Updates and short posts are over at On Deciding . . . Better. This week, I updated progress on my book manuscript. Current intent is to provide short updates there, weekly longer posts here.
Currently reading: The Entanglement by Alva Noe.
This week’s image: a decorated cargo container. Just casual photography. Leica M11
Years and years ago, I remember hearing about how trying to reconcile conflicting beliefs causes discomfort. Like being opposed to slaughtering animals for meat and enjoying a well prepared, juicy, tender steak.
It turns out your brain doesn’t really care. In my research for the ODB book, I realized that neural circuits have to settle into one state or another. With a choice of steak or cheese ravioli for dinner, ethical considerations are only one of the positive or negative attributes of the steak. Cost, availability, quality all add or subtract to the balance and we have no access or influence over ones we’re aware of and ones that don’t enter awareness. We choose as networks across a large number of brain regions trigger a single action. Our choice is made one way or another.
If we do contemplate a few attributes in awareness, like an ethical stance or memories of previous steaks, it just delays the settling in and action trigger. We’re aware of the doubt as long as we’re unsure or we’re aware of the choice flipping from one state to the other. Then it’s over and we act just as if there were never any off-line simulations of outcomes.
But the idea that we have views and attitutes that are self-consistent and not conflicting just isn’t real. In fact, it’s one of those mental illusions we have because we construct a model of self that seems unified because our thoughts are from this single person who should be a stable thing just like everything else. We see other people also as having stable, fixed characteristics over time.
For example, context has dramatic and very rapid effects on our choices. Simply whether we are alone or observed changes how we weight aspects of a choice, again without our awareness or control. Whether we’re at work or at home can make us behave radically different. Plus we have the remarkable ability to adopt attitudes and beliefs as when we’re on stage acting or trying to convince a potential client of our sincerity. Sometimes with awareness, often not.
Of course, thinking we’re supposed to have a consistent identity and set of values can get very uncomfortable. We definitely have problems when our multiple selves run into each other as George Costanza experienced in this perfect bit of comedy.
George Costanza:
Ah you have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world, then George Costanza as you know him, Ceases to Exist! You see, right now, I have Relationship George, but there is also Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up with - Movie George, Coffee shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.Jerry Seinfeld:
I, I love that George.George Costanza:
Me Too! And he's Dying Jerry! If Relationship George walks through this door, he will Kill Independent George! A George, divided against itself, Cannot Stand!
If I’m right, and the sense of self as consistent and unitary is an illusion and our selves, as George says are so divided, how can we ever start to understand who we really are, what we really believe, or what you really value? I think one would start with the externalities. What choices do you consistently make and what values do those reflect? When you express your feelings, do they motivate actions or are they rationalizations for actions?
Next time, lets look at one of the best and private ways of externalizing events and feelings is journaling.