"A thinking mind cannot feel."

[MacCruiskeen]

Via Ran Prieur, who writes:

October 1. A set of ten studies suggests that intuition promotes cooperation, but rational thought turns us selfish. This reminds me of a strange speculative piece from a few years back: In a fast society slow emotions become extinct. A thinking mind cannot feel.

It is strange, and thought-provoking. I'm posting it more-or-less as it stands, but with a few typos removed. It's by an Indian guy called Sushil Yadav.

http://www.1stpm.org/articles/emotion.html

In a fast society slow emotions become extinct. A thinking mind cannot feel.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.




When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.



A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.


FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.


THIS IS AN APPEAL FOR HELP.

I have been trying to prove some co-relations in a laboratory. If the members of this association can help in getting the following experiment conducted somewhere then please let me know.

( My background is given in the first letter ( letter No. 1 ) under the topic ã Correspondence with neuroscientists ã on the website : www.netshooter.com/emotion )



A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.

A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.


I have proposed the following experiment on emotion and am trying to find a neuroscience/psychophysiology/bio-chemistry laboratory where it could be conducted.


There is a link between visual / verbal speed ( in perception, memory, imagery ) and the bio-chemical state of the brain and the body.

Emotion can intensify / sustain only when visual and verbal processing associated with the emotion slows down ( stops / freezes ).

The degree of difficulty of an emotion depends upon the degree of freezing (of visuals and words ) required to intensify and sustain that particular emotion.

Experiment:

Subjects (preferably actors specialising in tragedy / tragic roles ) will be asked to watch a silent video film showing any of the following:-

Human suffering.
Animal suffering.
Suffering ( Destruction ) of Air / Water / Land / Trees.

Subjects will be asked to intensify and sustain the subjective feeling of empathy for the sufferer.
Their brains shall be scanned by Brain Imaging Machines ( PET / FMRI ).

The chemical change associated with the emotion in the brain ( and the rest of the body ) would be measured by appropriate methods.

The silent video film will be shown at different speeds :

125% of actual speed.
Actual/real speed.
75% of actual speed.
50% of actual speed.
25% of actual speed.



Results :


Intensity of emotion increases with the decrease in visual speed.
Intensity of emotion is maximum when visual speed is minimum (25% of actual speed)
The amount of chemical change associated with the emotion in the brain ( and rest of the body ) will be found to increase with the decrease in visual speed.
The chemical change is maximum when visual speed is minimum.
The amount of chemical change will increase with the decrease in breathing rate. Breathing becomes so slow and non-rhythmic that it stops for some time at the inhalation/ exhalation stages.


for some time at the inhalation/ exhalation stages.


In the 2nd stage of experiment we shall replace the silent video film with a Narrator ( Audio only ) and repeat the procedure thereby establishing the link between intensity of emotion and verbal speed.

Kindly share this message with people who could help in getting the experiment conducted in a Neuroscience / psychophysiology/ bio-chemistry laboratory.


Yours Sincerely,
Sushil Yadav
Delhi, India
www.netshooter.com/emotion


Please note:

If the co-relation is wrong it will be proved wrong experimentallyand the matter will end there.
A THINKING MIND CANNOT INTENSIFY / SUSTAIN ANY EMOTION.
While this statement is generally true for all emotions, it is particularly true for all painful emotions.
Empathy = Sadness + Worry ( for the suffering of others )
It will be found that empathy activates the same parts of the brain (neural circuits ) which are activated by sadness and worry. The chemical changes in the brain and the rest of the body are also the same.

Sadness and worry ( for the suffering of others ) are emotions of the highest level.

In a society in which visual ( verbal ) speed and breathing- rates are fast pain / remorse / empathy cannot be experienced. It is impossible.

IN A FAST SOCIETY SLOW EMOTIONS BECOME EXTINCT.


PROOF.
Proof of the link between pain and slow visuals / words :-

In the last century man has made thousands of movies / films on various themes / subjects. Whenever pain / tragedy is shown in any film the visuals ( scenes ) and words ( dialogues ) are always slowed down. In many films tragedy is shown in slow motion. At the most intense moment of pain the films almost become static / stationary.

Tragedy-films provide direct proof / evidence of the link between pain and slowness.
Pain can intensify / sustain only when visual ( and verbal ) speed slows down( stops/ freezes).



CHANGE IN VISUAL SPEED OVER THE YEARS

One thousand years ago visuals would change only when man physically moved himself to a new place or when other people ( animals / birds ) and objects ( clouds / water ) physically moved themselves before him.

Today man sits in front of TV / Computer and watches the rapidly changing visuals / audio.

He sits in a vehicle ( car / train / bus ) and as it moves he watches the rapidly changing visuals.

He turns the pages of a book / newspaper / magazine and sees many visuals / text in a short span.

The speed of visuals ( and words ) has increased so much during the last one hundred years that today the human brain has become incapable of focussing on slow visuals /words through perception, memory, imagery.

If we cannot focus on slow visuals / words we cannot experience emotions associated with slow visuals /words.

IN A FAST SOCIETY SLOW EMOTIONS BECOME EXTINCT.



Before the advent of Industrial Revolution Manâs thinking was primarily limited to :

visual processing ( slow visuals )
verbal / language processing ( slow words )
Today there are many kinds of fast thinking :

visual processing ( fast visuals )
verbal / language processing ( fast words )

If visual / verbal processing is fast we cannot feel slow emotions.
Scientific / Technical thinking ( fast )
Industrial thinking ( fast )
Business thinking ( fast )

(3), (4) & (5) ARE ASSOCIATED WITH NUMBERS / SYMBOLS / EQUATIONS / GRAPHS /CIRCUITS / DIAGRAMS / MONEY / ACCOUNTING et
As long as the mind is doing this kind of thinking it cannot feel any emotion - not an iota of emotion.

In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
In a thinking ( scientific / industrial ) society emotion itself becomes extinct.

EMOTION IS WHAT REMAINS IN THE MIND WHEN VISUAL /VERBAL PROCESSING SLOWS DOWN (STOPS/ FREEZES )



There are certain categories of people who feel more emotion (subjective experience ) than others.

If we attempt to understand why (and how ) they feel more emotion we can learn a lot about emotion.

Writers, poets, actors, painters ( and other artists )

WRITERS
Writers do verbal ( and associated visual) processing whole day- every day.
They do slow verbal ( and associated visual) processing every day.
(A novel that we read in 2 hours might have taken 2 years to write. This is also the reason why the reader can never feel the intensity & duration of emotion experienced by the writer )

POETS
Poets do verbal ( and associated visual ) processing whole day- every day. There is more emotion in poetry than in prose.
This happens because there are very few words ( and associated visuals ) in poetry than in any other kind of writing.
There is a very high degree of freezing / slowing down of visuals & words in poetry.

ACTORS
Actors do verbal ( and associated visual ) processing whole day- every day. During shooting / rehearsal they repeat the dialogues ( words ) again and again ( the associated visuals / scenes also get repeated along with the dialogues )

PAINTERS
Painters do visual ( and associated verbal ) processing whole day- every day. They do extremely slow visual processing - The visual on the canvas changes only when the painter adds to what already exists on the canvas.


There are some important points to be noted :

All these people do visual & verbal processing - whole day - every day.
They do slow visual & verbal processing.
They do not do scientific / industrial / business processing whole day - every day.


Most of the city people doing mental work either do this kind of mental processing which is associated with NUMBERS / SYMBOLS/ Equations / Graphs / CIRCUITS / DIAGRAMS / MONEY / ACCOUNTING etc· or they do fast visual ( verbal ) processing whole day - every day.

This kind of thinking ( processing ) has come into existence only during the last 200 years and has destroyed our emotional ability ( circuits )


SELF-ASSESSMENT OF ( SUBJECTIVE ) INTENSITY OF EMOTION IS ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG.

Suppose the highest ( maximum ) intensity of a particular emotion that can be experienced by any human being is 100 units.

Let us suppose the maximum intensity of that particular emotion ever experienced by two people A & B in their entire life is :

A - 100units
B - 20 units

Now suppose A & B are made subjects on a particular day and are asked to feel that particular emotion under experimental conditions ( or outside the laboratory ) and the intensity they actually experience is :

A - 90 units
B - 18 units

If A &B are then asked to indicate the intensity of emotion on a scale of 0 -10 their response is likely to be ;

A - 9
B - 9

Who is right and who is wrong ?
A is right.
B is wrong - B is wrong by a wide margin - B has experienced an intensity of 18 units out of a maximum of 100 units and his correct / actual score should be 1.8 )
Self- assessment ( self rating ) can be accurate only if people have the capacity to experience the highest intensity ( units ) of the particular emotion under study.



In small ( slow ) agriculture based societies of the past because of physical work and slow visual/verbal processing the mind used to experience a state of emotion all the time.

Emotion can intensify / sustain only when visual / verbal processing slows down ( stops / freezes ). In an Industrial (thinking) society because of fast ( visual / verbal / scientific / industrial / business ) thinking people experience very little emotion.

Suppose the maximum intensity of a particular emotion ( for most people ) in a fast society has reduced to 5 units ( from 100 units that people used to experience in earlier /slower societies ).

If such people experience 4 units of emotion they will give themselves a rating /score of 8 on a scale of 0-10 whereas their actual score should be 0.4

IN A FAST SOCIETY SLOW EMOTIONS BECOME EXTINCT.


A thinking species destroys the planet.
Animals lived on earth for billions of years (in very large numbers) without destroying nature.
They did not destroy nature because their thinking / activity was
limited to searching for food for one time only.
Man has existed on earth in large numbers for only a few thousand
years / a few hundred years.
Within this short period Man has destroyed the environment.
This destruction took place because of Manâs thinking.
When man thinks he makes things.
When he makes things he kills animals / trees / air / water / land.
( Nothing can be made without killing these five elements of nature ).
A thinking species destroys the planet.

There was a time when Man knew nothing about the number of species and millions of species existed.
Today Man knows the names of millions of species and nothing is left of the species.


Man can do the same physical work every day.
Man cannot do the same mental work every day.

When man used to do physical work ( farming and related activities ) he could do the same repetitive work day after day- generation after generation.

After the Industrial Revolution when man switched-over to mental work he began a never ending process of making new machines / things / products- a process which can only end with the complete destruction of environment ( planet ).

AS LONG AS CITIES EXIST ENVIRONMENT CANNOT BE SAVED.

To save the ( remaining ) environment from destruction man will have to
return back to physical work ( smaller communities ).

To save the mind from mental diseases man will have to return back to physical work ( smaller communities ).



Environment can be saved only if we stop production of most ( more than 99% ) of the consumer goods we are making today.

ENVIRONMENT CANNOT BE SAVED BY RECYCLING

TRYING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT BY RECYCLING IS LIKE SHOOTING SOMEONE 10,000 TIMES AND THEN TRYING TO SAVE HIM BY TAKING OUT ONE BULLET.

http://www.1stpm.org/articles/emotion.html

[Harvey]

Is this an unnecessarily absolutist position? I stress, it only 'feels' like one to me. Within the sanctity of it's own province it may be true, but if the focus wavers, does the argument itself become, like a mirage, only half true.

Art metaphor alert. Learning to draw, a wise teacher I had the good fortune to know and become friends with, asked me to observe that the most visual information occurs in the border land between light and dark. The contours are revealed there, the topography is starkly visible, the shadows of objects stretch toward the the darkness in relief against the vivid brightness of their opposing side. Beyond these borderlands there is a certain 'featureless' quality. Bright light and dark shadow both seem to soften details which are alternatively burned out or hidden entirely. It becomes hard to differentiate between the same kinds of information on either side. But by the same token, a backlit subject, bathed in reflected light can often reveal much.

To stretch the metaphor, the city might be it's own truth until you leave it. The wilderness might be it's own truth until you leave it. Travelling between, one finds something complementary, the places where thinking and feeling might co-exist, the places where feeling is needed and the places where thinking is needed. I don't know.

Also, are there are arbitrary elements in some of the examples given in this piece which may serve to confuse rather than enlighten? If so, does the argument lose the power of whatever truth it contains? I really don't know the answers, I'm just asking questions. Confusion is sometimes it's own source of the revelatory.

[Pele'sDaughter]

This is interesting because it's an entirely different perspective than I've heard before. The fact that our history is vague beyond some distant point makes it difficult to pinpoint these changes. I feel that originally there was only intuitive thinking and that humans gained knowledge directly from their environment. What exactly prompted the introduction of "knowledge" as opposed to "wisdom". In my definition wisdom is something that comes from the heart through intuitive thinking, and knowledge is cooked up in the brain and must be received through brain-based thinking. Knowledge than conflicts with innate wisdom which causes a feedback loop in the mind that leads to emotional distress and dysfunction. Brain-based thinking seems to be funneled through ego which leads to selfishness, desire for agrandizement and power, jealousy, etc. I'm sure that ideally there's a wonderful symbiosis between the two types of thinking that makes for a balanced human, and at the moment we're severely unbalanced because there seems to be no emphasis at all on intuitive thinking. As an intuitive thinker I often feel like an outsider and that my opinions have less value to others.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Follow every assertion with its negation.

Meditate upon how much is excluded by each assertion.

You might become afraid to say anything at all!

Until, of course, you actually embody the resolution of every paradox.

That's right.

That's one helluva trick if you can master it.

I love Harvey.

I guess that was a bit cryptic.

I may have more to say later, I dunno.

But wisdom is in the awareness of the interdependence of complementarities.

As Harvey demonstrates.

...

[Hammer of Los]

...

I'm sure that ideally there's a wonderful symbiosis between the two types of thinking that makes for a balanced human

I don't doubt there is such a thing.

Pass me the batphone.

Hello? Is that the Baxter Building?

Hehehe.

...

[Hammer of Los]

...

Ideally?

Yes.

Xactly.

Idea first.

Materia later.

...

[brainpanhandler]

Confusion is sometimes it's own source of the revelatory.

Or maybe even always. Certainly the already known and understood is not readily the source of the revelatory it seems to me.

I perhaps don't think as well when I am feeling strong emotions, but I am pretty sure that powerful emotions inspire my best thinking, which in turn refines my emotions. Emotions can be just as confused and dishonest as thinking.

It does seem though that Yadav has a point about the relative speed with which we experience the world and the speed of our processing of that experience having an effect on the quality of our emotions when compared with slower, "simpler" epochs. That sort of stands to reason. Though what exactly that effect is I am not sure.

I sometimes get the impression that cinema, whether by conscious design or not, serves to allow us to feel something. Anything. It's as though we are so afraid of feeling honest emotions in our own lives that we are drawn to darkened cinemas in order to vicariously feel something, safely.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Re op;

Slow down, you move too fast.

And through the rhythm of moving slowly
Sent through the rhythm work out the story
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past

Young Christians see it from the beginning
Old people feel it, that's what they're saying
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past

They move fast, they tell me
But I just can't believe they really mean to
There's someone to tell you
A course towards a universal season

Getting over overhanging trees, let them rape the forest
They might stand and leave them clearly to be home
Getting over wars they do not mean, we charm the movement suffers
Call out all our memories clearly to be home

We've moved fast, we need love
A part we offer is our only freedom

What happened to this song we once knew so well
Signed promise for moments caught within the spell
We must have waited all our lives for this Moment.

Makes perfect sense to me.

...

[barracuda]

The ideas in the essay (if we can call it that - it feels more like a transaction receipt) are startlingly self-evident, almost to the point of cliché. Artists experience emotion deeply. Technical work destroys your soul. The Industrial revolution has destroyed the planet. Cities are sources of human agony and destruction. Looking at numbers all day can fuck you up. These themes have been admirably explored in Bartleby the Scrivener or any of dozens of other nineteenth century literary works on the perils of alienated men and the industrial world. In other words, I agree with pretty much all of it. Not to sound like a luddite or anything, but the history of technological progress is a rather notorious example of the unreliable narrator.

[JackRiddler]

I sometimes get the impression that cinema, whether by conscious design or not, serves to allow us to feel something. Anything. It's as though we are so afraid of feeling honest emotions in our own lives that we are drawn to darkened cinemas in order to vicariously feel something, safely.

Yes. Also, yes to your other points.

Speed is the key. Uninterrupted speed is the mind killer. And the society petrifier. (It's also what's transformed cinema into a different animal since the 1980s. Almost all of the most emotionally powerful cinema scenes are slow and extended.)

[compared2what?]

Via Ran Prieur, who writes:

October 1. A set of ten studies suggests that intuition promotes cooperation, but rational thought turns us selfish. This reminds me of a strange speculative piece from a few years back: In a fast society slow emotions become extinct. A thinking mind cannot feel.

It is strange, and thought-provoking. I'm posting it more-or-less as it stands, but with a few typos removed. It's by an Indian guy called Sushil Yadav.

http://www.1stpm.org/articles/emotion.html

In a fast society slow emotions become extinct. A thinking mind cannot feel.

This neither describes thinking nor feeling as I experience them, ever, although my experience of both/each is....I don't know what the right word is. The opposite of "fixed" or "static." Dynamic, maybe?

....

My inner life is not a singular, once-and-always-forevermore, wait-I-recognize-this-it's-thought-and/or-feeling! type of a deal.

^^That's not quite it, but it's close enough. Is that just me? It can't be. Please tell me that it's not.
_______________

That said, the unexamined life is not worth living. And both thought and feeling can be greatly impaired by regular exposure to too much stress. (Or activity, or information, or....anything, really, including thought and feeling themselves.) Permanently damaged, even.

But those are both very complex propositions that are capable of almost as many interpretations as there are people on earth, even leaving aside all the issues raised by the society > individual part of the equation. So I don't know. Maybe I just don't understand the premise. But as far as I can tell, he's basically just saying that stress is injurious; and then vaguely faulting industrial society for it.

If that's more or less correct, fwiw, I agree. But considering how violently I object to the replacement, via rhetorical sleight of hand, of "stress" with "thought," it's not worth much.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

Oh my god, no. I wish.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Unless I only get one, in which case I wish for this.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

If that's the author's experience, it should be in the first-person. And if not:

What people? What kind of mistakes? With what kind of actual or potential consequences for whom/what?

And that's not even disputatiousness on my part. Necessarily. I don't know whether I dispute it. I have absolutely no idea what it means. I'd be pathetically grateful to anyone who could explain it, though. And that would be equally true whether I agreed with it once I understood it or not.
_________________

More on the difficulty of delineating what constitutes thought as opposed to feeling in a moment, maybe. I'm not sure if I have an idea or not.

[compared2what?]

I sometimes get the impression that cinema, whether by conscious design or not, serves to allow us to feel something. Anything. It's as though we are so afraid of feeling honest emotions in our own lives that we are drawn to darkened cinemas in order to vicariously feel something, safely.

Yes. Also, yes to your other points.

Seconded, wrt the above. But that's not always a dangerous (or even a bad) thing. And understanding is, as usual, the best defense against it when it is. FWIW, I do totally concede that "best" means "only" in that context, though. So no thoughts and/or feelings of approval/disapproval intended, really. It just is what it is.

Speed is the key. Uninterrupted speed is the mind killer. And the society petrifier. (It's also what's transformed cinema into a different animal since the 1980s. Almost all of the most emotionally powerful cinema scenes are slow and extended.)

I want you to know that although I'm suppressing my impulse to debate you on that one just for the sheer pleasure of the thing, I regret the loss. Or maybe "the unrealized gain." But you know what I mean.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Reminds me of something I read this morning:

http://pastehtml.com/view/cdoca09bx.html

"The Urge to Self Destruction" by Arthur Koestler ... definitely a bit dated, which kind of enhances the brainfood value....for instance:

This leads to the third symptom: intraspecific warfare in permanence, with its sub-varieties of mass persecution and genocide. The popular confusion between predatory and bellicose behaviour tends to obscure the fact that the law of the jungle permits predation on other species, but forbids war within one's own; and that homo sapiens is the unique offender against this law (apart from some controversial warlike phenomena among rats and ants).

Well, these days the data is telling us something pretty different -- we are far from unique in that respect. Lots more paradigm shift gems in the mix, but you can connect your own dots, after all.

[Seamus OBlimey]

So only an unthinking mind can feel?

I think not.

I don't like absolutes.

Feck! I sound like HoL.

[Seamus OBlimey]

Empathy = Sadness + Worry ( for the suffering of others )
It will be found that empathy activates the same parts of the brain (neural circuits ) which are activated by sadness and worry. The chemical changes in the brain and the rest of the body are also the same.

Sadness and worry ( for the suffering of others ) are emotions of the highest level.

No room for joy in that equation then?