The abstraction of thought is an interesting consideration, one I’ve done some research into. Our mind is the only known thing which has named itself.
With that being said, I think you would enjoy “thinking fast and slow” (it’s a book). In that book he goes into detail about fast thinking which is heuristical and what we refer to as “muscle memory”, “habit”, or “doing without thinking”. The interesting assertion he made about this “system 1” as he calls it, is that it lacks any ability to consider a statement as false. Every statement that goes into system 1, is considered to be true unless otherwise determined. System 2, or slow thinking, is more sapient and contemplative. This is what we would think is “us” as an abstract concept. Almost all of the information that goes into system 2 is filtered by system 1, so unless we reevaluate more carefully directing system 1 to examine everything, we are working off of incomplete data. Only what system 1 believes is relevant for the circumstances for system 2 to know. The rest is filtered out (to varying extents, depending on what executive function you have) as unnecessary. Things like background noises, other people speaking to eachother, signs, text, and other visual markers that are not important to what we’re currently doing (and have not historically been important). System 1 just discards that data constantly.
I would say that universally, we all use the faculties of system 1 quite extensively, but we are largely unaware of it… We operate on “autopilot” more or less. There’s a nontrivial number of people who seem to actively refuse to engage system 2, and do any cognitive and logical thinking. When they must, they do the bare minimum, and often opt to follow whatever tribe they identify as a part of. Whether that tribe is a sports team, a country, a political system or politician, or it’s a religion or something. They turn to those people whom they trust (for better or worse) to make the best decision for them, and tell them what to think. This is especially bad because often, those people are making selfish choices. They’re directing people to achieve an objective that benefits them directly, often at the expense of those who are following along.
This whole thing has more or less been beaten into us, both by family, friends, and communities, but also ingrained into us as a survival trait from when we hunted and gathered primarily. Where the survival of the tribe was the most important thing, at the cost of all other tribes and people and creatures.
We no longer need that survival trait of going along with whatever tribe we were born into, but it’s not one we can easily disregard, since it’s been ingrained in our cultural persona since we started walking around, many millennia ago.
There’s still plenty of people walking up to the fact that they don’t need to follow along to what others want of you, or do as they tell you to do. Getting away from the strong tribalism that is now mostly just a plague on humanity.
The problem is that the thinkers are independent, and neither want to follow, nor lead.
So here we are. Trajectory set to failure. Following these tribal leaders serving their own interests above all others. Removing one tribal leader just creates a part vacuum where another will step in to take their place, someone who is just as bad or worse with few exceptions.
This might be the first time I actually read a book recommended by someone on the internet. I feel like you’re dangerously close to how I think and feel, for better or worse, and while the revelation and understanding made me despair, I think pushing through and learning more might be the only way forward.
I am seeing our species’ future, where it’s just going to be cycles of back-and-forth, fighting our worst survival instincts or giving into them as we just make fascism and oppression over and over again because we’re not built to form a universal bond. Likely because for the million years or so before we even started agriculture or mastered fire, we were killing each other in wars without record, countless bloody fights between tribes of humans until we all just learned to hate and distrust anyone even slightly different than us. It made our brains grow so fast that our heads are now lethal weapons against our own mothers, but it also made the idea of a unified, borderless and compassionate world strictly unattainable. So what’s left? What’s the alternative?
Barring an actual threat from beyond like a 3-body-problem alien (a fantastic story btw) that would unite us all against a common enemy, then I don’t see us getting past this current state of shuffling pieces around on the bored to make little pockets of group-think and superficial relationships like skin color tribes, video-game culture tribes, religious tribes, and so on. We have brains forged from threats and enemies, and that is what we will see in each other before we see friends every time, and any little differences will always be amplified through that “System 1” as we invent rationalizations for not engaging our System 2.
My best advice for where you are right now, is “be the change you want to see in the world”
Where you see indifference, show compassion. Where you see ignorance, learn and try to educate anyone who will listen.
Be the kind of person you wish this world was occupied by. Be better.
Three only reason I’m still alive is because I know how many people would be significantly harmed if I were to do something different. They’re some of the only people I care about, and I don’t want them to be sad. My strongest motivator is that I would rather suffer though a life so they don’t have to suffer as much though theirs. I am a helper. I provide assistance. Always have, always will.
The only reason I accept any money for helping ever, is because I require it to have a home, food, and the resources with which to assist others.
That’s my purpose.
I will also point out that this is the reason I will never have children. I didn’t ask to be put in the position I’m in. I didn’t request to live a life. If someone asked me, I probably would have laughed in their face. Are you kidding? Do you see what life is like? No thanks. I’ll choose oblivion over dealing with the vast majority of people that currently occupy the world; and with that said, since I can’t ask my future children if they want to exist at all, I’m going to err on the side of caution, and not condemn someone who I would surely care about deeply, to a life, here. I’ll save them that sufferage.
Always remember, exceptions exist. Exceptions will always exist. Examples like the late, great, Mr Rogers. He’s a shining example that exceptions exist. There’s a lot more I could point to, but I’ll let you ponder that at your leisure.
Unfortunately, for every positive exception, it seems there are a hundred exceptions the opposite direction. People who knowingly and willfully harm others for personal gain. There’s a bias here though. Good, nice, and kind people, don’t generally make headlines. So the media and by consequence, the majority of people of our culture, crave and glorify sensationalism. So we see and hear about the ridiculous, cruel, evil and terrible people far more often than the random acts of kindness that people show to eachother every day. Recognize the bias and work against it to train your system 1 to learn that what we’re being told is almost always skewed towards the negatives. That the world isn’t 100% good, but it’s not 100% evil either, the truth lies somewhere in between.
I also made this decision on children for the very same reasons. I am very much also in the role of “helper” in my world, I don’t know any other way to be but I kind of lost touch with how to want anything for myself so there is a danger to it.
Anyway, thank you for the intelligent exchange, it’s rare as praseodymium lately.
The abstraction of thought is an interesting consideration, one I’ve done some research into. Our mind is the only known thing which has named itself.
With that being said, I think you would enjoy “thinking fast and slow” (it’s a book). In that book he goes into detail about fast thinking which is heuristical and what we refer to as “muscle memory”, “habit”, or “doing without thinking”. The interesting assertion he made about this “system 1” as he calls it, is that it lacks any ability to consider a statement as false. Every statement that goes into system 1, is considered to be true unless otherwise determined. System 2, or slow thinking, is more sapient and contemplative. This is what we would think is “us” as an abstract concept. Almost all of the information that goes into system 2 is filtered by system 1, so unless we reevaluate more carefully directing system 1 to examine everything, we are working off of incomplete data. Only what system 1 believes is relevant for the circumstances for system 2 to know. The rest is filtered out (to varying extents, depending on what executive function you have) as unnecessary. Things like background noises, other people speaking to eachother, signs, text, and other visual markers that are not important to what we’re currently doing (and have not historically been important). System 1 just discards that data constantly.
I would say that universally, we all use the faculties of system 1 quite extensively, but we are largely unaware of it… We operate on “autopilot” more or less. There’s a nontrivial number of people who seem to actively refuse to engage system 2, and do any cognitive and logical thinking. When they must, they do the bare minimum, and often opt to follow whatever tribe they identify as a part of. Whether that tribe is a sports team, a country, a political system or politician, or it’s a religion or something. They turn to those people whom they trust (for better or worse) to make the best decision for them, and tell them what to think. This is especially bad because often, those people are making selfish choices. They’re directing people to achieve an objective that benefits them directly, often at the expense of those who are following along.
This whole thing has more or less been beaten into us, both by family, friends, and communities, but also ingrained into us as a survival trait from when we hunted and gathered primarily. Where the survival of the tribe was the most important thing, at the cost of all other tribes and people and creatures.
We no longer need that survival trait of going along with whatever tribe we were born into, but it’s not one we can easily disregard, since it’s been ingrained in our cultural persona since we started walking around, many millennia ago.
There’s still plenty of people walking up to the fact that they don’t need to follow along to what others want of you, or do as they tell you to do. Getting away from the strong tribalism that is now mostly just a plague on humanity.
The problem is that the thinkers are independent, and neither want to follow, nor lead.
So here we are. Trajectory set to failure. Following these tribal leaders serving their own interests above all others. Removing one tribal leader just creates a part vacuum where another will step in to take their place, someone who is just as bad or worse with few exceptions.
This might be the first time I actually read a book recommended by someone on the internet. I feel like you’re dangerously close to how I think and feel, for better or worse, and while the revelation and understanding made me despair, I think pushing through and learning more might be the only way forward.
I am seeing our species’ future, where it’s just going to be cycles of back-and-forth, fighting our worst survival instincts or giving into them as we just make fascism and oppression over and over again because we’re not built to form a universal bond. Likely because for the million years or so before we even started agriculture or mastered fire, we were killing each other in wars without record, countless bloody fights between tribes of humans until we all just learned to hate and distrust anyone even slightly different than us. It made our brains grow so fast that our heads are now lethal weapons against our own mothers, but it also made the idea of a unified, borderless and compassionate world strictly unattainable. So what’s left? What’s the alternative?
Barring an actual threat from beyond like a 3-body-problem alien (a fantastic story btw) that would unite us all against a common enemy, then I don’t see us getting past this current state of shuffling pieces around on the bored to make little pockets of group-think and superficial relationships like skin color tribes, video-game culture tribes, religious tribes, and so on. We have brains forged from threats and enemies, and that is what we will see in each other before we see friends every time, and any little differences will always be amplified through that “System 1” as we invent rationalizations for not engaging our System 2.
I get it, 100%.
My best advice for where you are right now, is “be the change you want to see in the world”
Where you see indifference, show compassion. Where you see ignorance, learn and try to educate anyone who will listen.
Be the kind of person you wish this world was occupied by. Be better.
Three only reason I’m still alive is because I know how many people would be significantly harmed if I were to do something different. They’re some of the only people I care about, and I don’t want them to be sad. My strongest motivator is that I would rather suffer though a life so they don’t have to suffer as much though theirs. I am a helper. I provide assistance. Always have, always will. The only reason I accept any money for helping ever, is because I require it to have a home, food, and the resources with which to assist others. That’s my purpose.
I will also point out that this is the reason I will never have children. I didn’t ask to be put in the position I’m in. I didn’t request to live a life. If someone asked me, I probably would have laughed in their face. Are you kidding? Do you see what life is like? No thanks. I’ll choose oblivion over dealing with the vast majority of people that currently occupy the world; and with that said, since I can’t ask my future children if they want to exist at all, I’m going to err on the side of caution, and not condemn someone who I would surely care about deeply, to a life, here. I’ll save them that sufferage.
Always remember, exceptions exist. Exceptions will always exist. Examples like the late, great, Mr Rogers. He’s a shining example that exceptions exist. There’s a lot more I could point to, but I’ll let you ponder that at your leisure.
Unfortunately, for every positive exception, it seems there are a hundred exceptions the opposite direction. People who knowingly and willfully harm others for personal gain. There’s a bias here though. Good, nice, and kind people, don’t generally make headlines. So the media and by consequence, the majority of people of our culture, crave and glorify sensationalism. So we see and hear about the ridiculous, cruel, evil and terrible people far more often than the random acts of kindness that people show to eachother every day. Recognize the bias and work against it to train your system 1 to learn that what we’re being told is almost always skewed towards the negatives. That the world isn’t 100% good, but it’s not 100% evil either, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Be well.
I also made this decision on children for the very same reasons. I am very much also in the role of “helper” in my world, I don’t know any other way to be but I kind of lost touch with how to want anything for myself so there is a danger to it.
Anyway, thank you for the intelligent exchange, it’s rare as praseodymium lately.