The Lies People Tell Themselves

In being a human being, I am implicitly present to events which happen inside my mind, which, at the same time, feels like "me" "doing" the action.

Intentionality appears whenever we cognize. Perception, on the other hand, has more of a passive, pre-conscious quality to it, and so, is often referred to as the "non-self" relative to the "self" of the cognizing mind.

Between these two cardinal poles of reality, human reality unfolds. But rarely - extremely rarely - does it dawn on human minds that the things they do are generated from past interactions with real live others. Granted, there is what seems to be a 'unwitting' admission that you are the way you are because of your history, but for some reason (which I will explain very soon), we don't emphasize it in our conversations, but rather superimpose "stories" i.e. myths, upon the focal reality of 'what causes what', which is always being tallied by the right brain.

The left brain is the part that creates stories. Everything that actually occurs is based in symmetry dynamics with other human selves like yourself. Thus, the right brain is the 'archive' of your relational history, whereas the left brain is the 'adaptive response' that your left brain seeks in its consciousness of expectations, values and styles in the social world.

When we think about how experience is deposited into brain structure, we need to keep in mind that every .100 or so milliseconds are experience of the world (and ourselves) is being updated, with meanings arising at imminent temporal scales (.150 and less), more 'conscious' temporal scales (.300 milliseconds) and narrative structures adapted to the exigencies of human conversation (integrating the small scale with the lengthy conversations we can have).

The first level itself produces an impression (right brain) and an 'adaptive response' (left brain), so that the elements of each interaction are lateralized to the proper hemisphere. The 'tuning' of the left hemisphere appears to be related to the immediate impact of a social situation on the feelings we feel, and so the words we use - the stories we tell - have everything to do with what we implicitly believe would happen if we were to say it. The right hemisphere houses the prediction - the result - and so, is always 'impelling' the left-hemisphere into a selection process that lands upon the 'right' word, even if, in fact, this unconscious response is inaccurate and inefficient. However fundamental the body is to accurate thinking, it's mindless stereotyping of immediate situations makes it stupid and unaware relative to the 'panoramic' vision of the conscious mind. Yet, it is still the body - sometimes hated, but powerfully recognized as too important to ignore - which shapes the quality of our existence.

Here's an example for what I mean. The things we don't do - the things we avoid - are always about avoiding stress, and hence, avoiding what we feel "threatens us" - whether or not it is objectively threatening.

I tend to avoid responding to threads because I have a hard time reading criticism and dealing with the anger it arouses. I do this - and I may tell myself that I do it for other reasons (totally reflexively, some of which, such as time, are also valid) but I think it is far more objective and accurate to relate this feeling to my history of interpersonal trauma, and so, to the conditioning of the various parts of my brain to experience any sort of critcism or negativity as a "major threat". This 'major threat' response is something that was created in my actual past; through chronic hyper and hypo arousal of my autonomic nervous system - in a context of interpersonal bullying - my brain enacted a 'self-defense' procedure whereby the cognitive (self) states that usually seek social enlivenment (i.e. the neuroaffective systems of PLAY, SEEKING, CARE) and does it through goofy and playful action, begins to experience any desire for action as a threat in itself. The traumatized mind responds to its own thoughts and perceptions as if they were threatening animals. Quite logically, since we are metacognitively aware of ourselves in our acting with others, the traumatized mind becomes more and more "tuned" to the 'right' (i.e. adaptive, strengthening social power) 'ways of being' in order to elicit the effects that these 'ways of being' (cognitive mind) have on other humans. The cues of the other (passive) is precisely the unconscious generator of the cognitive self's feeling of grandiosity.

What is so crazy about humans is how mean and arrogant we can be, even when the very energy and power you have derives from the effect of your actions on others. If the response doesn't come - they grow upset, dejected, and feel a tad bit of shame. This emotional neediness - this need for a response - the RIGHT response - is what trauma does to the human mind. The mind becomes afraid of itself and shrinks itself into the smallest and safest space. Safety - this is the only law of evolution that we see as a 'basic teleos' in the behavior of organisms. We all need it; we all, unconsciously, seek it. Even those who run to war - feeling powerful and strong - feel safe, and hence, take for granted how a feeling of safety mediates all those positive affects we feel. They derive a benefit from safety (occluded from awareness as a relevant parameter) and then, by enacting brutish, ignorant personalities, they deprive others of the safety required to feel good emotions.

It fascinates me that people talk about God, christ, Allah, Mohommad, Moses, the "prophets", Buddha, etc, and yet it still hasn't quite caught on that the problem with this thinking is it mythology - its intrinsic ambiguity. Humans, being such vainglorious creatures (requiring pride to flourish) inevitably got caught up in romantic ideas about their self-experience and their experience of reality. Judaism became infatuated with Judaism; Christianity with Christianity; Pagan gods with the gods they worshipped. Point is, there was this incestuous, and mindless, emotional neediness to prove - despite being nakedly motivated by deficiency feelings, and so always stemming back to real life pain that was defensed against - that your way of thinking is 'true', even if all the evidence before you shows the opposite.

Think about how shrunken a mind such a person is. It's pathetic - whether it be when I seek to hide the real reasons for why I act - or when I see it in others. Fearfulness that masquerades as 'strong' is pathetic. It would be better for the person acting this way, for instance, to realize that love really could help them.

But of course, even love is a skill. If it hasn't been shown to you, not only would you not want to experience it, but you would also hate other people for the importance that they ascribe to it - believing (out of self defense) that its for 'weak people'.

Symmetry is symmetry, and there is no greater law in the universe than the law of symmetry. It is why all physicists seek it, because we see its presence in everything, and most of all, in ourselves.

Things need to correlate to work. My eyes need to reflect real objects in order for my cognitive mind to be effectively guided in getting what its motivational systems are pusshing it to want. Everything that we are is made like this. We are a very complicated node - the most complicated node known - in the universes transformation of energy.

I didn't read the post past the first sentence, but if you're implying we're being possessed by entities who give us "suggestions" to see if we'll follow through with them, then I completely agree. I'M AWAKE and know that many of my actions are being influenced by beings who are "on board" and trying to get me to do what they want me to do.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Ya pretty much. It's hard to accept that everyone ia really alone with their own thoughts. How you perceive yourself and the world shapes what you do and shapes your life. Negative views tend to lead to negative actions which tends to lead to a negative life both for yourself and those around you. And it's hard to accept that the people you put effort into won't always return the effort or even appreciate it. Though if everyone looks hard enough they'll find someone that did the same for them. I've found the best thing to do is to try and make good decisions that positively influence yourself or others even thpigh it may seem pointless or undeserved....life's hard enough for everyone...I usually try not to make it harder for others if I can....I dunno im kinda rambling now...I don't even know if this is related to what you were saying but this is what it made me think of.

a reply to: Astrocyte

The idea that we process everything in our brains through a single 'conscious processor' is nonsense.

Our brain is massively parallel. Simple processes like seeing or moving require thousands (or even possibly billions) of discrete tasks that have to happen at the same time.

It makes no sense to wait for one result to finish before beginning to process an unrelated task. Nor do the processing tasks have to all be as massive as 'consciousness'.

We have billions of synapses in our nervous systems. Each connection can perform a rudimentary computational task as part of a neural net. The 'us' that we believe is ourselves must, by physical necessity, be massive groups of conscious and unconscious collaborations.

As we are each colonies of cells, we are each colonies of thinking units.

Our religious sensibilities may seem irrelevant and somehow invalidated to some because the language that we use to express them is anarchic, but at the other end, the mystics and religious thinkers have been telling us that the mechanical and reductionist view is false.

It is not a failure of religion to describe a mechanically ordained universe but is a failure of a proponent of the reductive scientific paradigms of thought to understand religious complexity irreducible to a nice orderly single sequence.

And then someone tells you they have managed to 'bypass' the written word for insulting (or being negative), and can instead, flood your space with the putridity (I prefer the word; putricity) of their singular, or group 'energy' and thought patterns, in the form of and 'energy send'.
but
Only you can feel it. (which I doubt also...by responses I saw)

It can be sickening. It certainly makes the cowards scatter...

And you're right, totally.
I should stop thinking everyone is lovely and nice, and pure and worthy of not being slaughtered, by people that hate them, like those hopeless cases that want all out devastation and destruction just to prove a point or because they suck at life.

Bad habit of mine to only see the good in people that only that (the good), about themselves is seen.
I'm learning to not be so naïve...it's taking a while.

It was a real eye opener, that's for sure.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Symmetry is symmetry, and there is no greater law in the universe than the law of symmetry. It is why all physicists seek it, because we see its presence in everything, and most of all, in ourselves.

Try this: Intentionally pump out $11.11 worth of gas at the gas station . Then watch "11.11" pop up unexpectedly somewhere else in your life.

It fascinates me that people talk about God, christ, Allah, Mohommad, Moses, the "prophets", Buddha, etc, and yet it still hasn't quite caught on that the problem with this thinking is it mythology - its intrinsic ambiguity.

Or perhaps you haven't quite caught on that religion / mythology is a money maker and thus a time proven way of survival for some. And they have even increased their cash flow by giving the people more mythology like Batman , Superman, Spiderman, etc. etc etc. It's all about people willing to pay for an "experience"
whether it be got from religion , movies, prostitutes, etc. etc, etc. And of course there will always be those
who are willing to accomodate the (experience) seeker for a price.
Kind of like this too:

a reply to: RavenSpeaks

the primary function of humans seem to be to delude themselves
and others.

We are delusion machines.

We can't live without it.

Even full-time debunkers of nearly everything, no doubt have
some sort of delusion that is powering their debunking behavior.

Historically a human who didn't now how to lie, was killed by
his tribe..

that's why nearly all of us are superlative liars.