I Think Therefore I Think: Changing the Way We Think

Changing our thinking

Our potential is only defined and limited by the parameters of our thought. People say you can do whatever you want, or whatever you can imagine, but if you don't want or imagine something then that's where we really meet our limitations. It is in our thoughts that we are alive, and if we could speed our thoughts up to be a million times faster, our perception of time would move far more slowly and we would have achieved near immortality in a way - immortality frozen in a moment, regardless of the perception of the outside world. If your thoughts live, you live. It is thought and perception that defines us and that creates the world around us, and so it is those things that limit us. To quote an old clich� 'I think therefore I am'. So surely if you think better, you can be better? You... am better?

Top down perception

When we look at an image of a house or a seaside view then we see it only in the terms of the human mind. For example, did you know that there are no such things as edges? Did you know that the space between the molecules that make up a can of coke is only fractionally different than those of the air around it? A rock is made up of more space than of matter, and yet we perceive it as solid because evolutionarily that makes the most sense. Edges don't exist but for the human mind. We could evolutionarily survive without this perception now though as long as we could acknowledge why we needed it in the first place. Colour too is only the way we perceive it - and in cultures where they have fewer colour terms they seem actually unable to perceive the differences in colour. the whole world is merely our interpretation of something we can never experience. What else could be out there that we simply can't sense? We know lots of what's there for a fact - infrared, radiowaves, air... What if we could sense those things? What if we could see what we do see without applying meaning or any interpretation onto it? When a blind person who has been unable to see since birth gets their sight due to medical breakthroughs they often break down due to the intense sensory overload. If we learned to view the world differently what would that do to our very way of thinking about the world?

Computational power and software

At the same time it's been demonstrated that the amount of time we take to pronounce words and numbers in our heads affects how quickly we think. Countries where numbers have fewer syllables find that their populace are able to perform sums more quickly and efficiently - they have fewer syllables to remember and to sound out. The same could be true for lexical data. Where else is our way of thinking limited? Why not change our language and our coding completely? Why not teach maths as something you perform by imaging images rather speaking out loud? Why not at least try? When was the last time we experimented with teaching methods in an attempt to help our children to break out of the confounds of a single way of thinking? Teachers and parents tell children off for using text-speak (AKA TXTSPK), but in reality these abbreviations mean we can think faster and write faster. They are adaptations to new technology and they are more efficient. So why shouldn't they use abbreviations? 'It just doesn't seem right' is no longer a valid excuse I'm afraid and neither is 'it's always been that way'. Who designates what is speaking 'properly'? Our brain is capable of doing incredible maths unconsciously - like when you go to catch a ball you have calculated the algorithms perfectly to do so (assuming you have basic hand eye coordination). So the computational power is there to do incredible maths. It may well be that we have amazing processors but just need to upgrade the software. Thus our cognitive ability is affected very much by our thought processes. Could this be the secret by autistic savants?

Breakthroughs

At the same time though our view of ourselves, of how we 'should' behave, of 'normality', is all also dictated merely by our minds. It is the social constructs, expectations and norms that guide much of our behaviour and thought. We have no contact with a higher power - we have no idea what the purpose of our existence is - and yet we act as though we know the exact way we should live our lives. Why is a businessman more successful than a tramp when we have no outside measure of success? They both end up in the same place at the end of the day. There is nothing to say that the correct way of living is not to give up and become a pirate. So much of what we do is dictated simply by tradition. For example why do we wear clothes the way we do? Socks, jumpers, t-shirts? Why not moving clothes? Why do we live in homes when we could live in shells we carry on our back? Why do we accept that we aren't 'allowed' to swear? Why do we accept the government we're born into and never chose? Literally every aspect of our behaviour could be questioned and there is literally limitless potential about what we do and how we do it. And yet we are not as free as we could be because we are so brought up steeped in tradition and concepts that are only the hangover of convention that we can't see out of the boxes we've created for ourselves. There are limits to our imagination, but we can push them. If we're not free in our own minds then where are we free? As the great and sadly fictitious Tony Stark once said 'Great minds don't think alike. That's what makes them great.' It's when someone manages to think outside of that box that they create something new, that they break their limitations, that they achieve for a moment an ascension of sorts. All new inventions and all revolutions are sparked by someone managing to think in a different way. There are infinite ways to do anything, so why do we stumble across them so rarely as a race? My friend said that all my inventions are 'coming up with solutions to problems that don't exist'. He meant it as a criticism but I take it as a compliment - I'm just looking at different ways to do existing things. As Stallone says 'if it aint' broke fix it - that's why they're called breakthroughs!'. The other day I was carrying a dipping station I'd built down the road. I looked insane as I was carrying the remains of a chair turned into a bizarre contraption at the middle of the night. I was getting weird looks and felt self-conscious. But then I thought - why do I feel weird? Why is it accepted that this isn't the 'done thing'? If people were really taking full advantage of their creativity, in a perfect world, there'd be no such thing as 'looking odd', because everyone would be constantly trying new things. In many ways it is the rest of society that puts pressure on us to act in a certain normal way. We must overcome that, but more we must break out of our thinking habits. Our muscles will adapt to anything new we start doing, and our brains have demonstrated in recent studies on 'brain plasticity' that they are able to change shape in reaction to our behaviour. We are only the way we are because of the way we behave - we are capable of any configuration.

Expand beyond your boundaries

This doesn't quite explain the full extent to which our behaviour is pre programmed though, and it's difficult to grasp just how much of our behaviour is simply a result of habit and pre-perception (like preconception... but it goes deeper). Of course changing the way you think is nigh impossible simply because the only tool we have to do so is the limiting thought we already have. But imagine if we could change the very way we thought and the very way we saw the world - if we could see things no one else could, dance between the rain drops and conceptualise entirely new concepts. There are some ways that we can achieve this at least to an extent. Firstly simply by from now on being active in questioning what we do and whether it has a good reason. My girlfriend told me off today for throwing away loose American change from my holiday (I'm English). It was about $1 in loose change - worthless over there pretty much let alone here. It felt wrong to throw it away, but when you analyse that there is no real reason for this instinct. Just as many weird things I do seem odd but in reality leave me no worse off as a result. But further also question the very design and ideas behind these things. Is there a better way than a chair? At the same time think proactively how reprogramming your own brain could lead to heightened performance. For example I came up with the idea of visual maths. What else could you use and learn? Even changing your own body and the way you move could be useful to you. Several people have taught themselves to write different things with each hand. How useful could this be for a paid writer? Could they also think two streams of thought at once? Could those streams of thought converse with one another? Still this is only surface level mould-breaking. Here we'll look at a couple of schools and fields of thought that are showing us ways to change our way of thinking so that you can sample altered perception and re-programmed thinking. By the way, this is partly why the Biomatrix motto is 'expand beyond your boundaries'. Clever huh?

Ways to change your thinking patterns

Meditation: There are many different forms of meditation and many are quick to judge them as useless. However meditation is actually only a tool which can be used to many different ends. While some meditation techniques have the aim of relaxing us, others are use for prayer while others still are used to achieve enlightenment. Even therapists use meditation on the NHS and just thinking deeply on a topic can be considered meditation. The unifying element of all these forms of meditation however is that they aim to teach us to control our own thought, or to at least be more aware of the content of our thoughts. Meditation is any attempt to listen to, control or silence our thoughts. We'll come on to how cognitive behavioural therapy uses meditation soon, but first the way in which meditation can be used to achieve 'enlightenment'. Here the aim is to silence thought by focussing on a point in our mind, or on listening to ourselves hum or repeat a phrase (a mantra). Once we stop having thoughts what actually happens is that areas of our brain shut down because we aren't using our higher-order thought functions. This then results in things like that edge perception area shutting down while we are awake to experience it. Our language centres shut down, and the part of our brain that tells us where our body is in space shuts down too. This last point is what causes the feeling of being 'one with the universe'. Enlightenment is often interpreted as reaching a higher plain of existence and in many ways it is - it's perceiving the world as it is without applying human logic to it - and often it's overwhelming. Many religious experiences are the exact same thing happening (often in induced circumstances) and near death experiences can also be explained this way. Stroke victims too often explain similar effects.

Drugs: Drugs of course alter perception in a very similar way to meditation - closing down or increasing brain areas to alter perception in strange ways. Perception altered by drugs is very similar to the things achievable by meditation, this being why the Beetles moved on from LSD to Eastern Philosophy (reflected fascinatingly in their music). Einstein too claims he was on drugs when he came up with his theory of relatively at which point he could 'see' the atoms in space, suggesting how altering our perception can facilitate us in breaking out of our set thought patterns and having 'breakthroughs'. In Sherlock Holmes the titular character would often use drugs in order to help him solve complex cases. Of course I don't recommend the use of dangerous drugs as a thinking aid as these can permanently damage our brains and also... kill us. Which would render them probably not worth it. However I do advocate the use of meditation to change our thought processes. And there are plenty of other things that can bend our minds that are currently thought to have no negative effects and are perfectly legal (it takes a bit of thinking out of the box to realise they're there).

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Cognitive behavioural therapy is the current favourite form of therapy adopted by the NHS (all psychology and therapy could be seen as 'self-programming' in a way). The idea behind it here is to teach patients with anxiety disorders to change their 'faulty' thinking. Someone with low self esteem then would listen out for the thoughts in their head like 'I'm useless', or 'I'm a fat ugly hooker pirate' (using meditation or 'mindfulness' among other techniques) and then replace them with positive thoughts instead. Why wait until you're clinically depressed though? You can also use affirmations and mindfulness to improve your thought processes when you're fine in order to become 'better than fine'.

Transhumanism: Transhumanism is looking at many ways to improve the human body and mind. Once we do find a way to step back and programme our own thought, or to tweak it from an outside source then we'll be able to give ourselves limitless potential. Many people talk about 'consciousness uploads' (uploading our consciousness onto a computer) as a way to live forever. More though, it would mean we could speed up our thinking, or even reprogramme it.

Technology: Technology though is already changing the way we think. Many people for example are claiming that we now no longer have the long attention spans we once did. The fact that the internet provides shorter and shorter snippets of information, and that we can choose what information we read, means we no longer have to sift through huge essays like this one. Our knowledge base is likely much larger too, and we are probably exposed to a more multinational way of thinking too. No doubt other technology has altered our perceptions and our way of thinking too - for example transport has made the world seem 'smaller'.

The Exo-Cortex: The exo-cortex is something I developed to help me write faster. It's a programme that augments my existing writing abilities by presenting me with information, using predictive text, and lengthening my abbreviations. I don't want to give away the secrets too much, but I see this as 'augmented' thinking, whereby I have identify the slow areas in my brain and written software to compensate for them.