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Cognitive Filters
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 807
The idea of a Cognitive Filter is that we all - consciously but more usually unconsciously, view and experience the world through our own unique perceptual framework which often reinforces our established points of views. We are all guilty of it.
The best way to imagine a Cognitive Filter is a 2X4 jutting out of our forehead, from which we hang countless prejudices, prisms, bits of colored glass, polarizing filters, ornaments, whatever prior experiences we have had in life. Not only do we hang things, but for a great part of our lives - think childhood, think politics, news, education, friends and family - we allow other people to hang things there as well. Very often this 2X4 becomes so cluttered with "filters" that our vision is obscured unto blindness.
The funny thing about Cognitive Filters is that while none of us can see our own, or very often even the world past our own, we for some reason think we are able to see others. For example, we all recognize bigots, racists, homophobia, we can all look at our friends and say "this is your problem...", and our advice very often is good - we can see their problem, we've swung our own 2X4 far enough out of the way to take a clear look at theirs. Not always, and never as well as we think, but often enough. And often we can see a filter on their 2X4 - the same one we've hung on our own - and out of embarrassment refuse to observe it - Alcoholics, for example, generally out of politeness or a matter of form won't acknowledge that another person is an alcoholic - it's easier to ignore that filter and instead put their problems down to one of a thousand other filters hanging down from the 2X4, or we might recognize a filter on another and realizing we have the same one on ourselves flatter or congratulate the wearer - think of religion, politics, nationality, any number of clubs or organizations.
The point of all this meditation - "All This" so far rarely adds up to 30 minutes a day and never even a minute of true mind(ful)(less)ness - is to see past the cognitive filters and get back to an unencumbered view of the world.
...Or maybe I'm understanding it wrong...
Free Will VS Predestination/Predetermination
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 751
I see this cropping up from time to time - interviews with Psychologists, Physicists, Biologists, and the question is reduced to Free Will or Determinism.
I am clearly a firm believer in Free Will - and that the question itself is a red herring that paints one into a corner - much as asking someone "Would you prefer to die by drowning or hanging?", when, in fact, that someone had no intent of dying whatsoever and so the question is irrelevant.
Determinists subscribe to the mechanical view of the universe as laid down by Newton or Galileo, that cause follows effect, that we, as people, are of necessity driven by a thousand subconscious "causes" of which we can recognize only a few at a time. These "causes" result in most of the largely unconscious day to day decisions we make. Therefore we can be seen as being driven by unconscious urges and reaction to external forces and cues such as advertising, peers, society, people in the street, etc, etc...
They would argue that as we are largely unaware of the forces that shape us and control our behavior we are therefore little more than automatons, admittedly with a very complex programming, but automatons nonetheless.
To a degree this is true - but like many things it's a question of degree. We are all - to one degree or another - Schizophrenic, Neurotic, Obsessive, etc, etc - but our place on the scale of labels determines whether we take it as part of our identity or not.
I personally disagree with a great many of the physical and psychiatric diagnoses handed out for the sole reason that it disempowers the patient and takes away the ability for them to try and effect positive change and accept responsibility for their actions. Not that they are necessarily responsible for their disease or condition, but people that accept helplessness never get better, people who accept responsibility and take action occasionally do. A cancer patient might resign himself to a terminal outcome on the recommendation of their physician, when they could instead be making adjustments to their lifestyle and attempting to remedy the causal factors that led to the cancer. And I've met a lot of mentally ill people that seemed to accept their illness, as opposed to attempting to understand and control it. No diagnosis should be an excuse or a defining part of anyone's character or circumstance.
I fundamentally disagree with the question and would argue that a better question might be "How can we best reduce the influence of internal arguments and external influence to achieve the results that we truly want?". This, then, supposes we have some agency in our fate and by the very supposing we take responsibility and agency.
Meditation
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 784
It takes a month to make a habit or so they say, and I'm on my way, I'm on my way. I get my phone ready, I've got to time this. Get into pose. I've got my own poses.
Then START:
"gotta make a list I'm gonna kill...and...wait! That's a thought...let it go...
...wonder what I'll have for lunch...WAIT! THOUGHT! LET IT GO
..and then I'm gonna...and ... THOUGHTS!! BAD! CLEAR MY HEAD!! IMAGINE SWEEPING THE LEAVES AND THE LEAVES ARE THOUGHTS...
NO, DAMN, THOSE ARE THOUGHTS TOO
...how much money is it there left in the bank? THOUGHT! THOUGHT! LET IT GO!!!
...this place is a dump...gotta clean it...
THOUGHT!!!"
Eventually after a long while of wrestling inane thoughts that just percolate up like the bubbles in champagne I arrive at a place like this:
"...
...I'm bored...THOUGHT!!...
just breathe...THOUGHT!...
..."
END. Open my eyes, stop timer. Record time. Over 22 minutes, a new record, I'm getting better at this...Now the actual time I'm actually in any sort of meditative state - even at 22 minutes, can't possibly be even 1 minute. But I am noticing flickers in the white noise and assure myself that I will get better - qualitative as well as quantitative, like anything it's just a matter of practice...
The power of gaze
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 801
It is a common trope that vision has the power to affect what it gazes upon - and there are no end of figures of speech that seem to back that up. Think: "She felt his eyes burning...", 'feel' and 'burning' suggest a tactile response to the gaze, and we are all aware of that uncomfortable feeling or prickling upon the nape of our neck, then turning to find somebody looking upon us. This has its precedent in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision) - that the eyes emit photons or rays responsible for seeing - and while we would generally laugh there are some recent psychological studies done that seem to suggest that we still unconsciously believe it: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/328.
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