Posts by Julia

Quote from Kalosyni

I am on a tablet that is running android, so I would need to see if there is an app for that.

The Dark Reader plugin is available for Firefox on Android.

Kalosyni The screenshot shows how the "Garden" looks like at my end, which is "dark enough" I think. Still has a little colour but muted, desaturated, thus no glare. I get this result by using "Garden", and using Dark Reader (a browser plugin) with my usual settings: +50% grayscale (range 0 to 100; this mutes the colors) and +10% contrast (range -50 to +50; this helps maintain good readability after the first step). (The other plugin settings are at their default values).

I suggest focussing on the normal, light theme variant to figure out a good default. Once that is done, one of us (like myself) can test it with Dark Reader (which is quite commonly used by people who want a no-glare web experience). Chances are good that it will just work well and look good out of the box. Then, we can use a screenshot of whatever Dark Reader generates to make a dark theme variant (such that those who, for whatever reason, do not use Dark Reader can get the same experience using the forums on-board tools).

PS: I like the theme as seen in the screenshot (as it is for me right now with using Dark Reader, which I use everywhere at all times anyway). I realise the muted colours (is that how one says it? I admit to having spent art class with maths homework…) might seem strange at first. When we switched to this (for the whole web, mind you) everything looked kind of boring, but by now, the normal web looks way too flashy and over the top -- meaning to say: It's just habituation. So…recap: normal light theme first, Dark Reader to generate no-glare screenshot, make dark theme variant to match; this keeps our limited time focussed on the typical visitor (light web, no plugins), ensures it works well for the typical no-glare web user (no theme changes, but Dark Reader plugin) and has something in store for the dark-theme preferring user who for some reason uses no plugins.

PPS: Might these photo AI tools come in handy somehow? Again, not a graphic designer just a thought that came up

The Inspire version called "Garden" is nice

Regarding animations: Please don't use an animated theme (such as the "Foxhole" theme, which is animated at the bottom/footer). They eat up battery while on the go, they can be laggy (or else cause high system load) in some browsers -- and they can be distracting and make it pointlessly harder to focus on what one is actually trying to do. I think the theme should have a be calm quality about it, and thus be without constant movement. (I'd prefer it if the title banner of "Garden" were be fixed, but because I can usually scroll down a bit to hide it, I wouldn't mint too much, either. The constant movement of Foxhole would drive me up the walls sooner or later.)

Quote from Kalosyni

to try the new theme click on "Kalosyni Ambiance Blue" under the change style option.

Doesn't seem to show up for me? I can see the plain "Ambience Blue" (which looks different) but no theme that mentions your name, Kalosyni? Having customs themes like that sounds like a great way to discuss which way to go thank you

Friends, I am baffled. I mean. Speechless! You're all wrong!

The background image has to be piles upon piles of rare delicacies and choice wines!

To be honest, I find the background images all a bit dark and gloomy…I can see how they all have a stark, rough beauty, but freezing temperatures, rocks and the raw forces of nature aren't the setting I calm down in and start to philosophise, if you see what I mean? To me, those pictures and colour themes convey more of an adventure/expedition setting than a garden setting.

I've changed the settings to the “Dark Theme” of the “Default Wotlab Style”, which is essentially a black blank page, and works for me. But in the interest of growing the community, if it were up to me, I'd change the default background image to something cozy, like a summer landscape, something warm, soft, gentle. (I'd also keep the default colour theme light; I think I am in the minority with my preference for dark themes – and I mostly prefer them for practical reasons, less for aesthetic ones (less glare in dark rooms, less impact on my sleep cycle).) There's a reason why feel-good advertisements (vacations, credit cards, various drinks, …) look so much alike: they use colour palettes and scenes which are typically closely associated with pleasure

If the major philosophies each were to be represented in a single photograph (and the corresponding colour palette), which choice would best say "Epicurean"?

Quote from Kalosyni

he makes a quick comment that suppressing your authenticity leads to body illness

I think in that regard one needs to keep context in mind: He is compressing “a whole chapter of [his new book]” into a few sentences. He strikes me as a smart guy, so I don't think he means to imply that when you don't say what you mean today you'll have a tumor tomorrow. I think what he means to say is more general, more along the lines of an overall theme of «chronic psychological distress weakens the body» which then gets a somewhat disproportionate weight by his spontaneous use of worst-case rhetoric (“you get cancer”).

(Not being authentic, hiding who we truly are, hiding our feelings from others, suppressing them within ourselves, maybe even trying to be liked by everyone, is a pointless cause of chronic psychological stress. This chronic stress might lead us to smoke more tobacco, to drink more alcohol, to eat more sugary food; these behaviours each make it more likely to get cancer. We might hide ourselves away indoors, not get enough UV exposure, end up with low vitamin D levels; that makes autoimmune disease more likely. We might turn into a workaholic to numb the pain of being unseen, to make sure that at least our colleagues like us, which makes it more likely we get stomach ulcers and high blood pressure. And so forth.)

Quote from Kalosyni

So it is a matter of placing first priority on taking care of yourself.

To jump ahead: I agree with your conclusion, and I think it is Maté's conclusion as well even though we all agree on that, let's take it step by step, just to be sure:

Quote from Kalosyni

when he uses the word "authenticity" he is refering to both internal experience and outer expression of feelings/emotions.

He does, indeed. Let's keep in mind he is talking about children; with that context, I consider it valid to define “authenticity” such that it is both internal experience and external expression, because it is quite hard for children to hide their emotions. It takes some time to learn the skill of the so-called “polite” smile, the smile which – while being an expression itself – distances itself from expressing anything at all (which requires a sort of “stepping besides oneself without mentally leaving the situation entirely”; more on that can be found when reading Helmuth Plessner's work on anthropological philosophy, where he introduced the terms centric and eccentric positionality to describe that).

Quote from Kalosyni

[…] makes it sound like one's "self" is in a very delicate and precarious position (a very vunerable understanding of the "self"). Yet as an adult […]

As a child, it is quite hard to inwardly maintain a contrarian position (or to inwardly feel a feeling) and outwardly hide one's true self (or to appear unemotional on the outside). As an adult, many people continue with patterns they learned as children – patterns which were adaptive and correct given their powerless position as a child, patterns which ensured their safety throughout their formative years.

This continuation with what was once functional/adaptive (but now is dysfunctional) is one common reason for why people stay in abusive relationships, for example. I think it is fair to acknowledge, that our behaviour is not entirely free to chose, that we are set in our ways to some extent, and that it requires effort to change. For instance, if abuse is what you've known for a long time, it feels familiar. You'll know what to expect. How things work. Leaving the abuse then, by way of amounting to a big change, can be scary. Leaving harmful situations can be scary, whereas simply staying in the harmful situation is that person's normal. Another aspect would be that freedom is, among other things, a state of mind. And to add insult to injury, one's sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem were likely deeply eroded, reducing the sense of agency and empowerment needed to take a leap of faith, step outside the cage, and act freely.

A similarly twisted dynamic can be at play with authenticity: To show who you are makes you vulnerable to be attacked (belittled, laughed at, shamed, …) for who you are. I'd claim that people who don't show who they truly are often have an eroded sense of self-worth and self-esteem, originating from what caused them to hide their self in the first place. For those people, then, it feels safer to continue to act as if they're someone else: It means no change. It worked so far. And if anyone makes fun of them, it's not actually fun of their true self, merely fun of their mask, which is much easier to cope with and brush off.

So when we look at the type of question he asked

Quote from Julia

“Who would you rather have in your life? Them or yourself?”

it is important to keep in mind that, from context, “them” are bad people, people who his addressee puts up with, because she learned to please and appease everyone around her, because she internalised being disrespected, disregarded, and as such the type of question he asked is indeed

Quote from Kalosyni

This sounds like an "either/or" phrasing

an either/or phrasing: Either you continue your childhood pattern and keep letting yourself be mistreated for the sake of not being abandoned (which as a child felt-like-being or actually-would-have-been deadly) – or you realise you're an adult now, that you now have power, that you have agency and many degrees of freedom. Either you continue chose them, or you wake up and chose yourself again!

As such, the context in which he asks his question doesn't transfer perfectly cleanly to the oxygen-mask metaphor: In an airplane, there is enough oxygen for everyone; nobody needs to go without. However, when choosing yourself, there might very well be less for others: abusers will take offense, will get mad, will assert their power, will try to put you back in your box, and even average people, even the people who were friends with your fake-self for years and years, will – chances are – no longer like you, abandon you when you're most fragile (which might mimic the child's experience of being abandoned for being itself, causing the whole effort to be aborted prematurely), precisely when you're just starting to explore life on your own, as your self, when you'd most benefit from support and friendship.

All of that said, he offers not a choice between “either any company or solitude”, rather he raises the question of “either keep your current company or get reacquainted with your self (with the small but existing chance that some of your current company might be good people, might stick around, be that to be good friends while you're still learning to talk or be that because they actually like your true self, too)”.

Quote from Kalosyni

For anyone dealing with "people pleasing", that likely needs help from a professional therapist.

I'd agree that a good therapist can be a valuable resource; but I'd disagree that one is “likely needed”: Physical injuries heal automatically; doctors cannot heal them – but they can set up a good environment for the automatic healing to take place in (such as a cleanly stitched wound or a plaster cast). Likewise, therapists cannot heal our psychological wounds – they can only provide a good environment for that healing to take place in. However, unlike with physical wounds, the healing of psychological wounds remains mostly a manual process. With that in mind, in Western Europe, many[1] of the licensed professionals are still quite bad, so depending on the country and financial means, it can go a longer way to read books written by experienced good therapists (rather than have a bad therapist offer a 3rd rate regurgitation of what they only learned from reading, too), keep a journal, reflect, and chose one's friends wisely – depending on the circumstances, it can actually go a longer way to consciously create a good environment, and to manually do the healing inside of it, without a coach cheering from the sidelines. But of course, having a sympathetic coach cheer doesn't hurt, and having an actually qualified, actually good coach sprinkle in bits of wisdom throughout training sessions is very nice to have. But even then, just like a teacher can explain things to me, but not understand them for me, no coach can do my training, no doctor can do my body's healing, and no therapist can heal my mind – that's for me to do myself.

[1] With regard to the countries/places I know (all in Western Europe), I feel inclined to go much further and say most are still quite bad; but I also know that they're sufficient for assisting in a garden-variety issue, a problem of the type most people face at one point of their life. Nonetheless, abuse at the hand of therapists, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses is still common, while their knowledge of and willingness to assist in the overcoming of more challenging problems is usually subpar at best…

End note: In this context, being courageous initially entails being oneself, but being oneself leads to an increased vulnerability. The Stoic way to be courageous and invulnerable, is to not be courageously oneself, but to be a courageous embodiment of their four virtues. Then one might not be oneself, be emotionally disconnected and eventually empty, but it eliminates the vulnerability and being virtuous provides a cognitive anchor for at least feeling morally superior

Quote from Pacatus

In the context of the video, absolutely. But I'd extend the Epicurean answer to: Myself – and if can we can be friends, then you too, à la the so-called “Gestalt Prayer”:

I fully agree as you say, and as Maté lays out in his little speech, we have a very deep need for attachments, so…

“Who would you rather have in your life? Them or yourself?”

“Myself!”

…is not at all about rejecting the company of others, rather it is about being oneself, such that one can be seen for who one is, and with that have the basis for form genuine connection, which in my view is the antidote to existential dread. (I'd add that one shouldn't be needlessly disagreeable in character, which just causes avoidable pain – one might argue that is what Socrates, Plato, Diogenes and the Ancient Stoics did (if Modern Stoics would do that, they would elevate virtue above the law, and get themselves into trouble just like their ancient heroes).)

I found it interesting how he described what boils down to Stoic mentality in his negative example of parenting ([]-comment added by me):

“I'm going to threaten you with the loss of the most important thing to you, which is the attachment relationship [and that feels very dangerous to you, because you're a helpless child in need of attachment to adults like me]. If you feel your feelings, you're going to be disattached. When you no longer feel your feelings, you can come back and talk to me.”

So this type of parenting is basically a Stoic boot camp for children, which I didn't see this clearly before. (I'd like to add: Raising children such that they are allowed to express their emotions, have them acknowledged, and get support in learning to regulate them (called co-regulation) does not at all imply raising children without any sense of responsibility or self-efficacy.) If we take what Maté says (which I consider to be true), we can conclude that if the Stoics were to take Epictetus by his word

“For good or for ill, life and nature are governed by laws that we can't change. The quicker we accept this, the more tranquil we can be.”

and really “live according to nature” they would need to accept that feelings, too, are a part of our nature, and therefore they would have to arrive at the true philosophy and be Epicurean…

(At times like this, it still feels wild how I myself have been blind to this simple truth for so long; how that was even possible despite all the reading and reflection, despite knowing in my gut that “something isn't right”; how completely I was entrenched in what is wrong so obviously.)

In this short seven minute snippet, Gabor Maté does a wonderful job at summing up attachment and authenticity in developmental psychology: Link to video on YouTube. (Watch now for the rest to make sense.)

He ends with asking:

“Who would you rather have in your life? Them or yourself?”

The Epicurean answer: “Myself!”

Ancient Stoic answer: “Neither, I'll have virtue, even at the price of my life!”

Modern Stoic answer: “Them, but I'll pretend, even to myself, to be virtuous by subconsciously turning into a compulsive people pleaser!”

_{^{(The Cynic answer: “I just shat on the floor.”)}}

Well, I can just about handle worrying about the scrolls, and I only did that because I thought: “Maybe I could donate a bit to help save them?” (There is a way to donate, but they focus on philanthropists, whereas I still cook my own meals.)

As for the rest: Thinking about what it would do to the people who live there or the world at large is much pain, paired with zero power to change it – so I shut that out of my mind. Focussing on what I have power over, on what I can turn into action – be that to change it or prepare for it – helps me stay sane, and completing those actions gives me a sense of accomplishment and tranquility

So in a sense, this is me, standing on a cliff, thinking with neither spitefulness nor gloating “Glad I'm not in that boat down there fighting against the storm”, and continuing to do my own thing, because that's all I can do anyway…

My sources for this rumour are “people on the Internet”. Can one of us confirm or refute this?

Rumour: So far, only four scrolls have been scanned using the highest resolution, but – because they're stored in an unprotected room above ground – they're at risk if the Phlegraean Fields erupt. Some say something's brewing up with the Phlegraean Fields, what with the recent earthquakes in and around Naples. This is said to be a somewhat older picture of the scrolls' cabinet / storeroom:

Is this true or false, is there any substance to it? I think we'd all be quite heartbroken if they got volcano'ed a 2nd time, especially now that it's clear they can be read, and soon, and all it would take is to x-ray them all (and then simply copy the scan data all over the world).

Quote from Don

https://dianerehm.org/shows/2016-11-…lk-to-ourselves

It is important to distinguish fictive heterodialogues (recall my initial post in this thread) from hearing other selves in high dissociation; while both can be thought of as existing in different places on a spectrum (mere quantitative difference) in some particular regards, it shouldn't be glossed over that they're also qualitatively different in a number of ways. It is also important to distinguish the voices heard in delusions, as I've just done with a focus on schizophrenia.

What happens in this show is what still happens all too often: There are only the voices labelled #1 through #3 (see above[1]) – and then there's schizophrenia. What is entirely missing is a proper delineation of dissociative voices (#4 above); if they get mentioned at all, they either get erroneously conflated with the voices heard in schizophrenia, or with the voices heard in so-called “normal”[2] inner dialogue. In my opinion, this oversight is is why the topic keeps getting circled without being grasped. Florid schizophrenia is hard to overlook, “normality” is hard to overlook – at the same time, trauma makes people uncomfortable to begin with, trying to research it will ring all kinds of ethical alarm bells, and of course, there is very little money for that type of work.[3]

[1] I made those numbers up to have an easier time referencing things; their order is arbitrary.

[2] There's nothing inherently abnormal about dissociative voices, they're just uncommon now, because we live in exceptionally peaceful, safe and predictable environments.

[3] It's not very attractive to donors, it doesn't make for as good a PR stunt as the children's cancer ward (which doesn't imply I'd want to take any of their care away; I'd give more to both ).

The answer to that isn't obvious and I'd claim nobody fully knows. Here's a start:

• Around five generations after once crossing-in a wild animal into a pet breed, the offspring will usually be considered a “pet” again. After 20 generations (of selecting only tamest specimen to continue breeding) around a third of foxes are domesticated to a dog-like level, after 30 generations 3 of 4 will be dog-like. Women in Athens married at the age of around 14, women in Sparta around the age of 20. Even when we're generous and award 30 years per generation, that still makes 66 generations in the past 2000 years, or more than twice the generations needed to turn wild foxes into pet-like, dog-like creatures. To sum up: Both the genetic and epigenetic influence on the psyche could be quite considerable over such a long time. (Yes, "quite considerable" is vague, but it's hard to put a number on it: How about “100 Standard Considerability Units”? Is that a lot? Well, it is certainly considerable! ).
• The condition of the mother, the gestational environment plays a role in later development.
• Microbiome and nutrition play a major role, both short and long term.
• Apart from nature (genetics, …), experiences are also culturally inherited (nurture).
• Early experiences (especially up to the first beginnings of puberty) play an especially big role.
• Language itself is an important factor (think of Newspeak, the influence of propaganda, the influence of framing, how different cultures view things differently).

With so many variables at play, what are the chances that you would, in fact, still “have a strong tendency to have a similar way of thinking”? What's more, the ancient times were comparatively violent, and transgenerational trauma transmission is strong: “Researchers typically find an intergenerational transmission rate [of Intimate Partner Violence and Child Maltreatment] of 30%”, says the APSAC Handbook On Child Maltreatment (page 172 of the 2011 version; a bit outdated, but not much will have changed with that number, because this topic has been actively researched since at least the early 1980s). Even nightmares of traumatic events are passed on somehow.[1]

At any one time, around 0,3% of the general population is affected by schizophrenia. This makes it one of the rarer mental disorders, which isn't very surprising, because it is very detrimental to survival, not just of that one individual, but of the entire hunter-gatherer tribe.[2] Schizophrenic delusions are characterised by hyper-meaning, by seeing meanings in meaningless things, by seeing associations between unrelated things: “Why did you take two sugars – Julia only takes one sugar with her tea! Who are you and what have you done to my friend?!” It is also characterised by impaired reality-testing (lack of asking oneself: “Is what I just thought even possible physically, logically and realistically?”). You can imagine it quite like living in a nightmare, in which you are paranoid and your mind connects unrelated things to scare you. However, the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't erratic, delusional and irrational. Neither were they floridly schizophrenic, nor did they suffer the negative symptoms of schizophrenia: a deep emptiness, in which “everything is missing” (lack of will, speech, emotion, desires, …).

Another feature commonly thought of in the context of schizophrenia is “hearing voices”: some (but not all) schizophrenics hear voices, which – and this is important – they localise as coming from the outside world[3] and which transport irrational, delusional contents/commands. These are called Schneiderian first-rank symptoms. The ancient texts tell us about voices, but those voices aren't irrational or delusional. Those voices do influence the person hearing them, but they don't effectively remote-control that person, even injecting new thoughts or erasing their own thoughts (which is quite possible in acute schizophrenia). The ancient texts also hint sometimes that those voices appear as a 4th category of their own: 1. voices of other humans, 2. the voice of one's own thoughts, 3. voices imagined in the mind's ear (auralisation; like pictures imagined in the mind's eye (visualisation)), and 4. voices which are not of other humans, not one's own thoughts, and not one's own imagined sounds, but which ”appear in the mind somehow”. Such voices are consistent with and common in highly dissociative people.

Above 1% of the current general population is persistently(!) highly dissociative (three to four times more than are schizophrenic), and this number increases rapidly with traumatic experiences – to rephrase: it increases rapidly the more unpredictable and stressful the environment is. Even temporarily living in such an environment before the age of approximately eight can (but doesn't have to) lead to being persistently highly dissociative throughout adulthood.

I cannot quite imagine life in Ancient Greece – if I was born then, it would all be normal to me, so would I still consider certain things unsettling? Probably not? But perhaps more importantly: Why would I not consider those things unsettling anymore? What psychological measures would my mind take to remain so unfazed? Who is to say I might not, in fact, be dissociative and consequently “hear the muses”? (Similarly, what most people today experience as “being torn between two choices/positions/points of view” can present itself as quite literally an “inner argument” in dissociation.)

Let's contrast modern Western life with that in ancient times: Plutarch claims that Spartans would have cherry-picked babies, leaving those who appear weak to die. Even if that's exaggerated, it does set a certain stage. Spartans were explicitly raised to negate their personal boundaries entirely: their selves and their lives were nothing, Sparta was everything. Boys had to attend the agoge, a kind of primary and secondary school and military boot camp rolled into one. Bullying was encouraged, and the ritual whipping (the diamastigosis at the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia) of teenage boys was a very bloody affair. Being a woman, I wouldn't have been sent to the agoge. However, what we today consider rape is common in the existing texts, even the “heroes” do it, the treatment of slaves was frequently transgressive, wars were common and routinely resulted in raping of women and children – and with all this going on, what it does to the victims is practically never mentioned at all. This either shows the men (our kind writers) did not consider it worth mentioning or it means the women did not consider it that bad – in either case, that points to a very different way of thinking, a different way of functioning even, and is hardly compatible with the idea that they were “just like we are today.” To me, these and many other things – gladiator fights, human sacrifices, the brutal punishments exerted “for justice” – offer a glimpse towards a world which, for all its science, art and beauty, also contained an unimaginable amount of violence. Did children, in that world, routinely grow up with secure attachments, with warmth, being cared for mindfully, having their personal boundaries respected?[4] Was that world consistently comprehensible (predictable), manageable (non-overwhelming) and meaningful (pleasurable) to the children growing up in it? Somehow, I cannot quite imagine that.

Seeing one's brother or best friend ritually flogged to death at an altar laden with cheese (diamastigosis), while many visitors are present watching the spectacle – that in itself could hardly pass modern teenagers by without leaving a mark. So why should their minds still function “qualitatively the same”?

[1] This appears to be a quite readable introduction to that topic: https://doctorsonly.co.il/wp-content/upl…ransmission.pdf

[2] This might be why humans instinctively try to exclude the overly eccentric (“If she does that, who knows what else she might do, she might accidentally call the sabre-tooth tigers to our cave!”).

[3] Stereo recordings are typically mastered such that, when listening to two speakers around three metres away and turned by about 30 degrees, a nice stage can be imagined. (A song with a particularly wide stereo field is the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but I digress.) When listening with headphones the stage is no longer imagine in front of oneself, and instead is located “behind the eyes” and the music plays “inside your head”, because the binaural crossfeed is missing: the brain requires certain naturally occurring acoustic effects, which alter the sound heard by both ears, to compute the location of the sound source. When both ears hear exactly the same (something which can only be achieved with modern day headphones), an unnatural edge case occurs, and the brain's sonar module locates those sounds “inside the head”. This topic is somewhat analogous to stereoscopic vision (3D vision) requiring consistent-but-different input from both eyes (minor change in viewing angle): next time you play catch or frisbee, close one eye and see how well you do.

[4] Someone might object that this is asking too much, that to raise children like this sets the bar too highly; however, I'd argue that even in a hunter-gatherer situation children were with their parents or immediate family almost all of the time, knew their place (in the group hierarchy), had secure attachments, were not subject to any grotesque and violent cultural practises, and as such I see no obvious reason why their personal boundaries would have been arbitrarily, needlessly ignored; so with some luck, the only unpredictable elements in their life were the weather and predatory animals – but not other humans. (Fossils show hunter-gatherers attacked each other, but that probably wasn't the norm, and I be surprised to learn their culture included arbitrary and pointless violence inside a tribe – they couldn't afford such waste.) To be more direct: Why would a hunter-gatherer have beaten their children? Why would they have neglected them? Even chimpanzees can literally rip an arm out of another species of ape they just killed in one moment, and peacefully cuddle and delouse their offspring the next moment. Compare that with the many artificial celebrations of violence in the ancient Greco-Roman world – whose childhood would be less overwhelming and less unpredictable? I don't know, but I can easily imagine that growing up 2000 years ago was no piece of cake, in which case those minds would have naturally developed their full psychological defensive capabilities, they would have been well-versed in dissociation, which is a natural, adaptive and powerful human capability lost in most modern humans – quite like vision remains lost if raised in darkness until a certain age (critical period).

Basically, that research agrees with Cassius' observation

Quote from Cassius in Episode 059 starting 30:12 (cleaned transcription)

There's not a lot of discussion of consciousness, or words that today we tend to use as describing the ego or whatever the word you want to use to describe the ‘you’, the ultimate ‘you’ […]

In light of so much philosophising, the only way I can think of for that to not be surprising is to think of minds with limited introspection, minds which cannot as easily refer to their self as they can refer to themselves…

Quote from Lucretius in Book Four, Browne 1743 edition, section leading up to Latin Line 906

And now attend, and you shall know how it is that we are able to walk when we will, that we have a power to move our limbs as we please, and what it is that thrusts the body forward with all its weight. I say then, that the images of motion first affect and strike the mind, as we observed before. This makes the Will, for we never attempt to do any thing before the mind knows what it is we desire to do, and the image of that thing which occurs to the mind must be present before it. And thus the mind, having moved itself so as to resolve to go forward, strikes immediately upon the soul, which is diffused through the whole body, and this is easily done, because they are both closely joined together. The soul then strikes the body, and so the whole bulk by degrees is thrust forward and put into motion. Besides, the body by this means is rarefied, and the air, which is ever disposed to move, enters the open passages, and pierces through the pores in great abundance, and so is dispersed through every minute part of the body. By these two therefore (by the soul laboring within, and by the air entering from without) the body is moved, as a ship is by oars and wind. Nor is this at all strange, that particles so very small should turn about the bulk of our bodies, and move so great a weight; for the driving wind, formed of so fine and subtle seeds, thrust forward a large ship with mighty force, and one hand can govern it under full sail, by turning one little helm which way it pleases; and an engine with small labor is able, by pulleys and wheels, to move many bodies of a great weight.

In response to this, Elayne said:

Quote from Elayne in Episode 059, starting 12:32 (cleaned transcription, eg no particles and markers (no “ahem”, …)):

Because Lucretius had to give an explanation for imagination – dreams, “How do we come with that stuff that's not actually in front of us?” – and he said that it was because there were images that we weren't seeing with our eyes, but were penetrating through the skin, and we were perceiving them with our mind, rather than the brain itself being creative. So it does make sense that, if you thought that, you would not think that you could imagine a motivation to move: How would you know how you wanted to move, in his model, if you weren't presented with an image beforehand, because you're not… — last week we talked about the memory being more of like a pattern, storing not an actual image. He doesn't have that in his model at all, so this has got to come from outside! And so then we're surrounded by all these images of moving, that I guess the mind would decide to focus on something moving, and that would give it an understanding of what to do, and then it would decide to move! – Really, really fascinating idea. Not how it works, but cool.

What Lucretius describes casually as a mental phenomenon seems unusual to Elayne, and indeed would to most present-day people. However, I am not aware of any of Lucretius' contemporaries taking offense at the phenomenon he describes – only the explanation of it was disputed.

The explanation of floating images – however wrong from today's perspective – should be credited for, at the time, being less-wrong than supernatural alternatives. Within the Epicurean physics, the explanation seems logical, natural, and standing-to-reason. Let's compare it with the “columns of air“ which pass through the eyeball and allows us to tell how far away things are – how weird is that from our perspective?! Yet, it didn't bring about much controversy, because it fits well within the Epicurean physics. In the same way, this explanation fits. It shouldn't raise any eyebrow. It isn't the explanation that causes the feeling that “something is going on in this passage”, it is the mental phenomenon that causes this.

In the quotes above, I have highlighted the inner mental processes, and left out the underlying explanation. If you read only the highlighted text in both statements, you end up reading a perfect description of one aspect – that of physical movement – in what we today would call dissociative humans. There is not a thing that's odd or wrong about it, except, of course, Lucretius' explanation for it – and the fact that most present-day humans do not have this experience anymore.

I'm not in the mood to manually, bit by bit dissect the entire extant writings from Homer's pre-pre-Socratic society to the post-Roman not-yet-dark-ages society in this manner. However, I have yet to come across a single passage which makes me question my assertion, what I said here is entirely in line with the numeric, empirical evidence offered by the team Mariano Sigman (the guy from the TED talk) published with,[1] and I am not currently aware of any substantiated contradictions…

_{^{(Both images licensed under CC BY 3.0 by Diuk CG, Slezak DF, Raskovsky I, Sigman M and Cecchi GA (2012) in A quantitative philology of introspection. Published in Front. Integr. Neurosci. 6:80. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00080).}}

So I concur with Elayne, when she says:

Quote from Episode 059, starting 24:55, cleaned transcription

Cassius: “What is a thought then?”

Elayne: “[Lucretius] is separating it in a way that is real hard for us to imagine, but I guess it would be… […] He apparently thought about how the brain works very, very differently from either how we experience it or how we are able to understand it currently. It's really, really different. And I don't think we should gloss over the rather extreme differences in that model, just to try to squeeze him into what we have now. That is a real difference.”

and I'd stress it is important to not get distracted by Lucretius' outdated explanations and instead appreciate the qualitative difference of the inner experiences he is describing from the experiences common to most people today, and to appreciate how much he takes for granted that his audience shares his experiences qualitatively.

[1] Original Research: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2012.00080

Quote from Don

By defining "consciousness" narrowly or broadly, two speakers using the same word can talk right past each other.

I agree. Choice of words and their respective definition matters a lot here.

Quote from Don

It also strikes me as similar to the discredited idea of the "triune brain" (reptile/mammal/human) that Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett (among others) has done such a good job debunking.

Please note I'm not trying to argue from the bottom up (neurons → mental phenomena → behaviour) but I am arguing top down (behaviour → mental phenomena) and I leave the neurons out of the picture entirely; they're still really a black box to us today. Some neuroscientists and science journalists love to make it seem as though we have it all figured out, but in reality we barely understand the first things.

As such, when I say things like “autopilot”, I do not envision a literal cluster of neurons acting on its own, bypassing all other processing to directly control the physical limbs. Rather, I am referring to a mental phenomenon, a state of mind.

I have extensive, direct personal experience with a wide range of mentally ill (ill, as in: inherently suffering or inherently causing suffering in others) and mentally divergent (divergent, as in: straying far from the average without suffering inherently caused by it) people, diagnosed with all sorts of things: addiction, depression, acute schizophrenia, severe personality disorders, mental symptoms of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, you name it. With that understanding, please do note my distillate wasn't "Ancient Greeks were Schizophrenics"; instead, what I said was:

Quote from Julia

In some ways, ancient minds worked considerably different from ours.

Now, am I trying to cop-out? Not really: Regarding Jaynes (whom I didn't bring up), if the very ancient minds (Homer, not Epicurus) were schizophrenics, there would have been chaos, and it doesn't make sense in several other ways. However, this doesn't negate the underlying idea that they were somehow qualitatively different from us. If I were forced to put a single word to it, I'd say very ancient minds were dissociative (which implies being much-less introspective, and is a sort of “geocentric vs solarcentric” distinction, when before the assumption was a flat earth). However, dissociation is quite hard to grasp for laypeople, requires rather verbose explanations (because it is so foreign from common everyday experience); by using only a single word, it is necessarily a simplification, and as such in turn easily gives rise to half-true analogies and half-true associations to fill the gaps. That is why I prefer the qualitative description of “their minds worked quite differently from ours” (unless I'm talking to someone well-versed in psychology lingo to begin with and who knows how I define my terms) and try to illustrate it by saying “they might have actually heard ‘muses’ speak to them” – but weren't able to conceive of them as originating from their own brains (that would be akin to introspection), nor did they consider them to be as real as the ground they stand on (that would be akin to schizophrenia), instead they speak of “divine afflatus” or other things along the lines of new-age “channelling” in a similarly casual way as they speak of dreams – that is in itself noteworthy. Furthermore, a very similar oddity occurs in dissociative humans, who lack cultural input to develop better concepts (or have been fed false ones). With nature deities (thunder gods, …) being an accepted part of everyday life, it would be much less outlandish for contemporaries of Homer to think of ‘muses’ speaking to them, than to think of the voice they hear as originating from ‘another self residing besides them inside the same brain’, an accurate description some, even today, erroneously consider outlandish. During Epicurus' time, this would have been in the process of changing for quite a while, with presumably low-ranking slaves lacking behind and the relatively rich and wealthy (such as, for the most part, our philosophers) leading in the development.

(For those who this is intriguing to: In response to recent changes in modern day society, mostly the ubiquitous internet access, a weird wave of collective mental shifts is currently happening in the Empty Spaces (no, not the Pink Floyd song ), leaving people increasingly disengendered, disembodied, and ultimately dehumanised; oddly enough, it doesn't appear to inherently cause any suffering. Personally, I've put this phenomenon on my watch list for the coming decades.)

I'm not entirely sure this offers more answers as it raises questions, but having typed all this makes me want to hit [Reply] so here we go

You see, the Epicureans were “very wrong about their physics and it has since been refuted” – but the underlying idea of “atoms and void” still holds.[1] Similarly, the geocentric model was wrong, but at least it was a step in the right direction: the Earth isn't flat and the stars aren't hanging from a giant dome above it. Science, as you know, is the social process of finding less-wrong answers

With that in mind: As to the underlying idea, I am not aware of any such evidence to the contrary; in my humble opinion, it can be argued that a mind with introspection can hardly exist for long, if at all, without also holding the concept of introspection inside itself. Further, it is very unlikely that a vast number of people are capable of introspection, do have the mental concept of introspection, but chose to never talk about it – it is absurd to assume they collectively conspired against writing it down, and as such it is reasonable to assume they didn't say it, either. If they didn't say it, why else would that have been other than that the concept was absent from their minds, which in turn implies they didn't have that capability to anywhere near the extend that we commonly take for granted today.

What's more, humans can function quite well without introspection, even in today's society. Only once cognition or even learning itself are impaired does the overall functioning see a rapid decline. And what is probably most surprising to many people nowadays, is that reduced introspection has very serious advantages in a harsh environment.[2]

To put it differently: By offering evidence that the sun must be at the centre of the solar system, one cannot refute the underlying idea of the geocentric model: “Planets are balls circling each other.”

[1] To be read benevolently; which is to say: I know even the Bohr model was more refined than that, there's the particle-wave dualism, and all that doesn't even get us started on the quantum physics. None of this genuinely affects the point I'm trying to make, which is to say: At the time, “atoms and void” was less-wrong than anything else, and as such it was the right way forward.

[2] Conjecture on my part: This is why the Stoics tried to emulate some aspects of a non-introspective mind inside of an introspective mind.

Quote from Cassius

the images theory was a more general outgrowth of atomism, meant to explain the way the senses work, rather than focused on excusing hallucinations

There are several types of “images”: There is what the physical eyes can see. There is what the mind's eye can see upon making the conscious choice to do so (what we now call imagination). There is what the mind's eye can see without making the conscious choice to do so (what we now call intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, etc). And finally there are dreams. Because Ancient Greeks might have involuntarily seen pictures seen in their mind's eye, which they knew are not real (pseudo-hallucinations), there was a requirement to explain where those came from: they didn't come from the mind (because they were involuntary), they didn't come from reality. So they must have been "floating around" because their "particles are very fine and smooth" and happened to get themselves attached to the mind's eye by chance.

Thank you TauPhi

I know the Bicameral Mind; it has some truth to it, and gets quite close to reality in many regards, but some aspects are left out or are somewhat wrong (which is to say: just like almost every publication, the Bicameral Mind shouldn't be seen as an absolute, but merely as one step closer towards how things really are. One of the few pieces of writing which tend to describe absolute truths is my Things I Forgot While Shopping list ). If you want to extend your reading surrounding such topics, I'd recommend the Dialogic Self as well as reading a bit about dissociative minds, such as seen in (Partial) Dissociative Identity (which is very different from, and in fact could be seen as a polar opposite of schizophrenia). One thing I especially reject is the characterisation as bicameral minds being non-consciousness; rather, they should be characterised as being largely, but not fully non-introspective.

This episode discusses how “images” enter the mind; it does a good job at to deciphering what our dear poet meant, however it falls a bit short in taking into account something I now consider a fact (until sufficient proof convinces me I'm wrong, in which case I shall happily change my mind):

In some ways, ancient minds worked considerably different from ours.

On one hand, there's computer-assisted archeology to back this up; here's a pop-sci TED talk which does a very good job at explaining it. Please do watch it to understand this post. On the other hand, there's what we can extrapolate from people who grew up among animals (“feral children”): they will not only behave like the animals they grew up with (in terms of locomotion, facial and vocal expression, food, social behaviours, …), but will also (as far as can be told) think how the animals think to a large degree, and in either case will be unable to “become normal” after a certain age (unable to acquire speech, to use tools, …). Then there's what we can extrapolate from people who grew up in various shades of isolation (criminal neglect, human trafficking, …): During the respective critical period many behaviours can be instilled into them, making them extremely complacent, highly dissociative, or otherwise “useful” to their offenders. And finally, there is what we can extrapolate from solitary confinement (isolation of adults): Otherwise healthy humans will start to develop odd idiosyncratic behaviours, such as naming objects and speaking to them as if they were human, speaking out loud to imaginary friends or memories of friends (in psychology, this is called a fictive heterodialogue); if they have a TV, they might consider recurring TV actors / show hosts to be their friends; with increasing sensory isolation, pseudo-hallucinations (hallucinations which are recognised as being unreal) will begin to appear.

I can assert the truth in Martin Buber's statement that “The human self forms in encountering another self“, as I know even the extension to be true: Without another self, one's self dissolves. We need another self to define our boundaries, and we need interactions, more specifically, we need conscious reactions (mechanical/mindless reactions won't do) to define our content (what the self is filled with; our values and ultimately our identity; the who-I-am as opposed to the where-I-begin/end). In such a situation, drawing on fictive heterodialogues helps slow this dissolution immensely. The more progressed it is, the more malleable we become – no matter whether out of our own will, out of someone else's will, or out of our subconscious drive to adapt and survive. The older we are, the lesser these effects will be, but I'm quite certain they never fully vanish. Without the non-stop reality testing provided through social interaction (next time you speak to a friend, casually sprinkle in a most outlandish statement to see it in action), with increasing time/intensity, our thoughts can go off in all kinds of directions. We know this effect to be true not just for individuals, but for relatively isolated groups of people, too, as is illustrated in the Salem Witch Trials, the people of the Easter Island who (possibly) caused their own extinction by logging trees for cultish purposes, or the North Sentinelese, who collectively fear foreign humans very, very much; what they all have in common, is that the “hive mind” of those groups of people is isolated and cannot readily interact with outside “hive minds” to do a reality test, leaving the entire group prone to diverge further and further what is real – even to their own peril. We can find similar reasons (isolation, …) for other irrational convictions (such as cargo cults), in groupthink phenomena, and in modern-day algorithmic filter bubbles.[1]

Now, to circle back: All of this shows the immense plasticity of the human mind and the overwriting influence of culture on it, and while Ancient Greeks did not live in utter isolation, their groups (eg minor islands) were sometimes much more isolated compared to the ubiquitous global communication of today. Together with the statistical computer-linguistic proof (→ TED talk referenced above) it is therefore fair to think of Lucretius' explanation of “images” like that: Epicurus' model tried to explain the “images” without having as introspective a mind as we have (but he already had much more introspection than Homer); the “images” would therefore have felt more like pseudo-hallucinations to him, which explains why they were of such importance to begin with, and why they required such careful, detailed explanation: to clarify that they're not messages sent to us from Olympian Gods, or muses. At the same time, they couldn't have come from “his own mind", because they felt distinctly foreign (like nightmarish fever dreams do), possibly even ego-dystonic at times, and he didn't necessarily conjure them up consciously, rather they might have happened to him in a subconscious manner.

Quick thought 1: This might also be why the geometricians were so happy to adopt the idea of a plane of ideal forms – they might have experienced such a plane, when pseudo-hallucinating geometric shapes after having spent all week drawing figures in the sand…

Quick thought 2: The introspective mind being a new development then might be why, personally, I feel as though their writings are somehow clearer, fresher, less cluttered – without two millennia of introspective cultural baggage, were their minds less tainted from the many layers of paint that are glossed over our selves, having grown up in modern society?

[1] Footnote: The lack of reality testing in the relatively isolated filter bubbles are the explosives at the core of the bombs that are so-called “social networks”; dangerous, but not by itself. The fuse to light it up is to be found in the imperative to generate an income, hence grow the user-base and absorb as much user-attention as possible (to sell ads) – this is achieved by designing apps such that they bypass the evolutionarily new, thinking parts of our brains, and instead speak more directly to our evolutionarily older, more primitive, instinct-driven, emotion-based brains.[2] It is these "back brains" which do irrational things such as scroll through Facebook at 3am on a week day or get hooked on five hours of video footage from the deep oceans. The two characteristics are biologically related: by designing an app which gets people hooked, they have to design an app which bypasses the rational, thinking brain, and by bypassing that, the users stop reality-testing what they just saw. Without reality testing what they saw, they are easily drawn into the parallel world of a filter bubble, which is algorithmically isolated, and thus self-sustaining. Ultimately, this leads to a fragmentation of society along the lines of these filter bubbles, hence to the inability if the society's “hive mind” to form a consensus (the “hive mind” is fragmented), which in turn can more easily lead to civil unrest (the same effect – trying to reach a society-wide consensus without all social groups having a say in it – is what brought about the French revolution).

[2] Footnote to Footnote: We all know this "back brain" effect: When our neighbour rings our bell in the middle of the night yelling "Fire!", we'll get out immediately – our "back brain" acted instinctively to save our life. Only once we're out on the street does our "front brain" realise: "I cannot see any fire. There's no smoke. No smoke alarms went off, either. My neighbours eyes look suspiciously red and glassy. He's known to be a junkie. This was a false alarm, and, darn it, I forget my keys!" We also know it as an “auto pilot“ effect, which can be specially intense when we're too tired to engage in conscious thought or when we're in a particularly stressful event (such as immediately after an accident).