Pay Attention to Yourself
I was driving my car the other day and I decided to run some experiments on my consciousness (yes I know, brilliant time to decide to play with consciousness). I was thinking about how automatic so much of our behavior is. How amazing it was that such incredibely complicated behavior can be done all under the radar. I thought it would be neat to pay extremelly close attention to motion and action I made and see what it felt like.
It was an odd feeling. And the following will sound paradoxical, but paying close attention to my movements (movements that I was already doing) gave me the oddest sense of control that was lacking before. The gas, the break, the clutch, the shifting, these motions weren’t just going on while I was listening too music and thinking about whatever crazy thoughts normally run through my head, these actions were things I was doing!
I decided to take this a step further. At this point I felt like I had more control, but to a certain degree I was still just along for the ride. In a weird way, I felt like I was predicting the future, but I wasn’t necessarily causing it. I was paying close attention to my actions, but I wasn’t actually willing them into being consciously. I decided that for each movement, I would actually think about my intended action before letting my body go through with it. This proved nearly impossible. First of all, you don’t realize how many things you do concurrently that it’s just impossible to plan in the spur of the moment. Let’s say that I wanted to slow down my car. The first thing I thought was, “I need to shift this car into a lower gear”. And as I reach for the shifter, before I’m even aware of it, my left foot goes the clutch, my right foot goes to the break, and my left hand moves on the wheel to compensate for the missing right hand. All I did was think about one particular action, but this thought was enough to initiate the motor sequences of every other action connected to it. When I actually tried to think through each and every motion in the series before I did it, I found it to be impossible. There simply wasn’t enough time to think about each motion consciously and still drive in any sort of safe manner. Let alone the times I tried to consciously control my actions as a turn came up or I came to a light. My body was doing 5 different things at once before I could even contemplate what was going on. I was astounded by how out of control I really was.
But this isn’t really true is it? It’s not that I was completely out of control, it’s that I only had to think of a higher order command, to initiate all the underlying motor sequences necessary to achieve my goal. I think “turn” and everything necessary for “turn” starts happening. This isn’t magic. At some point every one of these mini sequences of muscle action had to be learned consciously. Had to be given my full attention. Each mini sequence itself might have had it’s own mini sequences that needed to be learned. This is true of much more than just driving, and is one of the truly amazing aspects of our conscious lives. Without the attentional aspect of consciousness we couldn’t learn to do anything. And yet, once we learn to do it, all that’s needed to do an incredibly complex series of events is a simple thought. A simple idea. Turn. Run. Play a C-chord. Type; I’m not even paying attention to a single thing my fingers are doing right now, and yet this sentence came out perfectly. Once we are familiar with something, we live a world of ideas and concepts, separated from the behavior our concepts initiate, so much so that we can barely make sense of it when we try to pay attention. Do you remember learning to tie your shoe laces? Do you even pay attention while you tie your shoes anymore? Just try explaining to someone (not showing them) some complex skill you’ve acquired and see if you can even figure out all the parts without actually doing them. Next time you’re in your car and engaging in some complex series of action, just remember how thankful you should be that you don’t have to pay attention to each and every one of those things!
Has anyone else ever experienced these sorts of moments? Please share below!
7 Responses
7:47 am
Those moments of realization that you describe that reveal the complexity of everyday life are times of pure ecstasy for me. The times where the conscience rational part of the mind realized how little control and influence it really has. For me, I reach these moments much more often when practicing meditation. Just paying attention to the world around you outside the incessant stream of thoughts coming from the conscience part of the mind allows one to observe this world of the unconscious action. It is this intuitive part of the brain which remains more of a mystery and is probably one of the smartest things about our minds…
6:21 pm
Now that you’re my blogging mentor I feel compelled to contribute to your work.
This is interesting. What might this say about how we make decisions? Are some choices already made by our interenal make-up? If someone asks me for help I say yes. But maybe not because I’m a wonderful person willing to make sacrifices, or some sort of Saint who outshines all my peers. Maybe it is because all of the things that go into making that decision are already in place. I was loved growing up, I am loved now, people help me when I ask and so it is natural to return the favor. But what of the person who says no? We may be tempted to call them selfish, but is something else behind the decision making process? Is it as natural for them to say no as it is for me to say yes? If so, does that make the answers equal?
More importantly, what might this say about how we change behavior? Try to teach an adult a new way to tie his or her shoes and you’ll be battling against the underlying motor sequences you mention. The method may be better, it may be more efficient, it may make more sense, but send them out and they’ll inevitably revert to their old motor skills.
Take that same person, send them out with a jammed finger or broken thumb and they’re forced to re-adress they way they approach the task. The building blocks are re-arranged and change must follow. I’m not advocating we start breaking didgets, but seems there is much to consider about the issues you raise and how we treat different behaviors we love to label ‘disorders’.
Great post. Keep it up.
12:55 am
Your Comments
As a teacher in special education (from Lehigh U), we had to make lesson plans for students in a life skills program. For example, putting on a pair of pants or coat, going into a fast food restaurant and ordering etc. You don’t realize all the little steps that need to be taught just to do those simple things. We take it for granted, but students with disabilities (more severe) have to be taught each step along the way. And just when you think you have all the steps, you think of another one that needs to be added! Good Post!!
7:56 am
I recently decided to start tying my shoes the proper way. It was indeed a strange experience it first. I had to recite a little saying each time. L over R, R over L
Indeed, MAN CAN CHANGE. Even without a jammed appendage.
11:20 am
@Cezar
I find both parts equally fascinating, dependent on my mood. They are intertwined in an inescapable loop. Without the inexplicable existence of this thing we call consciousness, all the amazing and complex behavior that happens unconsciously wouldn’t be quite so mysterious. As least not to us, since we wouldn’t have the power to reflect on its mysteriousness.
@Eric
Great thoughts Eric. I had a post about free will recently where I touch very briefly on this issue in the comments below the post. That in essence the arguments about free will are sort of red herring, when what we should really be concerning ourselves with is understanding the causes of human behavior and how behavior can be changed. Why do people do the things they do, and how can we promote positive thoughtful behavior, while respecting their individual rights? And how do we weigh the level of ingrained behavior and the difficulty in changing it vs. the benefit that the change in behavior will provide to the individual (and to society, and if there is a discrepancy between the two, how do we address it)? Sometime soon I want to discuss some of the very issues you bring up.
@Sheila
Very interesting Sheila, I imagine that you are constantly confronted with aspects of behavior most of us take for granted, beyond lessons plans. In a sense, this is probably a valuable experience, but also a constant reminder that there are many who through sheer happenstance aren’t afforded the opportunity to take these things for granted.
8:21 pm
I’m looking for a little more clarification to your use of the word “think.” I normally think of “myself” thinking as the narrative running through my head at all times, but merely thinking “grab the cup” in this way is not enough for me to grab a cup. There’s a sort of “movement” that still has to occur, so where is the “subject” that wills? Or is it more of a consensus? Does that make any sense?
2:51 am
I’m not sure if I understand your question, so I’ll just expand a bit, and if I don’t cover what you’re getting at, you might have to expand a bit yourself.
Part of what I’m getting at in the post is how complex and unconscious so many of our actions are. Driving is an example of one type of action for me, though it may not be for everyone. But I do think it’s almost certain that we all have various functions that we perform regularly that we pay no attention to whatsoever. That we don’t even realize we’re doing. Sometimes when I’m driving and deep in thought, I might realize I have been driving for minutes and have paid absolutely zero attention to anything going on around me. I’ve shifted, I’ve braked, I may have even stopped at stop signs or lights, and through all of this I’ve paid no attention to the actual act of driving. I’ve slowed down for cars that I may not even have been aware of seeing. I find it fascinating that we can do this. And yet we couldn’t have done this without at some point all of those actions being learned in an extremely attentive conscious manner. But each action is not a single action, a discrete function. Each action is itself a series of complex motor behaviors. Neuroscience has broken down the simple behavior of catching a ball, or reaching for a cup, and the process is a massively complex series of actions. You don’t consciously extend your upper arm a millimeter, then swivel your lower arm 10 degrees, then extend the whole thing forward a millimeter, then recalculate your current position, measure against the goal position, and then initiate the sequence again. But your brain does. You are conscious of a very small subset of the brain’s activity (of the body’s activity).
Now, you might be getting at the idea of will, in relation to action. Our body engages in a lot various behaviors. Some have the subjective sense of will associated with them. Some don’t. Much of driving for me is seems like an unwilled behavior, because I’m not conscious of it. But even when I tried to take over, and will it consciously, I found that willing one action, automatically initiated all the other associate actions. I also found that I was only willing general concepts, not individual muscle movements, and find the whole concept of a “thought” being able to causally effect a whole bunch of neurophysiological processes pretty amazing. Now, depending on your view of free will and consciousness, this might be a non issue, as you might view the subjective sense of will as only a sense, an illusion, a feeling like any other feeling, and thus it is not the thought that initiates the causal consequences, but rather the neuronal firing that underlies the thought. But then…why the subjective experience? But if you view consciousness as causally efficacious, then it’s another mystery that needs solving. Whichever view you take it’s pretty fascinating.