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Psykology…?

What follows has certainly nothing to do with the rest of the site. ... or in the contrary?


Summary

The Unconscious, store of all memory

The Unconscious, source of all thought

Conscience, for what?

Pleasure and pain

Will and habits

Decision

Intelligence

Conclusion

 

I often wondered why schoolbooks contain so many things about the digestive tract and nothing about the way we think, how the thoughts are sent and changed in actions…
I supposed that mankind was more digestive tracks than Homo sapiens?

Why are we taught nothing about the mechanism of our thoughts?

1) Nobody knows…

Oh! Maybe a few specialists know a little about the question, but if they do not share with everybody. It is useless.

2) And nobody wants to know it…

Honestly, as we are living in the best world possible, why would we like to know how we think?
Marketing professionals are happy enough to be able to drive available brains, so why should we learn how to avoid to be bound by our mental rules?

And then, later, I will go on translating the following:

Before writing about human life and philosophy, I think it is useful to understand how our mind could work.

As an architect needs physics knowledge…
As a driver need to know a bit about the way the cars work…


I am nothing, and nobody…

As many people, when I was a child, people took advantage of my naivety and I believed in many stupid things; I am definitely cured of all human verities…

In spite of my interest for this topics, I confess I was unable to study philosophy, psychology or psychoanalysis…

Those sciences did not publicly answer my questions, so I felt that it would be a waste of time to plunge my neurons into sciences coming from a past so primitive on many points (specially about the mind…) ?

Paradoxically, the less you know in some domains, the less you are involved in centuries of ignorance, verbose and false erudition, and the more you can be fresh for starting from zero and going at last somewhere. That was what I thought… in great modesty!


Through the keyhole…

If all you know about houses is what you guess, looking throught the keyhole…

…you would think that the entry is the main room in the house.

…you would imagine that the walls are very thick.

…you would think that everybody entering cross the house to go somewhere else, when you do not see them anymore in the lobby, or that they sleep hidden in the walls.

…maybe, after going away from the lobby, people go into another dimension, which explains their disappearance ?

If all you know about your mind performance is what you feel through your consciousness, you can think that your conscience has a very high importance, playing a role far beyond his abilities and it is a so common mistake among people for millenaries that it looked like a verity…


Not an iceberg…

Conscience is not the tip of an iceberg, which you could confuse with the headquarters. Not even.

Conscience is just the periscope of a submarine, and, as we only see it, showing above, we believe it is tall as a lighthouse guiding ships…


Common preconceived opinions on the operations of mind

Beware! The following sentences are false, and the earth is not flat either…

We are consciousness beings, able to do extraordinary things with the operations of our conscience, and we can do other secondary actions, called reflexes, without the help of the conscience…

We are free beings, able to choose between Good and Evil…

The unconscious has a little role, but it is the place of rather rubbish impulses, where mad people can find their dirty nevrosis…

There are obviously other stupid things in store, but it is all right for now…

Beware! This warning is useful, because we shall see that those preconceived opinions soak into the operations of mind, playing the game of this false reality.

It is just as if a car, powered by an internal combustion engine, assumed that it was powered by steam…
It would not be disturbed to spew heavy smoke through its exhaust pipe…

And this smoke screen would explain very well why you had to wait for 2011 to learn what you will…

The Unconscious

The Unconscious is not this mysterious thing, vaguely disgusting, used specially by mentally mad people and used to commit lapses fo memory, parapraxis and dreams…

The Unconscious is much more than that : he is "us", entirely. He is both the store of all our memories and… the factory of all our thoughts, thus, of all our actions.

But, would you say, if the Unconscious is so all-mighty, what is the role of our conscience (so valued in the ordinary way of thinking…)?

The conscience is a mute idiot!

Oh yes! The conscience is only the pit of the unconscious iceberg. It is the attic window which the Unconscious uses to better perceive the real world and… to test the value of his suggestions!

We shall see that the conscience is only the monitor displaying the computations of the unconscious computer.

And also, the conscience allow us (us, thus the Unconscious) to perceive pains and pleasures of the human life…

At last, the conscience is a precious auxiliary for the Unconscious, because it is on the front line of perception, of feeling.

But, cleverness, culture, taste, we shall see that the consience knows nothing about it! You should better think that a double glaze has a soul…
(It is hard to accept, isn't it?)



The Unconscious, memory store

If I tell you "Waterloo", maybe you do not know that a battle took place here on June, 18, 1815 (I just come from Wikipedia…), but you could know that it is a defeat of Napoleon (the last one…) and a victory of the United Europ.

Three seconds before I evoked "Waterloo", this word and its meaning were not existing in your conscience (unless a marvelous chance…).

Imagine an actor on stage. He does not know a single word of his role. He does not even speak the language of the drama he must play! He is the conscience…

In the prompt corner, there is the Unconscious. He perceives everything that the actor perceives, and anytime, he prompts to him what he has to say and do. The actor stupidly obeys and as soon as the Unconscious is doing correctly his job, the audience do not find anything weird…

Better than that: there is not any other audience that the Unconscious, who is also the only active part of the operations of mind.

If somebody tells you "Mister Martin…", you could answer "Yes, Mister Martin ?" or "What Martin? I know many Martin…", unless it would be "No, I don't know any Mister Martin…".
The other one insists: "You know… Aunt Martha's husband, who is working for a lawyer?" and then, everything shines, his fleeting face appears in your conscience. Yee-hah!
It was a little untidy, but the Unconscious has finally done his job…

If somebody tells you "idiosyncrasy", you know… or not… or not sure (but if one gives you the meaning, you will know if it is right…)… or not at all (never heard about it and I dont care…). Myself, I am not sure about this word, but I am absolutely sure about his reality!

Here too, before evoking it, "idiosyncrasy" was 100% out of the conscience and only the good will of the Unconscious can give a meaning… or not.

As any memory, even the most important!
Reading the lines above, were you conscious of your own name?

You are quietly sure to be able to remind your own name, anytime, but your name is only stored in the Unconscious, more than 99% of your time (unless if you are a VIP, called by his name every minute…).

The conscience is a window…

Through the window, you can see the spectacle of the street, your backyard or the countryside, but you do not confuse the window with the sight you can have through it.

The window let the sun rays go through, but the window has nothing common with the sun.

The window protects you from the outside cold… only if there is heating inside.


…which take an important part in the memorization

Because of its own characteristics (we shall see them later…) which the Unconscious has not, the conscience is useful for the most important events of memorization.

Even if the Unconscious is able to remember unconscious perception, the strength of memories is far below those which the conscience helped to record… and hopefully!

We shall see that the conscience is an indispensable part in our operations of mind.

Automatically, the Unconscious send memories to the conscience, and it works very well; otherwise, we would not be here, in front of our keyboards, but yet in the cave, uttering cries without meaning.

The Unconscious is like the harddisk of the computer, where we write all data which we use for a long time, and the conscience is like the RAM, fugitively filled when the computer needs it, and emptied a few moments later, to free the place, without keeping any trace.

You switch off the computer: the RAM erases until next time, but the harddisk keeps data and programs in memory; at the awakening, everything takes place as well as before (with the memories recorded before).
You fall asleep: the conscience vanishes until next morning, but the Unconscious keeps data and programs in memory; at the awakening, everything takes place as well as before (with the memories recorded before).

A slight difference: the computer has no dreams when it is off. But the analogy will be better if, during the night, you launch a hard disk maintenance program (we shall see dreams later)

We could go on for a long time, finding exemples proving that conscience has nothing common with memory, but you can help: have fun randomly opening the dictionary and pointing a word; if you already know it, you will remind it (as if the letters contained the meaning) but who is gently giving the meaning and the memories to your conscience? The Unconscious, of course.

Last point (for now):
You know this memory game where you hide a dozen of objects under a rag, after having showed them a certain amount of time. You have to remember as many objects you can.
Obviously, visual memory is at work, and it is very close to the perceptions of the conscience, but who is gently playing, giving his best the missing objects in the list, giving back a small detail, causing the complete remembering? Who else, what else, if not the Unconscious?

Conscience is mono-task. It may seem to jump from the rooster to the donkey at the speed of light, but it does not manage rooster or donkey, neither the speed at which she juggles with these thoughts, that are never its, even if it welcomes them...

Conscience is the stove where we throw all kinds of foods in succession, but it does not choose among them, and if some roast while others burn, conscience is never responsible...

(To be continued)


These pages come from research I had done three decades earlier. I could simply copy a book I wrote at the time, but I preferred to start with my own memories, plus an experience which only served to confirm my assumptions. When I am short of inspiration, I can always dig into my old pages to fill the holes in my logic ...

La Rochefoucauld wrote : "It is a great madness to want to know alone."
Unfortunately, I did not choose my madness…
…maybe you can write to help me to understand my errors? I would be grateful…

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