Cognitive Babble Things (Swinging Swords too Big)
It's clear to me that life exists on a multitude (so many) of multidimensional (every which way) sliding axes (plural axis) with my own day-to-day feelings coloring the actionability of each next moment or thought. It's as though I'm putting together a jigsaw puzzle with my mind as the table. Unfortunately, it's a table that can show the outline of the next correct jigsaw piece with an almost prescient clarity, but other times it doesn't seem to offer me much more than a wobbly leg. While at yet other moments it actually appears to have erased entire sections of completed puzzle while I wasn't looking. There's an aspect of psychic continuity rooted in stories and words that I can't get away from, and a deep need - good or bad - for objective measures from which to take proper action in my world.
Another thing that has become clear to me recently is my threshold for challenging information I find factual. In science, it is lauded to second-guess oneself, and if one successfully proves one's own previous assertions wrong, one is seen to have truly succeeded. My issue comes from my own cognitive baggage. I have found that in order to learn something new, I will apply it to my life. In that process, the knowledge/information somehow becomes "sacred" to who I am, or what I understand about the nature of reality. This, in turn, becomes problematic when I find an equally compelling, conflicting piece of information that directly disputes what I had just learned. I find myself taking sides on scholarly theories, but catch myself and realize that I literally just learned about "side one" a week ago and there is no logical reason for me to assess it as having more value than "side two" other than the fact that I was introduced to one before the other. This is actually a cognitive shortcut called the primacy effect; wherein we tend to place more value on the first thing we learned rather than what comes after for no actual reason (there's also the recency effect, wherein we do the same thing but for the most recent information). In both cases, the antidote is to challenge one's ego and ask, "On what grounds do I actually believe one of these things is better than the other?" You'd be surprised to find just how flimsy your reasonings are for believing what you believe, and how little legwork you've actually done on the things you purport to know.
In this way, I feel I am manufacturing calm from a chaos nest (aka the neural and physiological substrate from which we act -- the bio-electrical storm from which all things of value emerge). Judgments are typically reactions, and reactions are type 1 (shortcut) thinking that isn't particularly useful when it comes to complex puzzles like being a person. And perhaps even placing ways of thinking into types falls short of capturing the nuance of subjective experience. Regardless, I'm certain that I have a table (my consciousness), and I'm certain that the table is all that matters because it's the construct that makes things matter in the first place. This seems to be the most potent antidote to my misapprehensions, biases, and even my false certainties. Cultivating a sturdy table is clearly what's necessary for solving all the puzzles that life holds for each of us. Knowing the table is there is a start.
Another thing that has become clear to me recently is my threshold for challenging information I find factual. In science, it is lauded to second-guess oneself, and if one successfully proves one's own previous assertions wrong, one is seen to have truly succeeded. My issue comes from my own cognitive baggage. I have found that in order to learn something new, I will apply it to my life. In that process, the knowledge/information somehow becomes "sacred" to who I am, or what I understand about the nature of reality. This, in turn, becomes problematic when I find an equally compelling, conflicting piece of information that directly disputes what I had just learned. I find myself taking sides on scholarly theories, but catch myself and realize that I literally just learned about "side one" a week ago and there is no logical reason for me to assess it as having more value than "side two" other than the fact that I was introduced to one before the other. This is actually a cognitive shortcut called the primacy effect; wherein we tend to place more value on the first thing we learned rather than what comes after for no actual reason (there's also the recency effect, wherein we do the same thing but for the most recent information). In both cases, the antidote is to challenge one's ego and ask, "On what grounds do I actually believe one of these things is better than the other?" You'd be surprised to find just how flimsy your reasonings are for believing what you believe, and how little legwork you've actually done on the things you purport to know.
In this way, I feel I am manufacturing calm from a chaos nest (aka the neural and physiological substrate from which we act -- the bio-electrical storm from which all things of value emerge). Judgments are typically reactions, and reactions are type 1 (shortcut) thinking that isn't particularly useful when it comes to complex puzzles like being a person. And perhaps even placing ways of thinking into types falls short of capturing the nuance of subjective experience. Regardless, I'm certain that I have a table (my consciousness), and I'm certain that the table is all that matters because it's the construct that makes things matter in the first place. This seems to be the most potent antidote to my misapprehensions, biases, and even my false certainties. Cultivating a sturdy table is clearly what's necessary for solving all the puzzles that life holds for each of us. Knowing the table is there is a start.
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