Limiting behaviour
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| | The complexities of life can and do overwhelm us. They would do so much more, however, if our brains did not have limiting mechanisms.
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| | At a basic level, our subconscious filters out a huge amount of sensory information and thoughts, allowing only a small, pertanent amount to reach our conscious minds.
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| | In a sense, the subconscious has a greater control over what our brains and minds do, deluding the conscious mind into believing the contrary.
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| | By limiting what we perceive, our brains make life more manageable.
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| | When you are talking with a friend in a coffee shop, you are engrossed in the conversation, balancing a courtesy to listen with a nagging urgency to say what is next on your mind.
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| | The ideas may queue up, and listening may become tricky, but your awareness is pretty much limited to the current and next topics. You are mostly not aware of your foot pain, the leaking bath tap, the errands for your Mother planned for next Friday, the state of the economy and so on.
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| | These things are deferred by your brain for dealing with later. Of course, sometimes there are matters of great urgency that remain in your mind, and can restrict your attention in the conversation. This is where life can get complicated - your brain sacrifices limitation, and therefore simplicity, in order to get something of great importance resolved.
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| | A mindset is another form of mental limitation that helps keep life simple. A classic example is the pigeon-holing of people. We don't do this when we are young - it is an acquired behaviour we use to simplify the process of seeing and meeting so many people! When we see an oddly behaving man, he is swiftly put into the 'be wary of this man' pigeon hole.
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| | A mindset is a constrained view of the World that simplifies things for us. Mindsets can create big problems however. Racism is a classic example, where our pigeon-holing of a whole class of people is based on the behaviour of just a few.
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| | But many mindsets are so entrenched or subtle that we fail to notice them, and they can trap us for years, causing problems and misery in relationships. We'll look at some of these below.
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Designer versus user
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| | Industry has many clever people making the products that we buy. They are often experts in their product domain, and carefully engineer the product to try to suit our needs.
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| | But no matter how hard they try, whilst designing, they are in the designer mindset. Not the user mindset. They are all too often focussed on the mechanics of the item than in the logistics of using it.
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| | For example, my desktop Sony radio looks great, has useful preset buttons for selecting programmes, and an LCD for displaying the time and programme information.
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| | But the designer stopped short of actually using the radio. Or a prototype. I say this with some assurance because it takes two hands to press these channel buttons - one to press and one to stop the radio from moving. And the time looks like a programme - 'AM 8:59' on a casual glance looks like 859 MHz on medium wave (amplitude modulation).
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| | The reason that the designer failed to correct these very real concerns are because they would have undone a lot of the design already in place. The designer had focussed too much, too early on the engineering rather than the usability.
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Sudden changes of mindset
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| | These are wonderful! It is that moment when the 'penny drops', and suddenly you can see the World in an entirely different way.
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| | This happened to me a number of months ago. I was attending a driver improvement course as a consequence of involvement in a car crash. I was actually trying to step outside of my mindset, preparing to accept that I was guilty, approaching the course with this 'open mind'. I was very keen to learn from them who they thought was the 'guilty' part.
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| | But such an open mind was nothing of the sort. I was still trapped in my mindset - that one or other party was guilty.
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| | True, it was likely that one party was more guilty than the other. But I experienced that wonderfully enlightening feeling when they instead focussed on what both parties could or should have done to have avoided the crash. It was much more important that I learn from the course how to avoid incidents than learn who was to blame.
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| | Now that the penny dropped, my view of 'good driving' was swiftly and permanently changed. I now look beyond myself and at all of the cars around me, especially, for example, where a slip road joins a motorway. Rather than be concerned whether other people are driving well or not, I now try to concern myself with making sure that I do my bit to make sure that we as a collection of drivers are less likely to be involved in an incident.
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| | With this changed viewpoint, I am that much more aware of how many other drivers remain in a 'blame' state, looking to criticise others for poor driving ahead of doing their bit to make it safe for all.
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| | The sad thing of course is that this change of thinking is so swift and easy to invoke, yet only likely to happen after something bad has happened. My viewpoint is that the core parts of this course should be a mandatory part of the new driver's course. This, and mandatory motorway driving lessons after you pass your test would make for a much better driving standard for all. (How did you learn the techniques of motorway driving?).
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Two sides of the sword
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| | The Orientals have ying and yang, symbolising the two sides to everything. If you say that someone looks pretty today, it implies that they didn't look pretty yesterday.
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| | We can be locked in a mindset that allows us to see only one side of things. A favourite example is double yellow lines. When we are driving, and wish to park, they are an irritation. We rarely step out of that irritated mindset to see that they are there not there to annoy us, but to provide access or visibility.
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| | Likewise, on this theme of driving, we can be equally annoyed when pedestrians cross in front of us as we turn into a road. It is their right of way, and we fail to see their perspective - they are not only legally in the right, but they are also the same as you - human beings. Why should a human in a metal box have an automatic precedence over pedestrians?
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Left versus right brain
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| | In a sense, I am in a privileged position. I have a strong understanding of technical and scientific matters, but also a sympathy and feeling for things artistic.
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| | But not at the same time.
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| | I will normally be in the former mindset, the left brain, 'get-on-with-life' mindset. When like this, I can appreciate drawings and paintings just like most people. And that is the point, some level of appreciation is there, but it lacks the depth that is provided by the artistic mindset.
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| | I watched 'The Jazz Singer' tonight after a day of programming. Initially, it was a struggle to tune into this slightly dated looking film. By the end however, I was absorbed in the characters and music, and now saw all things computing as something quite alien.
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| | I am rarely found in this sensitive, deeply feeling mood these days, and was enjoying it thoroughly. I was also wondering why I did not return there more often. The probable answers are many, not least that the pressing needs of daily living do not accomodate too much sensitivity.
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| | But also, and more unsettling, I have many times in the past been deeply upset when trying to share my feelings with others. It was just not possible - all too often, there was no matching empathy. And the vulnerability of the sensitivity left me open to upset from hastily made comments.
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| | But now that I recognise these problems, maybe I will be better able to protect and prolong this calm, tender state. A state that seems so balanced and somehow 'right'.
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