IS CONSCIOUSNESS FADING IN MODERN SOCIETY?

INTERNAL BLINDNESS AND MENTAL BARRIERS

If we want to learn about human behavior and attributes by observing people, we will always learn more by observing people with extreme attributes. Many years ago I had that opportunity. A woman I knew quite well gave me insights into certain aspects of psychology that I doubt I would ever have gained otherwise – and certainly not in school.

She had a very interesting combination of personality and mental traits. In fact, I’ve never met anyone else with these particular extremes. Naturally, I was somewhat fascinated by the contradictions she displayed.

Firstly, she was extremely intelligent. I know that for a fact because I saw the result of an IQ test she took. It was spectacularly high – at the ‘gifted’ level. Those results were backed up by her educational prowess. She was an extremely strong student.

Secondly, she had extreme ‘blind spots’ in her personality and perception. I eventually realized that the cause was an extremely low self-awareness, which extended from the psychological to the physical. She sometimes literally didn’t know where she was positioned in relation to things in her environment. Her psychological self-awareness was also spectacularly low. It was truly fascinating to observe someone with these extreme traits – to see how someone so intelligent could be so blind to her own behavior, beliefs and conclusions.

She was very interested in behavioral psychology and became a behaviorist – a devout disciple of B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism has certain flaws which are a result of a certain pattern of ‘dishonesty’ integrated into its structure. This was obvious to me and I assumed it would be obvious to her if I pointed it out. It turned out it wasn’t obvious to her at all. She got angry and dismissed the whole thing. I assumed this was a result of her being a behaviorist. Behaviorists, after all, take great pride in their inside-the-box thinking. But there were other examples.

Once during elections I told her that I was certain that political views were mostly inherited – i.e. genetically determined. I had given it some thought and I saw a very clear circumstantial pattern which seemed to indicate that. There was a structure in my mind with all kinds of facts connected to each other, with all kinds of possible causalities and probabilities attached to them. It was like a big regression analysis floating in my mind. It all seemed rather obvious to me and I expected her to see it as well – and I tried to explain it to her. She completely dismissed it and gave me the impression that she thought I was a total idiot. Now 25 years later, the genetic influence on political beliefs has become a ‘legitimate’ field of study called ‘genopolitics.’

There were many more similar cases and I started to notice a trend: She didn’t accept any conclusions based on patterns, or on any sort of complicated and unclear inductive reasoning. She only accepted conclusions based on linear logic (deductive reasoning) based on what she considered to be established facts. I also noticed that some assumptions (or presumptions if you will) she used as the basis for her logic were incomplete or dubious. She repeatedly just assumed ‘fact status’ of assumptions for logical analyses and didn’t investigate further. She often reacted negatively when I suggested that assumptions she was using might be dodgy, and once she had adopted a position she was almost incapable of re-examining it.

Assumptions (or axioms) are a big problem in logical analyses. If an assumption is wrong or incomplete, the result of the logical process will be wrong – even if the logical process is sound. The problem is that you usually can’t verify assumptions without exploring them using inductive reasoning. Deductive logic is nothing without inductive analysis, which is by its nature not a logical process. It’s a probabilistic ‘association’ process.

So I asked myself a question. Was she averse to inductive reasoning and the questioning of logical axioms because she had been programmed that way in school (she’s a behaviorist after all) or was she averse to it because she was incapable of these things? I started observing how she solved problems and tried to present her with all kinds of issues requiring inductive reasoning. My conclusion was that she was certainly capable of it up to a certain level, but there was a certain line her mind would never cross when it came to intuition and speculation. It was like her mind was carved in stone rather than being flexible and fertile. I slowly came to the conclusion that this part of intelligence was, to a significant degree, outside her ability. Coming to the conclusion that someone so intelligent could also be so intellectually deficient was one of the biggest mental leaps I’ve taken.

Through the years I’ve worked with a lot of smart people and I see this pattern everywhere. A good portion of well-educated and intelligent people seem almost unable to derive clear patterns from unclear information, and are frankly, mostly void of common sense. At the same time a good portion of poorly-educated not so intelligent people display considerable ability to see patterns and considerable common sense.

The duality of reason

The ‘duality of reason’ has been known for a long time. Back in the day intelligence, or reasoning ability in general, was described as two distinct processes: analysis and synthesis. Analysis is basically what we call deductive reasoning. It is the process of linear logic leading from an assumption or axiom. The process follows a number of very clear rules, usually in the form of if/then. The two key aspects of deductive reasoning are the rules, and the fact that it is linear or serial. One thing leads to another. It is similar to language in that respect. It is thought that logic, along with other serial tasks, is primarily processed by the left hemisphere of the brain.

Synthesis, or inductive reasoning, is about putting things together. A pattern basically emerges from chaos. The process is not linear or serial because a lot of things happen at the same time. It is more like a fuzzy statistical analysis, like multiple regression on steroids. The patterns that emerge are based on the strengths of associations and are not necessarily logical. They must therefore be evaluated consciously. A proper evaluation of these emerging patterns is probabilistic in nature. You can rarely be absolutely certain of the validity of a pattern or a theory that emerges in your mind. Parallel processes, including inductive reasoning, are thought to be primarily processed by the right hemisphere of the brain.

The duality of reason is not the main issue here. The main issue is that the two processes do not seem to be particularly strongly correlated. Some people seem to be good at logic but poor at inductive reasoning – while some people who are good at inductive reasoning are poor at logic. The former, however, seems to be much more common.

This dissociation between logic and inductive reasoning has extremely serious implications when it comes to evaluating people’s abilities and intelligence. IQ tests do not really measure the ability for inductive reasoning. A mental pattern doesn’t emerge when ordered to – it emerges in its own time and cannot be measured under standardized conditions. This means that the IQ measurement industry simply omits this part of intelligence – and the school system has followed its lead.

This dissociation between logic and inductive reasoning is being noticed by more and more people. Articles about the left versus right hemisphere of the brain and ‘intelligent idiots’ have been appearing with increased frequency. Some have even suggested that our current troubles have been caused by the takeover of the left hemisphere in western societies.

There is, however, an issue which hasn’t been properly discussed or understood. It is the following:

• Sound logic depends on sound assumptions.

• Assumptions can rarely be evaluated or validated without inductive reasoning.

• Inductive reasoning is not a logical process.

• Logic therefore depends on a process which is not logical.

• For inductive reasoning to work, it must be consciously managed.

• Inductive reasoning therefore requires self-aware thought.

• Without self-aware though there is neither logic nor reason.

Let’s discuss this further.

Concept breakdown and intuition

The brain is arranged in evolutionary ‘layers.’ The oldest layers tend to be the lowest or innermost, while the rest represents evolutionary additions, culminating in the most recent layers of the neocortex. The brain also has several different ‘modes’ of thinking from the evolutionarily ‘basic’ to the advanced modes – all operating simultaneously. The most advanced mode we have is most likely inductive reasoning managed by self-aware thinking. What is this and how does it work?

The biggest evolutionary breakthrough in thinking involved the use of symbols. Instead of just using basic logical rules to interact with the environment, objects in the environment received internal representations. The use of these symbols/representations had one basic rule: similar things are the same. In other words, if something looks like something else, it will behave the same way, even if it’s not completely identical. This had massive consequences for cognition because it didn’t only cause external objects to have internal representations, but it expanded the representations into ‘inexactness.’ This inexactness expanded the ability to understand the environment and further introduced probability into the relationship with the environment.

The use of symbols became more and more advanced resulting in seriously advanced cognitive abilities. Symbols have now been broken down into components which are associated with each other in our brains based on activation and similarity. This means that new concepts can be created on the fly by combining ‘sub-concepts’ – or concept components/elements. The brain has become a concept-connection machine, working with concept elements; breaking them up and combining them as needed. This has created incredible fluidity and creativity in our cognitive processing, enabling us to modify or create new concepts on the fly. An example would be the concept of a ‘wing.’ Birds and planes have wings, and they are therefore related. They also relate to and demand the concept of flight. We also have things which fly but have no wings, such as drones and helicopters and silvery UFOs. This requires new concepts, which are subsequently created. Thinking using this ability can be referred to as ‘association thinking’ – and reasoning using this ability is referred to as ‘inductive reasoning.’

This mode of thinking is mostly subconscious and automatic, but it can be accessed and controlled to a significant degree as we shall see.

What must be understood about this ability is how much it contrasts with pure logic. The concepts exist regardless of whether they are real or not and they associate with each other regardless of whether the association is logical or not. This is necessary because you can only internally represent a complicated, vague and inexplicable world using similarly vague and inexact concepts. Crispy and clear logical rules or response sets do not work on their own in our complex world, and are an evolutionary dead-end on their own. Instead our minds have evolved toward more and more inexactness and more and more vagueness. Our mental powers come from connectivity and fluidity of clusters of concepts which create more and more complex ‘super-concepts’ and patterns. It’s obvious that this process will lead to an increasing number of false concepts and false concept connection-structures (ideas) if there is nothing to monitor and correct it.

You must, essentially, impose logic on your mental processes in an active fashion if you want to be a rational person. If you are unable to do that, you will basically be a puppet of your subconscious processes, which you will perceive as being (almost) external in nature.

Self-aware thinking

The process described above is both automatic and subconscious, unless we consciously interact with it. If we don’t interact with it, it will nonetheless work and create concepts and patterns. Those patterns will influence us, even without us understanding why. This phenomenon is usually called ‘intuition.’ We understand something without knowing why – simply because the process behind it has been under the threshold of our awareness. Yet, the process is more or less identical to the process we use during conscious inductive reasoning.

During conscious or self-aware inductive reasoning we essentially present a problem to our brain and wait to see what happens. Patterns will emerge and possible solutions will present themselves, often very vague. We then analyze what emerges actively and try to determine if it’s logical and fits the facts as we know them. Then we either reach a conclusion or start thinking about something else. While we think about something else, the brain will keep working on the problem, forming more patterns – which will either pop randomly into our awareness (or even dreams) or become clear the next time we actively analyze the issue. This is how inductive reasoning works and how intuition works. The whole process is essentially a ‘dance’ between an active and conscious logical analysis and mostly automatic pattern-forming processes which respond to our conscious analysis. This is where logic becomes reason.

This also involves us observing our own automatic thought processes – and interacting with them like they are separate from what we actually are. This ability is essentially what is referred to as consciousness or awareness. It goes without saying that this phenomenon is among the biggest mysteries we know of.

This process of interacting with our brain, or our memory, is massively affected by the processing capacity of our brain. Processing capacity can be defined as the ability to hold concepts active above the threshold of awareness (also known as short-term memory or working memory). A normal person can hold seven concepts in awareness at the same time. If this processing capacity is less, it will adversely affect the ability to interact with our memory and pattern-forming processes. If the processing ability is higher, it will enable much better interaction – and a more powerful mind in general. It can almost be said that consciousness, at least as it relates to inductive thinking, is not an on/off phenomenon, but differs between people to a degree.

Internal blindness

The ability to interact with the inductive pattern-forming process differs between people. The ability is probably normally distributed like other primary traits or abilities. This means that some people can form conscious positions on issues and examine their own conclusions and logic, while other people are less able to do this. The people less able to access their pattern-forming processes are more likely to operate on ‘autopilot’ when it comes to interacting with complex issues. They are more likely to accept ‘prepared logic’ and ‘engineered positions’ toward all issues – simply because their ability to examine them is lacking. I like to call this deficiency ‘internal blindness.’

While processing capacity without doubt affects the ability for inductive reasoning, there are clearly other factors involved. If a person has problems thinking ‘inductively,’ there are two possible reasons: A) The conscious interaction process is poor and/or B) the automatic inductive reasoning process itself is poor. The person either has low activity/ability in pattern forming or is unable to perceive the patterns and/or interact with them properly – or both.

A big hint as to what is going on is the phenomenon of ‘doublethink’ or the ‘ability’ to hold two contradictory views at the same time. A person may even argue for a particular position, and then soon after argue for a contradictory position without noticing the discrepancy. This is very common and seems to be, at best, mildly related to IQ. Smart people do this all the time, including in academia.

If things are working properly, there should be a ‘pattern response’ in your brain when you formulate or describe an idea. As you describe your idea or position, your brain should automatically and subconsciously explore this idea and everything related to it, including prior ideas. A pattern should form, and if it’s contrary to what you’re saying, a ‘warning’ should pop into your awareness. For a large part of people, this warning doesn’t come. It’s like there is a barrier between ‘consciousness’ and the activity of the pattern-forming process. This may possibly be some kind of communication problem between the left and right hemisphere of the brain, but there may be something else going on.

If a person with significant internal blindness is challenged with facts and logic, or ‘tricked’ into discrepancy and the discrepancy is pointed out to him, the response will often indicate discomfort. It’s like something has happened in his mind which is outright uncomfortable, like his mind has been hurt. The response is usually to alleviate this discomfort by denial or rationalization – and nothing will be learned. This may possibly indicate that the lack of ability to access the pattern-forming process is some kind of ‘avoidance behavior.’ Examining things ‘inside’ is uncomfortable, and is therefore avoided.

This is a somewhat weird suggestion, but it’s not without (circumstantial) evidence. Thinking is hard, but the most difficult thinking we encounter is when we try to break a mental barrier. Breaking a mental barrier is unique in the sense that it does not only require a lot of focus and determination, but it also results in significant discomfort. A good example is when a hypnotist hypnotizes you to forget something. He essentially places a barrier between the memories and your conscious access. If you can detect this barrier, you can break it and access the memories. Breaking the barrier is, however, very unpleasant. The barrier will elicit an almost phobic response, and you will be tempted to avoid it. If can even be said that the barrier is a phobic response to the memories.

How or why this happens is not clear. The phobic discomfort may suggest that the memories have been given an emotional element – that they have been connected to a strong emotional response from the emotional mechanism of the brain. It is interesting that people with poor ability to access their pattern-forming processes tend to be more emotional and more ruled by emotions than others. Perhaps every pattern their brains form automatically receives an emotional association, and will automatically create a mental barrier around itself. This would imply the automatic intervention of emotions into higher automatic processes which should work independently of emotions.

We usually perceive cognitive functions and emotions as two separate systems, which presumably they are. If a person is emotionally irrational, we usually blame the interventions of emotions at the time the irrationality takes place. If this ‘emotional barrier theory’ is correct, most patterns will automatically receive an emotional component in some people. Perhaps it happens during any conscious interaction with it, resulting in an emotional barrier, or perhaps it happens automatically on a subconscious level. That would be phenomenal indeed.

This would basically mean that every time a subconscious pattern emerges in a person’s brain which is contrary to current beliefs, the emotional system will automatically hypnotize the higher functions of the brain to shield it from conscious thought.

Are we increasingly avoiding conscious thought?

My position is not that the only reason for poor access to pattern-forming processes and poor inductive reasoning ability is emotional barriers. I suspect something else is going on as well. Lack of processing capacity is likely an issue, as well as something fundamental that I don’t yet quite understand. Self-awareness is far more than just the absence of barriers.

The lack of access to the pattern-forming process means that conscious thought is not applied to many problems or solutions. Instead, theories, systems, opinions, and logic, are accepted without challenge. The closer the opinions are to already formed (emotional) beliefs, the less the challenge. Still, this problem does not only apply to the ‘radicalized,’ but it seems to apply to the entire ‘middle’ of society as well. The middle is probably also too busy with their jobs and vacations to think, but it’s still a problem. People, particularly in western societies, generally unquestioningly accept anything they’re told, even if just a cursory examination would reveal it as ridiculous and outright false.

The big question is whether this avoidance of conscious thought is increasing, and/or whether we have a pattern of people lacking it becoming more prominent in society – making all the decisions. I suspect that both are true. While we don’t have direct confirmation of these trends, an objective observation of western societies makes it difficult to come to any other conclusion. What is happening now is not normal and goes beyond the usual brainwashing of ignorant people that governments have used for millennia to further their goals. Let’s look at a few examples:

Lack of self-examination – A defining characteristic of western societies is the utter lack of self-examination. We are always in the right, and never do anything wrong. We destroy our economies and our societies, and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war – but it’s never our fault. Someone else is always to blame for why our policies aren’t working, and all we need is to stay our course. Mistakes are never admitted, responsibility is never recognized, and no one looks inward.

Stagnation – Another defining characteristic of western societies, particularly basic science, is stagnation. Science, geopolitics (attitudes toward the outside world), and economics look like they were put in suspended animation in the seventies. A lot of what isn’t stuck has regressed, like education. The only fields that have progressed are engineering (based on ‘derived science’) and social engineering – which we’ve become awfully good at. The stagnation is extremely visible in science and academia, which is locked inside a ‘mainstream’ paradigm. People who question the orthodoxy and try something new are driven out of academia, ridiculed and persecuted. Incidentally, recent estimates indicate that something like 90% of university professors in the US identify as ‘democrats’ – which nowadays is a code word for persons with low self-awareness.

Stagnation happens when positions and theories are systematically not re-examined. Something has locked the minds of our scientists and academicians in place, preventing them from discarding theories that obviously don’t work. The system is, admittedly, set up that way – but the people in it are set up that way as well.

Violent responses to challenges – Yet another defining characteristic of the modern western world is the response to a challenge – intellectual, political, or otherwise. Challenges are not accepted rationally or stoically anymore. Instead they are met with emotion, including anger and hate, which then transforms into action to get rid of the challengers. Challenges are now seen as emotional violence – causing pain like real violence. Challenges force re-examination, and re-examination is painful.

Unquestioning acceptance of narratives – Naïve people in the past assumed that unlimited access to information would result in a more enlightened populace. This has not happened. Instead, people have become more and more willing to accept any theories and logic without question. Any agenda, no matter how crazy, can now be presented in a pseudo-rational package that will be accepted by the majority. Moral bankruptcy is presented as moral superiority and scientific falsehoods are presented as a scientific consensus.

The willingness to accept these fake narratives is so great that they barely need to be disguised – and challenges to it are dismissed without thought by the public. An hour on the Internet is usually enough to debunk almost everything western authorities say – but no one seeks real information in the information age. People might find something they won’t like.

If I were to describe the current essence of western civilization, it would be ‘civilization without conscious thought.’ It moves unthinkingly forward in time through a narrow tunnel – perhaps toward its own destruction.

What are the causes?

To summarize the text above, I have speculated that conscious thought, or self-aware thought, has been diminishing in the western world. The proposed mechanism is the increase in mental barriers actively preventing people from looking inward in general, and interacting with their inductive pattern-forming processes in particular. People are less able to accept intuition than before, less able to think inductively than before, and to challenge their own views and the views of the majority. Trust has replaced curiosity, and laziness has replaced inquiry.

I further suggest that this may have an emotional component, with emotions increasingly affecting higher functions of the brain – creating these mental barriers. I also suspect that there may be a processing capacity dimension to it, with processing capacity (short-term memory) dropping in the western world.

Processing capacity almost equals consciousness. It perhaps isn’t consciousness as such, but it is the tool by which it operates. If it drops, conscious thought will suffer. I recently published an essay discussing ADHD and mental processing problems where I suggested that processing capacity of human brains has been dropping in recent decades. There is some evidence for this. IQ is dropping in the West, and conditions seemingly caused by processing problems have skyrocketed. If generation after generation is growing up with impaired processing capacity, it will directly affect the ability of society to evaluate problems and solutions. A person who is barely able to pay attention in class will not turn inside and start breaking mental barriers. Instead he will accept the version of reality which requires the least mental effort.

Regarding the emotional dimension, I have suggested that people have been becoming more and more driven by emotions in the last half century. There is a huge amount of evidence for this, including the massive increase in diagnosed emotional problems, and the emotionally unhinged nature of our societies. The reason is likely the partial abandonment of child-rearing methods that enable children to control their emotions. Emotional control enables people to isolate emotions from their higher cognitive functions. If control is lost, we can expect emotions to increasingly seep into higher functions of the brain – including formal logic and inductive reasoning. I will be publishing an essay on this issue soon.

If the conclusions of this essay are correct, western populations are not only getting more emotionally driven, but also more docile and manageable because their brains are changing in that direction. The consequences for our societies will be serious – in fact they already are. The docility has reached such levels that it seems unlikely that the majority of westerners will wake up until they are being personally threatened. By then, it will perhaps be too late.