Archive for the ‘The Human Instincts’ Category
Entry 1328 — My Stupidest Idea?
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
About a month ago I had an idea so stupid I never wrote it down. But somehow I more than half believe in it! In any case, it may be entertaining, and I need something for today, so here it is: when we struggle to answer some problem and fail, our brain will eventually connect it to–here’s my idea–a False Solution. Here’s what makes it wacko: we know it’s false but accept it as our solution, anyway! And it explains nothing, it just says to you, you got it without telling you why.
Here’s what I tentatively think happens: a mechanism recognizing great puzzlement sticks this false solution to our thinking about the problem, with it clearly labeled “crap”; but the mechanism also lowers the pain that failed solutions generally cause, and which make us keep struggling with the problems causing them. So we accept it. It keeps us from ever solving the problem BUT makes up for that by keeping us from wasting too much time and energy trying to solve a problem we can’t solve, because we’re too inept, or have no likelihood of acquiring sufficient data to solve it, or it’s unsolvable (e.g., why iz we here).
To cast a better light on it, I could call it the Unsolvability Urceptual Knowlecule (UUK). A form of x is x because.
The alert amongst you may well see how such a thing may just explain . . . You-Know-Who, Almighty. In fact, I think certain things some find animistic vague answers to may connect to the UUK, which strengthens and personifies them. In other words, if it exists, it would be the basis of a human instinct to form and believe in religions. Always in tension with the instinct to be rational, even–I suspect–for the most devout. And, in reverse, for the least devout.
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Entry 946 — Pronouncements & Blither, Part 7
Saturday, December 8th, 2012
This entry was to consist of two paragraphs I wrote yesterday in which I tried to get a start on something major about the definition of “definition”–as a first step toward my final attempt at definitive book on poetry. Except that I soon realized my first step should be about names. Anyway, according to my diary, I thought my efforts lame. I still thought them worth posting here–but somehow they got deleted. So, instead, the beginning of something I threw together earlier today after getting a yen to list all the major human instincts I could think of:
1. The Fundaceptual Awareness
None I can think of.
2. The Behavraceptual Awareness
None I can think of.
3. The Evaluceptual Awareness
The Pleasure-Seeking Instinct
The Pain-Avoidance Instinct
The Evaluative Instinct
4. The Cartoceptual Awareness
The Self-Location Instinct
5. The Objecticeptual Awareness
None I can think of.
6. The Reducticeptual Awareness
The Analytic Instinct
7. The Sagaceptual Awareness
The Reproductive Instinct
The Hunting Instinct
The Escape Instinct
The Heroic-Self Instinct
8. The Anthroceptual Awareness
The Love Instinct
The Friendship Instinct
The Maternal Instinct
The Hostility Instinct
The Dominance Instinct
The Servility Instinct
The Individualism Instinct?
The Collectivism Instinct?
9. The Scienceptual Awareness
The Cause and Effect Instinct
10. The Combiceptual Awareness
None.
I’m trying to arrange them by which of my Knowlecular Psychology’s ten kinds of major awarenesses they belong in. The list, of course, is almost entirely for me–to give me something to look at and think about. It’s already given me ideas: the possibility of an instinct causing us to seek solitude and/or be different from others, and an opposite one to seek a herd to be part of and/or avoid being or seeming different occurred to me for the first time.
I know there are omissions, probably important ones. But it’s a start.
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