I know this may end up in pseudoscience, but please hear me out. I would like anyone who studies the mind to give me input on this. Ready? 1st: My brain is a receiver. When I am around a group of people thinking the same thing I can get caught up in their togetherthinking, even if I can not observe them. Some people just think really loud and I can hear their thoughts audibly. Usually these thoughts are of either a violent or sexual nature. Why they are so loud, I don't have a clue. I can't 'make' this happen, it is passive. 2nd: My brain sends out tendrils to gather information. I have received tactile input about people and objects I can see. These tendrils are random-they tend to flop around and stick to random things. It only happens when I am semi-relaxed and generally unfocused. 3rdPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!utting our heads together, two heads are better than one, are not just pithy sayings. The electrical impulses in the brain transmit at between 400 and 420hz. If people focus on a problem or thought and allow their heads to touch they begin to togetherthink. Large groups work like alot of transmitters, generating a 'cloud' of togetherthinking. 4th:My mind is seperated into personas. 4 to be precise. One is the rescuing paladin, always charging to the rescue. One is the pragmatic scoundrel to whom the end always justifies the means. One is the quiet bookworm and sometime poet, he seldom has useful opinions though. One is the machine. Cold logic and pragmatism. We have discussions, and I have, in the past, allowed one or another to be my evidenced persona. The machine has always been the default. What do you think? Is all this normal thinking that everyone does and just never talks about? If so, why is it never spoken of? If not, what is your experience of thought?
I'm not going to support your view of togetherthink or group think, or your concept of tendrils sent out by the brain. But your view of multiple personae seems well put. You convey the 4 personae from a perspective of being in control of them and as if you consciously deciding how you want others to view you, i.e. you control the self-image that you convey to others. I think this is a pretty good analysis of the way humans project their image when they want to be perceived in a certain way. However, such projecting does require conscious effort. Left to project on its own, the sub-conscious will be goal oriented. The goals are previously implanted as action items and so the image you project when not consciously controlling the personae would be your true self, IMHO.
Heh! Yeah, me too, Oli. But there's really an accurate label for all of this - it's two words and the first one is "pathological."
So, Read-Only, what is YOUR experience of thought? What happens in your brain as you read this? Do you experience thought or does thought just seem to 'happen' to you?
My thoughts always take me where I lead them. Once in a while I let them wander where they will, but very seldom. I'm a very organized thinker and I try to put them to constructive uses.
Read-Only-so do you have a concept of what machinations occur when you have a thought? How do you lead your thoughts? How does one think in an organized fashion? Do you have simulated file folders you turn to? Is it more efficient, like a database with a search engine?
I lead them and organize them by directing my attention to a problem I want to solve or to a decision that I need to make. I go over what information I already have to see if I've overlooked something useful and deterimine what else I need to find out and where it might be found. Just straightforward and logical, that's all. No mystery or big deal about it.
I've no idea what you mean by 'tendrils.' Is that suppose to be some sort of name for a metaphysical action like "reaching out to other minds?" If so, absolutely not. I contact other minds through the normal communication channels of speaking and writing.
That, of course affects anyone's thinking processes. But 98% of the time I leave ALL emotions out of mine. The other two percent comes into play when I consider what the results my actions or decisions will have emotionally on those I care about, like my family. Of course I consider that.
I tend to think in flow-charts myself, with a chalkboard for math and an infoticker for random information. Motor output thought is more interesting, though. I can't quite grasp what functions occur when I want my left hand to move. Consciously thinking,"Left-hand, move" does not work. I've tried. Yet here I sit typing away, and as I do it I get a mental picture of the statement, and a further mental picture of each letter a bit of a second before I type it.
A friend of mine tried to get me to read a book called "The Silva Mind Control Method" - José Silva, myself and my friend have completely different tastes in reading or understanding, so I didn't really read it all. However the over premise was that Silva had a belief that you could manifest entities within your mind to aid you on your voyage through life. The piece I read was like picking notable historical figures as being the "entities" you would query as a kind of "professional panel". On the one hand if it works for someone then by all means why not indulge, the problem is though that the medical profession would assume this "division" within a persons mind is a mental state of their own engineering and they can be quite rigid in their defence of their field.
I haven't read it either but have seen it referenced years ago as I studied what we know about the sub-conscious mind. One book I did read was "Psychocybernetics", buy Maltz, in which I liked the discussion on improving and controlling your self-image. Mr. H, your point about the "machine" persona being the sub-conscious mind does correspond with how I believe the sub-conscious mind works. But how you actively control your mental processes boils down to conscious thought which we all experience. There is no reason that I know of to believe that we all use the same technique. An individual's technique of organized conscious thought would likely be developed based on their environment, i.e. the way they learn to think by interaction with others right from birth.
Stryder-my personas were not consciously created constructs, I don't think. I realized when I was a pre-teen that I seemed to act in certain ways in certain situations, and frequently had conflicting information about decisions. Upon querying myself I realized the personas were there. They are each very individualistic. They have their own names, are different ages, different values. I had always just assumed that everyone else experienced this. The invariable bickering between personas that arises at times does get to be annoying, that's why I wanted to find out if others DID have the same experience, and if they had any means of negotiating between the personas. qw-so we all have the same thought processes, we just have different methods for applying them?
