Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Natural Distaste for Thought


I recall a moment in grade school when i was attempting to understand the distinguishment between the human consciousness and the body. I had spent the morning in an odd state of reflection - and found myself trapped into a staring contest with the mirror. This brought about questions, and later that day I walked up to my teacher and asked her how we can really define life when our knowledge of life was within the realm of existence itself. What (I believe) I meant when I said this was that 1.) our mode of thinking can never be truly objective and 2.) Why is it we cannot maintain that feeling of acknowledgement of existence we reach occasionally. I'm sure I meant more than this, but again, it was grade school and the term existence was hard enough to explain.

Her response was avoidance, and eventually she began interjecting humurous responses into my monologoue. I became frustrated and embarassed, and quickly went back to coloring and learning about silly grade school things.


This comic epitomizes this form of a typical response. The questions that existensialism raises are not as easily assesible as questions of Justice and the Good Will. Our inability to adequately answer these questions leaves us with a sense of dis-ease, and we find ourselves questioning peers. However, (unless they, too, are in an ethics class) they tend to avoid this form of exploration of knowledge. It leaves us feeling small, and traps us in a line of thought that can easily lead us away from "reality." Pleasure seeking activities such as reading fiction and conversin with friends are set to the side in favor of attempted understanding.

I've found that, like my teachers, peers often avoid this method of thought. It is uncomfortable, and the feeling of self-awareness is similar to that of an unwanted drug.

However, if one has never been in this form of discussion before - why is it that they know to avoid it? I can assure you, I didn't realize heights frightened me until I climbed a ferris wheel at a city fair and discovered I couldn't make myself climb back down. Seriously.

Sartre hits upon this initial moment of self realization: that of the gaze. He states that it is not until we realize we are being gazed upon that we further realize we are in a physical realm of existence that houses our consciousness. This moment of self-awareness fades away, only to resurface when questioned by peers or staring at a reflection.

Biologically, scholars have theorized that our strange feeling when observing relfection occurs as a side-effect of the mind's attempts at salvation. In our daily life we process information, and then quickly categorize and set it aside in favor of others. While typing this post I am sitting in a chair, and selecting keys with a keyboard. However, within moments of begining, I categorized and forgot about these sensations. No longer was I focused about the senstaion of sitting, the feeling of the keyboard keys, or the resistance of the chair. Instead - my mind relized that these feelings were continuous and sought out other information. It is a method of not only preventing insanity, but also of allowing the further aquisition of information.

This occurs when looking into a mirror. Once you brain realizes that you have been staring at the same thing for the past few moments, it starts to process new information. Your reflection becomes not something you are merely looking at, like when you comb your hair of brush your teeth, but instead something you are analyzing. You then start the strange pattern of recognition of existence, questioning "what it all means," and what you have to do with it. It is, indeed, a unique feeling.

This is why our peers and leaders recognize the strangeness observed with it, and often avoid true discussion with sly comments and super soaker attacks. It leaves us free from responsibility. Free from dis-ease and frustration. Free from recognizing the limits of our human reasoning.

3 comments:

  1. First, I'd like to say I love that xkcd and I think your experiences with the super soaker effect are pretty reflective us all. I've been thinking about quite a few things after reading your post (although my brain tried and often succeeded at distracting me). My main question is why as humans, we try so hard to avoid thoughts that make us uncomfortable and why specifically these kinds of thoughts on existence and consciousness do give us such dis-ease. One of my potential explanations, like your explanation for the phenomenon itself, is biological. Perhaps we just evolved away from the tendency for this kind of self examination. In a competition (let's say hunting) between a human who is deeply involved in their own internal mechanisms and a human who is easily distracted by external stimulus (like the animal they're hunting), it's pretty clear who will "win" and survive. Gradually, this capacity may have faded as part of the cost for survival. My other thought on this matter attributes it to socialization. This might help the continuation of the super soaker effect even without a pressing evolutionary cause. In your story, for example, you naturally happened upon your reflective thoughts, and although they perhaps made you slightly uncomfortable, your discomfort was not enough to force you to discontinue your quest for ideas. Rather, it was the social response from your teacher, her dismissal of your serious thoughts and the embarrassment you felt, that discouraged you from continuing your self examination. Perhaps we are all just well-trained to be distractible.
    Also, I'd like to point out that through this whole comment, I'm still suffering from the super-soaker effect and avoiding the uncomfortable issue by focusing instead on its causes. Appropriate, I suppose.

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  2. Wow. So…why don’t people like to think about things that matter, or at least the really BIG and BASIC things? (that’s just one of the questions I’m feeling from this post and comment.) I think that people, as Stephanie said, are trained to ignore certain things. These ideas of what we are and what life is are difficult questions because they are, in many ways, unanswerable. It is completely possible to speculate of course, but to come to a confident, decisive answer that empowers a person is (I would say) impossible. It’s like taking a test where you have to pick the essay question you want to answer, and one is impossible. The alternative question (i.e. the distracting and manmade and perhaps “inconsequential” issues we deal with every day) is much easier to attack and gain some sort of reassurance from answering.
    In regards to evolution, I think that maybe humans are actually evolving the other way—away from the instinctual, survival-driven life of living from day to day and toward a life filled with time to contemplate not only more elevated sources of happiness besides just survival but also more elevated scopes of thought. So if this is the case, maybe it will become easier and more acceptable for people in the future to tackle these bigger ideas…but I can only speculate of course.

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  3. Stephanie: I believe your comment is based largely on the nature vs nurture argument, and I feel like you've captured the essential balance of the two. Human beings are neither wholly biological, nor entirely social creatures. Our identity, and our essence, are developed in response to the two. The acknowledgement of these two forms of competing attributes allows one to understand ideas such as the Fisherian Runaway model of sexual selection. This had led to the overemphasis of traits to the point of negativity, seen in cultural characteristics such as Machismo. Thus our tendency to ignore unsettling ideas stems from a basic biological avoidance, but is enhanced by social guidelines.

    Karissa: It seems that what you are saying is that our initial tendency to avoid these questions are based in our inability to fully resolve them - and that this tendency will be decreased in the future when technological innovation allows us to pursue elevated interests. Though this is the ideal, I feel like we might have a progression towards a more "Brave New World" future. This, of course, assumes a society that pursues self-satisfaction via carnal pleasures instead of the pursuit of higher interests. However, if we do not pursue these interests now, why would we in the future? I believe it is far more telling to observe actions in moments of stress than in moments of peace. The things we pursue when stressed and overworked [and thus allowed less time] can be categorized as the things we place more value on. However, I might be merely missing your point, or taking an overly pessimistic view on humanity. Both are highly likely.

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