Continuing with the "Spuriously Genuine" thought...
After my post entitled "Spuriously Genuine", i got some comments which said, what is the big deal? Let me tell you what the big deal is. The thing is that i am confused to no end when i think about genuineness of what i feel. If an extreme experience such as that described in that post was not genuine, what would be? If all the arguments and assumptions made in that post hold, it means that whenever we know that we are thinking/feeling something,it does not remain valid as genuine anymore. And then unless we know it, it is of no use to us. It is very much like the role of information content in an efficient market. As soon as it is known, it loses its value and everything is reflected in the prices. The issue is, we can carry on with semi-strong efficiency in markets. But can we do so with our life?
Also, i had a long discussion about the topic with one of my friends (yes, i do have a few of them) today. As a sidenote, it was a very pleasing and enriching experience after quite a long time and i thank him for that. Thanks dost! Coming back to the issue at hand, one point which came up during the discussion was that of consciousness about the thought/feeling and its effect on the requirement of validation. What we stumbled upon was a concept where i think every thought/feeling starts very consciously and then we need validation for that. It need not be true in trivial matters wherein the thought is that of waking up early the next morning or having a cup of tea instead of a regular cup of coffee. Here i am referring to the feelings which the society does not perceive to be "genuine by default" and looks at with a shadow of doubt. One such very easily observable feeling is that of love. Again, by society i do not mean entire human being on the planet but the relevant part of it for the given context and it includes oneself.
Now, as a social creature with a decent exposure to the expectations of society; we know that the probability of this feeling being appreciated and accepted as a genuine one increases if it is subconscious one which suddenly, naturally, and accidentally came to surface. This tends to make us camouflage this conscious feeling very conveniently with a mask of subconscious element. Again, as i had mentioned in that post, this is not really intentional; but automatic out of our desire of validating it and the convenience it offers.
The next question which came was where and when does this "manipulation" start? Say i am claiming the current thoughts of mine as manipulated, my friend went upto time t = 0.01 seconds after the birth of a child. At that time, the thoughts, reflexes and feelings of the child will be natural as s/he has not had exposure to the environment yet. Again, these reactions will be different for different babies, but each one being genuine in its own. Now, as time goes on, that child is being exposed to many things simultaneously: the facts as s/he observes, the environment s/he lives in, his/her interpretations of the facts being observed and corresponding reactions decided, and the feedback to those actions by the society. This forms a simple learning process which unfortunately also goes on increasing proportion of "manipulation" in the thinking and feeling. And as the time reaches t = 20 years or so, the proportion of genuineness reduces due to the multiplicative rule. And my claim is that by this time it starts tending towards zero. It might vary with person but for a large enough sample, the distribution can be expected to be a highly peaked one with a very low mean. i realize that what i have tried to put across is a very crude way of interpreting the whole thing, but this is the best i could think of right now. Would really welcome you all with different views/interpretations.
The bottom line is, if i cannot trust my thoughts/feelings to be genuine once they become known; and they are of no use until i know them; what is it that i can really trust as genuine? What is it that i can hang onto?
Also, i had a long discussion about the topic with one of my friends (yes, i do have a few of them) today. As a sidenote, it was a very pleasing and enriching experience after quite a long time and i thank him for that. Thanks dost! Coming back to the issue at hand, one point which came up during the discussion was that of consciousness about the thought/feeling and its effect on the requirement of validation. What we stumbled upon was a concept where i think every thought/feeling starts very consciously and then we need validation for that. It need not be true in trivial matters wherein the thought is that of waking up early the next morning or having a cup of tea instead of a regular cup of coffee. Here i am referring to the feelings which the society does not perceive to be "genuine by default" and looks at with a shadow of doubt. One such very easily observable feeling is that of love. Again, by society i do not mean entire human being on the planet but the relevant part of it for the given context and it includes oneself.
Now, as a social creature with a decent exposure to the expectations of society; we know that the probability of this feeling being appreciated and accepted as a genuine one increases if it is subconscious one which suddenly, naturally, and accidentally came to surface. This tends to make us camouflage this conscious feeling very conveniently with a mask of subconscious element. Again, as i had mentioned in that post, this is not really intentional; but automatic out of our desire of validating it and the convenience it offers.
The next question which came was where and when does this "manipulation" start? Say i am claiming the current thoughts of mine as manipulated, my friend went upto time t = 0.01 seconds after the birth of a child. At that time, the thoughts, reflexes and feelings of the child will be natural as s/he has not had exposure to the environment yet. Again, these reactions will be different for different babies, but each one being genuine in its own. Now, as time goes on, that child is being exposed to many things simultaneously: the facts as s/he observes, the environment s/he lives in, his/her interpretations of the facts being observed and corresponding reactions decided, and the feedback to those actions by the society. This forms a simple learning process which unfortunately also goes on increasing proportion of "manipulation" in the thinking and feeling. And as the time reaches t = 20 years or so, the proportion of genuineness reduces due to the multiplicative rule. And my claim is that by this time it starts tending towards zero. It might vary with person but for a large enough sample, the distribution can be expected to be a highly peaked one with a very low mean. i realize that what i have tried to put across is a very crude way of interpreting the whole thing, but this is the best i could think of right now. Would really welcome you all with different views/interpretations.
The bottom line is, if i cannot trust my thoughts/feelings to be genuine once they become known; and they are of no use until i know them; what is it that i can really trust as genuine? What is it that i can hang onto?
posted by vaibhaV at 11:02 PM
2 Comments:
hey vaibhav after a long time.
i just wanted to know (??) that, what flashed in your brain or mind, as you say, was it an conscious effort?
what i feel is that was not a conscious one,as you didn't try to bring that on, but it just came. now i don't have any explanation for 'just it came'(as i am confused still), but yeah, as you said, maybe our trainings make it hard for us to differentiate. (immune....)
U said, "our trainings make it hard for us to differentiate. (immune....)" this answers your question i guess...
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