One of the fascinating things about us humans is the way in which we process information. We have a good understanding that the brain is hardwired both in the physical structures and functions as well as the cognitive (or operational) elements. Now consider for a moment, at any given point in time the brain is processing thousands of bits of information, from all our senses, internal status, and all our internal conscious thoughts. The processing of this data takes place largely at a non-conscious level, picture a wall, and look across to the opposite side of your room. Think of that wall as containing the sum total of all information your brain is processing at this moment, now picture on that wall a small picture frame which we will call our awareness, we can move that frame all over the wall bringing various elements into consciousness, shifting our thoughts, perceptions and awareness around the larger field of information. This all takes place within a complex mind-body connection and operates in a systematic, orderly and largely automatic manner. This process is “hardwired” it is the physical and mental system operating system if you will. We understand much of the system, and one element that makes this system as rapid and efficient as it is, it that the brain uses constructs to fill in the pieces. We do not need to process every bit of information, run it through complex logarithms to arrive at a conclusion, but instead we use these constructs that allow us to very quickly make assessments on minimal amounts of information. We do not require every possible piece of information in order to make assessment. In fact we make most all assessments using minimal data, because of these constructs. One very clear example of this is optical illusions, the reason optical illusions “work” is because of this process, these mental shortcuts. We like to think of ourselves as largely rational, but in reality we are predictably irrational, many of our decisions are made as a result of these mental shortcuts and can be quite irrational, we can as a result be conditioned (largely by chance but also intentionally) to behave and respond in ways that are contrary to our best interest. Interestingly these mental shortcuts not only apply to us individually (psychology) but also in the context of our interactions with and in social settings (social psychology).
In our larger social context we use very similar processes when we use various constructs to interpret the large amount of social, cultural and contextual information we must process. A few (there are many) familiar examples are our prejudices, bias and stereotyping, all of these contain both positive and negative elements. Again these processes (these social shortcuts) happen largely at a non-conscious level.
The way in which we operate using these mental and social shortcuts allow us to operate at a high level of efficiency, but also add significantly to the risk of error and mistakes, awareness of the how give us insight into the why.
gwg
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early morning musings...interesting, i like shortcuts...preconditioning is the key to long term conditional response..preconditioning is best early, pre-natal, pre-kindergarden..if we forget who we are early on, the harder the ah-ha moment has to break the mind control (conditioning)of you can't do this but you can do that when ALL things are possible.we laugh at our lostness...death and hell cannot hold those who are filled with cognitive awareness, love, for the ONE and all that are.there is no time, it is an illusion....it is merely part of the great conditioned response to not living in the now...as we grow we grow 'from' glory 'to' glory.. lv u kg1
ReplyDelete@ kg1
ReplyDeleteThe short cuts are a two edged sword, they allow us to react quickly to our environment (and as such have value) both individually and culturally and are therefore rooted in the physical world. The downside as you point out is that we can quickly become a collection of conditioned responses, minimizing our free moral agency, which is to say our individual choice (responsibility). We become the rat in the Skinner box pressing the lever for food pellets. When one considers karma, the law of cause and effect, reaping what you sow, this principle / law, is in effect whether we act as a result of conditioning or conscious choice. I agree awareness, enlightenment or consciousness is the path we are on.
gwg