idea entry: week 10: november 04

word of the week: DIVIDED

quotes:

Definition of divided

1. a : separated into parts or pieces b of a leaf : cut into distinct parts by incisions extending to the base or to the midrib c : having a barrier (as a guardrail) to separate lanes of traffic going in opposite directions divided highway>

2. a : disagreeing with each other : disunited b : directed or moved toward conflicting interests, states, or objects <divided loyalties>

3. : separated by distance divided — James Joyce>

"Plato used a similar metaphor in which the self (or soul) is a chariot, and the calm, rational part of the mind holds the reins. Plato’s charioteer had to control two horses:

The horse that is on the right, or nobler, side is upright in frame and well jointed, with a high neck and a regal nose; . . . he is a lover of honor with modesty and self-control; companion to true glory, he needs no whip,
and is guided by verbal commands alone. The other horse is a crooked great jumble of limbs . . . companion to wild boasts and indecency, he is shaggy around the ears—deaf as a post—and just barely yields to horsewhip
and goad combined."

"But as the twentieth century wore on, cars replaced horses, and technology gave people ever more control over their physical worlds. When people looked for metaphors, they saw the mind as the driver of a car, or as a program running on a computer. It became possible to forget all about Freud’s unconscious, and just study the mechanisms of thinking and decision making. That’s what social scientists did in the last third of the century:
Social psychologists created “information processing” theories to explain everything from prejudice to friendship. Economists created “rational choice” models to explain why people do what they do."

"The Roman poet Ovid captured my situation perfectly. In Metamorphoses, Medea is torn between her love for Jason and her duty to her father. She laments: I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong."

annotated source:
"To understand most important ideas in psychology, you need to understand how the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes. Our minds are divided in four ways. The fourth is the most important, for it corresponds most closely to the rider and the elephant; but the first three also contribute to our experiences of temptation, weakness, and internal conflict."

"We sometimes say that the body has a mind of its own, but the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne went a step further and suggested that each part of the body has its own emotions and its own agenda. Montaigne was most fascinated by the independence of the penis:

We are right to note the license and disobedience of this member which thrusts itself forward so inopportunely when we do not want it to, and which so inopportunely lets us down when we most need it. It imperiously contests for authority with our will. Montaigne also noted the ways in which our facial expressions betray our secret thoughts; our hair stands on end; our hearts race; our tongues fail to speak; and our bowels and anal sphincters undergo “dilations and contractions proper to [themselves], independent of our wishes or even opposed to them.” Some of these effects, we now know, are caused by the autonomic nervous system—the network of nerves that controls the organs and glands of our bodies, a network that is completely independent of voluntary or intentional control. But the last item on Montaigne’s list—the bowels—reflects the operation of a second brain. Our intestines are lined by a vast network of more than 100 million neurons; these handle all the
computations needed to run the chemical refinery that processes and extracts nutrients from food. This gut brain is like a regional administrative center that handles stuff the head brain does not need to bother with. You
might expect, then, that this gut brain takes its orders from the head brain and does as it is told. But the gut brain possesses a high degree of autonomy, and it continues to function well even if the vagus nerve, which connects
the two brains together, is severed."

"The mind is divided in many ways, but the division that really matters is between conscious/reasoned processes and automatic/implicit processes. These two parts are like a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider’s inability to control the elephant by force explains many puzzles about our mental life, particularly why we have such trouble with weakness of will. Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement."

[Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic, 2006. Print.]
I feel that we are unable to truly be where we want to be and do what we want and let our mind and body be free because we are so divided in so many ways. Everything that makes us are conflicted with one another. We can divide the human self into two parts; the mind and the body. But then from those two categories we are divided and sub-divided into a million and one other categories. Perhaps this is why it is rare for us to be completely content with our physical location and also be mentally present in the same location and not else where.

summary:
I believe some of the reading for this week, helped answered some concern from last week. I thought of the body as a vehicle in which the mind drives. I also wondered why we are still unhappy since we have the position behind the steering wheel, why we are incapable of driving ourselves to the place we wish to be so that our thoughts and our body can be on the same way. I realize after reading this that it is much more complicated than just having the steering wheel in our hands. We are really riding an elephant. We are an elephant rider. We have control at the same time we do not. How do we get all those parts and sub parts of our human self to all head towards one direction, so that every part of us can be in the same place? Is it possible? Does that yield happiness if we are able to center our thoughts to be within a small parameter of our physical self?