What's In Your Head?

[bloodyrosemccoy]

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I got to thinking about my brain recently.

 

Whenever I have a weird thought, an idea that seems a bit inexplicable and off-the-wall to me, I will say something like “My brain came up with this crazy idea.” As though it’s a separate entity from me, that my consciousness is somehow independent from the crazy ideas that I’ve been coming up with. And it’s not just me—I know others who have said that, as well.

 

Which can only mean one thing: my conscious mind has a suggestion box set up for my subconscious.

 

It’s an interesting perception of the mind: the conviction that much of it is going on without you being there. And it’s not just me; I’m sure you’ve seen some cartoon where people’s heads are inhabited by a whole mess of little people.* Definitely a metaphor there—this is a common thought, at least in our culture. I think it’d be interesting to see how other people, people outside of my own little world, would view that—if they even think about it.** I’m not even sure of my own perception, though—whether there’s somebody up front driving and a whole bunch of others in the back, or if they rotate, or which part or even how much of me is me.

 

Where do you identify yourself? Your consciousness? The conglomerate of it all? There’s a common definition of soul or mind as separate from the body, but your consciousness separate form the rest of your mind? Which part is you? And what’s the rest of it for?

 

It’s an interesting point to contemplate, but I think I have to dig up more from the back of my head before I form any ideas.

 

 

*The most memorable, for me, being a Disney one with Professor Von Drake. Von Drake has the despicable distinction of being to gender equality what Warner Brothers’ Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs was to racial equality. The two people in the woman’s head were Reason, who was a prissy frigid ugly spinster who was supposed to be driving, and Emotion, a red-headed pink-dressed selfish cavegirl. Their dilemma? What to eat for lunch. Reason favored something light, but then Emotion took over and made the woman bacon and eggs and then she got fat and nobody loved her anymore.

 

(If anyone is interested, the man’s little headpeople were the same, only the caveman had a club. Their dilemma was whether to approach a woman with a stupid pickup line. Finally Emotion clubbed reason over the head and took over, and so the guy got slapped. Which just goes to show that Emotion is for big fat stupid cavepeople and can ony lead to no good.)

 

**With their conscious bit, of course.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

The image I use to explain how I and my brain work (or don't work, as the case may be) is a house with a porch and a long front sidewalk (or driveway, depending) with the mailbox out by the front gate. I'm down by the mailbox. If there's something that requires thought, I'll run up to the house and hand it off to the brain for pondering and check back in later to see what the answer is. With personal relationships, most people are down in the front yard. A few are up on the porch. A very few have a key to the front door.

A downside of this is that sometimes the brain makes decisions before I even know it's been thinking about them, like in the case of my ex. I went to hand the thought off to the brain, and there he was in the living room already, with his own key. (The problem now is getting him OUT of the living room, and that's not going well, or quickly. Even though he's the one that did the leaving.)

Then there's the dreaded "Are there any questions?" question after a lecture/interview/presentation/whatever. Well, I *might* have questions, eventually, but not right now since the brain hasn't had a chance to process things yet.

[crazykawaii.livejournal.com]

My brain is run basically like the British parliament - each opinion or aspect of myself has it's own incarnation and voice, and argues and makes fun of and insults all of the other opinions in my brain.

So if, say, I'm trying to decide whether or not to skip class (like I'm doing right now), there's one voice criticizing me for wanting to skip class, because I should be responsible and go; another voice pointing out that we hate going to that class anyways; another voice waxing poetic on all the things we could get done in that two and a half hours if we weren't sitting in class; another voice wondering if maybe we couldn't get those things done by skipping something else, instead? And they discuss and guilt-trip and rationalize, and I generally go with whatever the consensus is.

Of course, sometimes there's no consensus, and then I have to flail and go ask a real person for help.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I visualize a kind of finite malleable living space inside my head, in which conscious-I and the various subsets of myself (characters and the like) reside. There's mechanisms by which I can pass messages down to the subconscious and get messages back, but for the most part, I'm keeping myself busy and pointing out certain bits of input while the subconscious mass somewhere far underfoot mutters and calculates and makes decisions. Sometimes it takes the input and does it itself and kicks the resultant decisions up to the consciousness out of nowhere. Sometimes it lets me manipulate the input a bit first.

There are a few ways in which I can access the subconscious more directly, such as making art. If I do it right, I can put the conscious, thinking self aside for a while and just draw. This is not common, but it's nice when it happens. I don't have a visual metaphor for it.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Actually, stating that conscious-I resides in the same space as the subsets is not quiiiiite right. Conscious-I is quite capable of interacting with the subsets, but is also capable of watching from an outside omniscient viewpoint without being percieved in return, and is also driving the body (with assistance from the autopilot functions).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I think of my "self" as a conglomerate of different characters with very different priorities who sometimes agree and often disagree, speaking out of turn and shoving each other aside to be at the controls.

You've already read about four or five of them.


I remember having been offended by a Disney cartoon with a different premise: in a Duck Tales episode I watched when I was a kid, the idiot cave boy got hit in the head and got all smart for a while, then when the three other kids got attacked by some monster in a cave, the cave boy was hiding with them whereas he'd have usually been fighting it. So he got hit on the head again, got stupid again and beat up the monster. As the nerd kid the other kids made fun of, I wasn't impressed with intelligence being equated with cowardice or stupidity with bravery. It strikes me as a notion that's affected American politics way more than it should have. IGNORANCE BRINGS STRENGTH. -.-

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I love how one's personality comes out in every character in a story, and in such different ways for each one.

I remember that episode! (What the hell was Cave Boy's name? I remember his pet triceratops was named Tootsie ... was his name Bubba? Bugger. That's gonna bug me for weeks now.) That annoys me, too, because I've seen it elsewhere as well. I always wished for one of the big tough guys to turn out to be intellectual and nonviolent, so I wrote a few of those myself. (And that's probably why I suddenly became a die-hard X-Men fan when I discovered they had one. ;) ) Oh, Disney. It's a love-hate relationship.