This is the theory: The mind is a heirarchy of conscious threads. Each thread is a continuous stream of thought. Some threads are very sophisticated and have access to a lot of resources. Other threads are less, and the smallest type of thread is a simple, closed loop containing a memory. This type of thread is a meme.
At the top of this stack is, well, you. You are in charge, so we call this the Master Thread. Just below the surface, are many Commander Threads. These threads perform a lot of tasks that you don't need to be aware of. These threads do many different things, but we call them Commanders because they have the power to direct you, physically, when necessary.
Here are some examples of commander threads:
Focus - When you are focusing on something that you are doing, such as driving a car or shopping at a store, many of the commander threads team up to simply repeat a mantra, "I'm Driving I'm Driving I'm Driving" or "I'm Shopping I'm Shopping I'm Shopping". (Incidentally, this, like all forms of communication between threads is, surprisingly, carried out in the form of your native language, i.e. English).
Reading - While reading, depending on your level of focus, one or more threads will actually recite, in spoken language, what is being read by the eyes.
All Commander Threads speak the native language of your mind. This is how they hear each other, and how they get attention. The more threads there are reciting the same thing, the more it is brought to the attention of the rest.
At the center of the conscious mind there is an Aperture of Consciousness where the Master and Command threads reside. Within this Aperture, there is a Cacophony of spoken streams of thought coming from all of the threads. The loudest things heard in the Cacophony are the things which are brought to the attention of the Master and Commander threads.
For instance, they might all simultanously scream "Red Light!" or "Duck!" causing the entire being to instantly turn it's focus, and conditioned responses, to a single idea.
Another thing that the threads are constantly doing, is simply speaking what they perceive, stating the names of the objects, feelings, perceptions, even humorous connections as they experience them through the senses or through their relations with other threads.
Memes also do this, only to a much lesser extent, and it requires more memes to operate in concert to rise to the level of attention with the cacophony. An example of this is several threads crying out simultanously, "Where's my keys? Where's my keys? Where's my keys?" to which a great many memes might begin screaming the answer.
These threads are all talk, however. There is not much feeling going on with them. In fact, Threads don't have Feelings as you an I might immediately think of by definition.
Feelings come from lower down on the stack. Feelings come from an area downstairs, maybe just a level above physical sensation. In fact, many kinds of feelings are just that, a physical sensation that we very often mistake to be thought.
Here is where we get to the crux of Obj20. The part of your mind that is YOU, is the complex web of threads and memes. The rest of it is living meat, and animal that you inhabit. This animal has a separate mind based on instinct and feeling, and we've become so horribly entangled with this beast that we don't know what part of our mind is "I", and what part of our mind is "It". We do to very bad things with the "It" within which the "I" resides.
1. We include "It" in our decision making process: The things that enrage or excite the creature are incorporated into our mental processes as though they were valid thoughts, and they are not. They are like a dog barking next to you. Yes, the barking might have significance, but it can easily not, and either way it is a separate entity, driven only by instinct and feeling.
2. We torture "It" by making it responsible for our actions, by including it's perceptions in our decision making, and then by blaming it for the results. We consult it for a reaction by imagining horrible things, allowing it to perceive these things, and then having a reaction. Often times this process results in both unnecessary torture for the creature, and bad decisions as a result for the mind.
Yes, "It" will feel, be happy, hurt, hungry, and sad. You cannot stop that, but we make things so much worse by letting "It" run the show, and by torturing "It" by trying to solicit it's opinion about everything.
One way we do this, is by using a mechanism that we have called the Future Stage. On this stage, we act out future (and sometimes past) scenarios, confrontations, and other events that induce an emotional response from "It". We do this in order to try and make a decision, based on the emotional response It has. This both tortures the creature and results in faulty decisions, based on feeling and not rational thought.
Another way we torture It is by allowing a particularly effective specialist thread (or threads, I don't know) that we refer to as "The Conscience" to torture the creature, rather than simply tell the rest of the threads what it is thinking. I believe that this is because The Conscience has trouble getting attention by shouting into the cacophony, so he just stabs the creature over and over again with a pointed stick until you listen to him.
So, the first steps to creating a rational, pure Objectivist Soul is to train yourself to do a number of things. This is not easy to do, and it requires conditioning your mental responses, and spending time thinking about what is really going on inside your head.
1. Get off the Future Stage: Stop demonstrating hypothetical scenarios to the animal mind, looking for a reaction. You hurt it, and it gives you illogical responses. Don't use the Future Stage for tactical thinking. Instead, narrate your thoughts to yourself and your threads in English (or your native language). The animal cannot perceive this, and will not react with any emotion.
2. Ask your conscience for it's opinions, in English (or your native language). Pretend that you are your own personal Jiminy Cricket and tell yourself what your conscience wants to say about things.
(Playing the role of various commander threads, as though they were actual people in your head, helps you to shift your center of gravity to focus on the function of that thread. Of course, it's still just you who is speaking, but when you take off the hat of the Master Thread and put on the had of a specialist thread, you can actually assume the role of that thread for a time being. This technique can be most dramatically demonstrated by sleeping on demand, and dreaming while awake.. not daydreaming, but actual dream-dreaming. I'll write about that later)
3. Feed, Entertain, and Comfort the physical side of your body, and it will not bother you about anything.
4. Know that when the body feels, it is not you. It is a separate thing from you. Emotions are like the guages on the dashboard of a car, they are not the driver behind the wheel.
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