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‘So; what next?’
A lot of people have very irritating habits. I wonder how many have a very irritating habit which only irritates themselves.
I have. It's a habit that suggests I'm used to being involved in far more ongoing planned activity than I usually in fact am. What happens is: when I'm alone, and not immediately doing anything, and find myself with a few moments in which my brain isn't occupied (this doesn't necessarily mean I'm sitting on the sofa – I could be walking from place to place or other autopilot-driven sorts of activities), I'll sit back and relax. About five seconds later, apparently triggered by the act of sitting back and relaxing, a very strong reflex will cause me to metaphorically sit up and say to myself ‘So; what next?’; and then I'll begin to mentally take stock of my situation, review any ongoing plans I have in the middle of execution, and make a mental note of what I need to remember to do about them next.
This would probably be an extremely useful habit if I had a situation to speak of, if I remotely often had a complex master plan for my life, and if there was anything I needed to remember to do next. Sadly, this is not the case; my life is lived largely in a routine, and when I do have plans they're usually the sort that can be fulfilled through the mechanism of that routine. So what actually happens is I think to myself ‘So, what next?’, and then realise there is no ongoing planning activity I actually need to do right now. So I sigh with pleasure and settle back to actually relax. And then, five seconds later, because I've just relaxed, my brain goes round the same loop again. ‘So, what next?’ At which point I start to get annoyed, because whatever part of me triggers this mental stocktaking isn't getting the message that it's been done.
It wouldn't be so bad if I could work out how I acquired this habit. If I'd spent years of my life in incredibly complex situations and constantly being at risk of forgetting something vital, it would be an obviously reasonable habit to have picked up; but looking back over my life, I can't think of anything that would really fit that description.
Perhaps it's a sort of guilt reaction to the idea of relaxing and enjoying myself at all – perhaps, whenever I relax, some part of my brain wants to know whether there's something more important I ought to be doing instead. I wish I knew.
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It does seem to be remarkably difficult to train oneself out of the 'what have I missed?' reflex - what you say reminds me of my 'Have I turned the cooker off?' problem..
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That said, if I were busier then I suppose this particular irritation wouldn't bother me; but I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as liking it...
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Then again, normally when I sit down to relax there *is* a huge list of things I've forgotten that need urgently dealing with...
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Doesn't this rather suggest that this "habit" is born of your (subconscious?) wish that you did have some kind of master plan, that you did have something to be working towards?
Not that I have any advice on how to acquire a Master Plan, or how to achieve it once you have it... <sigh>
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I'm usually reluctant to impute "subconscious wishes" to myself or to anyone else - it always makes me feel like a cliché Freudian, forever telling people their subconscious wants to do horrifying things and making them feel like perverts :-) I'm more inclined to see the subconscious - certainly my subconscious - as an engine whose main function is to acquire and pursue habits and instincts, rather than having desires.
But then, just because I don't like Freud's tone of voice doesn't necessarily mean he was 100% full of shit, and certainly doesn't mean you are :-) So you might be right. I wonder how I could find out...
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Wariness about imputing stuff to the "subconscious" is a healthy thing, I think; on the other hand, I do know that I often wish stuff without really acknowledging that wish to myself (let alone to other people), and it's only when I think "Why am I doing this?" that I realise what I really want to happen. (Think of it sort of like a more passive version of being in denial about things.) ... I could think of examples but they're all a bit too close to the bone right now & I'm trying not to discuss them too much in my own journal. :-/
I'm more inclined to see the subconscious - certainly my subconscious - as an engine whose main function is to acquire and pursue habits and instincts
Why do you think it acquires those habits? Do you think it's just a machine without any kind of reason, without any sort of connection to you-the-thinking-being-with-reason-and-desires?
But then, just because I don't like Freud's tone of voice doesn't necessarily mean he was 100% full of shit
I think in a way his groundbreakingness was more important than whether he was actually right about everything. The idea of a "subconscious" isn't solely Freudian though!
and certainly doesn't mean you are
Why thank you. :) Your faith in me is touching and probably misplaced!
I wonder how I could find out...
I don't think there's any way you can find out for certain. It's not as if you can stick a bit of litmus paper into your brain and have it change colour if you do have subconscious desires. :) I think the only thing you can really do is try to think about what you want from life, and whether you're being honest with yourself about stuff. And (possibly relevant in this case, but I don't know) whether you're trying to convince yourself that you're happy with what you have when perhaps you aren't...
On the other hand I feel like I don't want to encourage you into the sort of obsessive self-analysis that I've got myself into, because a lot of the time it just makes me miserable and frustrated and uncertain about everything. <sigh>
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I do think the subconscious has no reasoning ability of its own; it would disturb me greatly to think that there were two independent reasoning engines in my brain. But I don't think it's unconnected to me-the-thinking-being. My view of the subconscious is that it sort of feeds off my own reason. It's not an independent entity which sees the same things I do and forms its own separate analysis; it will sometimes respond directly to sensory impulses (looking round at a loud noise, for example, is something I'm often aware of having done before I even consciously hear the noise) but just as often it will wait for my conscious analysis of a situation and respond to high-level concepts present in that analysis. This multi-level input makes it ideally placed to implement a wide range of habits, instincts and reflexes, ranging from direct response to raw sensory data (jerk hand away from hot thing) through higher-level responses to the interpretation of sensory data (feel pleased when you see someone you love, or notice when someone says your name) to the almost entirely abstract and conceptual (reflexively feel suspicious of someone's motives when they suggest you do something that would be in their own interest).
With that model, I don't think the subconscious requires any motivation beyond recognising patterns, reinforcing them when they occur again, and becoming able to respond to them automatically. You've done some juggling, so you've experienced this at a physical level - you repeat an action a lot of times, and at some point you stop having to think about it consciously every time because your right brain / subconscious / reflex system has taken over dealing with the mechanics and left your conscious mind free to handle other things. Most of the subconsciously driven mental phenomena I experience can be entirely adequately explained by the same sort of thing at other levels - my subconscious has noticed me responding in a particular way to particular (sensory, interpretive or abstract) stimuli, and has taken over the management of that response so that my conscious mind doesn't have to make the effort every time.
This ties in directly to my previous self-analytic journal entry, where I talk about the highly developed programming intuition I (used to) have: in this, the "habits" being formed are responses to particular patterns of abstract programmingy sorts of concepts, but the principle is the same.
I'm sure there's some reading of intent involved as well - I'm more likely to make a habit of a particular reaction to a situation if I feel satisfied or happy about that reaction the first few times I make it. This is why a juggler develops the reflex to catch juggling balls rather than the (initially) much more common reaction to the same stimuli of flailing randomly and dropping them :-) But I don't usually feel as if the subconscious has its own intent; it feels much more like a mindless pattern-recognition engine responding to my intent.
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advice on how to acquire a Master Plan
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