I lost a post again (it seems to happen every time now). This time I typed the post, then selected it all, then right clicked. A split second after I right clicked and a split second before I clicked ‘paste’ I got the ‘sever not found’ screen. It doesn’t usually happen that quickly. Anyway. I’ll try again… (this time I’ll copy’n’paste before I click submit.
I was busy being bored at work (nothing on tv, as you’d expect on a night shift, and nothing on the internet, as you’d expect from a media allowing millions of people to share information) when I asked myself - Why can’t I switch off? Why can’t I switch into idle mode, staring at a wall or something, monitoring for sensory input such as a phone call or other work-related sound.
So, why do human’s brains have to be active,engaged,‘in-gear’ all the time? why can’t we ‘park’ somewhere, leave the engine running in case we need to drive?
That doesn’t cover the answer. (I know you were joking, but let’s be serious about it) because my question was basicaly -why can’t we switch off at will. we can’t sleep at will (at least most of us can’t) and sleep risks missing the aural clues (it also kinda risks me losing my job)
Well, if your brain wasn’t “engaged” then something would come along and eat you. In order to reamin alert, the brain must process all stimuli, important or not. This act of processing stimuli is the buzz we like to call consciousness. Turning it off would render you comatose.
Because we didn’t evolve that way.
Imagine if you will a caveman. He figures hes not doing much so he switches himself off. He is promptly eaten. So, our caveman friend is not able to breed and create children. Thus the ability dies with him. Instanly falling asleep is convienit but it doesn’t help with survival, so evolution wise its useless. Simple as that.
OK, so my brain is engaged in order to stop me being eaten. followup question - why does the desire not to be eaten translate into the desire to be doing something as opposed to not doing something.
Why are we not content to just sit and look out for things that might eat us? why is it more bearable to be doing something (almost anything) than it is to sit and do nothing?
If I were to sit and do nothing for too long I’d go insane! And even if I did sit and do nothing, my brain would be thinking about something, it can’t avoid thinking about something. Why MUST it think all the time?
Can’t we avoid being eaten without having to think. can’t we do the thinking only when the danger arrives (the time when thinking really is needed)
Are you asking for an evolutionary story about boredom? Sure it might sound a bit silly, and could be easily dismissed with a ‘so you don’t get eaten’ answer, but I think it is a good question. Maybe because I hate being bored. That said, I think what is being asked is why did we evolve the negative reaction we call boredom? Why can’t I just sit and stare at a blank wall waiting for time to pass? I could, of course, but if I do it is accompanied by a negative sensation. Staring at a wall doesn’t mean I am any less alert and ready for the saber-toothed tigers to come prowling by. It just means that my curiosity-zone gets hungry.
You can’t selectively process stimuli. You brain doesn’t know the difference between a phone ringing and a bear roaring until it has matched it up against everything you’ve ever heard (and remembered). This act of processing input is what triggers “thoughts.” As you sit in an empty room, the slightest input from your senses summons up associations in your mind, which lead infinitely on and on as your “train of thought.”
Even when you sleep, your brain processes everything you hear, smell, taste, see (not much when your eyes are closed), and feel. Most of the time, this input is not important enough for the brain to wake you up, but it still affects what you are thinking at the time, a.k.a. your dreams.
So just to be clear, your “thoughts” are just the side effects of your brain constantly comparing your sensory input to everything you’ve ever come in contact with. That is why you can’t stop thinking.
As to the propensity to be doing something rather than nothing, I’m inclined to say that it is cultural.
You can be sitting down with your eyes closed and still be “doing something,” i.e. making a decision or recalling a happy memory from childhood. There is an abstract cultural value in “accomplishing things,” and whether that thing is mental or physical does not matter. Therefore your propensity to do something over nothing is just a response to society’s request that we be productive with our time.
Well you have to remember that in caveman times, you had to do a lot of stuff just to survive (forage, drag women back to the cave, hunt, discover fire etc.), so you can just imagine that any caveman that decided he could just sit around and stare at his neighbour’s cave paintings would generally be rejected from the group, and possibly starve if he wasn’t.
ummm… if we simply, disengaged our brains, we would be unable to re-engage them. surely you have to be engaged to realise that your brain needs to be re-engaged. hehe. if there was an emergency, and you needed to re-engage, how would you be able to do it if you were disengaged. ok that entire post was jobberish, i know, i hope somebody understood it.
Buddhist can train themselves to completely clear their minds for multiple hours on end.
Of course this takes much practice, but it’s not that your brain must, but rather it does not know how not to.
Discipline.
When they do this, Buddhists are not thinking about nothing, they are thinking about one thing: something called a koan, a nonsensical question meant to aid in meditation. For example, a famous koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
This has been a very enlightening and entertaining post (I am not taking the credit. it is the replies to my OP that have been very good)
But no-one has mentioned a certain vital factor in all this - the sub-conscious.
With the subconscious wouldn’t be theoretically possible to be thinking about literally nothing [consciously] (or perhaps not thinking is more accurate) while relying on our sub-conscious to keep us out of danger, and to ‘re-engage’ us when we need it.
No, a normal, healthy brain cannot stop thinking. As I said before, your “thoughts” are simply the side-effects of your brain accessing your databank to compare stimuli to what it has encountered before. If you have no thoughts, then your brain is not processing stimuli, and you are comatose or dead.
I know it is a tantalizing proposition, but the division between the subconscious and the conscious is arbitrary and semantic. When things become automatic for us, we say they are “subconscious” activities, even though we can control them if we want (e.g., breathing). Even in a situation where we like to say our “conscious” is turned off–sleep–we are still processing stimuli and thinking. The only true subconscious activities are life functions: heartbeat, digestion, etc. If we strip ourselves down to these, we are not processing stimuli, and therefore we cannot voluntarily “wake up” from this state.
The fact that you are able to see, hear, smell, taste, feel and identify those stimuli means that everything is working together in Brain Land. You cannot process stimuli without having thoughts, period.
Second, there are many different types of meditation and ways to meditate. Koans are sometimes used, as are mantras (words or sounds of one or two syllables). However, the Zen meditation that I once practiced did indeed have as the intent to think about nothing, to have no thoughts running through your head, to have the mind empty. And I can attest that it is possible to attain, if only for short periods. It’s really not difficult. So you can, in fact, “disengage” your mind and it will nicely re-engage, all by itself.
I suppose if we could switch our brains off at will then solitary confinement for troublesome inmates wouldn’t be a punishment. You might ask one of them what they do 23 hours out of the day.
Wasn’t there a movie that addressed something along these lines? Altered States? A scientist puts himself in an isolation tank too long and reverts back to caveman status or something?
I suppose the OP is talking about going into a voluntary catatonic state. IIRC, catatonics still process the stimuli that goes on around them but for the most part are unable to interact with the outside world. I suppose if they could “wake up” any time they wanted to they would, so I guess that tack is out as well.
I saw a live hypnotist show one time and he was able to bring his guests in and out of concious states at will (these were all friends of mine and I knew nothing was set up beforehand). Perhaps the brain is capable of doing what you ask but it still needs an outside force to “wake” it up.
