Bridge and here

About the blog

   Going back to how our minds work (or seem to work) there's a feature that protects us from awareness overload on one hand and awareness lock on the other.  That feature is the shifting of awareness between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.

   Awareness overload doesn't mean having so much awareness you can hear around the corner of a building or know what leaf will fall from a tree next.  It's about being aware of so many details at once that logical and critical thinking becomes difficult or impossible.

   Were you aware that both logical and critical thinking rely on perspective to work?

   That may or may not be basic common sense to most, but we need the ability to compare 2 "somethings" or "sets of somethings" at one time to have a fully working perspective.  That means we need both parts of our minds available to each take 1 of those 2 things so a comparison can be made.

   Another way of saying that is we need the ability to freely make choices or our logical and critical thinking stops working like it should.   Making choices - our own choices based on what we know and believe - requires an equal partnership between both parts of the mind.

   That's where the notion of "free will" is from.

   If something throws that partnership out of position - even by the smallest unit of measure that we don't have for the mind - we stop having free will in the truest sense.

   What we then have is limited free will.

   Unfortunately this means we've lost the perspective to recognize we no longer have free will.  That leaves little chance of doing something about it unless someone figures out how to circumvent how the mind works.

   So who knows if any now have true free will?

   I'm proposing a way for anyone that's interested to find the answer on their own.  It won't take a research team or any supercomputers.  It won't take access to government archives of microfiche or hidden warehouses.  It will take time and involves bridge building.

   You'll have to learn how to build something out of nothing inside your own mind.  And both the conscious and unconscious parts of your mind need to have your mind made up about doing it or a bridge won't happen.  There are potential shortcuts but it's easier to agree to build a bridge than to learn how to breathe underwater.

   Going back to proving the mind...  I wouldn't be surprised if one day it's scientifically proven that damage or loss to one part of the mind can be compensated for by the other.  That's considered a generally accepted fact today but there's absolutely no evidence that can be used to prove it.  Every bit of "evidence" is simply anecdotal and what we think we see is occurring.   

   Are you surprised by that?  That we have no scientific evidence for how our own minds work?

   Does it seem like that's backwards?

   Whether that's the case and there's plenty of evidence only hidden from view isn't exactly known.  But if you find the lack of scientific evidence about how the mind works to be curious, strange, or maybe impossible to believe then you might be aware of things other people aren't allowed to be aware of. 

   That's a cryptic statement to make but I can't tell you anything you don't already know.

   Here's the best explanation I have for now:

   Conscious and awareness don't exist at the very same moment in our minds. There are protections in place to keep that from happening under normal circumstances.  That's almost always a good thing except if it ever becomes possible for technology to essentially use hypnosis on us at any time.  To prevent people everywhere from screaming bloody murder under the weight of hearing constant suggestion this would almost certainly be done subliminally.  Should technology reach that point we'd be more or less defenseless as each unheard suggestion reached the unconscious part of our mind and was either accepted to become part of us or rejected until it's tried again.

   We'd never know it was being done unless some combination of suggestion resulted in mental illness.  Short of that, the only way I know of to gain awareness it's happening involves disabling the protections that keep both parts of the mind separate.

   The end result might not always fit with the definition though.  A mental image of being able to cross a gulf between 2 locations is one way of looking at it.   Another mental image of tearing down walls of protection between 2 rooms and their occupants is equally accurate though it may seem backwards.

   That's what building a bridge means.