Engaging the World
The prison of your mind
This week, an image from a hike this summer off the Appalachian Trail just north of Asheville, NC. Lots of this area was devastated by Hurricane Helene a few months ago. I’ve donated some additional money to help with trail restoration.
Last week, I talked about the “illusion of self”—the way our brains present us with a stable perception of who we are in a world that appears stable and consistent, when we’re able to change . We rationalize, justify, and smooth over our choices, often to fit a story that makes sense to us, or that makes us look a certain way to others. We change attitudes and values instantly based on context and social feedback The result is that we’re not in control of who we present to the world at a given moment. Just like we’re not in control of whether we see that red hexagon as a stop sign or can choose whether or not to read a string of letter symbols as words and have their meaning presented to us. Like it not, just like have the world presented to awareness we simply present ourselves to the world.
This realization—of how easily we construct ourselves just as we construct the the world around us—creates a real problem: If the unified, true sense self is an illusion and our potential to be is so broad as to be almost limitless, how can get closer to being who we want to be?
Artifacts as Mirrors: Seeing What’s Really There
The essence of the answer, I think, is found in externalization: creating objects in our surroundings intentionally so that they reflect back to us, allowing us to experience our actions and attitudes independent of their creation. If we don’t pause and record ourselves out there, in our heads we’re just swept along, subject to the opinions of others, the noise of daily life, and the rewards of conform to expectations in the moment.
It’s said there can be no learning without feedback. I heard a consultant once say that managing employees without letting them know what you think they should do more of and what they should do less of is like being a tennis coach who sends a novice player out to a match against some one really good without watching. When the player comes back, the coach asks how they did. The player says “I lost every set”, to which the coach asks, “What did you do wrong?”
Of course here we’re trying to coach ourselves while playing the game. But coaching from the sidelines during the match is no substitute for analyzing what went right and what went wrong. What do we more or less of in order to get closer to what we’re trying to achieve. Not to find fault, but to see clearly and do better. Make better decisions in the future.
When we create something tangible outside of the ongoing perception of self, whether its a journal entry, a piece of art, or even a pause at the end of the day to review how we measured up to our own expectations—then we gain a unique chance to “see” ourselves through what we’ve done. We’re no longer just being who we are based on the brains limited presentation of motivation and feeling in the moment; we’re experiencing our behavior reflected back to ourselves. Words and images are concrete, lasting longer than the fleeting impressions of thought.
“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”
Garry Winogrand
By putting thoughts into words I’m building a mirror—a way to see myself from another angle other than inside out. It’s not that I expect insights or deep thoughts. Even as I write, I know I’m not recording everything I feel. In fact, I’ve realized over the years that I almost never go back and read my journals unless it’s to retrieve a list or outline of an essay. I don’t really care about what I was feeling a year or ten years ago. In fact, I generally don’t want to know. It is the act of externalization that clarifies the thinking by providing the feedback.
Error Correction and Staying on the Path
Without feedback, we will compromise without knowing that we’ve strayed from where we want to be. We rationalize, giving in to the expectations of others, taking the easy way and follow our desires even when they don’t align with our values. Reb Yosef Yoizel Horowitz (1847-1919) , the Alter of Novardok, in his Madregas HaAdam, wrote about how compromise, even in small steps, lead us away from the path of truth. He sees it as human nature. We end up invested in our compromises, rationalize them and resist the embarrassment of admitting error. The only antidote is to remind oneself of who you want to be and practice returning over and over to what seems right when you recognize a mistake.
This reminds me again of this basic principle that we exert much less control over our actions that our brains lead us to believe. We have what cognitive science calls “a sense of agency’ , the perception that we, ourselves, caused some change in the world, rather than attributing the change to an external force outside of our control.
That division between self and world is vitally important to ensuring that perception of change is appropriately divided between feedback for our control systems and changes in the world that need to be compensated for. For example, walking across a lawn, the motor system needs to know whether there’s an imbalance in the muscles controlling foot placement or whether there’s a hole that needs to be compensated for. We’ve all had the experience of misjudging the position of the last step of the stairs and stepping awkwardly because our brain thought there was one more step when we were really on the flat floor.
But when we externalize our mental world, we engage with a broader sense of interacting with the world, of being part of it and getting feedback from it.
Beyond Reflection Is Engagement
Right now, I’m reading, The Entanglement, the latest book by philosopher Alva Noe, in which he explores the intricate relationship between mind, body, and world. Noë argues that our minds are not isolated entities but rather are deeply intertwined with our environment. By engaging with the world through art, music, and other creative pursuits, we can expand our consciousness and deepen our understanding of ourselves. Through these experiences, we can come to realize that the boundaries between the self and the world are not fixed.
This is just the most current expression of ideas that I trace back to Gregory Bateson’s concept of an “Ecology of Mind”, that the self is not limited to the limits of the body, but is part of its interaction with other people, other minds, including those present only through writing and art. And of course, Chalmers made this idea of an extended mind most clear to me.
By externalizing thought through artifacts like journaling, we’ve extended beyond the flow of thought over which we exert agency but no real control. We’ve engaged an environment that can feedback and reflect what we’re doing and thinking to effect change in the world in some desired direction.
I’ve had a habit of putting one of my photographs at the top of my essays. It’s not related in subject matter, just a reminder of how my camera is a tool to engange with the visual environment. My perception of the trail through the woods in nothing like the image the lens and sensor captures. But when I engage with the visual world holding a camera, I see the forms, the textures, the structure of the world independeent of the affordances normally importnat to me as a human. Together, camera and I come up with a different way of seeing.
Why?
All of this learning through feedback supposes that there’s a reason to bother at all. Maybe its fine to cruise. Or drive as fast you can with face pressed up against the windshield.
For me personally, I come from a tradition that tells me that very purpose of my existence is the perfection of my belief and behavior. So the a path I follow is toward a purity of mind. The idea is see the world as it is and act appropriately. To the extent I don’t get there, that I’m bound by obligations and attempts to please others, I’m a prisoner and not free to choose. The alternative to is to be at the mercy of the social and cultural environment that happen to be current.
The next question seems to be to consider where do these values come from? Externalizing mental events won’t do any good for error correction if there’s no standard to compare what is to what should be.