From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Dec 20 1999 - 13:14:48 MST
On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> I may be a somewhat more militant zombie than Ken, however, because I am
> in the habit of claiming that we are all zombies, whereas Ken's only gone
> on the record saying that HE'S a zombie, but that anyone else might not
> be.
>
We are all zombies, in that most of our experience of our experience
and the directing of the "self" in the "mental movie" are occuring
at a level where we are not consciously thinking about it. A simple
example would be your "experience" of brushing your teeth this
morning. Do you actually remember *thinking* about brushing each
side very carefully, making sure to get all the tooth surfaces with
conscious attention on how the toothbrush felt in your mouth and
the sensation of tasting the toothpaste? For most people, I'd say
probably not. Most people were probably thinking ahead to the
smell of hot coffee or the taste of the piece of quiche they were
planing on having for breakfast. Or you could have been thinking
about how you have to remember to send out your Christmas cards,
etc., etc.
The Russian mystic Gurdjieff had a good exercise he did with his
students where they would be going about their daily activities and
he would suddenly shout "stop" to them. They would stop and notice
the difference between what they were *doing* and what they were
*thinking*. I suspect we spend relatively little time in our
lives where the doing and thinking are linked in real time.
That probably only occurs with very challenging tasks, or new
situations.
An interesting question for people would be *how* many things can
you "do" simultaneously? Walk and eat and smell for example.
At what points do the tasks become complex enough that you
can no longer have sub-agents managing them and must raise
them to the level of conscious thought?
Robert
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