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a preface to later posts, I hope
Jan. 20th, 2011 01:58 pmI keep writing shorter and simpler explanations of my usual obsessions that turn out to be more impenetrable than the long, digressive ones. But one more time, based on a combined reading of the biography of Huston Smith and a 2007 David Brooks column on why baseball exercises the unconscious mind.
We recoil from assertions that human evolution is continuing, claims of the sort that were made by Gerald Heard before the New Agers were ever heard of, because it smacks of the easily discomfirmed sappiness of ‘Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.” We start with anciently developed and recalcitrant physical equipment—even though half-century-old assertions that human physiology hasn’t changed in millennia are turning out to be wrong.
But we know that, although we do use most of our brains (not “only ten per cent,” as the old wives’ tale has it), “we,” each individual “I” of us, don’t use most of that brain capacity. An equally ridiculously unconfirmable statistic has it that the brain consciously processes about 40 inputs out of 11,000, with the other unnoticed inputs going to improving automatic reaction time or, presumably, dribbling off into some pointless neurological activity or another. There is more data available for redistribution than we think.
So may we presume that one of the functions of religion is to do what playing a musical instrument in an orchestra or being on a baseball mound sizing up the batter does? That’s to say, it hones certain uncognized skills of action and reaction, perhaps at the cost of blunting some conscious analytical skills, or perhaps not. Restrictions on diet, curious prescriptions for movement, et cetera, work in the service of this behavioral modification.
There are, as there are with all human activities, less desirable behavioral modifications associated with much of religious practice, which is never “religious practice” but a specific type of practice, just as baseball is not just another species of the category “team sports,” but a practice with a large amount of money and group solidarity riding on it. But I am writing about the modifications of unconscious capacities, not about any particular practices as a whole, or about their cognitive assertions, which are bracketed for the purposes of this particular discussion.
Art of all sorts also engages in modification of unconscious perceptions and capacities. Good art leaves the perceiver in a slightly different place than previously. This alteration doesn't necessarily last very long in any of the activities I am discussing. But it takes place, and its manifastations may or may not be measurable. (That is open to argument, as is scientific measurement in general.)
We recoil from assertions that human evolution is continuing, claims of the sort that were made by Gerald Heard before the New Agers were ever heard of, because it smacks of the easily discomfirmed sappiness of ‘Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.” We start with anciently developed and recalcitrant physical equipment—even though half-century-old assertions that human physiology hasn’t changed in millennia are turning out to be wrong.
But we know that, although we do use most of our brains (not “only ten per cent,” as the old wives’ tale has it), “we,” each individual “I” of us, don’t use most of that brain capacity. An equally ridiculously unconfirmable statistic has it that the brain consciously processes about 40 inputs out of 11,000, with the other unnoticed inputs going to improving automatic reaction time or, presumably, dribbling off into some pointless neurological activity or another. There is more data available for redistribution than we think.
So may we presume that one of the functions of religion is to do what playing a musical instrument in an orchestra or being on a baseball mound sizing up the batter does? That’s to say, it hones certain uncognized skills of action and reaction, perhaps at the cost of blunting some conscious analytical skills, or perhaps not. Restrictions on diet, curious prescriptions for movement, et cetera, work in the service of this behavioral modification.
There are, as there are with all human activities, less desirable behavioral modifications associated with much of religious practice, which is never “religious practice” but a specific type of practice, just as baseball is not just another species of the category “team sports,” but a practice with a large amount of money and group solidarity riding on it. But I am writing about the modifications of unconscious capacities, not about any particular practices as a whole, or about their cognitive assertions, which are bracketed for the purposes of this particular discussion.
Art of all sorts also engages in modification of unconscious perceptions and capacities. Good art leaves the perceiver in a slightly different place than previously. This alteration doesn't necessarily last very long in any of the activities I am discussing. But it takes place, and its manifastations may or may not be measurable. (That is open to argument, as is scientific measurement in general.)
