“You” are the sum of your agency, which includes both your unconscious and conscious minds. In fact, the two are inseparable as components of your agency.
Now Jeff is upset with folks who would annex your own subconscious (and moreover, your child's subconscious) for your "greater good", e.g. "anti-racism". And rightly so - who wants to be brainwashed?
I'm all for resisting attempts to capture and condition the subconscious of people; ultimately such methods always seem to be about power. Read Jeff's article, he really takes it apart. Great stuff.
And yet.
If conditioning is a praxis of political power and control, rightly depricated - and even if (especially if) we are ultimately responsible for every aspect of our mind, conscious or not - then how are we to guide and grow that which by definition we are not conscious of?
I think it's an important question, given that there's a lot going on beneath the surface.
I use the word "cultivation" to distinguish healthy care and feeding of the subconscious from the kinds of undesirable manipulation which Jeff describes.
Any gardener will tell you cultivation requires patience and is not always a direct thing. Something wonderful and alchemical happens in well tended soil - the miracle of growth.
How do you cultivate the unconscious?
Could it be the sub/unconscious that cultivates us? In a Darwinian sense I mean.
ReplyDeleteNow I'll go read Jeff's post.
Oh. My. Gawd.
ReplyDeleteI just had a comment eaten. A long one.
So while the rest of you celebrate that stroke of luck, I'm going to go have a sad face and some green tea. :P
Luther - good point. What bubbles up from the unconscious is certainly shaped by "choices" made by evolution.
ReplyDeleteWhat choices can we make to affect what our subconscious bubbles up?
afw - comment auto-save goes on the list of features we're looking for. Check.
You got it, Lewy, and though I wish I could claim the concept as original it was Stephen Pinker from whom I got the idea, in his book "How the Mind Works". In it he suggests that we may not be the 'free will' folks that we think we are. That coded deep in the DNA are, as you say, 'choices' already made for us. And, in reference to Jeff G.'s post or the comments therein, tribalism among the strongest.
ReplyDelete"What choices can we make to affect what our subconscious bubbles up?"
ReplyDeleteGlib answer, "Be Here Now". A truly good book if you've never read it. Though perhaps it was my youth that made it so.
What I mean by 'be here now' is that we must constantly examine ourselves, relevant to the moment, in order to sometimes 'not' let nature take its own course. That's where free will kicks in I think.
As nature only cares about survival and continuation... we now have a more nuanced view, if you will, of how to reshape our prime desires.
Luther, serendipitous of you to mention "Be Here Now"... at meditation last night we did a chant which was written by Ram Dass.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean by 'be here now' is that we must constantly examine ourselves, relevant to the moment, in order to sometimes 'not' let nature take its own course. That's where free will kicks in I think.
I agree, and this is why I try to pursue a practice of meditation. I find it opens up the scope of choice available to me.
afw "I just had a comment eaten. A long one."
ReplyDeleteIf you leave the page to look for something else, the something else doesn't open in a new window (another one of the limitations of blogspot)so when you come back, the comment you were writing has gone. You have to try and remember to open a new tab if you want to look at something else before you post your comment.
Just a couple of days ago I heard about a funny little study that concluded something along the lines of "we only function in complete self awareness 10% of the time".
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the time we're kinda like zombies, but without the brain-eating part.
Even the bible, though, says to subdue vain imaginations, to make captive every single thought and cause one's thinking to be obedient.
Guess if one doesn't order one's mind deliberately like this, one is the equivalent of a zombie.
The Pinker wikipedia page said he was the first (of how many) member of the "Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists" :OD
"this is why I try to pursue a practice of meditation"
ReplyDeleteI try, and most often fail, at making my entire life a meditation.
It is 'funny' though, that you performed that chant. Syncronicity... I'm somewhat a believer in that, have seen too much to view it as simple chance. Ha - there, I've exposed myself.
""we only function in complete self awareness 10% of the time"."
ReplyDeleteThat sounds reasonable. Life itself intrudes on our sensibilities. It's tough to not be a zombie.
Haha... yes, hair Pinker has, in abundance.