I have written about anxiety before. But today I want to discuss one of its lethal forms called Anticipatory Anxiety.
What is Event Anticipatory Anxiety? — This is something I named before I knew such a thing as Anticipatory Anxiety existed. I was trying to describe the same anxious feeling I felt while anticipating certain types of different events. I noticed that the idea of those events caused the anxiety way before the event even occurred.
What are events? — Events are occurrences of limited time-span. Life is the sum of events.
What kinds of events cause such anxiety in me? —Events that include people or entities I am not comfortable with in the event environment. For example, if the event is a walk in a certain street at night, stray dogs that bark are things I am not comfortable with in that environment.
What is common in all those event anxieties? — Something undesired will happen in this event.
Personal Examples of Event Anticipatory Anxiety—
While smoking inside the house
While entering a classroom
While checking Medium notifications
While meeting certain people
While visiting one particular relative of mind.
Descriptions of what goes on inside the head (the undesired will happen thought) during these episodes —
While smoking inside the house:A family member might come and create a scene about me smoking. While entering a classroom:The class laughs at me While checking Medium notifications in the morning:No response, followers or comments! While meeting certain people: This person will insult or humiliate me While visiting one particular family of relatives:They will talk of stupid and sensitive issues.
Real life instances where the descriptions above have come true —
While smoking inside the house: A family member might come and create a scene about me smoking. There have been instances in my young-days when I have been yelled at for smoking. Beaten and even jailed for drinking.
While entering a classroom: The class laughs at me. The entire class laughed at my buckteeth deformity when I first entered the classroom after joining a new school in the 5th grade.
While checking Medium notifications in the morning: No response, followers or comments! Daily these days.
While meeting certain people: This person will insult or humiliate me. I went through a lot of insults and humiliation during my childhood and teenage years.
While visiting one particular family of relatives: They will talk of stupid and sensitive issues. They always do so.
What have I learnt from all this? — * The undesired will happen * thought is due to the traumatic memories of true events of the past. Especially of those during my childhood and teenage years.
What is the solution? — Try to recallinstances of events above where you have been successful in order to wash the traumatic memories and replace them with successful ones.
While smoking inside the house: All instances of smoking in the house in the last decade. I have come out of the smoking room unscathed every single time. When I have enjoyed and woken up calmly at home after drinking the night earlier.
While entering a classroom: When I entered the classroom of the same school one day confidently chewing a gum and humming the tune of a song knowing one of them will ask me to write them a lyrics of any song anytime.
While checking Medium notifications in the morning: When one of my stories on Dostoevsky went viral.
While meeting certain people:Multiple instances in the last few years when I have bossed meetings and have come out of them as the leader.
While visiting one particular family of relatives: All instances I don’t visit them.
Conclusion —
Event Anticipatory Anxiety is when I have the same anxious feeling while anticipating certain different types of events.
Such anxiety is caused by events that include people or entities I am not comfortable with in the event environment.
The prevalent thought in all those events is this: Something undesired will happen.
This is due to the traumatic memories of true events in the past when the undesired has happened.
What is the solution? How to be free from this crap? Recallinstances of events where you have been successful so that you wash the traumatic memories and replace them with beautiful ones.
Three of us were having a conversation about weed experience. All three, weed smokers at some point of our lives. One (me) already quit, another a sporadic user and another a regular one.
The sporadic user said weed didn’t do him much good. I said the same.
‘It’s because you haven’t smoked much. Once you get used to it, it won’t harm you,’ the regular user said.
‘No, I have tried it a lot! In fact, I have done everything to conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the mental games by strengthening myself. I have tried to use it, exploit it and conquer it. I have tried to enjoy the game it plays with my mind and smirk at it. But it just doesn’t work for me,’ I said.
After that, I got excited and shared one of my experiences with weed:
I was alone in an office one night. Everyone had left. I had some weed given to me by a friend. I went to the roof and smoked a stick, trying to tell myself I was now strong enough for weed to bother me. Strong enough to fight the paranoia!
For half-an-hour, I was strong. I was excited at the idea of having conquered the beast that had been responsible for many fits of anxiety, paranoia and depression. I was excited at the thought of having been a strong person now.
45 minutes in, I started to get dizzy and my mouth went dry. The thoughts were normal — largely because I was doing everything in my strength to stop a few from coming. I thought it was time for me to leave. Feeling dizzier and drier in the mouth by the moment, I shut down the computer, turned off the lights, locked the doors and left in my car. Aphrodisia had kicked in and I was in a hurry to go to my bed, open my laptop and do what lonely young men do!
The distance between the office and my home was 10 minutes. I must have been driving for about 5 minutes — still feeling dizzy — when I reached to a major junction. Cars and bikes with headlights stormed from all directions. I got blinded for a while. But I tried to maintain the traffic discipline and drove. But things had changed:
I got nauseous. Seriously dehydrated and experienced vertigo.
I struggled to keep my hands on the steering. My legs were shivering. I thought I could drive no more. But it was still rush hour so stopping the car wasn’t a good idea. I kept driving. It kept getting worse. My heartbeat went faster and louder. I don’t know what I did and how, but I reached home.
At home, as I parked the car and shut the gates. A strange question hit me:
‘I hit-and-run someone, didn’t I?’
I got more nauseous. Severely dehydrated and experienced serious vertigo.
‘I have hit-and-run!’ kept popping in my head.
‘The police will be here anytime now.’
Of course, the police didn’t come and after the attack was over I could recall clearly that I hadn’t done anything as such. But the impact was devastating. I don’t remember having smoked it since.
‘Yeah, it happens to some. Such people shouldn’t smoke,’ the regular user said after I narrated the incident.
‘How’s it with you?’ I asked.
‘Oh! I get hi~~~gh. I feel rela~~~xed. And the sexual side of it is just unbe~lie~vable. When I fuck while high, I go on and on and on…’ he said.
I wish I could use weed like that, now that I am married, I said to myself.
But why does it work on some and not on others, I wondered.
‘It must have something to do with blood-pressure and all,’ I had been explaining myself.
But yesterday I had a different perspective.
Maybe it isn’t about blood-pressure, maybe it is about character!
The regular user I talked about earlier is one of those fun-loving guys. He likes to go to parties, on trips to Goa and Thailand, watch and talk football. Take one day at a time.
Once I had tried talking classical music and philosophy with him but he kind of scolded me by telling me those things were for the boring or for the old.
‘Don’t waste your time on those things. Life is for enjoyment. Enjoy!’ he had said.
Of course, my version of enjoyment does include classical music and philosophy. And introspection and self-awareness and self-enquiry and mental exploration and all that!
But he isn’t someone who will sit and wonder why he or the universe exists. I will bet every dime on the fact that he doesn’t sit idle in front of a lake thinking of how deep he has reached in his wisdom about life. Nor will he sit in front of a sea questioning whether he should be powerful in society or not. He lives by the day and does what’s supposed to be done by a modern youth.
There’s where I see a difference in character:
I have done all those things (Sitting idle in front of a lake, sea, etc.)
I see myself as too self-aware (emotionally too) for weed. Yes, it does make all people self-aware but maybe not to the extent as it impacts me. Because I get emotionally traumatized by it. Because maybe I suffer from emotions too much. I have always been troubled by them. That’s why I say, it’s in the character.
Maybe I am being judgmental or maybe I am missing a trick or two. That’s why I would love to know your experience with this thing called weed.
The Process of a answering this How To live question Begins With another question:
How am I feeling right now?
It should always start with this question. It should always be about this question.
But how do we track things as elusive and vague as our feelings?
Why do I keep coming back to these questions whenever I feel prominently about something? More important than that, Why are these questions even relevant when I can tune into any form of entertainment available in abundance and forget about my feelings (wash them) and shut my thoughts?
I don’t think I can get into the first, second and third questions without answering the fourth.
Yes, I have used sports, games, music, movies, TV shows, novels, friends, cigarettes, coffees, teas, alcohols — I have used them all in plenty throughout my life. I have used them all to get out of all sorts of feelings dwelling inside me. Good, Bad. Get out of feelings intolerable. Even getting out of feeling enjoyable to me as a celebration.
I have used them all to shut-down the thoughts that those feelings have generated in me. And those things of entertainment have helped me. They’ve helped me get out of the dreaded zone. But always temporarily. Unwanted feelings haven’t stopped. In fact, feelings haven’t stopped. These days, whenever I think of going into entertainment or distractions to get rid or celebrate my feelings, I am reminded of their transience. Of their ineffectiveness.
A person who goes to entertainment all the time never has to understand and feel the feelings. But the question remains: Why should anyone have to understand and feel diverse feelings when one can feel ‘entertained’ all the time?
In my case, it maybe because I have also done time of introspection in my life. And once you go inside yourself, you never completely come out, do you?
I got into introspection all those years back because I wanted to know what life was really about. I wanted to know what I was. I wanted to know why I was existing. I wanted to dig and reveal all sorts of feelings and emotions possible. I wanted to live completely. I wanted to live colorfully.
I haven’t seen those people who live for entertainment feel much about things. I have seen myself not feeling too much about things when I have surrendered myself completely to entertainment.
So, understanding your feelings is important if you want to live an introspective, profound and colorful life. You can use entertainment as a bonus. As one color in all the colors of your life. But you cannot make entertainment the only color of your life. (If you want to have a profound and colorful life, that is.) Yes, I can wash my feelings and shut my thoughts whenever I want by merely pressing y in my browser address bar, but I want so much more from life, don’t I?
With that out of the way, I want to share how I try to trace my feelings.
First thing is to be feeling-conscious:
‘How and What am I feeling right now?’
It’s difficult to do this all the time. In fact, I feel lucky whenever this question does grace me at all. But it’s sporadic. I have been trying my best to increase the frequency.
The thing to do is to try to stop yourself from getting lost in your feelings, which means from getting lost and carried by your thoughts. I see thoughts as slaves of feelings.
This is contradictory. How do I make my life colorful and enjoy the feelings when I stop myself from feeling the feelings?
My experience is that being feeling-conscious gives you some amount of control over what you are feeling. This control is important because then you can decide what to do with the feeling. This act of being conscious itself is control. You can then decide how much suppression or allowance you are going after. For me this control is important because I have found even good feelings to be intolerable for me.
Let me share something with you
A few days back, I went to a party, Got drunk and shared things with people with whom I usually don’t share things much. The next morning was devastating. I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t stand to go back to recalling the previous night, yet my mind wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere else than there. That day passed in intense suffering. Only time shall heal this misery, I said to myself. Until…
Immediately, the intolerable hangover vanished as I started searching for words to describe whatever I was feeling.
Humiliation
The word appeared as if by magic. And the feeling and thoughts that had made me suicidal, vanished, as if my magic.
But it wasn’t magic.
It was a pretty simple thing: Introspection. Feeling-consciousness.
I don’t want to and have to lie to you. After that, I was in control of my feelings. I pushed as if I was pushing something physical and heavy and successfully stopped humiliation from appearing in me again.
Trivia: I had spent the day watching a stupid movie for an escape.
The mere act of being conscious of my feeling and naming it worked for me. Of course, the humiliation hasn’t completely vanished, but it is something I know-of and am in relative control of as of now.
Let me answer the questions I asked in the beginning.
How am I feeling right now?
It should always start with this question. It should always be about this question.
But how do we track something that is as elusive and vague as our feelings?
We try to increase the frequency of the question above and name the prevalent feeling. Use Words. Use terms. Name it! Human beings have managed to create words for almost all the feelings, and even if they haven’t, it’s your chance to coin something epic.
Get in control of your feelings. This will help you control your thoughts. If you manage to do it, you will live a profound and colorful life. You won’t need to be dependent on the entertainers. You can use them in your own accord to provide you entertainment whenever you feel like having one!
Being Visionary is more about will than originality.
I don’t know how it goes with entities such as stars and rocks and rivers but with those of us living with cell (s): we are always forced to make decisions.
An ant crawls on my table and I for my own leisure block its path with my finger. Now it has to make a decision: persist with the obstacle or go a different path. The ant has obstacles apart from me: The dog, the wind. Which means, it has to make a lot more decisions in life. However, regarding the approach to making those decisions — looking at its circumstances — I believe it has only one: pragmatic which tells it to go to the currently most beneficial place.
I, as a human, am similar. I go along with my business and for some god’s leisure, a thought comes and blocks my path.
Then, I am left to make a decision: force myself out of the thought or go a different one. Lots of thoughts and events occur, which means I have to make a lot of decisions. But, when it comes to approach, I have observed two in me:
Pragmatic
Visionary
Within the pragmatic approach I am like the ant. Whatever thought or obstacle I face and have to make a decision, I decide to do that which seems currently the most beneficial.
While taking the visionary approach, I become a human in that whatever obstacle I face and have to make a decision on, I decide to do that which seems in line to the vision of myself I have in my mind. It’s like the ant going, ‘I have to climb this finger thing and die so my vision of becoming a martyr is realized.’
Pragmatic approach is understandable, you do that which ensures your survival and life-success. But where the hell does this thing called vision come up on me?
Where does the vision come from?
Ingenuity?
What else?
My observations of myself have shown that I do not in fact envision a future for myself. What I do is simply decide to not be pragmatic and allow my mind to drift along the inner voices, the rest is done by my mind. This way I don’t think it should be called vision. It’s more like natural is the correct term.
Why?
While I envision myself, I am in fact, not as creative as I think I am. This is because I am not designing a certain type of me from scratch. Rather, I am merely imagining (projecting) a me who has fulfilled all the desires that exist in me during the moment of envisioning. It is like the perfect balance of all my desires. THE SWEET SPOT. This way, fulfilling my dreams or realizing my vision is more like me being that which is natural to me: achievement of all desires, with the desires being the things which are natural.
Pragmatic approach is more about advantage. I will have to sacrifice a lot of my desires in the process. Success is the key here.
Let’s stay with the visionary approach:
Even if it’s not about free designing and creating, there is a certain skill required to envision yourself.
As mentioned above, firstly you need to agree to listen to your desires and let go of certain pragmatism (Of course, mixed approach exists in people but let’s not talk about that here). Even after agreeing to listen, the path won’t be easy. Your mind will make you scream, yell, cry, want-to-die in its search for the perfect image for your desires. It’s like pulling out a healthy tooth. But when your mind finds one, it fills you with ecstasy. You are freed. You are free to work on the how’s and finally forget visioning and decision-making!
And then the sad part begins:
The desires you have inside you are not constant. They change with new knowledge and experience and so has to your vision.
The irony of it all is that even if you go after the vision and reach the situation envisioned, there is almost complete certainty that things will end up being something completely different!
I was out to pick-up a dog cage from a pet shop yesterday. The cage was big and the street was narrow which meant I had to load it in the car in a short time. Motorbikes and taxis were already parked which meant I didn’t have much space to work with. I went past the shop looking for a place to turn around, and when I did, I spotted an empty spot from afar— a perfect spot. It was at the opposite end of the shop. I pressed the accelerator in excitement and went near. But what do I notice when I get there?
A young guy is sitting on his motorbike at the exact spot, leisurely using his phone. There was no point honking so I drove past staring at him and parked the car a little further. It would take more effort and time to bring the cage and load it in the car. But I did that. All the while cursing that young person’s existence in my head.
‘Why is this person even existing?’
‘There’s no use for creatures like these!’
I thought.
Miserable thought. Bad thought. I know. But I ask these too:
‘Why am I even existing?’
‘There’s no use for rascals like me!’
Whenever I get annoyed with someone (including me), I tend to have these thoughts. I tend to imagine the entire cosmos (as much as I think it exists) and judge the value of existence of each and every individual entity. Which is more important, the sun or the moon? The river or the sea?
What a sorry thing to do!
I…I know.
I don’t see much value in the existence of anything at all — including existence — apart from the value of existence itself. I mean, to exist is the only valid reason for existence. The only actual value.
Which means, I have no right to question the value-of-existence of anything or anyone. But I do it. I forget the lesson above.
I am a human and I have been shown and told a lot that existence in itself is nothing significant, its what you make of the existence that matters. So naturally I have grown up judging the value of existence of everything:
Dogs have less value than humans and ants have less value than dogs. Plants have less value than ants while mosquitos are there to be killed.
And then there’s the human world:
Writers have less value than businessmen and cleaners have less value than writers…and likewise. Division of labor. In society like mine — Nepali/Hindu — there’s this caste more valuable than that and that more valuable than that…
Yes, with my own eyes I have seen dead politicians taken to cremation in a parade and I have also seen corpses burnt with no one at all to attend. Division of value. VALUE OF EXISTENCE. Which means, high value people have more right to exist and properly die.
Now, when I saw the bike person, my human ego told me that the person was beneath me in terms of value-of-existence. I may have judged based on occupation or caste. But I judged and thought the person had a lower value-of-existence than me (and my dog since the dog I considered my own). Now, if there was a businessman with his Tesla parked — would I question the businessman’s value of existence?
Instead, I would question my own value of existence!
What a petty, miserable being I am. Why do I forget the lesson?!
Before getting into why I consider physical pain to be the greatest teacher, let me give some background.
I am one of those who constantly and intentionally creates problems for himself. Even when there is nothing significantly alarming in life, I have the habit of questioning and worrying about things such that I miss everything else going on, every emotion flowing in and need someone else to remind me of the absurdity of what I have been thinking and worrying about. That someone doesn’t have to be a highly intellectual or spiritual person. That something doesn’t have to be sophisticated or philosophical. Hearing a ten year old kid react while playing a video-game can do the trick. But such encounters rarely occur.
Believe me, I have read and heard the best of preachers preach and the greatest of teachers teach.
‘Thou shalt not do this…’, ‘You have been viewing the world wrong…’, ‘This is the proper way…’…they say.
But for me, what they preach and teach has always been like listening to some music you don’t like. You can hear the music playing, you understand what’s going on…but it just doesn’t touch you.
That’s my character.
Now I want to share my present situation:
I am going through excruciating pain in my mouth because of a couple of rotten teeth. It has persisted for a couple of days during which it has grabbed my attention, sucked my energy, has made me scream in anguish, has taken buzz away from beer, clouds away from smoke, taste away from food and relaxation away from a cup of tea. It has eclipsed my entire being and my thoughts haven’t been able to focus anywhere else apart from the region that hurts.
Under this situation, however, when I move my mind around things, I am amazed at my stupidity for constantly and intentionally creating problems for myself when there are none!
‘Everything is so simple…why was I complicating them?’ I ask myself.
‘This goes here, this there…this fits here…that doesn’t fit there…It’s all so simple. WHAT WAS THERE TO WORRY?!’ I question myself.
This is why I call physical pain the greatest teacher. While I sit here as a being suffering from the complications of its own body, I don’t have time nor space to get lost in mental forests of gloom. For one, it is because I don’t have the energy. Which makes me question whether my anxieties and mental issues are the result of me not being able to apply my energy appropriately. While all the energy of my being is sucked by the consciousness of physical anguish there is little left for the reveries of mind. This is why, perhaps, the mind focuses on the real.
Other thing I notice is the absurdity of problem-creating itself. While I sit here trying to figure out ways through which I can rid myself of this anguish, my state-of-mind is that of the issues of the body. The body which is real. I think I look at the thing that usually bothers me with the same state-of-mind which crops all unnecessary parts and perhaps, the mind focuses on the real. Here there is no place for problem-creating. Things are the way they are!
I don’t know how long this pain will last. In fact, I am about to go visit a doctor. But I don’t want to forget the lessons that this pain has taught me. Lessons about my reality, human reality. About my energy, human energy. Lessons about attention and conscience. Lessons I could never learn from gurus and philosophers.
This physical pain has given me hints on what I shall do and avoid. What I should try to constantly realize. Some part of me wishes some kind of physical pain always remains in me. But again, it’s not comfortable. I have to get rid of this anguish and this is what matters as of now. I need to go to the doctor for I have tried toleration and bearance but none has worked. I have tried homemade ways to avoid pain killers, hasn’t worked. The pain is real. I need to trust the system now. I need to trust a doctor. I need to focus on what is real. I need to do that which is there — not worry about that which may not be.
Right now, I don’t have enough energy or time to question the morality of medical systems!
You notice your anxiety and it burns such that you cannot help but question why you are feeling that way. By then, you have tried everything: distraction, inspiration, perspiration.
Questioning the reasons for anxiety is the only thing left to do and when you reach to that phase, half of it is already gone. ‘Why didn’t I do this before?’ you wonder. You begin digging, imagining, hypothesizing: what is causing this anxiety?
You go through multiple scenarios: past, present, future. Friends, family, self. Mental, emotional, physical. You trial and error through them. One moment you feel you have found the cause: memory of your bullies from school is causing this anxiety…but something doesn’t fit. ‘I have solved it before,’ you say and move on. Another moment: fear of failure! But still something doesn’t feel okay. The anxiety doesn’t leave! ‘No there’s something else,’ you say.
‘Oh, the absurdity of choosing a career of a writer’
‘Yes…but no not this time…I have dealt with it already. I have ideas about it…I don’t need to be anxious…it’s something else’.
And then you think:…it’s not the cause that’s the cause. It’s the anxiety that’s the cause. It’s the anxiety — which like a python dwells inside you. Yeah, it sleeps a lot too. But when it wakes up…it consumes you. It sees complications where there are none. It feels wrong when there are none. It sees another python when there is none. It may not only be the effect of sharp perception which sees the fragility in everything, It may be the cause of wrong perceptions. It maybe behaving like the way they call quantum particles do. In this case, it is both the cause and effect.
As long as it is effect, you can put the python to sleep (by digging the cause)and move on until the python wakes up again. And then you do it again. But if it’s a cause? What do you do? — Medication? Meditation? Masturbation? But, they’re all temporary!
Since I have mentioned the term ‘quantum’ above, I once read Einstein saying this:
…Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
I don’t know in which context he said it, but he said it good. The anxiety as the cause is similar. It’s some sort of weakness that lurks inside you and creates problem after problem. Time and time again. Why?!
It doesn’t let you have fun with your family, your food, your film. Doesn’t let you be at peace with your pet, your poetry, your plant. Nor does it let you do anything. It lurks and it hurts. Burns and it…It sucks!
It sucks color out of you, joy out of you, love out you, life out of you. And they say it is the sharp perception of the impending threat! I don’t wanna be sharp.
A better question then:
If you are constantly suffering from anxiety, are you shrewd or ill?
HINT:
(I have written this and now the python seems to have gone to sleep. I wonder when will it wake up again? Oh, wait…it’s back! Apparently, my thinking about it woke it up)
As I sit here with my laptop staring at this white canvas that tells me to write my story, I wonder who I might be writing it for. I wonder who would care about these ‘stories’ — which are in fact nothing but doubts, excitements, half-formed/uninformed ideas, opinions, perspectives and reveries. Yet, I believe such writing has the potential to do a lot if only a lot of people read seriously! I have even derived a quote: Writing is a small attempt with a huge potential consequence.
People who think a lot should write a lot. People who can’t think a lot should read a lot.
Some writer’s books feel like an ocean while some writer’s books feel like a muddy street.
Billionaires going on space trips and ordinary minds becoming writers is like wearing a woolen jacket on a hot summers day: They will only make things worse!
What I have noticed is, the more you write the better your typing gets. I do not know what importance it has on whatever I will end up writing today but I thought it would be a fun thing to share.
If you are like me who doesn’t have a dedicated list of things to write, then at times you must also feel there’s nothing special to write. What do you do then? Yet a feeling inside you pushes you to write, doesn’t it? It is like an addiction. But let’s be good on ourselves and call it a habit. Yet, that feeling is nothing but — the reasons why you write telling you why you should now be writing.
I started this by focusing on what Medium puts in its header: Title and Tell your story…I think it was a good start.
Yesterday I visited a book store and I saw a book written by a person who has participated in mediocre art-works throughout his life. His book was a Self-Improvement book and he was supposedly instructing others on how to live a quality life. IRONY!
If there’s anything in my life that resembles the cat and mouse situation it is me trying to interpret and understand what is causing my anxiety.
Apparently writing during a block is a lot like getting out of bed in winter mornings. Initially, you start imagining you won’t be able to get on with it. But once you decide to do it, you will always find a way around it.
People who have the habit of questioning whether their pursuits are substantial or not are both lucky and unlucky. Unlucky because they can no longer be children-like. Lucky because they can no longer be children-like.
As a writer, you can bend the Universe in whatever way you want. But for that you need strong shoulders. (Thanks Nietzsche!)
Let’s say, it’s 2070 and Humans have settled on Mars or some other planet. What did you imagine them doing there? — — I imagined them quarreling over some piece of land.
My dog is a local Nepali guy. What I realized today is — if I look at him without his name and all other cultural associations I have with him — he is a raw and wild animal living in a manmade world of language and technology.
Sometimes I utter the word Humans and enter a trance.
We humans, in this Cosmos is: a weird situation.Living to figure this riddle out is equally important to Living to make the world better, if not more!
You want to see the power of ideas? — — Imagine a cold dark pessimistic philosophy ruling over everyone’s thoughts!
Without entertainment and art, we would feel cold.
What is Art? — — Art is to humans what humans are to the Universe: Not practically necessary, but you haven’t been able to be without it either.
It is not AI vs Humans. It is Avaricious-Humans (AH) vs Humans.
Don’t be afraid of other people, ever.
These are some random thoughts I wrote when I had nothing specific to write. What do you write when you have nothing to write yet want to write?
The other day the debate was around the same question:
What is the difference between knowing something and applying that knowledge in life?
After a friend of mine said what he always did —
‘I know all this. The problem is that these things cannot be applied to life.’
I get hit hard every time these things come up. It makes me wonder if all philosophical and literary pursuits are indeed vague and unimportant. I wonder if they are mere luxuries of impractical and privileged people: Fanciful playthings for people who cannot get along with reality.
But I had to answer my friend. Ihad to answer him because for most of the time, I see the importance. On top of that, I had to answer him to prove to myself that I was capable of interpreting almost any thought in words. But more importantly, the solution was lurking not too deep inside my consciousness. I had to bring it out.
‘Thoughts drift. Thoughts are not under our control easily. Applying something you know is just about successfully leashing certain thoughts. After that, it is about maneuvering them in any direction you want!’ I said.
I was relieved. The friend remained silent. Awkwardness reigned for a few minutes.
Before talking in detail about bad thoughts, let me give some context.
A terrible nightmare woke me up at 3 AM this morning. After that, I went into a 30 minutes or so of ridiculous post-dream analysis.
I felt terrible. Weak. The dream and its thoughts were miserable!
I restrain myself from using the lessons from Vedic and Buddhist spirituality I once learnt. I dumped them after practicing for a lot of years, because I felt they were limiting my world-view and perspectives.
But this morning I the petty thoughts were intolerable. The more I argued with myself, the more I suffered.
So, after a long gap, I took out that spiritual-weapon. Focusing, drowning and losing myself on a feeling of nothingness!
It helped me fall asleep.
But that episode is still haunting me right now. Like a wound it persists. I don’t know what to do with it. It is injuring and damaging.
I have decided to write about them here to see what happens!
Thoughts are the ultimate entities of this human existence of ours. I have elsewhere tried to justify this statement. Thoughts play a crucial role in our knowing.
True and False are also essential to us.
If I am hiking in the woods and a thought suddenly says — A tiger is approaching, my immediate reaction will be to be alert and then look around. I do this because I want a proof of that thought. If I don’t find any, I relax a tad and walk on. This is because I haven’t found any justified truth to what the thought told me.
But still why my thought may have told me that is a question that won’t let me relax completely. If I can relax a bit, it’s only because I found a certain false in the thought statement.
However, if I notice birds flying or other animals making hasteful noise when I look around, I have found some evidence to support that thought, which increases my heartbeat, gets me sweating and emotionally injures me after which I start to figure out mechanisms of defence. This is because I found a certain truth in the thought.
But the differentiation between true and false is not an easy task as thoughts in themselves do not provide us with any distinction. Thoughts in isolation can be either. False thoughts can be judged as being true and vice-versa. As happened to me this morning, I panicked because I took the thoughts as being true which may or may not have been the case.
This is where a faculty in us called thinking is to be used for — locating evidence.
the facts, signs or objects that make you believe that something is true
In the case of the tiger in the woods, I searched for facts, signs or objects that had to prove to me that the tiger was there. In the case where I did not find any, I relaxed and moved on, whereas when I found some, I panicked and began thinking self-defence.
But figuring out the evidence wasn’t so easy this morning. For one, the dream and the subsequent thoughts told me things that were detrimental which was followed by imaginative ‘evidence’ which then emotionally injured me.
Unlike the tiger-case, I had no way of identifying facts, signs or objects as the thoughts were not about my immediate physical environment. They were about my self-worth and poor-decisions.
I then tried to argue with the evidence it provided by searching for counter-evidences which were again countered…
Now, how do I correctly gather evidence to judge the true or false thoughts that are about things as subjective as self-worth and decisions?
In other words, How do I deal with injurious subjective thoughts?
If my thoughts tell me that I am worthless, justified by an immediate evidence of me not earning money currently, which then injures me; how do I deal with them?
The path I chose was of ignoring — focusing, drowning and losing myself on a feeling of nothingness!
Is that it? The best solution? Is it healthy?
My purpose behind writing this was to just interpret whatever had happened this morning with me. As I have been writing, I have been noticing how absurd but effective the spiritual method is. While it would have been a stupid act in the woods, it does seem to be a worthwhile act in the safety of bed. That is, in the domains of subjective thoughts.
But in the long-term it seems hazardous. Since it is like tucking away an object of discomfort, I think it won’t stop thoughts from haunting you after a certain period. As I said in the beginning, while I did manage to fall asleep, the wound hasn’t left me.
A long-term approach such as that is sure to keep one away from addressing the issues at hand turning one’s life into one with ignorance. It was one of the reasons I had stopped using their teachings altogether because I thought they were limiting my world-view and perspectives.
So what is the solution?
I think I have found a few:
(Please remember that I am only talking about injurious thoughts related to Self-Worth and Decisions)
Be Strong:
Irrespective of the situation and threat, the only thing we can do that will not have any repercussions in both short and long-term and will only help us in dealing with the injury better is to be strong. Come what may I will deal with it could be the best thing to remind yourself during a crisis.
Seek Evidence:
While seeking evidence may not be as easy as in the immediate and physical scenarios, I think we should try to look for real-life proof of the doubts we are having. Trying to answer questions such as — What is the basis of the thoughts I am having? How can I prove it? What may have triggered it? can prove to be helpful as they take us away from the injury into the lands of scrutiny, where we have control (somewhat). This questioning I believe is the apt method to judge the true or false thoughts that are about things as subjective as self-worth and decisions
Remind yourself of deeds done:
This is where every deed ever done comes into play. Reminding ourselves of each act of success achieved, however trivial, can prove to be very useful. Maybe it is a game won, a road travelled, an adventure, an obstacle that had been overcome!
For me the purpose behind writing this was to — firstly, interpret what had happened to me earlier and then to hopefully heal myself through it.
I think I have successfully managed to do it (for now).
Writing for me is very important for many reasons. I am feeling the beauty and reality of one of those right now.
I asked myself about the future of thinking after I noticed how alert I was getting using my phone, laptop and TV.
I tried to understand the alertness and discovered that there was a voice inside my head that constantly reminded me that whatever I do in those devices is being surveilled,monitored and analyzed.
What is happening now is that this alertness is getting contagious. The hangover from device-usage is getting into my head. I am getting alert while Ithink, see or talk sensitive stuff in the same manner.
As if my thoughts and views are being surveilled, monitored and analyzed.
Is this what will happen to our thoughts in the future?
I have often found myself in the middle of philosophical arguments fuming with anger, full of anxiety. Speaking or typing at the speed of light what my fast-beating heart and an inflating ego demand of me.
While my intention behind discussing ‘deep’ things with others is almost always to share and hear things about I have been reading, thinking or writing, I haven’t been able to stop myself from getting petty to the point of attempting to humiliate the other person with all kinds of insults to his/her intellectual capacities.
Thisgot me questioning:
How can I handle such philosophical arguments better?
There are a couple of things I am clear about:
I *want* to have such discussions
I *don’t want* to win the arguments. I just want to learn a thing or two, boast a bit and have a good time at the end of it all!
So, how can I stop such philosophical arguments from getting petty?
How can I handle such arguments better?
Can I?
The first thing is to see what goes on during such arguments by trying to identify some significant factors at work.
We have to remember that Man – being an intellectually advanced (relatively) animal – is very sensitive towards its intellectual abilities.
No normal or dignified human being would ever want to be told that his/her cognitive abilities are of a low-grade. It would be like challenging a python on its strangulation abilities by strangulating it. The python would obviously want to prove you wrong.
I think this factor is at work our petty philosophical arguments.
The dignity factor
What I noticed was, most of us arguers believe that the ability to philosophize is the highest kind of intellectual ability. It’s just the way our culture is set up.
But it is justifiable because the ability to philosophize implies the ability to use our brains for something other than trifles. Everyone can trifle! Something other than practicality. Everyone can be practical! To dwell in the domains of abstractions and values. Now, not everyone can do that is what we believe! The same reason we value science, mathematics and engineering too. Apart from the money.
I think this is why no one wants to lose such arguments. As it would imply intellectual loss. Defeat.
From this angle, it seems as if philosophical arguments are the best test of cognitive abilities.
At this point we can wonder why it has never become a popular sport or a reality show. There is so much at stake!
The other factor I found was Cultural/Identity Sensitivity.
Philosophical arguments touch on areas that form the basis of any culture and identity. Religion, Ethnicity, Nationalism, all these have subjective worldview at their bases. Philosophical arguments are merely debates at core: The nature of reality, Creator, Rights and Wrongs, Why x is better than y, etc.
These are substantial stuff. No wonder people get agitated! Some even kill others for their views…This is a dangerous territory!
The other factor is emotional sensitivity.
If Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra has helped me get over severe nervousness and anxiety, then I certainly would be emotionally offended if anyone calls it merely a reverie of a madman.
Similarly, if Vedic spirituality has helped someone get over an emotional trauma, and if I go and tell that person the whole Vedic system is merely intellectual narcotics composed by addicts drinking liquid narcotics, they are bound to want to pull my tongue out of my mouth!
These are the factors I have discovered as of now. I will update if I find more.
Now, what about the answers to these questions:
How can I stop the arguments from getting petty?
How can I handle such arguments better?
Can I?
The best solution is to stop participating in such arguments altogether.
But as I mentioned above, I do not want to do that.
So, in order to stop it from getting petty to the point of anger and harassment, I should remember that the person in the argument who remains calm the longest has a better intellectual ability. This is self-explanatory.
Of all abilities, I believe that controlling and directing thoughts, desires and feelings are the most difficult. If I manage to remain calm throughout, then I believe my ego will be silenced.
At the same time, I should remember that I always have the option of walking out of such arguments or not participating at all. If I am having an argument it means I have voluntarily participated in it. Therefore, I should be able to reasonably listen to others and calmly defend my opinions and learnings. Even if it concerns me culturally and emotionally. If I can do that, my ego again will surely keep quiet.
I had developed a desire-management formula. I have been implementing it for more than a couple of years now. The reason for sharing?
It has proved to be very effective.
Now that I have fully committed myself to a life as a writer, there are a few elements which I think are essential to such a lifestyle.
This desire management is simply an allocation of those elements to the wants and needs embedded in almost all of us.
I had been very random and all-over-the-place with my thoughts, desires, time, work and life management. This particular formula has helped me get a little bit more organized. It may be of help for others as well, irrespective of the profession.
I hereby publicize this formula as The ABCD formula as it contains the (fundamentals) ABCDs of my existence and life.
The ABCD
ABCD = A, B, C and D desires. All four are distinct sets of various sub-desires. Those which are common with each other are organized in the same set. This way, each set is a whole desire or as I like to call it — the wills. Each will is named according to the most generic term that applies to all sub-desires.
Let’s dive into the desire management formula.
A
It stands for Ability.
Ability is the state of being able to do something. It is about skill, talent and capability. It is the absolute means, the foundation without which none of my other wills or sub-desires can be fulfilled.
My desires in terms of the abilities I want/need are as follows:
Ability to Think
Ability to Learn and Understand
Ability to pursue freedom
Ability to love
Ability to experience
Ability to enjoy
Ability for aesthetics
Ability to earn and survive
Ability to be strong
Ability of Wisdom
Thinking, learning, freedom, love, enjoyment, aesthetics, earning and surviving are my sub-desires. All these are grouped in the ‘A’ set.
With the A set, my purpose is — to remind myself that in order to look far, I need a good telescope.
It’s all about maintaining, polishing, updating and upgrading my abilities to do things. It’s about sharpening the tool, so to speak. It’s about the tool. It’s about the lenses and the vehicles.
B
It stands for Being.
Being is about existing in a certain way with certain values and ideals. It is about personal ethics and feelings. It incorporates everything I am, want-to-be and will-to-be as a free-being, human-being, son, father, etc. etc.
My desires in terms of the being are as follows:
Greedlessness
Non-Petty
Love
Good life
Freedom
Strength
Free thinking
Life and World Experiences (including Travels)
Aesthetics
Joy
I want to be as greedless as possible. At the same time I want to ensure I am not petty. I want love, freedom, strength, free-thinking, experiences, travels, aesthetics and joys in life. All these are grouped into the ‘B’ set.
With the B set, my purpose is — to remind myself of things that really make me who I am. My real purpose in life. My being. My essence.
It’s all about being who I am with this. I have settled on these sub-desires after years of hard work. My work with the B set is to ensure I don’t ‘sell-out’ (Whatever that may mean!)
C
It stands for Seeing. But is written C. Hence, C is an apt alphabet. Plus, it makes it easier as it perfectly fits well into the ABCD system which makes it easier for me to remember whatever I am trying to. I hereby use the term C-ing for seeing.
C-ing is about learning, knowing and understanding various subjects and elements of my life and of this existence of ours.
I had earlier mentioned about my life as a writer. My desire to — learn throughout my life was one of the things responsible for this choice. Now, it is also a necessity to sustain that choice. If I want to continue being a writer, I have to try to learn all the things all the time.
All the subjects I find interesting, relevant and important are covered under the C will or the C set which contains 3 distinct subsets.
My desires in terms of the knowledges of things I want/need are organized as follows:
HG-HE-STEP
sPa
POLE™
All three are acronyms.
HG-HE-STEP includes knowledge of things that are somewhat social or humanitarian in nature.
H: History
G: Geography
H: Humanity
E: Experiences (of People)
S: Society
T: Technology
E: Economics
P: Politics
sPa includes knowledges of and via three tools of knowledge acquisition:
S: Science
P: Philosophy
A: Arts
This sub-set includes looking at the previous subset through all three lenses (for instance, looking at technology from a scientific lens as well as from a philosophical one) along with studying the fields themselves and their interconnections.
For example, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Arts, Art of Science, Scientific Art, etc. etc.
POLE™ is all about my subjective, intuitive understanding and conclusions of everything possible.
P: Perceptions
O: Opinions
L: Life-Lessons
E: Experiences
™: Thought Management
Alternatively, I also use: EEEGSSTTPP
which stands for: Existential, Experiential, Economic, Geographic, Scientific, Social, Technological, Temporal, Political and Philosophical knowledge.
But it is difficult to memorize. C-subsets are much more convenient.
With the C set, my purpose is — to remind myself of things I want to and have to learn.
It’s all about organizing, balancing, selecting and choosing the subjects to learn.
D
It stands for Doing.
Doing is all about the actions I need to take and the things I need to do to fulfill the desires of ABC. This is through which I get things done. It’s about setting and implementing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics.
At the point of this writing, my D is threefold:
Write
Publish
Enterprise
I got to write, publish and be active in various activities apart from those two. This part is subject to much change and adaptations.
With the D set, my purpose is — to remind myself and ensure I successfully do what I need to do.
Conclusion
You may have noticed how they are all interconnected. I think this is the beauty of this desire management formula (for me obviously!).
We all have limited time. There’s a lot to think, learn, do and live in this duration. At times it feels a single life is not enough. And it isn’t! This makes effective time management a serious thing.
While we may not have been able to unearth an elixir to make us immortal (it’s good it doesn’t exist), we have been equipped with a good enough intelligence for us to do wonders with – if we use it effectively.
One way to do that is by trying to allocate and manage our life and its duration in an effective manner.
Time Management is simply the process of managing the time allocated to us for an effective life.
I developed a time management formula a few months ago and I have been implementing regularly. It has proved to be effective.
Now that I have fully committed myself to a life as a writer, there are a few elements which I think are essential to such a lifestyle.
This time management is simply an allocation of those elements to the clock-time embedded in almost all of us.
I had been very random andall-over-the-place with my time and work management. This particular formula has helped me get a little bit more organized.
I hereby coin this formula — The C-Clockwork (because it contains a few Cs)
The C-Clockwork
The C-Clockwork consists of 4 Cs sub-grouped into 2 Cs each, which in turn are allocated into groups of roughly 3 hours each. Each pair of Cs get around 6 hours and are interconnected. The clock cycle begins at 6 AM and ends at 6 PM.
The Cs are:
Contemplation
Consumption
Creation
Coordination (Communication)
Here 1 and 2, Contemplation and Consumption make a pair while 3 and 4, Creation and Coordination make one.
Let me briefly describe what they mean so to show why they are paired like that. But I would like to remind the reader once again that this allocation or division is based on what I think are the essential elements in my life as a writer.
The 1st Pair: Contemplation and Consumption
Contemplation: This is where I think. I begin the process at 6 AM by trying to answers questions that are integral to my life as an individual, such as —
What is going on in my life currently?
What do I want?
Why do I want what I want?
What have I wanted?
What should I want?
What is the status of all that I have wanted?
What should I not want?
What do I need?
Why do I need?
What should I do?
What should I not do?
What is helping me?
What is ailing me?
What do I need to do to remain motivated/inspired? etc.
More often than not, I wake up confused or curious on these. So by asking these questions walking to-and-fro with, firstly a cup of warm water followed by a pinch of black pepper in a cup of warm water and finally a cup of tea, I try to answer all these questions. I note the important points.
On rare occasions where I do not wake up bothered by my personal conditions, I contemplate on social, political, scientific, artistic and philosophical issues. The questions vary. There is no set formula in this. It may often be what I had been exposed to the day-before or in my dreams.
This lasts for 2.5–3 hours.
Consumption: It begins with my bathroom time at about 9 AM where I read the news followed by mostly continuing with the book I have been reading.
I use the term consumption for any reading, listening or video-watching activity — from others. But it is mostly reading.
I have made reading a great priority in my life. But before this structuring I was very haphazard in it. If I was reading a book, I would go on and on for the whole day until I finished it. But I noticed that such reading had an adverse affect on my thinking and writing. Most days would just pass by reading books without anything else. Reflections on books read were not happening. Writing wasn’t happening. This gradually became very problematic.
This C-Clockwork has allowed me to manage my reading time well. Now, I read at a certain period of time and have adequate time to think and write about it.
This ends at around 11:30 when I have lunch.
The C-Clockwork
The 2nd pair: Creation and Coordination
Creation: After lunch and chores, at about 12:30, I begin the process of Creation. This is when I write. This goes on for about 3 hours.
Writing on medium has proved to be very helpful for me in this process as it has allowed me to dedicate myself to one piece of writing a day. Otherwise, I wasted a lot of time either wondering on what to do or debating with myself on why not to write xyz.
The writing projects I have has to be worked on in this time period.
I am also involved in visual-arts projects. I make documentaries and animated cartoons. Writing them, directing them, is reserved within Creation.
Coordination: Interchangeable with Communication, this is the time-span when I:
Meet in person- go outside, talk to people with whom I am working or am supposed to work together on project(s).
Meet on the Internet- talk to people online with whom I am working or am supposed to work together on project(s).
Seek people with whom to work together on project(s)
My poor organizing before this system had me isolating myself for days without any communications with others, whenever I was reading or writing something important. That got me ignoring a lot of projects and people. Didn’t turn out to be a good thing at all!
Beginning at 3 PM and extending up to 6 PM, I spend my time going outside to meet people, making phone calls, sending or reading emails, finding relevant people and organizations, etc.
The Pairing
I have paired it as such because Contemplation and Consumption are inward, introspective processes. Nothing comes out of me during these. I just intake. They are about organizing and receiving thoughts respectively.
Similarly, Creation and Coordination are extroverted processes. Here the thoughts go out. They are outbound. They are about creativity and communication respectively.
Inconsistencies
Of course, there are days of inconsistencies. I may have to go out early in the morning or read a very important work in the evenings. I try my best to not divert but at times circumstances get the better of me.
But I try to cover-up by doing the activity missed in that timespan, the activity of which I did in the period of inconsistency.
Aftermath
After 6 PM: It’s Personal time. I spend time with family or doing activities of joy. Going out for an evening walk or some glass of beer takes place here.
Before the implementation of this formula, I wasn’t spending much time with my family or in activities of joy.
I was scrolling through my phone photos when I noticed something —
Four years ago, for the first time in my life, I had edited a photo of a page from my diary with ‘Goals’ on its header.
I know, there’s nothing special there. All I had done was use the vignette tool to make the center of the page brighter.
Here’s that image:
Image I had used as phone wallpaper for thought management
The significance of this information is that it was the first time I had used a photo of a self-written-text as my wallpaper in order to remind myself what I was about and what I was to do. It was the beginning of thought management through phone wallpapers.
That particular photo is followed by other photos in my phone. There are a lot more photos with similar design: A page of a diary vignetted.
I guess that marked the beginning of a habit that still persists in me — Designing and using phone wallpapers for my thought-management. It has been more than five years within which I have collected some solid experience on it. That’s the reason why I wanted to talk about it.
Phone-Wallpapering for thought-management is a regular and natural activity for me. Whenever I have a new idea, new structure or a new paradigm, I either draw it in a paper, take a photo or use a photo editing app. It has proved to be useful. I like to call it: Mind-supplement-in-abstracto.
Phones are without a doubt the most useful and personal technological devices. We learn, work, communicate and entertain ourselves in them. We spend almost all of our time with them (around).
They now play a role no other technology ever has.
This possibly makes the phone screen the most viewed thing in our normal day, both in terms of frequency and duration.
Into the inner phone experience, the wallpaper or the background is the most general component. In terms of design, it is a base in which everything is built and exists. Apps come and go, change places. But the background remains!
This nature of the phone background and our high phone usage makes the background an ideal thing to replicate what we would like to have in the background of our minds.
This is why I used the term: Thought-Management. It is about using the phone wallpaper to manage our thoughts in the way they ought to be managed. In a way they will be managed!
That’s why the term Phone Wallpapers for thought management.
Almost everyone who uses a phone keeps a wallpaper which is supposed to inspire or remind the person of what s/he is all about. After that, they look for aesthetics. It is done for symbolism. Everyone does it naturally. But what I am trying to put across is that, our thoughts are not as simple as that. Therefore, this task of phone wallpapering for our thoughts has to be taken more seriously and methodically.
Our minds are not naïve. They won’t obey what we would want them to obey! Things don’t work that way. the mind likes to counter-reason, it likes to explore, it likes to confuse! Providing it with only one vision and trying to discipline it on it is absurd.
A way to control or manage it is by using the phone-wallpaper more effectively:
The wallpaper has to be designed in such a manner that it addresses all aspects of our life and mind. The wallpaper has to address the confusions too.
Such wallpapers provide inspiration and context. But they won’t be able to address all of our questions and doubts. For instance, when a part of us is concerned with our current income and expenditure, such lofty inspiration can hardly be of use. What use of the information that we are here in this vast unknown, smaller than a speck of dust, when our bellies are craving the next meal!
Yes, I know they are supposed to provide metaphysical/spiritual base. But if we are talking about using phone backgrounds effectively, it surely has to do more than that!
If our human mind was to focus on a single thing, there wouldn’t be the need for thoughts and thinking.
I consider thoughts to be useful. Not something to suppress or extinguish — as others like to believe. Thoughts can and should be managed if we want to go to territories never gone before.
My pursuit is to open them up. To revolutionize human thinking.
If we want wallpapers to be our Mind-supplement we have to dig and design deeper.
We have to move beyond symbolism.
Here we are talking about using wallpapers to communicate to our mind all the things that we want to have communicated. A night sky wallpaper in the background with the current goals and obstacles written could be a good solution. This way our mind will notice the cosmic/metaphysical context along with the financial/moral whatever —just the way we want it!
What we can do is draw diagrams, make bullets — whatever we do to organize our mind — and set it as the wallpaper of our phone.
I have discovered space-effectiveness. Which is the art of placing certain components at certain parts of the wallpaper for the best effect. I also have my ideas about image placing, text placing, color-usage and all that. But I will talk about all that later.
My idea with this was to roughly talk about phone-wallpapering. I would love to hear how you use your wallpaper as I have no idea how others have been doing it!
It is the kind of activity I am doing right now which both amazes and amuses me on being a human being. What I mean to say is in regards to the act of thinking, questioning and investigating thoughts. What are thoughts, by the way?
It is through thoughts that we understand and know everything beyond our bodily sensations.
On occasions where we try to understand the thoughts itself, it creates a very peculiar situation of:
A thing doing that onto itself that it is supposed to do on something else.
Is it even possible?
Let us see where else such situations arise. Beginning with other organs of the human body.
Thinking about thoughts is equivalent to the heart pumping itself. The eyes seeing itself, skin sensing itself, tongue tasting itself, teeth biting itself, hair and nails covering itself, fingers holding itself, brain understanding itself and likewise.
Beyond organs, such situations exist in the following general cases:
Thinking about thoughts is equivalent to a creature consuming itself.
A snake poisoning/swallowing itself, a lion eating itself, a mosquito/vampire sucking its own blood and so on.
It is like a hammer hammering itself, a knife cutting itself, a gun shooting on itself, a lighter lighting itself.
Let us name such activities. Let us pick a name.
I have picked a name. Let’s call it: Self-Execution.
It is immediately apparent that it is not the function of any organ or system to do unto itself that which it is supposed to do to something else. Self-Executing is unnatural. Doesn’t the same apply to thoughts?
Is thought understanding necessary? More so, is it even possible?
In regards to the necessity of understanding our own thoughts, let us make a small experiment by pretending we know nothing about them.
Let us assume, we don’t know what kind of pattern they follow from one to another nor do we know what kind of law they obey in terms of the circumstances in which they spring or not-spring.
This implies we know nothing about reasoning/logic and psychology.
Now let us put ourselves in a situation where there are five of us in the middle of a forest and you, the individual, are the only one who has a small loaf of bread.
What does this do to us?
Will you be able to safely deal with the situation and ensure everyone comes out of the forest relatively calm and happy?
My guess is No, you can’t. You do not have the skill of reasoning that will tell you what are the best options and actions to take nor do you have the understanding of how your actions will affect your friends. All this will probably lead you to doing something that is unreasonable considering the situation..
Hasn’t this immediately turned us into hopeless beings troubled by great confusion and emotional turmoil?
One thing though is clear in regards to understanding thoughts as self-executive systems: Understanding thoughts is as important as understanding our physical body and in its organs.
But this immediately begs some questions- What are thoughts actually? How do we define it? What are their domains and boundaries?
One of the best approaches to thought-understanding comes from Thomas Hobbes, the British Philosopher. He defines thoughts as representation or appearances of objects which originate from our senses. Imagination for him is nothing but the residue of the sensed while Mental Discourse or thinking he defines as the succession of one thought to another. Every other cognitive faculty is developed from this basic principle for him.
It is clear that, for Hobbes, everything we humans do mentally, originates from senses which are then interpreted as thoughts. Therefore, our each and every mental activity from contemplation to emotions are nothing but thoughts- generated from senses emerging from the brain.
From a slightly different viewpoint, Khaptad Baba, the doctor turned spiritualist is of the opinion that thoughts have special forms of their own. He believes that the origin of thoughts are atomic in nature which are very subtle. In fact, so much that there is nothing in this world that is more subtle. For him too, thoughts originate from the brain:
Thoughts originate from the brain…Brain is more powerful and complete compared to other machines. Brain has such dazzling energy that it cannot even be described.
Like Hobbes, he too describes Thoughts as the original entities of all human cognitive actions. Therefore, our each and every mental activity contemplation to emotions are nothing but development of thoughts which emerges from the brain.
In regards to the origin of thoughts, neuroscience tells us the following:
Perspectives aside, we humans have not been able to clearly and concretely understand what thoughts actually are. This is something of great controversy and debate that has been going on forever it seems! Yet, people have tried and have continued to try.
In the next part, we shall investigate the attempts made to define and understand thoughts. For now, however, let us define thoughts as – everything that the brain does that is not physiological and as:
Something through which we understand and know everything beyond mere sensations.
In regards to the need to understand it, let us accept that anything we humans understand properly is always helpful in one way or the other for us. For this will allow us to move ahead without much confusion and restlessness. Additionally, under the self-execution system of knowing, now we have a valid reason too: Understanding thoughts is as important as understanding the heart, if not more!
There is another way of looking at history. As the struggle of human beings to understand, organize and use their own mind. That is, their thoughts!
It won’t be wrong to paraphrase one famous sentence of history this way:-
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of thought struggles.
To validate this silly argument, let’s start by suggesting that the struggles between good/bad, right/wrong, duty/passion, ideology/compassion, ego/emotion, gods – exist inside the human cranium (mind) in the form of thoughts and thinking. As struggles of the mind!
That is why, all struggles are the struggle between thoughts. A crisis of thought management. A crisis of mind management.
Identity is the way we define ourselves or the things which we identify ourselves with. This exists in the form of thoughts. Our very existence and the proof of existence’s existence is only possible through thoughts, said one Descartes, a long time ago. But we will not go in that end of the spectrum here.
Let us rather go into the ancient times where different tribal groups fought and killed each other for resources.
The thing that separated tribal groups from each other and made them go for each others’ blood and bounty was their identities. Members of each tribe identified themselves as a part of that particular tribe and not the other. This made them think it was right to kill people from other tribes and not one’s own.
History shows that tribal groups fought with one another until their groups united into one. The same continued later when small states appeared.
When multiple groups united, the individual members who fought one another suddenly identified with the nemesis as one and searched for new foes with a different identity. The latest example of it is the fact that more and more people today are choosing to identify themselves as a single species called Homo Sapiens instead of identifying on the basis of their race, ethnicity, caste, class, nationality, continent etc.
Of course, there are those who would like us all to be obsessed with minor identities to exploit the sentiment of such identities for their own power-game, but it is safe to say that we all are becoming wiser by the day and learning to utilize our specific racial, ethnic identities for cultural and emotional values instead of using them to decimate each other. It is only a matter of time, and, yeah, of thought!
Our difficulties in thought management and the absurdity of what will happen if it is not done well was understood very well by some of the ancients folks who being way way way ahead of their times, worked hard to find some method to the madness.
While some came up with the idea of One identity with the entire Cosmos, a person called Buddha came up with the idea that this entire identity bullshit is the most bullshit thing in existence and we all have to get rid of it from its source in order to stop suffering and ending this identity game for once and for all. Buddha and his subsequent followers established an entire religion which is nothing but a course in thought management. Mind management!
Image of Buddha
With the identity side of thoughts aside, let us talk about our earliest tool of thought management. We are not going to talk about various forms of chemicals, which basically alter the brain neurochemically which takes thoughts to directions as per the nature of the chemical and the default character of the user. We are going to talk about a thing without which it would have been impossible for Buddha to do what he did — Language.
Many thinkers on thinking agree to the fact that it was language which allowed man to actually take a giant leap forward. Not only did it provide man with a sophisticated mechanism to record thoughts, it also allowed man to conceive previously unconceived things and communicate with each other better which only improved as ages passed by. One can only imagine where man would have ended up if not for language.
Along with it, humans had been using techniques of arts — drawing, music, storytelling, dancing to make sense of thoughts by expressing them in a systematic way. While the arts had allowed people to express what buzzes inside the cranium it was far from becoming an actually serious pursuit.
Then the Greeks beginning with the fabled Socrates ‘seriously’ began working on thought management. Plato became so obsessed with the idea of thoughts that he thought all there is- is in that form, while Aristotle took the game a hell of a lot of steps further and began the establishment of an entire system of thinking. While we can go on and on about such theoretical managers, all we will do right now is stop at Aristotle and say that the works he did opened doors to a lot of things in the domain of thought management and utility, the fruits of which we are enjoying today in the form of writing, rationalism, philosophy, science, technology, etc.
And now that we have arrived at today, we have arrived at a point in time where our understanding of our thoughts and their management are about to go to a whole new level. Perhaps, we are entering a period of significance in thinking matched only by the advent of language.
Thought Machines
The computer is a strange machine. While all machines and tools developed by man since his ‘rise’ had been to make his task of physicality, be it seeing or running easier and smarter, the concept of computing machines took tool usage directly into the domains of the mind. While various transport vehicles must have allowed ancient people to lessen the distance between their objects of interest which they had to count themselves, tools such as abacus allowed them to make counting easier and more reliable.
If language provided voice to human subtleties, computers provided tools to supplement the brain and mind in their tasks. Beginning with simple arithmetic operations, computers soon evolved into doing heavier and more sophisticated mathematical tasks, some of the type which is almost impossible for a human mind to do. But all this to supplement human mind’s labour.
If we are to stick to the definition of computer as a device that makes human thought management easier, then we have to include devices such as navigational compass, clock, recorder, camera to the list too.
The compass provided the ability to think through directions, the clock helped keep track of time, the recorder allowed to record sounds, which is an advancement of audial-memory and the camera enabled to record images, which is an advancement of visual memory. The difference between other tools for same functions such as a drawn map, notations and drawing and these tools is that the former tools cannot be qualified as machines, they are mechanisms/methods alright but are not automatic.
In regards to the camera, the reason it qualifies as a thought machine and tools such as binoculars and telescopes do not is that- binoculars assist the physicality, the eye while the cameras assist thoughts by saving space and effort for memory.
This brings us to modern gadgeteries. While smartphones with the internet are supposed to be such thought managers, their niche is limited to integrating all other forms of retro thought machines into them and enhancing communication. Along with it, they are important assistances for other functions such as selection (eg. shopping items), distribution, entertainment and information, among few. While the amount of information they contain can surely be said to be assisting thoughts, which they certainly do, they haven’t reached to a point where they automatically as a tool allow us to understand, interpret and manage our thoughts. They are merely existing in the form of content of someone else’s language or such other forms.
But there are three up and coming technologies that can make a difference — VR, AR and BCI.
One of the founding fathers of Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier has listed a total of 52 definitions of VR in his book Dawn of Everything. Among those are definitions that talk about VR as a type of sensory and motor organs tricking devices which can make one identify with a whole other thing and environment instead of one’s own biological body and immediate surroundings.
VR functions as an immersive technology, in that, they temporarily disconnect all sense organs from the actual identities and environment and submerge them in some other scenario, tricking the brain/mind into believing that its actual body and hence responsibility is of that which is given by the device. This way of approaching the self can have huge consequences in the domain of thoughts and thinking. It directly toys with self-identification. But it doesn’t seem to have direct mechanistic implications in regards to our understanding of our thoughts and mind in general.
Augmented Realities on the other hand can be called extended and enhanced smartphones. They provide information better and easier but I don’t see them assisting in our thought comprehension.
And then come — BCIs
Brain Computer Interfaces in this context stands for consumer-end subset of neuroimaging which are fundamentally devices that allow us to send information of our brain directly to a computing device and vice-versa. It is a product that is and will be available to any human being. This is what makes it interesting and a serious contender for filling the shoes of language.
While still at their primitive stage, ideally, BCI can be that technology that allows us to see the happenings of our brain and mind in a system that is, firstly, not our own brain and secondly, is a machine. Language, Writing and Art allow the former but are not automated machines, meanwhile, a computer is a machine but does not have the ability to help us see those happenings if not for its usage in Language, Writing and Arts. BCI can be both.
With its capacity to map the workings of the brain in a computer in real time, we can expect to have greatly enhanced understanding of how our own brain works and which part of it does what when we are involved in x,y, or z. But as mentioned earlier, this mapping is still in its primitive stage due to the technique it uses called EEG which produces weak signals and is prone to interferences and also due to lack of information about brain-mechanisms, in other words on actuation.
Yet, they hold potential and no one can deny that. Considering the amount of investment being done on them in terms of both financial and talent resources, we can be sure that their limitations will surely be overcome in the not too far future.
Imagine being able to place a device in your head that is connected to your computer and being able to see the workings of your brain when you engage in xyz in real time. Now, imagine you being able to manipulate information in your brain, not by thinking but by making changes in the program in your computer which in turn affects the brain. Further, imagine your most important desire in life, say, taking care of your family, and imagine being able to computerally store that desire in a part of your brain via a computer and programming your computer to send you an electrical nudge each time you put on the device in that specific part of your brain where you have decided to keep that desire. Now we’re talking about thought management!
Imagine being able to see everything you have thought and your pattern of thinking in a computer device with you being able to press a few keys and play around with them! All this might be possible with BCI.
BUT
As with every other tool of importance, there will be vulturesque and hyenaesque humans to take advantage of your privilege.
Now imagine a corporation such as google or facebook being able to observe everything going on in your head and manipulating the information therein as they own the device or the system related to it! Not pretty now is it?
With great potentiality come great opportunities, ergo there will be opportunists waiting to cash in in your new found glory. But with the amount of control you have over your own thoughts, may be, you will be able to deceive them at that game and actually win! All this and much more is awaiting us with BCI.
We are on the verge of a paradigm shift in thought and thinking. Not only due to the technological sophistication but also due to the nature of our lives today with crazy amounts of information and complexities, we will be in dire need of thought assistance. Our brain will just not be able to handle the incoming times.
Name any kind of thought manipulating item and we are at a juncture where that item is getting more and more advanced with each passing day. This change is inevitable. All we have to do is think really really good now.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of thought struggles.
can be turned into:
The future of all society is the future of thought magic. Of mind magic!
We humans will have tremendous opportunities opening, the kind we are not even capable of imagining today once we get hold of the tools that will allow us to for the second time in history understand and manage our thoughts. Those tools are at our doorsteps. And so are opportunistic exploiters…
WILL WE WIN?
CAN WE WIN? but more importantly:
CAN WE BE FINALLY PUT AN END TO THE THOUGHT STRUGGLES?
Hey, I am Adesh.
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Creator, Writer.
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