The Embodied Mind

[BEZERKO]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html?em">From the NY Times:

Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally...

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore...


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html?em

[knowbody0]

1. amazing

lovely of you to share

[Newest Reality]

2. What breaks the game is ...

what thought is not abstract? All thoughts are an abstraction, but damn if we are not good at overlooking, ignoring, or skirting around that fact. It is far too dangerous to consider in a cultural or societal context, though there are those who have clearly expounded on this one, easily demonstrable fact.

All living organisms abstract a representation of their sensory experience. That is, they represent that environment to themselves via the biological capacities at their disposal. No representation is exact or precise, but merely a reflected copy of the original stimuli.

Our species has managed to create, and virtually live within, a rather viable and consistent version of what is where we can easily confuse and conflate our symbolic representations with what is most immediate and concrete in our direct experience.

When we speak of abstraction, we mean an inclusive, (though less specific) level of symbolic representation that is still constructed of the symbols we use to describe the result of sensory and other experience, (including the subjective) and so we are using abstractions to indicate abstraction. Some speak of higher levels of abstraction. To illustrate, we can move up a chain of abstraction from wheels to automobile to Ford to forms of transportation in a hierarchy that goes from specific to encompassing.

Our whole game is played in this manner and the necessary taboo about the nature of thoughts and words is always about getting to the point that consensus, faith, belief, method, and other factors establish an artificial and pragmatic norm, or a cultural imperative, that is considered just as real, if not more so, as actually getting hit in the head with a board. Once you get that without relying on substitutions, it becomes very clear how it functions and reality then understood as it is.

Your seed ideas and reactions are wired, via the molding of education and the teaching of those passing on their previous indoctrination and beliefs, deeply into you as a part of the conditioning required to survive in a given culture. Hopefully, that provides and initial insight into the nature of the game and the antidote to the doctrinal captivity sold as an inclusive, empowering knowledge representing anything resembling freedom, self actualization or even coming close to the awareness of one's true nature.

What with all the obvious, (and more subtle and covert) taboos concerning these matters, it is no wonder that organized religions and established dogmas still hold sway while new age pop-psychology continue to churn out false solutions to an inculcated and artificial set of meaningless problems that keep most of us distracted, divided, unfocused and almost permanently divorced from what actually is, or may actually be.

[BEZERKO]

3. Thought is physical.

It is 98% unconscious. More is higher, the temperature or the stock market goes up. Why? Warmth is affection. Why? These equasions are formed by our brains unconsciously by physical experiences.

[Silent3]

4. I wonder if, when we consider different political positions...

...we measurably, physically lean to either the left or the right. :)

[BEZERKO]

5. Ha, good question. I wouldn't doubt it.

But you know, the whole left, right, center linear political paradigm is useless, meaningless, and harmful to progressives. Frames influence, in some cases control the way we think. The DLC lives by it, and their focus is (aside from triangulating against progressives) on what they can concede to get what they want. That's the flaw in their thinking. I can't remember who it was, Keith Olberman I think, who noted the other night how individual congress members in the Republican party will talk about trying to work with their friends across the aisle to get something done, like on health care. Democrats never really considered single payer, a public option, or a national exchange, they conceded all of it, hoping that Olympia Snow would get on board, but they don't even sign on to the most watered down versions of anything Democrats propose. It's like Lucy and Charlie Brown, no matter how many times she promises she won't, in the end she snatches the football away from Charlie's toe and he always lands on the ground. Think about the language of that paradigm, "way out there," "fringe," "extremist," "center," "position," "outflank," and "far right wing," and though the pendulum may swing to the left, it always swings back. I haven't found where this metaphor came from, and when you disect it, it really doesn't make sense. And that so many pundits, consultants, organizations, not to mention political science departments live by that thing, it's hard to fight against. I prefer "partial conservative" or "partial liberal." I personally have no probem with people who are otherwise liberal being conservative on some issues, as long as they are genuine and authentic. The minute they adopt conservative or liberal views on certain issues for political reasons, they're pandering. People can tell, they don't find them authentic, so they don't identify with them, and they don't vote for them.