Tag Archives: mind

The “Ecological Unconscious”

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A recent New York Times articles asks :”Is There An Ecological Unconscious?“

Aside from citing a bunch of studies and trying to draw general conclusions from them (which is an incorrect use of science, by the way, for a great discussion of this, see John Sifferman’s most recent blog post), the author describes the field of ecopsychology, from its inception to present attempts at connecting individuals’ psychology and environment.

I dare you to look inside...

The article cites a study by Marc Berman, at the University of Michigan, whose study “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature” describes attentional gains after participants have walked through a setting full of “nature” (in this case, the Ann Arbor Arboretum…is that redundant?!).

But what is “psychology?”  Until that question is answered succinctly, all “psychological” studies are potentially redundant and misleading.

No one has ever answered that question in concrete terms.  Wikipedia says that: Psychology (lit. “study of the soul” or “study of the mind“[1]) is an academic and applied discipline which involves the scientific study of human (or animal) mental functions and behaviors.

But what is the “mind?”  (let’s leave questions of the “soul” out of the discussion for now).  Apparently it’s a combination of “mental functions and behaviors.”

Again, Wikipedia says that “mind” is: the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself subjectively as a stream of consciousness.

But where do all of those things come from?

These guys must know...if they're helping "mind"

Most of psychology, if you’ve ever taken a psychology course (or several) addresses “mind” as a thing separate from physical reality.  Theorists make up their own paradigms of mind and mentality, of “mental functions and behaviors.”

The terrible redundancy can be seen most clearly in the field of Child Psychology, or Child Development.  There are five or ten competing theories of child development at different stages of maturation.  All are right, most are completely redundant with one another.  Many (if not most) create definitions of the child’s developmental process that are obviously derived solely from the researcher’s personal experience…no “objectivity” there (the question of “objectivity” is quite another question entirely).

This redundancy seems extraordinarily silly to me.  For one, can’t we all just get along?!  But for another, where does this “mind” come from?  I mean, “mind” doesn’t just exist on its own, apart from the physical body…apart from “behaviors.”  Does it?

I think the development of the field of psychology stems largely from the Cartesian mind/body dualism, and an underlying belief in “human supremacy” in the Order of Things.

Foucault me.

That is, human beings always believe that they are somehow specially different, better, “more special” than anything else in nature.  We always try to find qualities that separate us from the “lower animals.”

But, one by one, all of those arguments have been disproved.  I’ve heard them all – human beings have language (all animals have language); human beings are creative (ever see a spiderweb?); we use tools (ever see an ape catch termites with a long blade of grass?); we are self-conscious (debatable, and impossible to prove that other animals are not also self-aware/conscious)…etc.

The list goes on, but always with the same result – we are no “better” than anything else this planet has produced, we’re simply “different.”

This led, in combination with the Cartesian separation of mind from body, to a belief that our thoughts were somehow separate from our bodies, from our “physical” selves.

“Ecological Unconscious” or “ecopsychology” is one attempt to put those things back together, but it has skimmed over one of the most important questions – “When studying psychology (the mind), what exactly is it that we are studying?”

In reference to this, I’d like to cite a 2007 study by Japanese researchers (following up on several earlier studies of a similar nature).  The study is called “Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction,” and, similar to Berman’s study, looked at the effects of walking or sitting in a wooded environment on physiology.

Needless to say, the effects were drastic, and positive.  Physiological markers of stress (salivary cortisol, resting heart rate, blood pressure, etc.) decrease in a “natural” environment.

Do the participants’ “psychologies” change?  Undoubtedly, yes.

I guarantee that changing your breathing will change your mind.

You see, for  me, “psychology,” or “mind,” is just a product of the physical body.  Sure, at some level it also becomes the product of the interaction of itself (recursive thought) and anything else (mind-to-mind, mind-thinking-about-itself), but without the physical body, there is no mind.

How can I assert this?  Well, you can “change your mind” by changing your body.  If you’re feeling blue, go out for a run.  It will change your mind.

So when fields like “ecopsychology” spring up, or talk of an “ecological unconscious” begins, I wonder why.  Why is it that we want to separate our physiology from our thoughts (or vice versa)?  Why is it that we hold onto this belief that there is some “magic” happening in our gray matter?

While it is magical that we have such a complex brain, the brain is not the mind.  The entire body is your brain.  To quote George Leonard:

Some researchers in the comparatively new field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) argue that the interplay of peptides with peptide receptors on the surface of cells throughout body and brain carries considerably more information than all previously discovered brain mechanisms combined. Imagine a pharmacy with well over a hundred potions that can be mixed in all possible combinations and proportions, and you can begin to understand the power of this chemical information system.

So don’t speak of an “ecological unconscious” as something separate from your body.  Don’t speak of nature as something separate from your body.  You are continuous with your habitat, with your environment.  This is why people living in cities get chronic diseases associated with urban environments – associated with pollution.  This is why people have the same diseases as their friends.

Everything “external” to your body can and should be considered your “external organs.”  There is nothing you see that does not affect your physiology on some level.  There is nothing you hear, smell, touch, that does not do the same.  At the same time, there are many things that you cannot sense in any way that are affecting your physiology…that are “creating your mind” – the invisible pollutants in your environment, the trees you do not notice that supply you with oxygen, the microbiomes that inhabit your body.

Stop separating your unconscious from your physical self.  And stop separating your physical self from the totality of your environment.  When you do that, you regain control over who you are and how you behave.

Only then can you finally say that you have a “mind.”

There is no “mind”

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I just got about fifty pages into the book “The Joy of Living, Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness,” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche – and had to put it down.

Now, I don’t mean to “put it down,” but I have some serious misgivings about this book.  Misgivings that won’t allow me to continue to read it.

For one thing, I question the persistent use of Buddhism, and the persistent presence of Tibetan Buddhists, in motivational literature.

I question that even more when the literature “merges Eastern and Western views.”

First, Buddhism, at best, is a religion.  Before you read the rest of this, you should read James Carse’s most recent (and excellent) blog entry (and probably his book, too).

In short – in case you don’t have time to do all of that preliminary reading right now – Carse draws a distinction between Finite Games and Infinite Games.  Finite Games are games that are played to win.  There is a Finite end to them.  Infinite Games are games that are played to keep playing.  There is no end to those games.

Now, Carse would rather make the distinction between “belief” (as infinite game) and “religion” (as finite game).  Though I’d say it’s rather different.

A religion is an “infinite game.”  A religion is about Mystery.  It is not necessarily “organized” or “indoctrinated.”  It is a thought, a pattern, a method, a Way, that the religious person carries with them.  Through it, they try to decode the Mystery of What-Is.

An ideology (or what Carse would say is religion) is a finite game.  It is the indoctrination of a religion, a religious belief.  An ideology plays to win.  It pits itself over and against The Other, whatever that Other may be – another religion, another ideology, etc.

My first problem is this – at best, science is religion.  It is a search for the meaning of Mystery.  It is the quest to continue searching.  There is no “end” to true science.  Just as there is no “end” to true religion.  It is a tool for constantly experiencing What-Is.

At worst, science and religion are ideology.  In those instances, as I’ve mentioned, they are pit against other beliefs.  They create the distinction of Self/Other.  They tear apart, break down, set brother against brother.

So, to be clear, the book needs to say what it is talking about.  Is it talking about the religions of Buddhism and science, or the ideologies of Buddhism and science.

Secondly, while I do feel upset about the injustices the Tibetan people have suffered, I disagree with the use of Tibetan Buddhist monks, or Tibetan Buddhism, to promote the cause of Tibet against China.

This, again, is creating an ideology of Buddhism.

Whatever, right?

Now that that’s said, I’ll tell you why I had to put the book down.

There is no mind.

Around page 28 (or the beginning of Chapter 2), the author begins to talk about the mind, and the origin of mind.  Then he talks about the brain, and the fact that the mind cannot be found within the brain.  Rather, he says, the mind is a process, not a static thing.  It cannot be pinpointed because it is constantly moving.

While I agree with the idea of mind-as-process, I think the distinction between mind, brain, and, necessarily, body, points to the Self/Other dialectic in this book.  It points to the place where the author is misguided.

There is no “mind.”

As I mentioned in previous posts, there is no “separation” of the body from the external environment.  The “external environment” is the human “external organ.”  Without it – as without any “internal organ” – the human animal dies.

Similarly, the human animal changes in response to changes in its external organ.  If the external organ is healthy, the animal is healthy.  If the external organ is sick, the animal is sick.  Just as with the internal organs.

Where is the separation?

Finally, find the clear dividing point, where one part of the brain effectively stops, and “the body” begins, and I will nominate you for a Nobel Prize in Godliness.

There is no “clear separation” between the “brain” and “body.”  They are the same thing.  Without a part of your “body,” the part of the “brain” that is associated with that part of the “body” withers and dies.

We could almost say that they were one and the same.

Scientists have found cerebrospinal fluid in collagen tubules throughout the body.  That is – fluid that bathes your spinal cord and brain flows through your entire body.

This should not be surprising.

There is no “dividing line” between your body and itself.

Similarly, there is no “dividing line” between your body and anything else.

The dividing lines that we draw are drawn for the sake of convenience.  Those lines, again, are tools to help us to understand the Mystery, and to work with it effectively.

But they don’t really exist.

In the same way, if you were to look at a map of the countryside, just an aerial photograph, you might say – “Oh look, a river, a  mountain, and a forest.”  But you would all say that they are part of the terrain.  And if you were to cut out any one of those things from the, let’s say square, map, you would say “This map is incomplete.”

Were we to draw state and county lines on the map, you wouldn’t say they were “real.”  They’re effectively real, because we’ve agreed to those terms.  That’s part of the infinite game – the rules of the game we’ve agreed to play.

In the terrain itself, you might walk over that river, through the woods, to grandmother’s house (sound familiar?).  But you wouldn’t say “well, where is the wilderness here?” would you?  It’s all around.  You wouldn’t say “the wilderness is only in the river,” or “only in the forest.”

Looking for “mind” in the body, or even “in the mind” is like looking for the wilderness in the river.  It isn’t there.  It’s in the crunch of the leaves under your feet, and the sound of the squirrel’s alarm-call as you approach.  It’s in the sound of birds’ wings overhead, that look like kites etched against the blue sky.  And it’s the blue sky, and the wind whistling through tree branches.  It’s in the stink of the rotten tree you climbed over and the squirming bodies of the insects you exposed when your foot went through that soft trunk.  It’s in your hands.  It’s in you.  It is you, too.

Mind is the same.  Keep looking for it, Huck Finn.  I have a map for you right here.  You and the other kids can help.

I am glad I read the first 50 pages of this book.  The book was a great help to me, actually.  It helped me to realize that this distinction runs so deeply, and to see the Self/Other dialectic at work in a new way.

But I won’t recommend it.

2012 – The Self-Fulfilled Prophecy

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There’s a new movie coming out.

It’s called 2012, and stars John Cusack.

The effects look great!  I actually want to see this movie.

But there’s something else.

This film is based on a Mayan prediction that the world will come to an end in the year 2012.

But what “world?”

The “world” of the Mayans effectively came to an end in 900 AD, when the Maya civilization collapsed for a number of reasons.

The prediction of the Maya calendar, though, may point to another type of “world” and another type of “end.”

Unlike our reductionist/scientific viewpoint, most non-Western indigenous cultures believe that time is cyclical…because Nature is cyclical.

The annual changes of seasons, the rise and fall of plants and animals (and people, and civilizations), the hormonal/emotional cycles caused by the moon, and by other non-tenable aspects of Universal movement – all of these are recurring all the time, whether we respect them or not.

In this, the Mayan myth is similar to that of the Hindu Kalpa – in which tradition there have been similar claims to knowledge of a forthcoming apocalypse.

But in both of those cultures, traditionally, that end, that apocalypse, is also seen as a new beginning, and is actually embraced as a time of great change, and a time for celebration.

What irks me about 2012, which shouldn’t, given the culture it’s coming from (ever been to Hollywood?), is that, first, it disregards this idea of cyclical growth and change (as far as I can tell…prove me wrong Emmerich!).

Second, it points (as far as I can tell from the trailer, again) to an apocalypse that occurs outside of the individual.  This is something you can’t control.  You are helpless.  A victim.  You have to fight fight fight for survival against nature.

Nature doesn’t work like that.  Not when you really live in it.

And the most important world-changing that needs to happen now, may be that realization – that our minds are separating us from harmony, from nature, from peace.

The self-fulfilled prophecy, at first, is your mind.