<< Chapter < Page Chapter >> Page >
This is a way to think about how humans think, not a philosophy of life but a deep way of thinking about life and how humans function. It might almost be speculative psychology but all philosophy could also be considered speculative psychology. This essay might get you to think about philosophy in more concrete terms (thus being more similar to psychology). It might also not be taken literally but could be used just to get someone to think. It is a view of consciousness and reality and who someone is, in total the sum of their existence because it discusses someone fundamental desires and who people fundamentally are. I discuss things on the "conceptual" level which means more like the word "ideally" or, if the world was perfect, what is really going on that drives the actions and behaviors you see and that would be something that is more conceptual than the actual actions and physical interactions taking place because it is more conceptual or intellectual.

Conscious reality vs. unconscious reality

The world is processed consciously and unconsciously, so reality exists in conscious and unconscious forms. The world is processed unconsciously first, since the unconscious is much faster and more powerful than the conscious mind. This means that all consciousness is is an understanding of what it is your unconscious is processing. So there is a reality which is unconscious, however, consciousness is the only reality that really matters because although you can feel things which are unconscious, and although you are currently feeling things which are unconscious all the time you only truly feel things until they come into your conscious understanding. This conscious understanding usually is slower and occurs after the unconscious experience. If you swim in a lake you feel the water and such, however you only actually feel the water when it occurs to you that you were feeling the water. The conscious experience occurs just slightly after you touch the water. The immediate feelings you get from the water are physical ones, when you touch the water with your hand you are going to feel something, but then you think about what you just did, and you feel it deeper. The longer you process what you just did (touch the water) the more the experience sinks into consciousness. Consciousness then is really just awareness that you can identify and play with in your mind. Conscious feelings are feelings that are tangible enough for you to understand. You can have a reality that is solely unconscious, but it is going to be harder to remember this unconscious reality unless you can “grasp” onto it consciously. You feel the water when you touch it, but it only really matters that you touched it until a few split seconds after you touched the water when you realize consciously, almost in a verbal manner (you almost saying to yourself unconsciously “I touched the water”).

Who am i?

When someone thinks, “who am I, what is the essence of me” they would then think about their feelings, because who someone is is a compilation of what they feel. People are the sum of their emotions. Emotions are longer than thoughts and there are much fewer of them, so when someone thinks “who am I” they think about their consistent emotional response to the world. They might respond to the world in a similar manner throughout life, and the things which are the same about why they originally responded to the world (their earliest memory of how they responded to the world emotionally) and the way they respond to the world now, are going to be the things which composite the core of their being, because there is something about humans that stays the same since birth till their death, and this thing is going to be the core of their being. People obviously change over time, but their original response to the world is going to be the simplest way to understand what emotions that person is trying to evoke from the world. It is also going to be the response they are ultimately trying to achieve throughout their life, only more and more complicated versions of it as they get older. Say someone was trying to get the world to invoke in them a feeling of slight delight. When they are first born they are going to experience this feeling immediately as their primary emotion, there may be other feelings that person is feeling, but this feeling is going to be clearly dominant. As that person gets older more and more feelings are going to appear but the goal of all of these new feelings is going to be to try to understand why their original, primary feeling felt the way it did. It feels like the goal of all those feelings is that your primary intent in the world is to understand your true nature.

Get Jobilize Job Search Mobile App in your pocket Now!

Get it on Google Play Download on the App Store Now




Source:  OpenStax, The complete psychological writings of mark pettinelli. OpenStax CNX. Jul 11, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10729/1.19
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

Notification Switch

Would you like to follow the 'The complete psychological writings of mark pettinelli' conversation and receive update notifications?

Ask