its better to have freedom then restrictions and that this premise also counts for all other life around you, then you have a basic line which needs questioning with every big question, but in the same time preserves the integrity and dignity of everything around you, which should be the end goal of every religion, life style.
vrijdag 15 oktober 2010
The chicken or the egg
We all have our moments when we look for meaning and purpose, for our life itself became dull. Filosophers and great thinkers throughout the ages liked the methaphysical wondering about anything possible, sometimes they found new knowledge or insights which were useful for daily life, but most of them wanted to transend this daily life. Trying to escape it into a magical world of difficult words, complex logic wich ,is not logic at all most of the time, and above all freedom. Complete freedom to think what you want, about whatever you want. Finding the answer is not always a relief then if you are mainly interested in escaping daily life, you have to find a new problem, or a problem with no answer, thats even better, to have a back up. The chicken or the egg question is seen with a metaphorical meaning of which came first, X that can't come without Y, or Y that can't come without X? Well its easy to see that you can loose your head a long time over this question, unless you change the parameters in your view.
If you don't want to escape this life or kill some time, you can try to look with an educated, open mind to the question and the answer will come pretty fast. Children of evolution will say that species change over time via mutation and selection. Since DNA can be modified only before birth, a mutation must have taken place at conception or within an egg such that an animal similar to a chicken, but not a chicken, laid the first chicken egg. In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds that were not chickens and did not lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time.
So one egg mutated and these mutations seemed to be advantageous since after a long interbreeding period there was a new species. I think that this is the best line of defense ever written for the creationists, simplify it a bit with some vulgar words and we have a question you can not answer correctly.
The evolution from a creature with just one cell to two cells was quick and clean, but after this it became less obvious and a new species can't start with one, although there is one mutant it takes a long interbreeding period before there can be talk of a new species or the species as a whole had an upgrade.
This brings us immediately at the heart of the problem, thinking, is there a good way of thinking, a better way and if yes what is this then and how can we do this. Cause no matter who you are, life has its dull moments, most of the amazing things we see, hear and feel can only speak one time directly with all its power to the soul. After this it's a pleasant full shadow we see, hear, feel and reminds us of this glorious moment. So we cannot find a golden bullet to erase the dullness, we need a way of living and thinking in which we are able to experience this pleasant full feeling more often, maybe not always as deep but at least more regularly.
If you don't want to escape this life or kill some time, you can try to look with an educated, open mind to the question and the answer will come pretty fast. Children of evolution will say that species change over time via mutation and selection. Since DNA can be modified only before birth, a mutation must have taken place at conception or within an egg such that an animal similar to a chicken, but not a chicken, laid the first chicken egg. In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds that were not chickens and did not lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time.
So one egg mutated and these mutations seemed to be advantageous since after a long interbreeding period there was a new species. I think that this is the best line of defense ever written for the creationists, simplify it a bit with some vulgar words and we have a question you can not answer correctly.
The evolution from a creature with just one cell to two cells was quick and clean, but after this it became less obvious and a new species can't start with one, although there is one mutant it takes a long interbreeding period before there can be talk of a new species or the species as a whole had an upgrade.
This brings us immediately at the heart of the problem, thinking, is there a good way of thinking, a better way and if yes what is this then and how can we do this. Cause no matter who you are, life has its dull moments, most of the amazing things we see, hear and feel can only speak one time directly with all its power to the soul. After this it's a pleasant full shadow we see, hear, feel and reminds us of this glorious moment. So we cannot find a golden bullet to erase the dullness, we need a way of living and thinking in which we are able to experience this pleasant full feeling more often, maybe not always as deep but at least more regularly.
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