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I make many assumptions in my life. I live with hypotheses, such as the idea that my consciousness is a problem-solving machine that runs on emotions. I also think we are deterministic. These are my beliefs.
I can experience the fact that using my imagination has a powerful effect on my emotions. I can feel scared if I imagine being a mouse walking down the streets of my town. I can, for a moment, feel powerful by deluding myself into thinking I am a panther made of magical flames.
Emotions do not reflect an objective emotional valence of what my senses report from my environment. What I see or hear is compared to whatever unconscious data I have on similar situations, and their emotional valence is retrieved. An average is made, and I am fed the corresponding neurotransmitter soup. That is, unless I trick myself into thinking differently, like with the mouse or panther experiment.
If I see a black cat and believe they are bad omens, I will feel bad. But if I trick myself into believing they are actually powerful aliens in disguise, taking care of everyone they see, I will feel good—even if I know it’s a lie. It will work as long as I allow the lie to work on me. It sounds a bit like choosing madness. Well, Erasmus wrote The Praise of Follyfor a reason.
Without getting the imagination involved, the emotional system in mammals is hardly optimized for our evolved brain. Or if it is, it’s designed to optimize survivability, not happiness. Predator territory? Fear. Safe environment with water? Happiness. For our complex brain, the amount of information involved is a lot more though, and more often than not, some of it is bad. And it'sretty much like when you cook a soup: one bad ingredient is enough to ruin the flavor. My consciousness is filled with so much data that can turn the soup into a disaster. As a conscious being trying to experience life happily, this is disappointing.
For people who get especially disgusting soups of neurotransmitters for a long time, this can lead to religion. Religions offer a powerful framework to make better soup. Whenever something happens that feels bad, instead of loading the emotional valence from your past experiences, you load the emotional valence associated with your religious texts. And you feel good as long as you follow those texts. Religion is mixed spice for the brain. Still bland, though.
I mean, even if it was made by experts, it’s still off-the-rack. I have a particular consciousness, with its own specific bad ingredients, and if I need my imagination to affect it, I should make my own blend of totemic images. Religion is also pretty anachronistic. It lacks modern templates to handle fear of clowns or guilt about global warming.
That’s the problem with available templates in general, not just religious ones. If I have a horrible relationship with my horrible sister, I can trick myself into believing I’m better than that, and that I’ll offer an olive branch. It will help for a bit, but it’s not specific enough, and thus doesn’t solve the underlying problem. And as soon as she pushes my buttons again… What I need is an image of a change in the relationship she would agree to—something that pushes neither of our buttons. After a few good memories together, it wouldn’t be so imaginary anymore.
For everything in life, imagination changes my emotions. And having a self-chosen, carefully and rationally built image for things that have become difficult is far better than trusting the natural process. In my opinion, this is the mechanism behind every spirituality. I guess I’m making a case for building your own rational spirituality here. But there’s one application I believe is pragmatic and helpful enough that everyone should try it: having a good image in mind when you’re solving problems.
Whenever you face something new that requires a solution, a powerful image that shifts your mindset is a universal tool. Pretty much everything in life begins with asking yourself, “How am I going to do this?” So finding that one image that helps you can be incredibly effective.
This has been pretty vague so far, so I’ll give you one of mine: the asteroid field.
When something new arrives that I need to think about, it’s an asteroid. I can destroy it, evade it, or mine it for resources—meaning learning something new. I can push it into someone else’s trajectory. When it’s too big, it blocks my field of vision. When I see people stuck on one problem, unable to move on, I imagine them having landed on an asteroid, nesting inside it. Sometimes the asteroids are dangerous and I go slow; sometimes I cruise through problems like I’m the Millennium Falcon.
That image motivates me to be faster and more focused. It’s also a self-diagnosis tool, a quick heuristic to know if I’m on the right track. I regularly picture my life as me flying through an asteroid field, and every other week I realize I’ve started to land on a problem—or that I’m choosing a path with a lot of asteroids, even though there’s a better way.
It has allowed me to bypass my previous emotional valence around problem-solving and made it much easier to approach. I hope some of you have similar images, and if you do, I’d love to hear about them.
I make many assumptions in my life. I live with hypotheses, such as the idea that my consciousness is a problem-solving machine that runs on emotions. I also think we are deterministic. These are my beliefs.
I can experience the fact that using my imagination has a powerful effect on my emotions. I can feel scared if I imagine being a mouse walking down the streets of my town. I can, for a moment, feel powerful by deluding myself into thinking I am a panther made of magical flames.
Emotions do not reflect an objective emotional valence of what my senses report from my environment. What I see or hear is compared to whatever unconscious data I have on similar situations, and their emotional valence is retrieved. An average is made, and I am fed the corresponding neurotransmitter soup. That is, unless I trick myself into thinking differently, like with the mouse or panther experiment.
If I see a black cat and believe they are bad omens, I will feel bad. But if I trick myself into believing they are actually powerful aliens in disguise, taking care of everyone they see, I will feel good—even if I know it’s a lie. It will work as long as I allow the lie to work on me. It sounds a bit like choosing madness. Well, Erasmus wrote The Praise of Follyfor a reason.
Without getting the imagination involved, the emotional system in mammals is hardly optimized for our evolved brain. Or if it is, it’s designed to optimize survivability, not happiness. Predator territory? Fear. Safe environment with water? Happiness. For our complex brain, the amount of information involved is a lot more though, and more often than not, some of it is bad. And it'sretty much like when you cook a soup: one bad ingredient is enough to ruin the flavor. My consciousness is filled with so much data that can turn the soup into a disaster. As a conscious being trying to experience life happily, this is disappointing.
For people who get especially disgusting soups of neurotransmitters for a long time, this can lead to religion. Religions offer a powerful framework to make better soup. Whenever something happens that feels bad, instead of loading the emotional valence from your past experiences, you load the emotional valence associated with your religious texts. And you feel good as long as you follow those texts. Religion is mixed spice for the brain. Still bland, though.
I mean, even if it was made by experts, it’s still off-the-rack. I have a particular consciousness, with its own specific bad ingredients, and if I need my imagination to affect it, I should make my own blend of totemic images. Religion is also pretty anachronistic. It lacks modern templates to handle fear of clowns or guilt about global warming.
That’s the problem with available templates in general, not just religious ones. If I have a horrible relationship with my horrible sister, I can trick myself into believing I’m better than that, and that I’ll offer an olive branch. It will help for a bit, but it’s not specific enough, and thus doesn’t solve the underlying problem. And as soon as she pushes my buttons again… What I need is an image of a change in the relationship she would agree to—something that pushes neither of our buttons. After a few good memories together, it wouldn’t be so imaginary anymore.
For everything in life, imagination changes my emotions. And having a self-chosen, carefully and rationally built image for things that have become difficult is far better than trusting the natural process. In my opinion, this is the mechanism behind every spirituality. I guess I’m making a case for building your own rational spirituality here. But there’s one application I believe is pragmatic and helpful enough that everyone should try it: having a good image in mind when you’re solving problems.
Whenever you face something new that requires a solution, a powerful image that shifts your mindset is a universal tool. Pretty much everything in life begins with asking yourself, “How am I going to do this?” So finding that one image that helps you can be incredibly effective.
This has been pretty vague so far, so I’ll give you one of mine: the asteroid field.
When something new arrives that I need to think about, it’s an asteroid. I can destroy it, evade it, or mine it for resources—meaning learning something new. I can push it into someone else’s trajectory. When it’s too big, it blocks my field of vision. When I see people stuck on one problem, unable to move on, I imagine them having landed on an asteroid, nesting inside it. Sometimes the asteroids are dangerous and I go slow; sometimes I cruise through problems like I’m the Millennium Falcon.
That image motivates me to be faster and more focused. It’s also a self-diagnosis tool, a quick heuristic to know if I’m on the right track. I regularly picture my life as me flying through an asteroid field, and every other week I realize I’ve started to land on a problem—or that I’m choosing a path with a lot of asteroids, even though there’s a better way.
It has allowed me to bypass my previous emotional valence around problem-solving and made it much easier to approach. I hope some of you have similar images, and if you do, I’d love to hear about them.