Ha. I should have trusted myself at time t-whatever number of days it has been since first I followed you, Ibrahim. You have availed yourself well with at the very least the first part of this--I could only read up to #6 before I needed to address something else that I could keep my focus here as much as it deserved, but I will tell you...
These thoughts have my mind spinning wildly off to new frontiers.
Let me give you a few excerpts from what I thought of what you have provided me in the first section thus far:
1. a straightforward and crisp presentation of what our current science tells us about the way these parts of our brain work
2. a greater awareness of their speeds of processing and what we think or perceive they are used for.
3. a model which helps me sculpt my understanding of the experience I had in my life better.
I note a few seeming discrepancies between what you summarized and what my experience is, and I haven't evaluated them, as though side-by-side as to where the truth lies (invariably, as one civil judge I once came across said, "the truth lies in the middle.")
Here is what my experience has been:
I know that my willful thinking is done in the prefrontal cortex. I know it is fluidly guided by my subconscious mind in a way I am only just beginning to understand. I now also know that my subconscious mind has something like a million to one processing speed advantage over my conscious mind.
Thus I feel as though I might reasonably be "led to conclude" that for me to somehow "use" my conscious mind to "seize" my subconscious as if to say, "no, don't do that. In this situation, do this" would require something like one heck of a lever in order to get anything like noticeable results. Some may even say, "that's impossible." I, however, am not so sure.
Surely, I think, if this could be done...if this could be...well, systematized...it would offer us a major leap in human capacities.
So I go further:
How might this be done?
Well, I say to myself, I don't know as "they have it 100% right about this subconscious mind. As I view things, the subconscious is the thing--perhaps like a life support system--which keeps me from almost immediately becoming dead when I stop paying attention."
Then I say,
"Yes, it would be rather bothersome to have to 'hold the power switch on' constantly--even when tying one's shoes or riding a bicycle. There needs to be *something* in there somewhere which sort of keeps the lights on and the pumps running."
At some level, I don't want to be persistently having to 'run in a circle' reminding the kidneys to keep my bloodstream relatively free from urea and such. I don't want to have to remember to breathe and such.
But then I say...
"But how do all of these things come about? How does the subconscious do what it does?"
and the answer comes readily:
"It does what it does 'because' if it didn't you'd be dead. Doh!. or, more politely:
evolution has 'led us' to the state where the stomach gives us something of a warning when we are hungry. It has led us--'as though by conscious design'--to a place where we don't have to wait until we experience a performance drop (e.g., low blood sugar, faintness/lightheadedness) before we endeavor to feed ourselves.
Similarly, we aren't generally capable of holding our breath until we die. We pass out first. The subconscious eventually 'notices' that the guy in charge of the conscious mind is wearing his dunce cap again and turns the lights off before we hurt ourselves.
But...and here is where it gets quite interesting for me...
Just like Aikido, we can live *straight up* in harmony with the world (and, by extension, those others around us--at least to some degree) merely by striving for
[and this will sound as though it 'bastardizes' the concept, though it sincerely does not]
the path of least resistance through...well, through the universe.
Can anyone argue that an Aikido master's approach to living life were he to consider his 'opponent' to be the environment is ...well, it appears to me that it either
IS
MIGHT BE
or
MUST BE
the best of all best approaches.
Think about it: if we define the "universe" as everything around us (let's stop short of including ourselves as individuals for the moment, and only talk about that which lies outside our skin)--if we define the universe as such, we shortly see that:
1. Focusing on harmonizing ourselves with everything (and everyone) around us is the least energy intensive approach, all else being equal
2. That 1 must be the case (despite our conscious minds currently in the process of attempting to reject that hypothesis) because if we can figure out the least energy intensive process to existing in the world *(considering all possible energy investments)* we will then be able to "pass down" a delightful gift to our descendants: the ability to persist on the lowest amount of energy per unit time that people can persist
[some of this I am stating loosely, so as to make it more readable. within some of these points, the subtleties must surely be 'hashed out' more than just to say, "in theory this must then work like this"]
3. The people who discover the method to live with the least amount of energy consumed per unit time will also have to be people who have considered harmony to be of paramount importance. They will be people who understand--just as an Aikido master understands--
that it is better to frustrate your opponent into submission than it is to beat him into submission.
This comes directly from our Sun Tzu, of course:
The art of war is to win without fighting.
Further, if we are to claim an even loftier aim as our own, we can certainly say:
The art of all wars (within oneself and without) is to finish them all with one single very carefully chosen battle.
The art of all wars is to convince the enemy that he/she/they/it cannot 'win' because you will not fight. You will only:
Direct all of his energies as swiftly and efficiently as possible toward eroding the ground under his feet.
Direct all of his attacks--each and every one--toward the least effective outcome among the series of possibilities it necessarily predicts.
More succinctly:
If we win the battle of showing how we will always use less of our energy on whatever opposes us and more of our energy on the outcomes we wish to achieve, we will be known far and wide as a person 'not to be trifled with.'
By individual, by group, and even by species.
You win the war without fighting by ensuring that your opponent has you sized up just as much as you have him--not more.
This may sound wrong, but it really isn't. How do we know?
We examine the cases:
1. If we are equally strong, neither will win easily, if either will win at all. We will just keep expending our energies into a bottomless hole of waste until we simultaneously pass out (like breath holding.)
2. If I am stronger than you it is better that both of us know it than if only one or even neither of us do.
3. If I am less strong than you I ought be learning from you, not fighting.
That's pretty much all the cases. In all of them, it serves us to do just as Sun Tzu also said:
Know thy enemy, know thyself.
I don't have to know the enemy first. I have to know myself first (it's easier, though not much I think)--by knowing myself I can much more readily know him. By knowing both of us, I can see the path of the Aikido master, and therein live in harmony with him.
The summary of all this is much more concise than the above, I've been at the 'stream of consciousness' thing again:
If I know how to harmonize with my environment, my life will be arranged much like anyone who knows Feng shui; people who come to my home will know where things are even if I am not there in some sense. Other men won't fear me or object to my behaviors because I will be the one who doesn't bother himself enough to bother anyone else.
Who seeks greater empathy, understanding, and the insights of others as his priorities in life.
I will be an example to others even though that may not even be my "first most conscious intention."
The net net?
The conscious mind, with all of its 40 bits per second, can deduce all of these things and much more provided we use it with some finesse. We can coax out of our subconscious the rules which guide us to harmony with the world, and the more we do it the more others around us will look at us like Red does Andy Dufresne in the beginning of Shawshank Redemption:
