From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Sep 07 1999 - 19:12:02 MDT
On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Clint O'Dell wrote:
> True, but
> Actualy you have more control over your personality and thus what you do
> than you seem to let on.
I will agree, that humans have an active "self-editing" option as part
of their "conscious" mind that will prevent some thoughts from being
"actively" entertained.
> It's what you do that differs from what someone
> else does in the same situation which we may see some control.
Yes, if you can restrict conscious thoughts, you can restrict the action
pattern as well. Much of what raising children is involves trying
to *constrain* the brain to only entertain specific "safe" or
"accepted" thoughts and actions.
> But it's what you do about it that is absolutely not genetic.
True. Doing involves an actor, that *almost* always is the
conscious mind. The only exception being those cases where
you do something that "you knew better than to do". Those
cases where you catch yourself momentarily after the fact saying --
"I shouldn't have done that. I *knew* that was a stupid thing
to do...", etc." Sometimes there are parts of your brain that
do a run-around of your conscious mind.
> Also thoughts and experiences do change brain hardware. You don't
> have to do that with surgery.
This I *agree* with.
> Because new thoughts create new links you can completely rewire 'parts'
> of the brain totaly by thoughts and conditions you set up.
I disagree with the term "rewire", that implies that you remove the
old connections an replace them with new connections. I don't think
that happens *if* you can remember that you once had the old connections.
You can alter the weights that the conscious mind gives to the
proposed behavior patterns. "... I used to think driving recklessly
was fun, but now as I've gotten older and value my life more, I
almost always drive very safely..."
> If you know enough about what kind of memories are stored where and
> exactly what happens as new connections are made you should be able
> to control this rewiring by thought and controlled events.
I would argue that any significant event with any high level of
emotional content, especially fear, drama, etc. *will* be stored
in your memories whether you like it or not. I argue this based
on the fact that the brains *must* be wired to retain memories that
have the potential for survival value. Those memories don't undergo
a process of "Gee... should I remember this or not remember this?".
Now, later, consciously, may you go back and "catagorize" a memory
as insignificant (lets say, because you saw it in a movie). But
I'm not so sure that that doesn't keep other less sophisticated
parts of your mind from accessing those memories *with* the
frame of reference -- "its only a movie". I had a girlfriend once
who categorically refused to see violent films because she did *not*
want to have those pictures in her mind, in part because she did
not want those images to occupy her dreams.
Given the amount of processing power that the brain has, it seems
to me that a *huge* amount of stuff is thought about that we are
never aware of. Some tiny fraction of it gets brought to our
attention. I agree that we have the power in almost all cases
to focus our attention and actions on specific things. I would
maintain my position that the underlying experiences and drives
affect and influence us in very subtle ways. As Anders pointed
out, the more we know about what these drives and influences are
the greater should be our skill in managing them.
Robert
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