Social Aspects: Back to the Depths III

In Buddhism, the "someone" as well as the "taking away" (see last post) has something to do with seeing into the nature of things as they are (rather than as how I might want to frame them). While the metaphors may differ culture to culture, some of the common positive outcomes are similar from brain to brain and from person to person. When we fulfill drives (like hunger), we are content in relationship to that drive (feeling full enough). But there is also the possibility of rising above, beyond, or through drives. That is generally what I talk about in terms of actualization from Clarity through Abiding. But sometimes we don't fulfill a drive and we don't transcend it either--we deny, avoid, and ignore it. Freud talked about this in terms of repression. A lot of what he said made good sense and a lot of what he said was crackers, so I prefer to to talk about submerged expectations. These submerged expectations are often misinterpreted as "assumptions". Just as Freud wasn't necessarily wrong but wasn't necessarily precise and clear on this stuff, calling submerged expectations assumptions is politically loaded--and I'd generally prefer to set aside politically loaded language when trying to actually get somewhere.

Submerged expectations may be "expectations" that people are aware of or not. Essentially, because our cortexes (conceptual part of brain) are connected to our limbic systems (more emotional part of brain), emotional drives activate psychological energy or momentum. This energy happens at a cellular level and is part of what I call action potentials. Once the emotional drive is stoked, we may look to understand, explain, and justify our emotional feeling and the actions driven by that feeling. When we can consistently connect the energy, the feeling, and a particular set of actions, I'll call this a "drive". A drive is motivation (physical/emotional action potential) and the ideas that may or may not accompany motivation. Those ideas, when paired with motivations may be used to explain and justify actions to oneself or others. I don't care whether people like to say the ideas cause the emotions or vice versa; with the idea of distributed processing, identifying cause can be a secondary pursuit. Often, once we get a clear sense of what we're dealing with in terms of psychological motivation and relationships, cause becomes irrelevant. (Think of the last time you argued with your boyfriend or girlfriend and couldn't agree on the cause of the argument but you still wanted to win in some way. We can sometimes work on how people disagree while trying to dig out the causes of conflict can be an unending and degenerative spiral.)

Okay. One of the most basic "drives" is for comfort. We experience psychological comfort in relationship, when it is caused by another person as soothing. (This whole line of thinking is causing me to re-evaluate my steps of actualization and attentional abilities; I may have to add one lower step so I can separate receptivity to being soothed as one ability and creative/communal play as another.) I recently found a kitten by the side of the road and brought her home. She was distressed at being alone and soothed by being taken in. Sometimes soothing feels more like what we conventionally call comfort (I'm comfortable around my friends), and sometimes it is more like love and what psychologists romanticize as "attachment". I'm becoming somewhat attached to this kitten.

In a healthy family, there is allowance/space/relationship that causes--nurtures at least--attachment and some degree of comfort. If you feel wary of your family, that is common but not healthy. Either way, for psychological well-being, we need to be able to rest. Since we are almost constantly surrounded by people, we need to feel a degree of distance or comfort with those people. Think of trying to sleep in a prison where they left cell doors open at night. Not soothing.

Since we have a drive towards rest and feeling soothed, that drive ends up "being there" in the same way that hunger is always potentially "there". Blood sugar levels need refreshing and we similarly need sleep. People who don't feel comfortable when they're awake tend to sleep too much or too little. And people who sleep too little tend to feel even more uncomfortable and socially anxious than they would if they could get decent sleep. This feeds the same sort of cycle that eating poorly can create. You can't admit weakness to dangerous people who threaten your safety and status, so you eventually try to convince even yourself that you're not really that tired, that you don't actually need more sleep, and you spend your life trying to convince yourself that you can be satisfied without ever being genuinely happy. That sort of trying rules out happiness categorically.

So soothing and relaxation are basic. When we don't get them, we may realize it's not someone else's job to provide them to us, but we may be in such a situation that we feel like we have to take on the denial of needing them in reasonable amounts. The denial creates a chronic lack, and because the drive never goes away and is denied, it can never be fulfilled OR transcended. It becomes a constant companion, a perverse lover twisted by our refusal to attend to it like a marriage gone bad. We have to relate to our drives: "Capacities are needs."

When a drive is purposefully ignored, avoided, and denied like this, it may become mostly submerged--mostly unnoticed by conscious functioning. When that happens, it is as if some part of us ("inner child" is popular here) expects that other people should provide some degree of comfort. The drive exists, the denial of the drive is enforced, but the drive pops up inevitably like a cork in water. Push it down, it pops up somewhere else. Addictions work as one way of supporting denial or avoidance of what we lack socially. Because the drive is never met and can't disappear any more than a cat can stop being catty, the addiction will keep popping up when the drive pops up. Physical dependence is often added (as another motivator) to that psychological reality.

Is your "inner child" actually a selfish, evil little ego for wanting "attachment" with other people? I think it is perverse--though understandable as a disordered type of thinking--to think so. In this way, even spiritual traditions take what is best in us (our desire to love and be loved) and turn it against us. But this frustrated desire to be cared for, to be soothed, is a very passive and fundamental expression of who we are. At the next level up the scale, we have purpose, power, and status. When we can't feel an abundance of a basic need (like love) we sometimes direct our energy (that action potential that will cycle until the cycle is satisfied) to the next best thing. In this case, if we can't feel safe and accepted, it is best to feel powerful and glorified. The conceit of our own power allows us to psychologically defend ourselves while glory allows the conceit that others will also rally to us once they see the light. In this way, purpose and concentration are healthy versions of this level of psychological states. They are most likely to be healthy when the lower level (soothing and social play) are met. Otherwise, we take our psychological disturbances upwards in such a way that even the attempt at transcendence can be a form of disordering. For the majority of us, we have a mix of healthy motives and unhealthy denials.

So soothing is basic. Power and glory are second. At the level of Understanding, we want to be treated as at least equals. If our power and status expectations aren't met well enough (and if we aren't loved and loving, they are never enough), we may try to be extra intellectual or abuse positions of social power. Think of going to the DMV. If the person behind the desk smugly tells you that you'll have to fill out a form again--correctly this time--and go to the back of the line, when they could just fix the form right there, it is different than a toddler or bully trying to physically enforce his will. But it is the same drive for power and status in a slightly different form. Using your intelligence or education to put others down is similar. When we're loved and have some valuable place in society, all that struggle becomes less significant. Not insignificant, but less troubled, less of a loaded situation.

At the level of mindful Appreciation, we want awareness of differences and appreciation of our individuality as well as of the unique situation of the moment. At this level, you have people sometimes trying to show off how "spiritual" or "aware" or calm they are. "It's very Zen of you." In Zen circles, they talk about still having the "stink of Zen" on you if you haven't gotten over yourself. This holier-than-thou attitude tend to be patronizing/matronizing and offensive to anyone who has reached the level of Understanding. We all want to be equal, and you shouldn't be holier than me. For those who have actually achieved the level of Appreciation, one's own faults are in obvious evidence, so the whole competition over who is holier falls away in the face of one's own fallibilities. When we try to only show that we aren't patronizing and offensive, this is some form of modesty--the social presentation. When we actually keep our own imperfections in mind (and if we are loved, valuable, equal, and appreciated, those imperfections aren't horrible to face), humility is the only reasonable response. Humility allows me to accept and affirm actual inequalities without employing the one-up/one-down positioning that it instinctually comes with. In other words, I can say and be okay with someone else being smarter, nicer, holier, etc. without putting myself down in comparison to their excellence. When that happens, I can actually accept my own genetically given temperament (I'm okay, but not naturally the nicest person) and work on my weaknesses by leaning on my strengths. (I have to put more effort than some into being nice but can relax about being intelligent. Others may have to put more effort into getting equal grades, but they might be able to relax into and enjoy their sociability.)

At the level of Clarity, if humility and precise awareness of one's own fallibilities is not established (or if one feels under-appreciated), extra energy goes into the ecstatic aspects of flow-states. This increases the intensity of the feeling of clarity but diminishes one's actual clarity concerning wisdom. In other words, you can then be beautiful and famous but you may feel the need to always perform. That makes sense if you are lacking in humility and appreciation of others, a sense of equality, value of self and others, and loving acceptance. If you are not lacking in those things, the ecstatic aspects are simply icing on a layered cake. You don't mistake the icing for the substantive food, and because you offer substance, you don't have to convince others that sugar fluff is substantive. There may still be effort then, but you don't spend your life chasing or stretching for one more star.

When clarity, ecstasy, and inspiration are part of your spiritual life, you end up enjoying life too much to have a world-denying or human-denying spirituality. You know things can be good because you live well. You become the example you want to be while living within your own means psychologically. Rather than trying to leave people and situations better than when you found them, the feeling that we remain connected grows. We feed other people by our own psychological health, and we get from them what we want in exchange as equals-in-potential: love, value, equality as persons, appreciation, clarity and inspiration lead to harmony. We treat others as the best that is actually in them because that best is real. And we do so in a way that "lands" with where they are at in the moment because we aren't idealizing some spiritual vision of how things should be or embracing some reductionistic denial of our real potential.

But if these drives aren't expressed and affirmed in society, the energy or action potential that could be directed towards joy, harmony, and perhaps peace turn in upon itself in a cannibalistic manner. If the drive is not fed what it wants, it eats itself. When we cannot express our love for life and people and have that love affirmed, it turns in and eats itself like a nest of rats that can't escape a confined space. We have the action potential and it will out. When we deny the drives, they come across as expectations. When we see other people as denying our reasonable expectations and as having unreasonable expectations of their own, we turn on one another and on ourselves. That's a different manner of going back to the depths.

Social Aspects: Back to the Depths II

One of the most basic drives is discomfort-avoidance. Babies gretz and cry when they're uncomfortable without necessarily knowing what causes their discomfort or how to stop it. Before they have a clear goal, they have a basic drive--something pushing them towards something even if they don't know what. We have a basic drive for life to be interesting and wonder-filled but we don't necessarily speak of it as such. But comfort, wonder, and love/acceptance are huge motivators we don't always recognize. Many adults aren't any better than infants at recognizing what they actually want. The research is actually conclusive on this point, and we say this more colloquially when we call people "stupid". People are stupid.

Part of what happens in our lives is that we encounter/create conflict between drives, identity, and our situation. Originally, in response to that conflict/chafing, we want only to be soothed or distracted. Between the ages of 2 and 10, let's say, we should learn the lesson that some other people actually don't see it as their purpose in life to soothe or appease us. But that lesson doesn't make the desire go away. It teaches us to express that desire in moderated ("appropriate") ways. Some folks believe that we can learn to not express that desire, and they're wrong. When desires can't be expressed in a straightforward manner, they twist. This is part of what I mean by action potentials. Action potentials are expressed. That's how it is. Drives are action potentials. Let's say you try to not verbalize a desire for food when you're hungry. You've learned to not simply scream endlessly until someone feeds you, and that's all to the good. But if you don't get food, blood-sugar levels drop. Does the desire for comfort disappear? No. But your ability to concentrate and the likelihood that you'll feel in a good mood rather than grumpy ("Does someone need a nap?", "It's that time of the month again") does diminish. Will your decreasing energy, mood, and ability to concentrate come out (be expressed) in some way? Of course.

There is a difference, then, between verbalizing and expressing. There is also a difference between verbalizing the desire for food and having an expectation that someone else should provide for an expressed desire. So your blood-sugar is dropping, mood and concentration are waning. Since we're taught not to expect everyone else to parent us, and because we often conflate expression with expectation, we try to not even verbalize that we're hungry. We even know that if we continue to obsess on our hunger, it will seem worse, so we might deny even to ourselves that we are hungry. And this is considered socially acceptable and relatively mature. Our society actually takes it as a sign of maturity that someone deny something as basic and simple as hunger. And most people do not question this on a daily basis! We create, then, a "social reality"--a socially accepted representation of reality--that is horribly skewed. It is skewed against your happiness when it is skewed against reality. You may not believe me yet, but it's true.

And everything that we do to deny reality goes directly against human happiness.

We can sometimes act as if this is not the case because it happens in a distributed manner.

If you are sharp or clear, this is not anywhere close to being open to question.

So, in the moment your mood is waning, you may try harder to "stay focused". This extra focus takes up more energy (brains use about 25% of our metabolic energy) and wears you out even faster, using up your diminishing internal resources on simply not getting worse. Getting better now is nowhere in sight. Getting food has been given up on, and the goal is to not lose focus. Of course, in your diminished capacity, almost anything can distract you. When it happens, you are prepared for blaming because you're primed with: diminished resources, the frustrated goal of staying focused, and an internal milieu that sets you up for petty expressions of the negative mood that might have been avoided by a sandwich. Once this happens a few times, you can see it coming, so you prepare yourself by keeping coffee around. That spins the stress/insomnia cycle, making it harder to get going and harder to keep going. Your discomfort increases while your ability to address discomfort decreases and you are left with little besides the myth that it is worth denying what you want because you are clearly unable to get what you want (rest, recuperation, and the potential for consistent happiness) by the methods you know. You are now on your way to completely trying to deny your lack of happiness. As I said, this is a poor recipe for happiness--trying for the denial of the desire itself since the actual thing is unattainable to you by this way of being.

Your desire for comfort and wonder have come up from the depths, so to speak, and has been sent back from whence it came. We end up saying about the desire that could point us to happiness, "Get that shit out of here--we're all stocked up!" And it's true. When your warehouse is stocked full of shit, everything begins to smell like shit to you, and there is no room for any more shit.

Rumi said anyone can bring gifts; I want for someone who will take things away.

Sometimes we have to take our focus away from "that shit" in order to apply our minimal resources for focusing on the housekeeping (clearing the warehouse) involved with getting rid of "this shit". We own it, accept what is, before we can address what is. Or we spend our lives trying to get shit "out of my face" while trying to pretend to not be unhappy. No one wants to spend their life pushing shit out of their face. Ewww. I want for someone who will take away. (No, it's not Calgon I'm missing.)

Social Aspects: Back to the Depths

Besides connecting the dots in new and interesting ways, along with things rising up out of murky depths or becoming clearer as they emerge from a fog, stuff also returns from whence it came. Things that we stop thinking about and working with don't disappear--no energy or mass is lost--rather, they fade or submerge.

Certain things that are easy to mentally hold onto, concrete things like the lesson to be careful around hot stuff, fade when we don't re-member it or work with it. In other words, cooks aren't more aware in a oogley-googley meaning of awareness, but they consistently work with the lesson to be careful around hot stuff so they tend to more practiced with being aware of hot stuff. Any of us who aren't primed for that awareness when we should be--BAM!--we are immediately reminded when skin comes in contact with a hot pan. That involves priming and engagement more than subtle awareness. If you're cooking, you re-mind yourself (you put into your active mind again) to be careful when you're around hot stuff. This is fitting when you're around hot stuff.

Not remembering or reminding oneself is different from what happens with those things that do not completely solidify in our consciousness and understanding of the world. For instance, physical balance never completely "solidifies" because it must constantly move as we constantly move. Emotions should generally change throughout the day unless we get stuck in personality-disordered habits that lock in moods to too great a degree. So some things are not necessarily "solid" even though they are salient and apparent. Balance is always about the present, and the present is in motion; emotions are fitting for "moments" in our lives but should not determine our personalities. (If you see yourself as an "angry person" or a "happy person", you're probably avoiding some of your emotions and getting "stuck" in others.)

For some people algebra never really solidifies, never becomes obvious, apparent, and familiar to work with. For others, things like racism seem to be clear at one moment but confusing at another. What is racism really? These sorts of topics are often also context-dependent. Just as we remind ourselves about heat in the kitchen but not necessarily in other places, we remind ourselves of the relevance and meaning of racism in mixed crowds, exploitative or bigoted groups, exploited groups, and racially mixed groups. Social items, like racism, fit into a different category than physical items and forces like hotel pans and heat. Psychological phenomena may have a physical basis, but these can generally be categorized as similar to social phenomena in the sense that you can touch a hotel pan but not your racism or joy.

Think of your fight-or-flight response. It remains "there" as only potential most of the time. It is a physical potential and involves instincts that fit extreme situations. Ostracism is "there" potentially in social groups. It is fitting in extreme situations--the old eskimo that wanders off into the cold in order to allow enough food for the young (historically), rapists and murderers are often ostracized, the diseased may be quarantined, etc. When we're at war, we want to find out who is definitely on our side and who is not. When we take these potentials that are fitting for extreme situations and prompt for those responses too often, the effects are psychologically and socially deleterious. Post-traumatic stress, hypervigilance, exhaustion, and insomnia can result from physical overstimulation. When we take ostracization as an ideology--racism, sexism, age-ism, whatever--we tend to wear out and/or ignore our ability to remain alert to and balanced in the present. We pre-judge then--give up our judgement in the present in favor of stable abstractions. Eternal vigilance may be the price of freedom, but the costs of eternal vigilance include paranoia, prejudice, poor judgement, and exhaustion.

But let's say that we don't idealize and abstract or over-utilize these sorts of potentials. There will still be stuff that comes to mind at certain times but is otherwise "out of sight, out of mind". Affection can be like that. If you're not completely infatuated with your dog, you may not think about Sparky much while you're at work. Out of sight, out of mind. But when you walk out the door at the end of the day and think about getting home, you may smile in anticipation of the mutual excitement and affection that meets you at the front door of your house. If someone said it was your job to always think about how much you love your dog, you'd probably get worn out trying to do it. Just ask a parent! Besides, your wife or husband might feel undervalued if you were always and only going on and on about your four-legged, best friend. So we are psychologically built for things like emotions, wakefulness, and attention to come and go. Rest is good, vacations are good.

All this means that relevance counts and so do our attentional limits. It doesn't make you a bad parent to need time away from your kids. It doesn't make you racist or gender-biased to need time away from groups that feel diverse or not intimate. Enjoying deep sleep or moments of solitude doesn't mean you're antisocial. We all have limits that are expressed in terms of political awareness, social boundaries, and psychological tolerances. In order to keep those boundaries, types of awareness, and tolerances all in the same head, we shift focus as well as shifting some things in and out of focus. Lots of ins and outs, man, a lot of what-have-yous. Some psychological drives are prevalent at times but then mostly fade back into the depths. The ways they come out and what we do with them fascinates me.

Social Aspects: Psyche is Distributed

In the same way that dreams can be meaningful, we can see our "selves" as coherent wholes or as collections of different influences. To the same extent that dreams, ideals, and imaginings are real, it can be helpful to shift from one perspective on self to the other. Let me just be clear that it makes no difference to me whether we focus on this meaning (whatever we might see as meaningful) as coming from God or collective social archetypes or whether we say we create it. If we can see it and affirm it, I am curious about how it works and Jesus can have all the credit for all the good that might come out of the curiosity and abundance.

When I say psyche is distributed, I am referring back to my essay on Self-Identity and Globalization. In this case, the distributed part means a few different things. The first is that the influences from the four "collections" which bombard, support, and/or direct us do not come pre-packaged as coherent and integrated. Sometimes our genetic temperament is helpful and sometimes not; sometimes our family histories and roles are helpful and sometimes not; sometimes our national cultures and stupidities are helpful and sometimes not; sometimes our beliefs and experiences with ultimate meanings or spirituality are helpful and sometimes not. What's more, most of the time these different influences push and pull us in a variety of directions. By putting together what we know of each of these four collections, we can say that they have a certain shape. And while maybe no one know exactly all of what goes into genetic code or American culture, for example, we can say that some things are a significant part of American culture at any given time (road trips, NYC, and big sky country) and some things are not (enlightened--or even respectful--political debate).

The various influences will sometimes lend themselves to counteracting influences from other levels. (The customs that fit with being trained as a therapist do not jive with the vitriollic nature of political talk radio shows.) And at other times or other instances, the influences will potentiate one another. (The customs that fit with being trained as a therapist align with a general emphasis on global equality over 16th century nationalism and racism.)

Naturally, we find that a distributed description tends to fit societies as well as individual people. My people are American, but I don't provide southern comfort or an educated New England liberal emphasis on history and debate. Nor would I expect them to cook me a shoo-fly pie should I visit. The whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are interesting in and of themselves. That's distribution. Not all the wonder goes to the overall picture or one of the parts.

Social Aspects: Up from the Depths

I like that science tends to be an attempt to go from one dot to the next, checking something that is obviously there and then seeing if and perhaps how it connects. Another type of distributed processing is more like seeing some dark mass rise up form the depths of the ocean or someone walk out of the fog. In this way, we don't begin with concrete points. We begin more with a somewhat vague shape and that shape solidifies, becoming clearer as we come closer to it. Just to be clear, I like applying each method to the other. Science helps us throw out a lot of bullshit and dealing in a more diffuse sort of distribution of things helps forward science by encouraging imaginative hypotheses. (Keep in mind that most hypotheses come up false or unproven and those also tend not to get published. In other words, most of science is lost--even to the scientific community that doesn't see fit to publish the things that even they have found that they do not understand.)

So this type of distributed processing is less like learning algebra--which actually does make sense once you can connect the dots--and more like dreaming or imagination. This fits with what Eugene Gendlin calls FOCUSING--noticing the changes in one's felt sense of body, mind, and world. This may bring us into murky areas that genuine scientists are fascinated by and pretenders deny out of hand. Shamans are at home here, but they too often seem to deny science or accountability. Well then, I guess it is up to reasonable and intelligent folks to figure it out.

Most simple this sort of distributed processing begins with hints, glimmers, tracks. We start with some hair on a treebranch, a track on the ground, but not the animal itself. We see something that our imagination tells us could be the Lock Ness monster but is probably not and we are left wondering about ripples. Every intelligent mammal is interested by these things that they recognize as signs--the only exception being humans who have been taught to be reductionists and animals so exhausted as to have no energy to sustain their curiosity.

If we apply the mammal intelligence given us by God, Charles Darwin, and Mother Earth (a fascinating menage a trois as ever there was), we pay attention. Now, the sort of attention that tends to lead to discovery in these types of cases is more like that song lyric, "Hold on loosely...but don't let go," than it is like the sort of focus we need in order to cram for that freshman-year physics final. It is more like the long-term focus it takes to parent than the short-term lazer-focus of the lion about to pounce. In the moment, we recognize that if we try to crush the potential butterfly in a bear trap, we may get nothing more than an indistinct smudge. Hopes are often like that butterfly, dreams for the future, ideals, the visions we have of what might be best within ourselves. I tend to prefer the people who use a net (not a bear-trap) and go after actual butterflies to those who only imagine butterflies and fairies and whatnot, but we need some of all types I'm sure. I'm also sure that I was stabbed by a vampire assassin last night in my dream; while I eventually killed him because he was too slow, the knife he used infected me in some way; it was a very fun dream, and I woke wondering if it meant anything useful or if it was "just a dream".

In the same way that I might be prompted by the energy and imagery of that dream to add some meaning to it, we can be prompted socially to move towards something like racial and gender equality by dreaming of the possibility and feeling energized by that hope. So there is this sort of distributed processing in response to psychological glimmers and also some sort of fumbling forwards due to idealization. Fumbling forwards when we can't really plan what will happen at Kent St., for example, is also distributed processing. This type of movement encompasses the sorts of questions like, "But did the Vietnam protesters really act in solidarity with the civil rights movement?" The answer, as often as not with this sort of process, is, "Sort of." To the same extent that dreams might motivate people if those people ascribe meaning to them, social acts are interpreted from different angles and propagandized by different sides. Sometimes it works out to be David or Vietnam, but Goliath usually wins. The bear trap is less likely to end as a smudge than the butterfly. The question is, if you are Goliath, do you want to be the villain? If you are not Goliath, you will most likely finds that imagination counts.

Social Aspects: Connect-the-Dots

Distributed processes are all about connecting the dots. If you'll remember back to first grade or kindergarten (or earlier), opening one of those new coloring books with a rough newspaper sort of paper, smelling the paper and ink, and tracing the connections between dots to form an image, you understand what I mean.

The dots being separate is the "distributed" part and the process of connecting them is the "process" part: distributed processes. When we do this psychologically, essentially, we pull a few dots together to form some shape that we can see as a whole or Gestalt. This happens when brainstorming (more distributed) moves towards applications (more cohesively formed). When something forms up quickly and/or decisively, we experience what we call "insight". (It is possible to feel hints or flickers of insight and also something more akin to "being hit in the head with a hammer it was so obvious once I saw it--wow!".)

This overarching process of making things form shapes or wholes is part of how we create meaning. Each whole can connect with other wholes, in which case they are also parts (which Ken Wilber likes to call holons to signify that they are wholes on their own but also parts when seen in context). In a positive tone, we say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and in a negative tone, we talk about getting lost in a crowd should the wholeness/individuality of parts gets lost in their part-ness ("you're just a number like everyone else").

Distributed processing is a big part of how we construct a self-identity, how we know ourselves as individuals (wholes). Since we learn about ourselves in a physical and social context, we come to know ourselves as parts or relational wholes (wholes-as-parts/holons). This essay breaks down a few of the phisycal-social "collections" that we draw from in constructing our self-identities. We can consider all of what is going on around and in us to make up our associational matrices.

Each preceding paragraph is an individual point that I want to now draw together to form into a single, cohesive shape. I will "connect the dots" by drawing lines between these points. Hopefully, as I move forward with my narrative thread, there will be the feeling in my readers that things are "coming together". There may be a somewhat vague sense of my purpose early on, but that should solidify as we go. So this exchange between us is an example of a distributed process, an example of how the "stuff" in my psyche interacts with my social milieu. You may get the sense that everything that is said here has been said in different ways before, but hopefully, this way/moment/post will also seem unique in itself. If each paragraph connects, then the post makes a Gestalt or whole.

Depending on my genetic endowment, family of origin, local neighborhood, education, regional cultures, exposure to diversity, nation, and generational cohort, I will be more or less likely to refer to different things. Shamans say that their bodies are the universe. In other words, our nervous systems "re-present" or filter the universe of physical stuff through our sensations. Sensations are filtered through and organized by perceptions, thoughts, and habits. Perceptions, thoughts and habits are shaped by our physical and social environment. Most of us can agree on what a physical environment is, and I believe it can be helpful to talk about the four collections that add up to put together the associational matrices we draw from in feeling motivated and making decisions.

If I am not taught or do not learn how to see and value certain "shapes" or forms, then I won't know how to understand what someone else means if they use those forms. This happens obviously with words (if someone else uses words I don't know), but it also happens with ideas. Furthermore, it happens with perceptual experiences. For example, shamans are familiar with drawing on perceptual experiences that other folks generally are not. Of course they are, because they KNOW that their bodies are the universe. It is true for everyone that our bodies represent the universe, but shamans know this, and that can make a great deal of difference.