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

[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).