Visceral Thinking, Physical Thinking

Posted on June 11, 2008
Filed Under Awareness |

Have you ever noticed that there are many people who talk in ’second person’ when talking about their beliefs, actions and feelings? It’s often a point of contention for me - because I mistakenly think they are talking about me. This happened to me recently when talking about why some people live in a form of ’self-denial’ regarding their daily lives. We were talking about the nature of society and reality, in the context of spirituality and metaphysical ideas. The jist was the old idea that we unconsciously attract most of the situations in our lives towards us. Naturally this led onto the idea of self-awareness - and the theory that the more self-aware you are, the greater influence you can have over your life.

Now the response I got to this was; “But you can’t think like that all the time! Life isn’t like that.” In a moment of dullness I assumed the you in that sentence was referring to me. Naturally the speaker was referring to themselves, and they were assuming that I realised that fact.

Ultimately two things came out of that conversation. 1) I react when I feel my beliefs are being challenged; “You can’t think like that!” 2) People have a lot of trouble facing themselves.

Dealing with number 2 for the minute; I always tend to be very open about my feelings, to the point I would use the sentence “I can’t think like that all the time, because I don’t want to start questioning my life circumstances!”. It seems to me that many people have a total dread about talking like that. Talking in second person - in that context - is a form of self-evasion isn’t it?

But then what is number 1 about? I reckon it is about feeling threatened when I feel my views and beliefs are being attacked. Perhaps this is the opposite side of the same coin. What I do know is when someone talks in second person in the way illustrated above, I always feel as though that person’s view is being forced upon me - that it somehow negates my own feelings. I feel that way because I feel as though my open honesty is being questioned. That in the other person’s words there is a buried implication that I don’t know what I am talking about, and that my words therefore carry a degree of nievity or lack of awareness.

The problem as I see it is two-fold. Some people think viscerally; their thoughts are very much about intuition and feeling, this is a holistic view where everything is related and connected. It allows one to see patterns in situations, and when combined with an open mind it makes for a very questioning nature. In addition because visceral thought is tied directly to feeling and emotion - it has the potential to make for a self-aware individual. I tend to be this way inclined - my focus is always inwards.

The other form of thinking is physical thinking…this is very much tied into the right brain, it is all about logic and reason. It tends to be more outward, focusing on the physical word. When combined with a reductionist mind, this form of thinking can very much discard emotion and belief. It tends to be more concerned with ‘the other person’ than it concerned with what is going on internally.

Make no mistake, both can live in self-denial, yet there is an obvious conflict with these two methods of thinking. The physical thinker is generally more concerned with physical circumstances, he will complain that this or that is terrible or wrong. Whilst the visceral thinker is concerned with their feelings, she will complain that this or that makes her feel bad. The problem in both cases is that the person doesn’t take their own input into account. The very fact that the visceral thinker feels bad about something will influence her behaviour towards that thing - she may therefore react poorly towards her mother whom she feels has always let her down. Meanwhile the mother continues to passover on her daughter because of her apparent self-interest.

The physical thinker may complain about his situation or life circumstances, but fail to realise that his emotions play a massive part in said circumstances. He therefore blindly dives into a situation without consideration form the impact his emotions or attitude are having, thereby he constantly makes the situation worse.

As I am always saying, the pivotal point lays in self-awareness; the self-aware visceral thinker will watch their own reactions as much as they do everyone else’s. The self-aware physical thinker will account for their emotional response when reasoning any issue or circumstance. Yet, the problem seems to be that many people do not want to be self-aware.

It comes back to that old statement, “You can’t think like that all the time!” When you have a job working 50 hours a week, a mortgage to pay and kids to feed - many feel that they can’t afford to question life. They simply choose to blindly ‘get on with it’ because they ‘don’t have a choice’. The saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ comes to mind. Yet even if you aren’t consciously questioning your life, you can bet your bottom dollar that your sub-conscious is questioning it - and if it doesn’t like what it sees it will do anything and everything in an attempt to sabotage the situation by influencing our actions and behaviour.

In many ways, life is very much about what we attract. That’s a hard thing to face, and I can understand why many people prefer to take a wilfully simplistic view on life. In the end, I don’t have any advice to offer on this I just find myself once again making observations, and wondering how so many people have manoeuvred themselves into such a position.

Watch your thoughts…

Comments

One Response to “Visceral Thinking, Physical Thinking”

Brian on June 12th, 2008 5:12 pm

Wow, this exact same type of phrase has come up for me too many times. Why to people judge others feelings to make sure everyone is miserable like them? Your right, by “You” they really mean “I am too lazy to think like that.” I think you can blame a lot of this dishonest conversation on the media/education system. Many people are just generally confused about what their beliefs are. Then there is Science that claims to have the answer for everything. This type of rational thought, has totally destroyed spirituality and intuition. I had a long conversation with a friend who said “there is nothing out there that science can’t explain”. Its hard not to start arguing with people at that point! See he is a computer programmer, so it kinda makes sense for him to be “ultra rational”. This person is quite “smart” but only in the sense of book smarts. Working all these high paying IT jobs, really does churn out some nice little robots. Work is just a tool, it was never meant to be the whole purpose of our lives. That’s how i feel, fuck ‘em!
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