February 1, 2015 — Burnt State

[ChrisJohnsen]

I was going to post the following in the George Hanson "trickster" thread, but it connects with comments made by @Burnt State in this Paracast episode, and with LCs comments. Maybe at some point a single thread to discuss this approach will materialize.

Some of us have discussed in various forum threads the similarities between abduction, close encounter, NDE, hallucinogen/entheogen, meditative, psychotic/mystical, and dream experiences. Essentially, they are all altered states of consciousness...
.

This was a fantastic post by Soupie and one I found very edifying. Thank you!

 

[ChrisJohnsen]

I had thought about collecting the writing here into a blog space but that would take effort. There are many exceptional blogs out there by people critically engaged in the field as both investigators and researcher/thinkers. I see myself more as a commentator with some specific areas of interest. I have learned a lot through reading good books, good thinkers and most of it has been through this show, the forum participants and Radio Misterioso. On occasion I post what I consider to be an article with stolen and/or manufactured art to accompany it in response to certain episodes or ideas. That seems to satisfy my creative brain and after all there is already an exceptional group of people here to engage with aleady. If I really felt the urge to write more seriously on the subject then I think I would need to also be able to give over the time to read much more thoroughly, specifically in the areas of neuroscience, anthropology and those diligent, critical ufo thinkers and writers like Rutkowski and Curt Collins (as soon as he decides to start publishing).


They Are, They Have Been, They Will Be - the title of the Kolchak episode on UFO's. I keep asking myself, "Are they really and if they are, why are they here with us?" Maybe we really are special, and I mean really special, or we are just really very confused and don't quite understand that much about what we may be.

Blogging is dead. Stick to forum posting. Good stuff.

 

[smcder]

Just watched The Babadook with daughter - a good intense psychologcal watch, cerebral & well written, brilliant acting, and an accomplished stunning first direction with all in camera effects. Look out for this director in the future. You can see in her work Lynch, Polanski, Méliès and Von Trier whom she studied under.

Director Jennifer Kent has created a classic horror, a wonderful anti-structure narrative of intense family drama. It is the story of a mother who lost her husband and how her own grief and son's stresses result in their destabilization. They collaborate to create a wonderful paranormal tale of altered personal states that includeseverything from the anticipation of the demonic monster to poltergeist activities. It demonstrates how the trauma of grief is the monster. This movie is an excellent example of what I think the paranormal is mostly about. Well worth the watch.

The film contains strong language, violence and animal abuse.

Animal abuse?

I know of one film where the reviewer argued no one under 35 should be admitted:

In The Realm of the Senses

I tend to agree, I was over 40 at the time and didn't finish it.

 

[smcder]

Blogging is dead. Stick to forum posting. Good stuff.

Yes and I understand something really big is coming soon: "bulletin boards"? Anyone heard of that?

Let's face it ... the whole 'Net is passé. I think of it as the Nyet. If you haven't yet/nyet joined the

Midpineal Amalgamated Dialectical Mind Articulated Network

... you're simply out of touch. And, as they say, out of touch ... is out of mind.

 

[Burnt State]

The film contains strong language, violence and animal abuse.

Animal abuse?

I know of one film where the reviewer argued no one under 35 should be admitted:

In The Realm of the Senses

I tend to agree, I was over 40 at the time and didn't finish it.

In the Realm of the Senses deals with real life human sexual attachment, and it works as a metaphor as well, at least the film's significant 'parts' do, but it's also an interesting anti-structure piece.

The Babadook is in another league altogether. Mostly mild language, nothing extreme or excessive, just the kind of things that a parent destabilizing, at the edge of their nerves, frequently may say to their child in fits of anger.

In the story, the children's book that contains the Babadook monster's story is destroyed, recreated, rewritten and anticipates a series of violent events including an unfortunate end for the dog that takes place off screen. What's very interesting about the making of the movie is that all the language directed at the child had the child off set for those moments. This director went through elaborate extremes to protect the child actor from any of the ill effects such movies about family trauma and abuse can create for young actors. She said the movie took twice as long to make consequently, keeping the real life mother on set as a buffer and support for the child.

I would be loathe to put these two movies together in any way, especially in terms of audience ages. While both anti-structure I would describe Realm as a transgressive movie and the Australian piece as a very instructive, horror, family parable.

As someone who grew up in and around similar fits and starts of the suddenly violent and/or irrational parent I found this movie to be accurately thoughtful. It has the same ring of childhood/adult family trauma truths as found in the recent cinematic version of Where the Wild Things Are. In fact they are companion pieces IMHO as both are gut wrenching for anyone who is acquainted with childhood trauma due to parental violence. I have very strong insights now into why my childhood dream space was so nightmarish. My brain needed to invent monsters to cope with the occasional appearance of real life monsters in the home. Both these films (Wild Things & Babadook) explore these real life tensions and things do get paranormal as a consequence. Life's like that.

Comparatively, in my own household, where we describe yelling as violence, I see that neither of my children went through the weirdo nightmare/monster phase. I kept waiting for it to arrive thinking that was the normal course of childhood - but not so. A calm house makes for good dreams. Go figure. Lessons learned.

 

[Constance]

A calm house makes for good dreams

I don't understand the purpose of sharing destabilizing videos with a child in such a household, Burnt. Would you clarify that?

 

[smcder]

I was going to post the following in the George Hanson "trickster" thread, but it connects with comments made by @Burnt State in this Paracast episode, and with LCs comments. Maybe at some point a single thread to discuss this approach will materialize.

Some of us have discussed in various forum threads the similarities between abduction, close encounter, NDE, hallucinogen/entheogen, meditative, psychotic/mystical, and dream experiences. Essentially, they are all altered states of consciousness.

Often, the Trickster is referred to a change agent. A mechanism that causes -- or perhaps manifests -- during times of system destabilization. During his Paracast session, Burnt State noted how historically individuals who entered these altered states were shaman; individuals who used their ability to access altered states for the good of their community. In general, historically, there seems to have been much more openness, acceptance, and value of altered states and the knowledge and insights that could/can be gained from them. (It might even be argued that the use of hallucinogens/entheogens was historically more integrated into human cultures.)

While it doesn't explain those cases in which external stimuli have been documented, it's possible that both exogenous and endogenous chemicals and the altered subjective states/experiences which they catalyze in humans may be an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that brings novel information/knowledge into human culture. In other words, this noted capacity for humans to experience self-initiated and spontaneous altered states may be an adaptive mechanism.

Or, for those who disdain reductive explanations, it may be a mechanism that was bestowed upon humans by some Other(s) for the same purpose: to advance the species/culture.

With that in mind, I found the following commentary very interesting. It comes from a long read article from the New Yorker about recent psilocybin (Magic Mushroom) trials for treatment of anxiety in individuals with terminal cancer being conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and New York University. Although the entire article is excellent and I recommend reading it, the comments of interest come from neuroscientist Carhart-Harris.

I've underlined the juicy bits for the tldr crowd.

“If the only way we can access the unconscious mind is via dreams and free association, we aren’t going to get anywhere,” he said. “Surely there must be something else.” One day, he asked his seminar leader if that might be a drug. She was intrigued. He set off to search the library catalogue for “LSD and the Unconscious” and found “Realms of the Human Unconscious,” by Stanislav Grof. “I read the book cover to cover. That set the course for the rest of my young life.” ...

When, in 2010, Carhart-Harris first began studying the brains of volunteers on psychedelics, neuroscientists assumed that the drugs somehow excited brain activity—hence the vivid hallucinations and powerful emotions that people report. But when Carhart-Harris looked at the results of the first set of fMRI scans—which pinpoint areas of brain activity by mapping local blood flow and oxygen consumption—he discovered that the drug appeared to substantially reduce brain activity in one particular region: the “default-mode network.”

The default-mode network was first described in 2001, in a landmark paper by Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University, in St. Louis, and it has since become the focus of much discussion in neuroscience. The network comprises a critical and centrally situated hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper, older structures in the brain, such as the limbic system and the hippocampus.

The network, which consumes a significant portion of the brain’s energy, appears to be most active when we are least engaged in attending to the world or to a task. It lights up when we are daydreaming, removed from sensory processing, and engaging in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, rumination, and “theory of mind”—the ability to attribute mental states to others. Carhart-Harris describes the default-mode network variously as the brain’s “orchestra conductor” or “corporate executive” or “capital city,” charged with managing and “holding the entire system together.” It is thought to be the physical counterpart of the autobiographical self, or ego.

“The brain is a hierarchical system,” Carhart-Harris said. “The highest-level parts”—such as the default-mode network—“have an inhibitory influence on the lower-level parts, like emotion and memory.” He discovered that blood flow and electrical activity in the default-mode network dropped off precipitously under the influence of psychedelics, a finding that may help to explain the loss of the sense of self that volunteers reported. (The biggest dropoffs in default-mode-network activity correlated with volunteers’ reports of ego dissolution.) Just before Carhart-Harris published his results, in a 2012 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher at Yale named Judson Brewer, who was using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators, noticed that their default-mode networks had also been quieted relative to those of novice meditators. It appears that, with the ego temporarily out of commission, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object, all dissolve. These are hallmarks of the mystical experience.

If the default-mode network functions as the conductor of the symphony of brain activity, we might expect its temporary disappearance from the stage to lead to an increase in dissonance and mental disorder—as appears to happen during the psychedelic journey. Carhart-Harris has found evidence in scans of brain waves that, when the default-mode network shuts down, other brain regions “are let off the leash.” Mental contents hidden from view (or suppressed) during normal waking consciousness come to the fore: emotions, memories, wishes and fears. Regions that don’t ordinarily communicate directly with one another strike up conversations (neuroscientists sometimes call this “crosstalk”), often with bizarre results. Carhart-Harris thinks that hallucinations occur when the visual-processing centers of the brain, left to their own devices, become more susceptible to the influence of our beliefs and emotions. ...

In “The Doors of Perception,” Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it. The mind is a “reducing valve,” he wrote, eliminating far more reality than it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be overwhelmed. “What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.” Psychedelics open the valve wide, removing the filter that hides much of reality, as well as dimensions of our own minds, from ordinary consciousness. Carhart-Harris has cited Huxley’s metaphor in some of his papers, likening the default-mode network to the reducing valve, but he does not agree that everything that comes through the opened doors of perception is necessarily real. The psychedelic experience, he suggests, can yield a lot of “fool’s gold.”

Nevertheless, Carhart-Harris believes that the psychedelic experience can help people by relaxing the grip of an overbearing ego and the rigid, habitual thinking it enforces. The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is, and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement. By adulthood, the mind has become very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. Much of what we think of as perceptions of the world are really educated guesses based on past experience (“That fractal pattern of little green bits in my visual field must be a tree”), and this kind of conventional thinking serves us well.

But only up to a point. In Carhart-Harris’s view, a steep price is paid for the achievement of order and ego in the adult mind. “We give up our emotional lability,” he told me, “our ability to be open to surprises, our ability to think flexibly, and our ability to value nature.” The sovereign ego can become a despot. This is perhaps most evident in depression, when the self turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out reality. In “The Entropic Brain,” a paper published last year in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Carhart-Harris cites research indicating that this debilitating state, sometimes called “heavy self-consciousness,” may be the result of a “hyperactive” default-mode network. The lab recently received government funding to conduct a clinical study using psychedelics to treat depression.

Carhart-Harris believes that people suffering from other mental disorders characterized by excessively rigid patterns of thinking, such as addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder, could benefit from psychedelics, which “disrupt stereotyped patterns of thought and behavior.” In his view, all these disorders are, in a sense, ailments of the ego. He also thinks that this disruption could promote more creative thinking. It may be that some brains could benefit from a little less order." ...
​

Once again, humans may simply be reinventing a "technology" that nature has already perfected over millennia of evolution. Spontaneous, endogenously caused altered, tricksterish states may be an intrinsic mechanism of the human (and other) species that promotes change, survival, and potentially progress.

Could you describe a non-altered state of mind and how much time the average person spends in it? Between daydreaming, highway hypnosis, meditation, eight hours of sleep a night to include hypnagogic and dream states, coffee, cigarettes, beer ... and in some cases various intentionally sought states of mind (that may or may not be formally recognized by the individual and might be labelled "disassociative" by those who don't know any better, also longing, grieving, dreaming, elation, ecstacy, anxiety, depression ... etc etc

While it doesn't explain those cases in which external stimuli have been documented, it's possible that both exogenous and endogenous chemicals and the altered subjective states/experiences which they catalyze in humans may be an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that brings novel information/knowledge into human culture. In other words, this noted capacity for humans to experience self-initiated and spontaneous altered states may be an adaptive mechanism.
How would you prove (or disprove) this?

Or, for those who disdain reductive explanations, it may be a mechanism that was bestowed upon humans by some Other(s) for the same purpose: to advance the species/culture.
How would you disprove (or prove) this?

“If the only way we can access the unconscious mind is via dreams and free association, we aren’t going to get anywhere,” he said. “Surely there must be something else.”

Individual experience may vary ...

The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is, and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement."

I think it's just the start. A place to rest that most people end up staying too long in.

 

[smcder]

I don't understand the purpose of sharing destabilizing videos with a child in such a household, Burnt. Would you clarify that?

My brother in law has a theory about "de-sensitizing" ... he says if his wife would ever watch the Walking Dead or Wolf of Wallstreet or other things, she would go through shock and then be de-sensitized and that would be that. The Greek idea of catharsis is related?

 

[Constance]

I think that was Bruno Bettleheim's theory about the psychological value of frightening children's literature. No doubt there's a range of theories about that, here and elsewhere. My instincts as a parent were to prevent, to the extent I could, the introduction of terror into my child's sense of the world. Difficult to do given the reach of the media {and the shocking range of what's for sale in it} into people's homes in our time.

 

[Constance]

The Greek idea of catharsis is related?

The question is how much terror is manageable by minds still young. Catharsis might be possible for adult minds, today and in the world of the often searing Greek tragedies. My impression is that children usually don't have established coping skills and need some time as young adults and adults to develop them.

 

[Burnt State]

I don't understand the purpose of sharing destabilizing videos with a child in such a household, Burnt. Would you clarify that?

The rating for this movie is: Suggested MPAA rating: PG-13 for Mature Thematic Material, Violence, Some Disturbing Images, Brief Sexuality & for Brief Strong Language so I don't really see it as too transgressive in any way for our daughter. Not to get into a parenting debate, but we process everything at our household, and I mean everything, and daughter has a pretty astute head on her shoulders. She would rate this movie as "casual" as far as horror movies go. She has access to the library and she's very aware of what is too adult for her and what isn't. We negotiate everything else inbetween and she adheres to our standards independently. She also was very there for the post movie follow up chat which included a very interesting discussion around parent child dynamics, child rearing and how tame and relaxed her family was comparatively. interesting convo followed around decompenstation and what happens when people lose their grasp on reality. She greatly enjoyed the storyline and plot aspects of this flick as it is a sophisticated feminist analysis and she's thoughtful enough to acknowledge and understand those parts as we deconstruct.

I don't see anything wrong with it . My son would never be able to watch such things. He took in Dr. Who Christmas movies with mom as we had popcorn and chills. She is a horror aficionado and rejects cheap gore and also understands that images are just images, as well as which images are disturbing and where do such images belong. If she was having bad dreams or not playing her saxophone because of image disturbance then that would be a different story but I would rank this movie as pretty light, but with some good sensations of dread all the way through. Knowing the difference between real life disturbance and horror entertainment is important. She feels that surgery is something that interests her greatly and so we do the occasional knee and hand surgery together but i'm mostly bored by such things. No one should ever watch things that disturb them or will worry them - household rule.

 

[Burnt State]

My brother in law has a theory about "de-sensitizing" ... he says if his wife would ever watch the Walking Dead or Wolf of Wallstreet or other things, she would go through shock and then be de-sensitized and that would be that. The Greek idea of catharsis is related?

My daughter was suggesting the same at dinner. She felt that both her mom and brother needed some good desensitization and should be forced to watch horror in order to live through any upcoming zombie apocalypse. She feels that they need to be toughened up.

 

[Burnt State]

The question is how much terror is manageable by minds still young. Catharsis might be possible for adult minds, today and in the world of the often searing Greek tragedies. My impression is that children usually don't have established coping skills and need some time as young adults and adults to develop them.

you'd be surprised at what kids can handle but I also think that each child knows their limits as well and likes to keep within them for the most part. my son learns about horror through some of the more scary dr. who episodes that bring him to cuddle with me on the couch and his blanky - he's eleven and still there for that - wonder how long that will last as daughter abandoned such things a ways back.

i think Bettleheim is a little old school. I would rather daughter read Angela Carter and get the feminist reinvention of the fairy tale to better critique her contemporary landscape with. I grew up with Der Struwwelpeter - a very gory children's book of morality tales featuring much violence, intimidation and death as far as what bad childhood behaviour will earn you. I would never show my kid such junk except for a laugh. we also never bought anyone a Barbie or a G.I. Joe and Disney is the real forbidden evil that never airs in our house. Exposing kids to strong thoughtful narratives that abandon the familiar stereotypes and gender roles is much more exciting. Studio Ghibli has been a much more thoughtful approach to childhood media. talking with kids about their media and the media their friends consume is critical. a lot of my sons peer play Grand Theft Auto with their dad. we would never own a copy. you need to talk with your kid about what media means.

 

[smcder]

My daughter was suggesting the same at dinner. She felt that both her mom and brother needed some good desensitization and should be forced to watch horror in order to live through any upcoming zombie apocalypse. She feels that they need to be toughened up.

That seems to contradict what you say about knowing the difference in imaginary versus real images. Or does knowing the difference not change the effect they have? I think it may not.

Either your daughter wouldn't be toughened up by horror films because she knows and processes them differently or the images are desensitizing her, which means they have some kind of effect. Doesn't desensitization involve a degree of trauma?

When I talked to my son about his desire to go into the millitary - his argument was that he played enough video games, he was desensitized. I told him video games don't project smells (which may include pheromones). They also don't project pain.

Finally, I have long suspected my toughened up brother in law would be fairly useless in an emergency whereas his wife would do what had to be done, no matter how squeamish she felt.

 

[Burnt State]

That seems to contradict what you say about knowing the difference in imaginary versus real images. Or does knowing the difference not change the effect they have? I think it may not.

Either your daughter wouldn't be toughened up by horror films because she knows and processes them differently or the images are desensitizing her, which means they have some kind of effect. Doesn't desensitization involve a degree of trauma?

When I talked to my son about his desire to go into the millitary - his argument was that he played enough video games, he was desensitized. I told him video games don't project smells (which may include pheromones). They also don't project pain.

Finally, I have long suspected my toughened up brother in law would be fairly useless in an emergency whereas his wife would do what had to be done, no matter how squeamish she felt.

Good points. But of course she says these things sarcastically as she feels displaced by the family viewing habits which are all about Dr. Who and so she excludes herself. She just doesn't understand why everyone can't love horror. (do you think there ever might be a real zombie apocalypse?)

Rollercoasters involve trauma too but you see kids lined up for miles to get on them with mom and dad. Getting real life trauma and jolts from seeing violence up close and personal is way different than watching it on a screen or reading it in a book when you know that it's a construction or simulacra.

I always have separate conversations with those youth who declare military or police service and like to have front line workers in my class, and spend lots of time on Remembrance Day and in adult relationship talks about what real life trauma is about, so that we can put some things in perspective and also get a handle on what kind of life or work we want to do. My daughter is entirely afraid of underwater movies and real life blood (that's why I think surgery is not in her cards) and I think that the difference between real horror and fictitious horror is very, very far apart.

 

[smcder]

I think that was Bruno Bettleheim's theory about the psychological value of frightening children's literature. No doubt there's a range of theories about that, here and elsewhere. My instincts as a parent were to prevent, to the extent I could, the introduction of terror into my child's sense of the world. Difficult to do given the reach of the media {and the shocking range of what's for sale in it} into people's homes in our time.

I forgot about Bettleheim ... and Grimm's was very grim.

My host parent's gave me a copy of Max und Moritz when I was in Germany ... these two bösewichter (villains - inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids) come to a very bad end as you can see:

01_Max_und_Moritz

(full text German/English)

I think the key is the sophistication of the media ... the director of the film Burnt mentions studied under von Trier and others. Film-makers have long been expert at eluding censors - be they government or parent. I think it may be hard to assess exactly what effect a film has ... Hitchcock knew a lot of things his audience didn't.

I think it's also very hard to assess how a child sees something, from our adult perspective.

What happens off screen can be more disturbing than what you see - but that disturbance may not be immediate and so it may be hard to make the connection.

I haven't seen the film Burnt mentions, so I can't say anything about it, but a Google image search is disturbing ...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YqwQ0QddO.../nightmarish-new-trailer-for-the-babadook.png

this link isn't explicit - it's simply a photo of a child's face contorted (CGI?) in horror or agony.

I do know what passes for PG now is a very far cry from the horror films that kept me awake as a child - compare John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) with modern instantiations of the slasher film, most directly with Rob Zombie's remake of that film. When Donald Pleasance looks up from the window where Nick Castle as "The Shape" has fallen and not finding him on the ground as expected, he answers Jamie Lee Curtis' question regarding the identity of the The Boogie Man in the affirmative ... "As a matter of fact, he is." I was set for many a good night of insomnia. To this day, the theme music or sight of the mask (a bleached Captain Kirk mask) the killer wore means I'll be sleeping with the light on thank you! But I wonder if that isn't a different effect from the explicit violence available? I was scared but obviously not desensitized and I think that is because it wasn't explicit. It wasn't in any way fun or something I craved more of -

I certainly didn't know my mind as a kid, what I could handle and what I couldn't ... that's part of being a kid. And part of being a kid is thinking you are more sophisticated than you are and wanting to impress parents and peers with your non-chalance. I'm also not sure I could assess a child's tolerance for these things. It seems media consumption isn't necessary and unlike real life, is avoidable. I certainly wish I had read and seen some things a few years later and others not at all. The natural course of events brought enough real experiences for me.

I remember reading that Gunsmoke was an early example of media violence, based on the number of (completely bloodless) killins in each episode. What had happened was in the late 40s and early 50s people watched Playhouse 90 and others and then turned off the television and discussed what they had seen. The 50s brought the Korean War and increased violence in the city streets of America and so sponsors wanted to ratchet up the level of television violence in order to keep people's attention and ratchet down the quality so that people wouldn't have that much to talk about and would leave the TV on.

 

[smcder]

Good points. But of course she says these things sarcastically as she feels displaced by the family viewing habits which are all about Dr. Who and so she excludes herself. She just doesn't understand why everyone can't love horror. (do you think there ever might be a real zombie apocalypse?)

Rollercoasters involve trauma too but you see kids lined up for miles to get on them with mom and dad. Getting real life trauma and jolts from seeing violence up close and personal is way different than watching it on a screen or reading it in a book when you know that it's a construction or simulacra.

I always have separate conversations with those youth who declare military or police service and like to have front line workers in my class, and spend lots of time on Remembrance Day and in adult relationship talks about what real life trauma is about, so that we can put some things in perspective and also get a handle on what kind of life or work we want to do. My daughter is entirely afraid of underwater movies and real life blood (that's why I think surgery is not in her cards) and I think that the difference between real horror and fictitious horror is very, very far apart.

Yes, just as pornography and real sex are very, very far apart.

Here in the Bible Belt anyway, parents seem to have unlimited tolerance for violence in the media but no tolerance for sex/nudity (where kids are concernted) - even the relatively rare portrayals of healthy physical relationships.

My niece was very upset one time about a scene in a movie, a woman was blown away in a tornado, but before she was ripped out of view, the tornado tore away her clothes revealing a naked body beneath and that was very upsetting to her. I asked her how she felt about the woman's death and she said "oh, that part was OK". So I asker her point blank if she'd rather see a violent death or naked woman and she opted for the death.

Sponsors spend millions for a few seconds of Super Bowl time:

Top 7 Most Expensive Super Bowl Commercials Of All Time | Super Bowl Commercials 2015

... so it must work ... and yet I don't seem to feel anything immediately after watching a Taco Bell commercial.

 

[Constance]

My concern is with the subconscious effects of even momentary flashes of violence and/or terror. Like the theme music that still haunts you after decades of something you saw too soon, or better not at all. The subconscious is like a sponge. It absorbs things we haven't been aware of hearing or seeing or denied in the moment they occurred. And the subconscious is not critical or rational, does not sort out the chaos of all the information it contains. Which is why so many adults suffer from events and experiences that they have literally suppressed and buried in forgetfulness, but which still affect them in serious and destabilizing ways that require psychological therapy and guidance to work through and move beyond.

 

[smcder]

My concern is with the subconscious effects of even momentary flashes of violence and/or terror. Like the theme music that still haunts you after decades of something you saw too soon, or better not at all. The subconscious is like a sponge. It absorbs things we haven't been aware of hearing or seeing or denied in the moment they occurred. And the subconscious is not critical or rational, does not sort out the chaos of all the information it contains. Which is why so many adults suffer from events and experiences that they have literally suppressed and buried in forgetfulness, but which still affect them in serious and destabilizing ways that require psychological therapy and guidance to work through and move beyond.

I tend to agree with that and I think media manipulates at this subconscious level in very sophisticated ways - commercials certainly do and restaurants hire psychologists to design their menus ... the same techniques are used in film to direct and control attention and for other effects, so that I think it's hard to evaluate the effect a film may have from the way you consciously feel about it, especially in the moment.

 

[Soupie]

Could you describe a non-altered state of mind and how much time the average person spends in it? Between daydreaming, highway hypnosis, meditation, eight hours of sleep a night to include hypnagogic and dream states, coffee, cigarettes, beer ... and in some cases various intentionally sought states of mind (that may or may not be formally recognized by the individual and might be labelled "disassociative" by those who don't know any better, also longing, grieving, dreaming, elation, ecstacy, anxiety, depression ... etc etc

By altered state of mind, I'm identifying states of mind in which one is experiencing sensory hallucinations. (Incidentally, the neuroscientist G. Tonini has described normal consciousness as a waking dream, so in that regard, all experience would be a hallucination.)

Thus, roughly, a non-altered state of mind would be a state of mind in which ones experiences correlated strongly with their current environment. (Of course we could have a field day with that statement, so lets have at it, haha.)

Re: prove/disprove a capacity to experience altered states as an adaption.

My understanding is that evolution acts on individuals, not species, so this idea is already on shaky ground. Unless one were to consider that a capacity to experience altered states (hallucinations) was adaptive at the individual level.

Im sure an argument could be made; I consider dreams altered states, and I think important learning happens during dreams, so there's that. If humans couldnt dream, what then? (I did read about a man who went decades without sleeping; I wonder what effects this may have had on him, other than being grouchy all the time. Damn.)

Other than some type of cruel animal studies, no, I'm not sure it could be (dis)proved.