The Chain

After writing my last post, I started thinking about the way that I think. And once again, I'm just going to write and not edit, because I doubt I'll read through it again and make much sense of it.

My brain tends to get stuck. A thought, as thoughts tend to do, will pop in innocently enough. But then it won't go. And I just keep thinking about it.

Or does the thought "think" about itself?

What I mean by a meaningless statement like that, is that when trying to describe how I think, I find that I can't describe what it even means to think.

I've got an idea. How did it "get there"? Wherever there is?

And even more confusing is trying to think about how a thought develops? What is it that moves an idea and rolls it over and turns it into a new idea? or a conclusion? Well, "I" am the one controlling this thought. But I don't have experience of that. Not really. All I have is experience of thought progression.

Maybe I'll work on a more tangible example. Moving my arm. I think about moving my arm, and my arm moves. But what if what I'm describing, and believe to be an experience of control, is actually just an experience of impulses that I have no control over, but constantly coincide. If "I" am just an awareness that can experience all impulses in my body and mind, then maybe every time I think I am consciously moving my arm, is just a movement of my arm coupled to a thought or belief that I have somehow moved my arm. Meanwhile, I am just aware of these two thoughts, and in the absence of any other evidence, I peace this together into an experience of "me" actually having played a role at all.

What I think I'm trying to say, is that if "I" am just this awareness, and the impulses moving my arm and and the idea that I have moved my arm, are coming from "me" or are being initiated by something besides this apparent consciousness, how would I, in fact, be able to tell? I have no connection I experience between the arm moving, and the thought of the arm. They just coincide every time.

So, if "I" am not magically initiating impulses, what else could it be? Well, nothing, at least in biological or physical terms, seems to happen without a cause. This is a major assumption I'm throwing in here. Causation can be argued separately. But I am assuming, (and I think not too unfairly so) that things don't just happen. something causes something else.

Could it, then, just be a chain of impulses and events more complicated than we could ever imagine or conceive? Maybe. Maybe, since my body was first made, it has functioned based entirely on a cause and effect, stimulus-response, system so complex and intricate that the collection of experiences of this bizarre situation accidentally formed into some sort of awareness that has mistaken itself for a consciousness that is actually controlling the whole thing. Like gloves thinking that they're moving the hands.

And then, if that's the case, there is no such thing as "me" thinking. There is only an awareness of thoughts. Not mine per se. Just thoughts that are there. In which case, I once again arrive at confusion about what this "I" is. Because if all that is plausible. Which I compelled to think it is. (I have no say in the matter, remember?) Then what I believe to be the "I", isn't actually there?

I have a headache.

Existence is Weird

This isn't a complaint. Really more of an obervation. As well as an obervation of an observation. I don't really understand what I'm trying to say, so I'm not editting this. I'm just gonna write non-stop and post, spelling mistakes and all.

Each and every one of us (assuming you all exist) only have the opportunity to experience existence, that is all that is and will ever be and ever was anywhere, from a very specific perspective. Your perspective.

I only get to experience through Jonny's body and Jonny's mind with all the associated limitations, albeit they are few and far between. I only get to observe a very particular point in existence covered in a fairly generous coating of cynicism, and always reflected upon with a sarcastic tilt. My experience of it all is quite different from yours. This difference is a little more profound than the issue of whether or not we both really experience the same thing when you and I both claim to be looking at a green light. I mean that the way in which we assemble everything together to form a semblance of understanding of the world around us is drasticlly, and unavoidably, different.

So, if we approach what we think we understand about existence as very deeply engrained acceptance of the only thing we have ever really believed we have experienced - existence - and we are free to muse about other types of existence that could have occured or could occur in some alternate reallity we don't understand, we can ask the question of what existence would be like if we weren't relegated to a single mind. Existence could have been very different, and much fuller.

Wrapped up in the language that I've been using is the suggestion that the "I" I'm talking about, is, in fact, a separate entity from the mind it uses. "I" am not cynical and sarcastic. "I" am just observing through a cynical and sarcastic mind. I'm not quite sure what to think about this. Really just an obervation about the way that I've been thinking about this particular issue. Can I really think of a good argument to suggest that "I" am separate from my mind? I'm not sure. I am not my body. If I have no arms, I'm still me. But, still, if someone punches me in my attached arm, they've punched me. "MY mind". Does that suggest that the mind is a part of the "me" in the same way that the arm is? Or maybe the confusion I'm having is just a product of language. Maybe if I spoke Chinese, or Icelandic, or Esperanto, I'd have a fuller understanding of the mind-body-me problem. Maybe, thinking in our own language limits the way in which we think and can actually experience the world? There are like 50 words for happy in the English language. And many of them really do have slightly different meanings and connotations, and suggestions of a slightly different emotion. If a person that speaks Esperanto only has a single word for happy (because esperanto is a loser language), how could I ever actually teach them to understand my words if they only have a single conception of what they all represent? If another language has a word for which we have no parallel, does that mean that I actually have no capacity to experience whatever that word represents? Nor could I ever fully come to understand the word - only the situations in which to use it. And all that being the case, if you speak a different language, does your experience of the world broaden or close in with respect to the complexity of the language? We can only experience the four basic dimensions. But there are others. In the same way, my comprehension of the universe stops where my vocabulary stops. Maybe the real issue with existence that I don't have the language to express the issues that I'm trying to understand about it.