When Culture Inverts on its own History: Some Thoughts on Baudrillard, Foucault, and My Struggles with Representing Myself

So, about a week ago I finished Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Two things have popped out at me. First, what Baudrillard is saying is very similar to what Foucault was saying in The Order of Things, mainly in terms of how many societies' have 'imploded,' 'inverted,' or 'turned in' on themselves. Foucault talks about the age of History and how society has began to turn inward on itself: allowing representation to represent itself as nothing but representation of representation. That is basically what simulation and simulacra are. A representation of something that does (not) exist. Simulation is second degree of representing reality: it is the simulation of an existing object. Simulacra is a third degree of representing: it is a representation of something that doesn't exist at all. It exists within a purely representative universe. So I will explore Baudrillard and Foucault and how those ideas might be related.

Second, I think that these ideas of simulacra/simulation gives me some new terms to talk about my own sense of identity, and how I relate to the culture that I have been living in for this whole life. Namely how I resent the fact that I have to wear clothes and like things and do things that have a history, and that I often feel as though I am engaging in a simulation of something else, or that what I want to be is just a simulacra.

So those are the priorities for this post: 1. Comparing Baudrillard and Foucault, and 2. thinking about my sense of identity in relation to society's simulacra and simulation.

Now, when I read Baudrillard I took a self-consciously relaxed approach to it. When I really get into non-fiction/theory/philosophy stuff I spend a lot of time understanding the table of contents, the structure, the flow of the entire book and argument. But I didn't do that with Baudrillard. I looked at the table of contents a little bit, but for the most part I just read at whatever pace I wanted.

So, bear in mind that as I am writing about Baudrillard I am actively trying to make sense of the book as a whole. In other words, know that my understanding of it is far from perfect.

I just spent about 20-30 minutes skimming through the whole thing and I have some ideas. But it definitely confirms that I don't know how to paraphrase the whole of this book. Perhaps it defies paraphrasing a little. That is more of a lame hope than anything else. I want to have the ability to paraphrase entire books like a pro. So, I am just going to go straight at this without thinking too much, so don't think I'm too confident about this analysis, just know that I am just going at it.

I'll start with what I heard prior to reading. So the main things I have heard about this book prior to reading: it addresses the hyperreal, the 'postmodern,' the coming of a new age. It definitely does seemed to be concerned with the contemporary. He was writing for 1981, it seemed. Very little actual historical references. Maybe some. But the book does seem like it is concerned primarily with history. With the moment in history that he was in right then. Perhaps it still applies to the moment I am in now. But I am not sure.

In some ways I am inclined to look at Baudrillard as a shorter, less broad, less historical, more literary version of The Order of Things. Not to oversimplify. But it definitely has its similarities.

In The Order of Things Foucault is looking at how understandings/discourses/cultures have changed from the 15th century to the present. His major concern is how language developed as a system of representation that allowed certain forms of thought to come into existence. Key term: episteme. The episteme is the space of possible knowledge that a culture is operating with. An example, prior to the 16th century things were represented in terms of similitudes. Similarities. Everything was seen as an endless chain or relationship to everything else. The stars were connected to human faces as faces were connected to lakes and to birds and to so on. Not until the 17-18th did language develop to the point that things began to be classified into specific categories. Finally, in the 18th and 19th centuries he claims the 'age of History' began. Basically, people started to experience the historicity of their discourses. Philosophers become aware of the historical development of philosophy, and it turns inward on its own development. People realize language has a history and philology becomes a field. People realize that living beings have a history and we get evolutionary theory. I suppose this has to do with the discovery of deep time (geological time), as well as the history of the discourses.

So, basic point: the episteme is the space of possible knowledge, and Foucault believes that the episteme transforms mainly based on how language is used to represent things, and how language transforms. He describes it as a historical inversion.

Baudrillard also talks about the inversion of modern culture a lot. An implosion, he calls it. Modern society has accumulated so many peoples and ideas that we are saturated in representation. We live in a world that is merely a simulation of prior events that have already happened. Which I guess means that those original events were organic, or natural. But now that we all talk so much, we communicate so much, everything is talking so much, every object and every sign and every corner seems to be overflowing with implicit words. So Foucault and Baudrillard seem to be in line here: culture, and most importantly the language that is used to represent things within culture, has reached a critical density that it now only reproduces itself within itself. Creating simulations and simulacra. We don't meet much reality these days, it appears. Mostly representations representing themselves and representations. Simulation and simulacra. Yup.

I'm also pretty fascinated with something Baudrillard said about animals and their inability to use language, and how that is unsettling to humans. Pg 137 he says: "In a world bent on doing nothing but making one speak, in a world assembled under the hegemony of signs and discourse, their silence weighs more and more heavily on our organization of meaning." Interesting to think of animals as a threat to what we have. I'm not sure I really understand this.

Baudrillard also closes the book with a section called 'On Nihilism.' He proposes that nihilism has lost its dark face. That he admires the 19th century for waging their assault on meaning and their turn to interpretation and history in the face of crumbling realities. Interesting stuff. He says there is no hope for meaning, which is good, because meaning is mortal. It is fleeting.

I am very interested in the abandonment of meaning, leaving understanding behind. It is great and all very nice and important and stuff. But there is something else to find without it. Mindfulness. Something like that.

So lastly, a few words on how I relate to how I present myself in relation to these ideas. I have always had a little bit of a hard time wearing the clothes I wear, and wearing the glasses I wear. My glasses are dark rimmed. And I remember when I got them when I was 16 sorta thinking about what I was choosing and what I was saying. I'm pretty sure someone remarked that it was making a statement in some sense. And it undoubtedly is. People wear different rimmed glasses to associate with a certain groups or certain ideas or certain somethings.

When I think about my glasses I feel like I am wearing a simulation/simulacrum/million times warped representation of the first person that wore thick rimmed glasses as a fashion statement.

Buddy Holly comes to mind. Maybe my history of fashion is way off or I don't know something, but to me Buddy Holly just seems like someone who was wearing thick rimmed glasses as a statement. Wikipedia seems to think so.

So, I feel like a by product of all these years of hyper post WWII culture where representation has been endlessly proliferating. It is just going and going. We represent and represent and represent. We love image image image. And here I am feeling like I am wearing things that have been represented and re-represented to death. It is a strange feeling.

But then I just wear things. I just put clothes on and that is fine. Perhaps recognizing that I am engaging in some sort of representative orgy helps me transcend it somehow.

This is a big theme for me: transcending the confines of the historical moment through a historically informed understanding of my position within that historical moment. Helping me feel better about the present because I can understand the present through history.

Blah blah blah.

But anyways, Foucault and Baudrillard are onto something pretty interesting. It does seem as though the historical weight of society's representation is pretty great. It is definitely reproducing itself in a representative frenzy. And these ideas help me think a little more clearly about why I feel self conscious about how I represent myself. Maybe most people are self conscious about that. But I guess I'm just saying I find it comforting to be historically informed about why I am presenting myself in the ways that I do.

I'll be pounding things out soon, here is a quick filler.

So today at the UMD undergraduate history journal conference (Janus) I presented my paper "World War II, The Federal Government, and The University of Maryland: War-Related Administrative Expansion." I would have changed the title a bit if I had the chance, but no dice.

I ended up winning best paper of the year for the 2010 issue of Janus. Good stuff. It will be on the internet on UMD's history website along with a couple other papers. I might get some money.

I was nervous about my presentation but it ended up going really well.

Then I was at home hanging out feeling good about it. I picked up our cat, Binky, was holding him. Then somehow his back claw ended up cutting me in the face/lips/mouth. Lol. Sounds weird. But I was holding him trying to switch hands with him and he kicked his back leg and his claws clicked on my teeth a little bit. Two small cut on my upper lip. Two on the inside of my lower lip and one on my gums. Yikes. Very strange incident.

But the thing that was most striking about it, actually, was not the physical pain or shock. It was the immediacy of physical pain in contrast to the pride/excitement I was feeling from presenting my paper and winning a prize.

Time to get some saltwater and rinse to disinfect my cuts. Not time to celebrate academic victory anymore. Funny stuff. The way the basics need to be met until I can really think about academia or scholarship. Very funny.

Just makes academics or intellectualism feel like a silly whim in the face of physical violence.

Clearly I am extrapolating quite far, going way beyond a mere cat scratch. But, think about all the countries where people are dying. Where pain is the status quo and intellectual thought is a luxury. Seems like in a world of really immediate issues (hunger, pain, work, etc.) it would be so easy to just go and go and go and not think about things.

Think of North Korea and how there are no intellectuals cause of the government has suppressed any ability to talk about anything. Or people are too busy worrying about food. Or god know what is going on in places.

I want intellectuals to be dangerous like they were in Eastern Europe from 1945-1990.

Why aren't there any American intellectuals who are dangerous to the government? Why isn't anybody saying anything that freaks people out or totally threatens our form of government? Maybe our government is real good. Or maybe people just aren't talking about certain things.

I read Noam Chomksy talking about how a lot of post-war intellectuals bought the typical narrative of the Cold War that was presented by the US government. He encouraged more people to challenge official narratives.

This is all babble.

But basically, I experienced physical pain and my intellectual thoughts disintegrated.

So it is difficult/interesting to think about a place in which pain is the rule and intellect the exception.Which is how it has been for the most part, anyways.

That is what I was doing here. What I wanted to do.

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It is only a brief break. And jeez I love The National

I haven't posted in a while. I am busy, as my last blog noted. After Wednesday I will have time and I plan on writing a number of blogs.

My reading is pretty much off the charts these days. Just in terms of making some interesting new connections between some things. In particular I just read a book on neuroplasticity, buddhist philosophy, and quantum mechanics that makes a very compelling statement about the ability of the will and the imagination to rewire neural circuits. The implications for a lot of the things I think about are very large. Tons of justification and support for lots of things.

Then I am reading a book called Reality Hunger and I am about to start Simulating Minds. So things are good.

Also, the new The National cd, High Violet, leaked this morning and I have been listening a ton. It is really good. I had given up on The National in a way. I had low expectations because I had burnt myself out on all their music soooo much. I wasn't expecting them to excite me.

But man this cd is killer so far. I am very excited. Really really digging on it. Nice that they still got it for me.

Many posts to come.

Graduation, Academic Projects, and all the Business

This will be brief.

I'm done with school now. I finished undergrad in December. Yet there are two strange things going on. I am still living in College Park because I have a lease, and I am still very wrapped up in various academic projects that are connecting me a little bit to the UMDCP campus.

Living in College Park is going well enough. I live with friends and I have friends in the area who I am staying in contact with. More than anything else it just feels like a sort of down time before I do anything else. Move, get a legit job, graduate school, etc. But the real thing is that it sorta keeps me from making any definite plans about the future cause I still feel so localized.

But I feel like I have all sorts of small academic projects that are going on that I feel strange about. I need to finish editing this paper so I can send it off to some journals. I got invited to the UMD undergraduate history journal's conference. Supposed to present a paper that they accepted for their journal. Old paper, gotta check it out. I have about 6 blog titles made with small things written that I could write into bigger stuff. I am about to finish a book called The Mind and The Brain by J.M. Schwartz, and I am close to finishing Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. Then I really need to read this book called Simulating Minds by Alvin Goldman. Just cause it is an elaboration of simulation of mind theory, one of the most recent, and I gotta get in on that.

Then I just got a phone interview for a place called 'Pawlitics.' A holistic pet store in Rockville. I do reiki. I know things about pets. I helped out at my sisters organic pet store once. I could get the job. Bit of a commute.

In short, my reading and writing is going well, but I feel like I have a lot of different projects and things to attend to. And sure, that is nice and probably how it will be in the future. Over and out.

Anticipating Moments, Anticipating Memories: When to Simulate and When You Risk Dulling an Experience

So, in this post I want to explore, again, how the imagination is involved when we 1. think of pending experiences, 2. when we have the actual experience itself, and 3. when we form the memory of the moments that we have already anticipated and experienced. In particular, I am curious about how it is that in certain moments, my ability to exist and just be in that experience is hindered because I have 1. already imagined the situation before hand, and 2. I am anticipating my memories of that moment. In other words, sometimes I can't just be in a moment because I have already thought too much about it, or because I am too busy thinking about how it is going to be converted into a momentous and important memory.

I am going to start off with an anecdote, my graduation ceremony and celebratory dinner. This was probably the most recent moment, and strongest moment, where I was really struck with the sense that my mind was not in the moment because it was being pulled into different times by my imagination. My mind wasn't there because I had already thought about it in the past, and I was already thinking about how I would remember it in the future.

Then, I'll discuss a few ideas about how it is that the imagination is involved in anticipating moments, and how this may stunt the experience itself. Then, I'll talk about the idea of anticipating a memory, and how that can also hinder your ability to be in a moment. Lastly, I'll try to make some conclusions that I'm not aware of at this moment. I have some ideas about how it is that the past, the present, and the future all live in the imagination, and how there may be some overlap between these thought processes (conceptually, neuronally) that would be worthwhile to explore.

So, my graduation dinner. Now I was pretty into my undergraduate experience. I really took a liking to reading and writing and I think it changed me in a lot of ways. Naturally, then, my graduation was sort of a big thing for me and my parents who were excited for me. Also, my sister didn't walk across the stage so I had to do it for my parents. But anyways, it was a highly anticipated event. Even outside of my personal academic success, it is a hyped up moment. All of youth and young adulthood sorta culminates in the college graduation. At least where I came from. How could I not have all sorts of ideas about oh my cap and gown, and oh school done is, oh we are gonna go out to eat and there is gonna be a celebration, oh etc etc etc. Oh graduation is coming blah blah! It seems impossible for it to not feel like a momentous event.

So, the whole months leading up to graduation it is something that my mind is constantly revolving around. I imagine what the ceremony will be like, what the dinner will be like. What will my parents say? What will the speaker be like? What will anything be like? Hypothetical simulations abound. My mind runs through these scenarios many many times. So by the time the moment itself comes I already have a wide variety of imagined possibilities. Unfortunately (or fortunately maybe) the actual experience never really lines up with how I imagined it. Things look different, people say things, all kinds of things that I was never able to imagine. My already imagined scenarios, however, create a sort of parallel and illusory version of the real moment. It seems like these imagined outcomes can pull me away from the moment itself at times. It can be hard to forget what I had expected, what I was trying to anticipate; my imagination is so strong that it pulls me away from the immediacy of the moment.

Perhaps the graduation ceremony and dinner were immediate enough that the anticipation didn't make too much of a difference. I think that is true. I remember what the chairs were like, the heat, the speaker, etc. I am not sure if it lined up with my imaginings. But perhaps I am suggesting that to not speculate about a future event, to somehow avoid the imagining of yourself in those situations, may make it easier to just be in those moments at the time. Don't think too much about what you are going to do beforehand in a situation, just do what you do when you get there. But that is hard. And there might be some benefits to imagining future situations, i.e. synthetic experience.

The anticipation of memory, however, seems to have much more of a dulling effect. I think that at my graduation dinner I was experiencing this pretty hard core. Basically, I'm at this dinner with mom, dad, grandma, nice restaurant, nice setting, everyones happy. But it had such a surreal quality to it. My dad ordered a bottle of champagne straight away and it felt more like a celebration for some reason. Then he said a toast and it felt intense. It felt like time compressed. The past(all my anticipations of the moment) came rushing into the present, and at the same time my mind was plunged forward into time, and I was looking back on the moment as if it had already passed somehow. I was anticipating my memories of that moment. Thinking 'man when I'm 30 and I'm doing whatever I'll remember how dad bought this champagne and said this intense toast and how this moment is just so surreal.' I think it felt that way because of the 2 forms of anticipation I'm talk about, anticipating moments and memories. I had already thought about this moment so much that when the real moment came I was hit with the frailty/inadequacy of my imaginings. Then I was launched into the future and I was reflecting on the moment as a budding memory while the actual experience was going on. It felt very strange to be thinking about a contemporary moment as a memory waiting to be. Because I'm sure it will be a strange memory for reflection. Especially now that I have recognized that both the actual experience and the memory was distorted by my anticipation of the memory. This post feels very weird.

Enough about graduation dinner. Hopefully this gets the point across: being in a moment is harder when you have 1. anticipated it, when you have extensively imagined it ahead of time or 2. when you begin to imagine how it is that you will remember that experience while still actively having the experience.

So what the heck is goin' on here?

Why am I being pulled from the moment by anticipation? Is the mind being thrust away from the present into both directions? Is the brain being primed by the anticipation of the moment and thus guiding your behavior during, pulling you into the past? Are you pulled into the future because you are already in the habit of futurizing yourself, i.e. of anticipating.? How are my experiences being dulled by these forms of anticipation?

Imagining and Priming

So, I guess I'll talk a little about how it is that anticipating moments might do somethings to your brain. This section hinges mostly on my understanding of simulation theory of mind, and of mirror neurons, which are related. When you imagine yourself in a future scenario, it is as if your mind/brain actually enters that given scenario. In your brain, the neurological changes are very similar. When dancers reenact dance moves in their minds, their brain activates all of the neurons that are involved in those actual movements. When piano players imagine themselves playing a certain piece, it is the exact same thing. Mirror neurons, they activate when we perceive or imagine a certain action. With dancers and pianists this is an aid to training and memory. They are working out all the neurons required to perform merely by imagining themselves perform. These neurons then become 'primed.' They have been used repeatedly and the neural connections have become stronger, and they are now more likely to fire in the future. So, the conclusion that will facilitate speculation about imagining future social moments: when you imagine yourself doing something you are simulating the experience in your mind, and neurologically the effects are very similar to having that experience in reality. In essence the imagination of an event is an internal simulation of that event that produces a synthetic experience for your mind/brain.

So, what if we are imagining ourselves in a situation we are soon to have? What sort of synthetic experiences are we creating for ourselves? And is it useful? Or is it damaging? To run with my previous example, was it at all useful for me to imagine my pending graduation ceremony and dinner? Or did that somehow facilitate my distance from the moment, my difficulty with being in the moment?

Well, I guess first I'd like to talk about how it is that imagining future scenarios would be beneficial. After I'll turn to how may be less desirable in certain instances.

Imagine/simulation of a future experience could be beneficial simply because uncertainty is hard to deal with. It feels very unsettling to not know what is going to happen, to walk into an experience without any way to gauge it before hand. So, imagining the experience we are about to enter, simulating a synthetic experience of it, would help us when we actually got there because we would have a sense of the possibilities we were facing. We could create hypothetical scenarios and think of possible responses. This wouldn't be to deliberately create a list, but to prime ourselves to answer at the time. We wouldn't write it down, and we wouldn't be able to remember everything systematically, but we could strengthen connections between neurons that would be in play during the pending moment. For example, before a job interview we can think of what types of questions will be asked, and we can simulate what our response to said question would be. Or before an exam we can try to anticipate the questions that will be asked so we can come up with a hypothetical answer. In both of these cases imagining pending moments would let us simulate the difficulties we are approaching, and we would be utilizing all of the parts of our brain that we would need to use in that actual moment. Here simulation would be useful because we would be priming our brain with answers, so that when were asked question X Y or Z we would be more ready to call it up at the moment because we have already exercised those neural connections with our imagination.

Well, then, the anticipation of a moment (i.e. to imagine a pending situation and a create a synthetic experience by simulating it) is useful so long as we are dealing with a situation that is simple enough that we can grasp the intellectual and emotional factors that are relevant. We know there are a limited number of possible questions that will be asked at an interview or on an exam, we can easily imagine the relevant factors and we can simulate them. So long as we can rationally manage the challenges that we will face, we can create a synthetic experience that will improve our on the fly decision making in that actual moment. So that is how I can see the anticipation of moments as useful. If imagining them provides us with a useful synthetic experience that really captures the space of possible choices and outcomes.

But what if a situation is too emotional or complex to really imagine? What if you are dealing with lots of other people that you don't know that well? What if your imagination isn't up to the task of imagining all the relevant factors and possibilities? Of what use is a synthesized hypothetical experience then?

Well, I suppose here I am suggesting that if a situation is too complex to be adequately imagined then we might not be gaining a lot from thinking about it before hand. I can also think of a way in which it might damage our ability to perform when we arrive the moment.

So, recall that imagining a future situation primes certain neurons which you have imagined yourself using. So what if you imagine a situation and prime yourself to use certain neural connections (certain ideas) that you don't need? For example, what if you imagine social situation and you are nervous so you try to anticipate what the conversations will be about, what would be the best way to respond. But then you get to the situation and everyone is talking about totally different thinks and all of your imaginations/simulations are useless. Well, what if by priming your brain, you are locking it into certain neural circuits that will hinder you at the time. If you imagine too much your thoughts will literally become rutted, they will drift around the themes you had anticipated and you may struggle to escape those ways of thinking.

So, if you can reasonably predict the pending situation, you can imagine/simulate it in a way that would be beneficial. You can anticipate questions and prepare yourself to answer them. But in social situations that are too complex or variable, there may not be much use. You may actually rut your thinking and prevent yourself from being open and creative with conversations at the moment.

Moments and not Thinking

So, now I'll talk a little about how it is that in certain moments you just need to be there reacting without having too much idea of how before hand.

Like I discussed above, if you think too much about what will happen in a certain situation you might, through false simulating and priming, rut yourself in certain ways of thinking and prevent yourself from acting on the fly.

I think I used to, and perhaps still do, have a problem with this. It seems so natural and helpful to try to anticipate. But honestly it seems like it doesn't offer too much help sometimes.

The answer: become comfortable with uncertainty to let yourself just react to people. Socializing happens so rapidly, there is no time for reflection or real thinking. You just need to react to people. A friend of mine once told me how exciting he found it to be in a room just speaking and reacting to another person who was speaking. How dynamic it could be, and how if you let it take you, it could be really exciting. It's true. Me and him had/have great dynamic conversations like that. Ryan Gleason.

All I really want to do in this section is claim that the anticipation of future events (imagine, simulation, priming) is in some way at odds with the reality of social interaction and conversation. Conversation is about spontaneity, about going wherever, saying whatever, being willing to go odd or unexpected places in a talk. Anticipating, simulating, priming, all of that depends on our ability to plan for actualities. But that is really hard to do in social situations.

So, for these types of things we need to learn to trust ourselves to act on the fly. To react in moments with any sense of what we will be reacting to.

Anticipation, imagination, simulation, would be useful if we can allow them to enter our brain simply as possibilities, and not as pre-produced scripts. If we take them seriously, as something we can rely on during those actual moments (like we could do with an exam or interview) then that is a problem. If we use them at all for preparation of social situations, then we need to think of them just as hypotheticals that prepare our mind in a very general way. They prime it for intuitive responses, not for regurgitated replies.

Imagining the Future and Being Now

Lastly I need to talk about how my anticipation of memory pulled me out of a moment, and what that is all about.

Quick recap: I was at my graduation ceremony/dinner and I found the moment so highly anticipated that when I got there I found my mom revolving around the anticipation of my memories of the moment, and so I wasn't as there as perhaps I could have been. I was too busy imagining the future.

I guess there are two things I can think of: 1. How my anticipation of the event primed me to keep pushing my sense of myself into the future, 2. How it is that the imagination can dominate the present moment.

So, I am a bit lost in this section. Don't really know what I am writing or trying to say. But I am just sorta wrapping up on the idea of anticipating memory.

Before the event I was very involved in imagining and simulating it. It was a landmark event so it was hard not to think of it. But because of that tendency to imagine my future self, my future perspective, probably made me more inclined to keep doing that. It was easy to continue imagining myself in the future. So it was a habit sorta continuing itself. Imagining myself in the future had been my MO so here I was doing it naturally again.

But this was different because I was imagining the development of memory. I was imagining how this event may feel significant in the light of many more years. How as a 30 something year old professor (or whatever I end up doing) I will think of that dinner as the end of undergrad etc.

I guess this is what I mean about the imagination dominating moments. I was prevented from being fully present at the dinner because my mind was pushing in so many different hypothetical direction; I was using many different hypothetical perspectives on myself and the moment. I had already anticipated it from the past, and now I was anticipating it by the future. The moment was essentially sandwiched by the imagination. Anticipation of moment leads up to the moment which is dominated by the imagination of the pending memory.

I don't want to write this post anymore. There are more conclusions to draw about memory and the imagination and mirror neurons and other things. But for some reason I have run out of steam on this one.

Brief conclusion: When a big deal of a moment is coming it is hard to not anticipate it. For me, it was also hard not to anticipate my memory of the moment. So, the general conclusion is to be careful of how your imagination can affect your interaction with certain moments. It can be beneficial if we are dealing with a relatively predictable experience (exam, interview). But in complex social interactions we have the potential to rut our thinking and hinder our ability to respond naturally to people. When it comes to really being in a moment it is a good idea to not imagine too much, just be there and do what you are doing. But when the anticipation of memory comes knocking maybe it is a good idea to redirect yourself to the present. Just by paying attention I guess.

This is a sloppy ending to a long and, for me, very fascinating post. I was trying to explicate a feeling that I had. Something that just happened to me. Those moments were heavy and changed me. I don't know. Maybe I'll come back to this post at some point. It certainly is related to so many of my others posts and ideas so maybe I will just reference it in the future. But I felt like I had bigger conclusions to draw when I began. But now I just feel disheartened and unsure of what to do. I think it is a lack of patience. I have many other blog posts already started and want to keep moving. No slowing down. Whatever.

This is about 12 hours or so about initially finishing. I guess I realized I don't quite know what to do with the idea of anticipating memories. Or what use it is to think about it. Or why it happened to me and whether I should try to avoid it or not in the future. I have no idea. I can think about it and make it happen most times but I just don't know what kind of effect it is having on my mind. I think I understand a lot more about thinking about hypothetical future situations, or thinking about past situations, but when it comes to thinking about future memories, I seem to be lost. So I think that is why this post broke down into a discussion of how it is that imagining future situations could either be beneficial or harmful.

Anticipating memory. I have no idea what is going on with that idea other than that it happened to me and sometimes I think that way and it sorta happens again with less intensity. I'll sit on it and maybe it'll turn into something but i dunno what.

Resisting Nihilism's Arrogance and Abandoning Understanding

So, recently I finished a book that I pretty much loved. I wrote about it before in a blog post. It was The Trouble With Being Born by E.M. Cioran. 212 pages of fantastic aphorisms. He is primarily a nihilistic philosopher.

The main thing I want to write about here is the relationship between nihilism and arrogance. I think a nihilistic worldview lends itself well to arrogance. It is easy to use it as a way to write people off, or to criticize them I am gonna talk about how this has been a somewhat consistent theme in my life. Then I am gonna talk about how Cioran and others give me a way to use nihilism as a path to compassion rather than arrogance.

So, nihilism and arrogance. What is that all about? Well, first I will lay out how it seems easy to use nihilism to lapse into a dismissive or arrogant world view. Second, I'll talk about how I think the conclusions of nihilism should lead you to a more compassionate view.

Nihilism and an arrogant world view:

Basic ideas of nihilism as I understand them. The world is without objective meaning. Human existence is one big accident. System's of meaning are socially constructed. Life is essentially pain. Ummm, I am having a hard time coming up with an in depth discussion of nihilism as a view. I suppose I have read a number of nihilist books but not really enough. But, regardless, it is a view that posits that their is a lack of meaning in everything, that everything is random and accidental, that life is defined by pain, and we may not even be able to access real truth or knowledge.

Sure, thats all good and fine. I suppose my knowledge of nihilism comes from Nietzsche, John Gray, Cioran, and Schopenhauer.

Now, how could this create an arrogant world view? Well, I guess I will start by saying that the nihilistic world view is in stark contrast to most of life within society. Mainly when it comes to the idea of meaning. Society seems to thrive on meaning. We need to assign meaning to things so that we can function. We have developed extremely elaborate religious institutions that have been explaining and assigning meaning to the world for millennia. We have legal and political institutions that have given meaning to our behavior and our interactions with others, given us a sense of morality. We also have scientific studies that have given nature meaning down to the smallest increment. Everything means something, or is a certain way.

And I guess nihilism is dangerous to these ideas because it asks: what if none of this means anything? And what if it isn't that way, but I have been indoctrinated into thinking about things in that way? In short, nihilism problematizes all of the meanings assigned by religion, law, politics, and science.

So how does this give rise to an arrogant world view? Well, seeing as how most of the world depends on at least one of these systems of meaning, it makes it easy to write people off, to attribute stupidity to them. When we see someone coming out of a church it is easy for us, being informed on nihilism, to say 'don't you know that religion is a historically constructed system of meaning? don't you see that it has nothing to do with your life and merely offers you a way of making sense of life's pain? why don't you just face the facts and stop living a lie?' So, since nihilism embraces the idea that life is an illusion, it, if misused, gives us liberty to attack other people's world view. Any system of meaning that guides someone, like politics, law, religion, or science, can be dismantled and shown to be incredulous. You can claim, almost universally, that any system of meaning is flawed and should be abandoned. I can see how It sorta gives you license to be critical of whoever you want whenever you want.

Religion is the most easily attacked, I think. But politics, law, and science, too, can be attacked by nihilism. Side thought: nihilism and historical study. Nietzsche was very historically informed, as is Cioran. John Gray frequently invokes history, and I believe Schopenhauer was too. So, what is up with the relationship between history and nihilism? Well, if you look at the historical record, more than anything else you find war, disease, general suffering, etc.. Things are okay for lots of people, life is good, but history definitely turns up more pain than anything else. Further, it is really easy to tie violence and pain to religion, just because religion has played such a role in human life for much longer than politics or science. So, I guess that is why religion was the first system of meaning to come under heavy scrutiny from the historically informed nihilists.

Later, other nihilists would made explicit claims about the systems of meaning that have been opened up by politics and law, science and technology. John Gray, for example, has some very interesting thoughts on science and technology. He argues that the Christian project of universal salvation has been taken up, in a modified form, by contemporary liberal humanists. Christianity, he claims, was the first belief system to offer salvation for all. Pagan religions never saw life as a process of salvation, but as a constant, something that would always involve discomfort. Buddhism saw things similarly, suffering is inevitable Buddha said. Gray claims that liberal humanists have placed their faith in science and technology to create panaceas for human pain, taking up the Christian project of universal salvation without even recognizing its origins. This isn't about abandoning science and technology. It is about finding its limitations, and recognizing the centrality of pain and irrationality. One quote from Gray's Straw Dogs, it demonstrates all of the above very concisely: "Today the good life means making full use of science and technology – without succumbing to the illusion that they can make us free, reasonable or even sane. It means seeking peace – without hoping for a world without war.... The good life is not found in dreams of progress, but in coping with tragic contingencies."

Foucault's work also challenged the systems of meaning, the 'games of truth,' he calls them, that were enabled by politics, law, science, and religion. While Foucault was a professed Nietzschean, it isn't really appropriate to call him a nihilist philosopher. There are hints of nihilism, certainly. But he is doing something quite different. But his work still applies because it resembles nihilist philosophy in two ways. 1. He seems to believe that there is no objective meaning to the world, and treats science, religion, and law as competing forms of hypothetical knowledge. For Foucault, there is no difference between what a scientist says and a priest says, both are analyzed as forms of knowledge that facilitate certain forms of power relations, and certain forms of ethics. 2. Foucault uses a particularly historical method to show that these institutions are historically constituted and thus do not hold universal or objective knowledge. So, this resembles nihilism in that it uses history to problematize systems of meaning. It uses history to show that the world has an essentially constructed meaning, and most importantly, that politics and science, as well as religion can come under the scrutiny of nihilistic ideas. Again, Foucault should not be thought of as a nihilist. I am afraid this characterization isn't quite fair. More so, I do not think this is most important thing Foucault has to say. I'll have to write a post on him.

So, anyways, what I am trying to say is that all forms of knowledge, religious, political, legal, scientific etc., can come under the scrutiny of nihilist philosophy. It uses history to break down their claims to absolute truth. So, it is easy to see how it would lend itself to a view point that is arrogant. Nihilism has the potential to look like an all out assault on modern life, an attack on all meaning. By questioning the meaning of these seemingly universal institutions, it comes off as simple criticism, or as hopeless rejection of life. But I think that is missing a really important conclusion about the lack of meaning in the world.

Basically, if nihilism means to show that the world has no real meaning, and that all our forms of understanding are historically and socially constructed, then nihilism has to recognize itself as an equally historically and socially constructed point of view that has the potential to merely replace other forms of knowledge rather than enabling us to transcend them. Every form of knowledge just enables meaning. And while nihilism can let us ascribe meaning to the world that differs from religion or science, it would be better used as a way to escape meaning in itself. If we can learn to look at the world without words, if we can, even for moments, escape the constant labeling, the constant inner articulation of everything, then we might experience the real benefits of nihilism. If all we can do with it is shred other forms of knowledge with our jabber about the lack of meaning we are contradicting ourselves. We are using analysis to discredit the idea of meaning as a whole: we are producing meaning to discredit meaning. And this is necessary. It has to be done, you have to talk about it to get around it at all. But the real trick is not stopping with the analysis, but using it to find wordless space. Meaning is not produced just to discredit meaning, it is produced to transcend meaning. We shouldn't talk about the lack of meaning just to wallow in the pain of those revelations, but to realize that we can enjoy an existence that doesn't need meaning.

Two quotations to back this up.

E.M. Cioran said: "'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened....' No sooner are they open than the drama begins. To look without understanding–that is paradise. Hell, then, would be the place where we understand, where we understand too much...."

Looking without understanding is the ultimate goal of nihilism. A very Buddhist idea. When we recognize the world as a game of truth, as a collision of systems of meaning, we allow ourselves to escape meaning altogether.

John Gray, on the last page of Straw Dogs, says 'why can't the purpose of life be just to see?'

Same idea. Why do we need meaning? Why do we need words to classify and govern our existence? Why do we need to talk about what we see and feel? Because it is fun, and satisfying, and helps facilitate understanding. But we shouldn't get lost in our production of meaning, we shouldn't take nihilism as a conclusion that provides understanding, but as a conclusion that helps us escape understanding.

So, then, I think nihilism presents us with two challenges, with two new ways of looking at the world: It challenges us to recognize that our ethics, our institutions, and our lives are historically and socially constructed, and in essence, devoid of objective meaning. And second, it challenges us to try and transcend meaning, it challenges us to exist without it, to exist without words.

Planning and Remembering: Imagining the Self in Different Times and False Memories

So, recently something happened to me, and in this moment the line between imagination, planning/forethought/intention, and memory disappeared and I realized they all belong to one strange imagined universe. It felt like planning and remembering had swirled together into the pool of the imagination. So first, the story. Second, the jabber.

The story. I was at my house with two friends. My friend was missing something that he thought he had brought with him. He recounted the days events, explaining how he remembers sitting on a chair with the item next to him and thinking 'i am gonna put that into my back pack.' And he really felt as if though he had placed it in there. He was genuinely surprised it wasn't there.

How could this happen? How could he have the intention of doing something, fail to do it, and have a false memory of doing it anyways?

Short answer: both forethought/intention and memory operate using the same processes of imagination and simulation. Intentions we have considered, therefore, can provide us with false memories. And when we incorrectly remember a memory we are drawing on the parts of our imagination that were primed by our planning.

Now, to expand this idea I want to talk about three things, all of them relating to how the mind engages in processes of imagination and internal simulation. I'll talk about how the mind internally simulates with the imagination in general. Then how the brain may engage in simulation in processes of forethought or planning. Then I'll talk about how the brain engages in processes of simulation when remembering things. Last, I'll try to wrap up how imagination, planning, and memory are all very closely related in the mind/brain.

General Imagination and Simulation:

So in this section I want to flesh out how it is that imaginative thinking typically involves forms of internal simulation. I am positing this mainly on my understanding of mirror neurons, and also on my sense of how imagination is wrapped up with experience. So, mirror neurons. When we see someone in pain, a portion of our brain cells responsible for feeling pain is activated, those are mirror neurons. Similarly, when we witness any action being performed our brain activates part of the neurons required to perform that action. When we hear a sound our brain mirrors the neurons responsible for the action the sound produced. For example, if we hear the sound of a baseball bat hitting a baseball, our brain would activate the neurons responsible for swinging a baseball bat. So, basic idea propping up the remainder of the post: the witnessing of an actions causes us to internally simulate the performance of that action for ourselves. In short, perception requires internal simulation.

Now, I have read that mirror neurons also play a role in all imagining. When we think about a hypothetical situation, our brain is utilizing its past experiences and its mirror neurons to concoct that imagined scenario. So we use our experiences with pain, our experiences with sadness, or frustration, to imagine how someone would have felt in x y or z situation. When we think of someone on the side of the road with a smoking car we have to imagine how that person feels, and we can only do that by drawing on our own experiences in that situation, or our knowledge of other people's experiences. I can't remember if I explicitly read about this, or if I am paraphrasing lots of stuff or what. But I am fairly sure that mirror neurons are involved in the imagination, and so therefore anytime we use the imagination we are engaging in some form internal simulation of past experience.

So, base assertion for the next two sections: Every time we use our imagination, from the mundane to the fantastic, we are engaging in some sort of internal simulation. We always using our past experiences to create a sense of how it would feel to do a certain thing, or to be in a certain situation. When we are thinking about the past, present, or future, or interacting with others, we are in some sense imagining and also internally simulating.

Onto forethought/planning and memory as forms of simulation.

Planning and Imaginative Simulation:

In this section I am entertaining the idea that forethought and planning require you to use the imagination in a way that amounts to a simulation of a hypothetical experience. For example, when I am planning to wake up and walk my dog, or pick up something for someone, I bet part of my mind is simulating those actions internally. When I see someone else experience pain, my mind activates pain receptors. Similarly, I bet that when I imagine myself getting in a car accident, or imagine myself going to the store, my mind activates all the motor and emotional neurons that would be involved in those actions. So imagining the future, planning, would probably force me to simulate the experiences that I suspect I will have in the future. So planning and the imagination and simulation seem to be very closely related.

I just read, in The Mind and The Brain, about an experiment comparing brains that actually perform a task and a group that imagines themselves performing the same task. I don't want to go into the details of this experiment. But, they had a group play a specific song on the piano and another group imagine themselves playing a specific song on the piano. Basically, the same areas of the brain were affected in near identical ways. Imagining an action and performing an action utilize the same areas and causes similar change.

So, this legitimates the idea that imagining the future probably involves the activation of areas of the brain that would be required for enacting those plans, and, as I will discuss, are also used when remembering the event. Planning amounts to an imaginative simulation of hypothetical future experience.

Now I want to make the case that memory also involves a form of imaginative simulation, and then I will talk about how planning and memory may mingle and become confused in certain moments, creating false memories

Memory and Imaginative Simulation:

So, as I said, I want to claim that memory is also a process that involves the imagination, and that it too involves the activation of neurons that were involved in the actual experience. In short, that memory is a form of imaginative simulation. I am basing this off of a little bit of evidence and some speculation. I saw Steven Rose, a neurobiologist, at a conference on neuroplasticity that I saw a video of, say that when remember something we are actively reconstructing the memory every time. Further, every time we think of the same memory and bring it back to life and we inevitably change it each time we bring it back. This makes it seem as though memory almost definitely involves the imagination. More so, it shows, as we all know, that memory is not very reliable, and is more of a story that your mind creates for you than anything else. So, memory definitely involves the imagination, whether it is mostly the a priori imagination or not, I haven't worked out that detail. But it is probably a combo of a priori and deliberate imagination, more so a priori I think.

Second, mirror neurons are involved in memory. When we remember past actions, just as when we perceive present actions, or imagine future actions, our brain activates the parts of our brain that would be necessary for performing those actions. So, when we are having a memory, we are in essence re-experiencing those moments as they have been created/warped by our imagination. Memory, therefore, is a process that involves the imagination and simulation of past events.

Now, to discuss how, given that planning and memory both utilize the same forms of imagination and simulation, they can become blurred in certain moments and create false memories.

When planning collapses into false memory:

I am arguing that in terms of the parts of the brain utilized, there is significant overlap between planning and remembering. The central faculties for both are 1. the imagination and 2. mirror neurons. When we are planning to do something we imagine ourselves performing that action in the future. When we imagine this action our mirror neurons that correspond with the performance of that action are activated (we plan to play baseball, our motor neurons for swinging, catching, etc. are activated). So planning forces us to imagine and internally simulate the experience we intend to enact. Similarly, with memory, we imagine something we did in the past, and our corresponding mirror neurons are activated (we remember pain, our pain neurons fire). So, memory, too, is essentially a form of imagination that facilitates an internal simulation. The only difference between imaginative simulation in planning and memory is the point in time we are imagining/simulating, and why we are doing it. We are either imagining/simulating hypothetical future experience for the purpose of planning, or we are imagining/simulating past experience for the purpose of remembering.

So, given that planning and remembering are using the same parts of the mind/brain, how could they blur? Well, I think I have a reasonable explanation for why it is that my friend, and maybe others, have false memories sometimes.

My friend had planned to bring his item with him. When he looked into his bag and it wasn't there he could have sworn he had a memory of putting it in there. I am proposing that his act of planning to do it (i.e. imagining/simulating the act of putting the item in his bag), 'primed' all of those neurons to fire when it came time to construct a memory. When we use one specific set of neurons (like when he imagines/simulates the specific task of putting the item in his bag), we make those neruons more likely to fire at a later date. This is called priming. When we learn about something new, we are more likely to find that thing in the world around us, even if it is just as common as before. The brain has become primed to its presence. It works the same way with language and memory.

So, my friends false memory can be attributed to the priming that occurred in his brain from the planning of the action. When he imagined/simulated putting the item in the bag he used all the motor neurons necessary for performing the action, the same motor neurons that would be used in the memory of the action. So when he tried to remember what happened, why the item wasn't there, his motor neurons were primed, from the planning, to fire, giving him the false memory of himself putting them in the bag. So planning primes the mirror neurons in the brain, thus making them more likely to fire when they are called upon for memory.

I created a sloppy pictorial image of this idea.

What I am trying showing here is the central pillar of the imagination, and how it is that planning and remembering can both be considered forms of imagination/simulation that are projected into different times. With planning, however, it can create ripples that extend into our sense of memory. When we plan an action we activate all the specific neurons (via mirror neurons) that are required to perform that action. When we remember an action, we do the exact same thing, we activate the mirror neurons that we believe we used in the actual moment. Given that neurons become primed once used, wouldn't the imagination of an action or outcome prime those neurons and make us more likely to remember the event that way afterwards? If you plan to act a certain way in a situation, are you more likely to remember that event as if you acted that way? If I plan on acting confident and witty at a party, and I imagine/simulate myself as acting that way, would my memory be more likely to be constructed around those terms? Would I be more likely to remember myself as witty or confident?

Here I feel like I am breaking ground on things that I am only aware of now that I have finished writing this. The connection, very generally, between intention/planning and our memories. Do our memories often drift around what our intentions were? Do we remember things certain ways because we planned them to go that way? All of this stuff on mirror neurons and the imagination certainly suggests our minds understand mainly through imagination and simulation of intention. So, it makes sense that imagining intention, planning, priming those mirror neurons, would make us more inclined to remember things as we had planned or intended them to be.

The imagination, as a super broad concept, is quickly becoming an important idea for me.