[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #12

[L. Michael Hall]

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Meta Reflections 2011 - #12

March 14, 2011

 

 

BRAIN LEVELS AND WATCHING MOVIES

Alfred Korzybski Series #8

 

 

If you read Korzybski's Science and Sanity you will find that he not only
wrote a lot about the visual representational system, but he valued it as
the most important one.  In fact, he made visualization central to the
neuro-linguistic training that he did in the 1940s.  He valued the visual
system over the auditory and kinesthetic channels and made comments about
limiting oneself to the others could possibly infantalize a person.

 

He also used his "levels of abstraction" to provide a mathematic explanation
for translating the processing levels in the brain so that we can translate
"dynamic" states into "static" states and vise versa.  And why would we want
to do that?  Primarily because there are both brain and representational
levels in the movies that we visually represent.  There are levels within
those movies- levels processed at different levels and in different ways
that creates two kinds of experiences: emotional experiences and
mindful-conceptual experiences.

 

In 1933 neuro-linguistic training focused on distinguishing the levels of
abstracting.  The reason is so that we do not confuse different the logical
or meta levels.  And one of the ways Korzybski did this was what he called
"training in visualization."

"... experience and analysis show that all forms of identification may be
successfully eliminated by training in visualization ..." (p. 423)

 

What is the mathematical function that we can do in our mental processing
via visualization?  Namely, we are able to translate a dynamic experience
into a static representation.   And why do that?  So that by analyzing the
static representation we can not only feel and experience the story
emotionally, but also understand it at a higher level of perception.  And by
going in that direction, we can also go in the other direction-and translate
a static representation back so that we experience it as dynamic thereby
translating what we know into neurology and muscle memory.

 

Korzybski illustrated all of this by referring to watching a movie.
Normally we experience a moving picture as dynamic and because we do, we
experience it as emotionally moving.  We "live through" the visual images as
if it was our experience- it induces us into states and emotional
experiences.

"When we watch a moving picture representing some life occurrence, our
'emotions' are aroused, we 'live through' the drama; but the details, in the
main, are blurred, and a short time after seeing it either we forget it all
or in part, or our memory falsifies most effectively what was seen.  It is
easy to verify the above experimentally by seeing one picture twice or three
times, with an interval of a few days between each seeing.  The picture was
'moving', all was changing, shifting, dynamic, similar to the world and our
feelings on the un-speakable levels.  The impressions were vague, shifting,
non-lasting, and what was left of it was mostly coloured by the individual
mood, etc. while seeing the moving picture.  Naturally, under such
conditions, there is little possibility of a rational scientific analysis of
a situation.

 

"But if we stop the moving film which ran, say, thirty minutes, and analyse
the static and extensional series of small pictures on the reel, we find
that the drama which so stirred our 'emotions' in its moving aspect becomes
a series of slightly different static pictures, each difference between the
given jerk or grimace being a measurable entity, establishing relations
which last indefinitely."

 

Here are two ways to view a movie and each way evokes a different state.
When we look at a movie as a whole, we are induced into an emotional state.
When we slow it down and view it as individual pictures, as a series of
pictures, the level of our brain is activated that enables us to analyze the
movie.

            "The moving picture represents the usually brief processes going
on in the lower nerve centres, 'close to life', but unreliable and evading
scrutiny.  The arrested static film which lasts indefinitely, giving
measurable differences between the recorded jerks and grimaces, obviously
allows analysis and gives a good analogy of the working of the higher nerve
centres, disclosing also that all life occurrences have many aspects, the
selection of which is mostly a problem of our pleasure and of the selection
of language." (p. 292)

 

Each way of viewing the movie involves a different level of the brain and
therefore a different kind of understanding or intelligence.  But it is not
an either-or choice.  We need both and we need both for different reasons.

            "The moving pictures gives us the process; each static film of
the reel gives us stages of the process in chosen intervals.  In case we
want a moving picture of a growing plant, for instance, we photograph it at
given intervals and then run it in a moving-picture projector, and then we
see the process of growth.  These are empirical facts, and the calculus
supplies us with a language of similar structure with many other important
consequences."  (p. 292)

 

In a movie the same "information" is communicated at two levels-separately
as a series of static images that are measurable in their differences.  At
this level and dimension we can see and appreciate the differences.  Seen in
this way we can learn new things that we didn't see before.  Seen as a
movie, we see something else that cannot be seen at the separate static
level, we see the gestalt- the overall experience and it moves us.

 

Similarly the human nervous system has two key parts for differentiating the
dynamic and the static.     "The cortex receives its material as elaborated
by the thalamus.  The abstractions of the cortex are abstractions from
abstractions, and so ought to be called abstractions of higher order."

 

Both of these kinds of thinking, the emotional one and the thoughtful or
mindful one which enables us to process the same information conceptually,
are needed.  The first level of thinking occurs in the lower levels of the
brain and generates our emotional thinking which creates a sense of an alive
world, always shifting and changing.

"According to our daily experience and scientific knowledge, the outside
world is an ever-changing chain of events, a kind of flux; and, naturally,
those nerve centres in closest contact with the outside world must react in
a shifting way. These reactions are easily moved one way or another, as in
our 'emotions', 'affective moods', 'attention', 'concentration',
'evaluation', and other such semantic responses.  In these processes, some
associative or relational circuits exist, and there may be some very low
kind of 'thinking' on this level. Birds have a well-developed, or, perhaps,
over-developed, thalamus but under-developed and poor cortex, which may be
connected with their stupidity and excitability. 

 

"Something similar could be said about the 'thalamic thinking' in humans;
those individuals who overwork their thalamus and use their cortex too
little are 'emotional' and stupid.  This statement is not exaggerated,
because there are experimental data to show how through a psycho-neural
training the semantic reaction in such cases, can be re-educated, and with
the elimination of the semantic disturbances, there is a marked development
of poise, balance, and a proportional increase of critical judgement, and so
'intelligence'.

 

The higher level generates our conceptual thinking:

"When these shifting, dynamic, affective, thalamic-region, lower order
abstractions are abstracted again by the higher centres, these new
abstractions are further removed from the outside world and must be somehow
different. 

"In fact, they are different; and one of the most characteristic differences
is that they have lost their shifting character.  These new abstractions are
relatively static. ... The value is chiefly in the fact that such higher
order abstractions represent a perfected kind of memory, which can be
recalled exactly in the form as it was originally produced."  (pp. 290-1)

 

[So in a movie] "... we see a very good representation of life with all its
continuity of transitions between joy and sorrow.  If we look at an arrested
film we find a definite number of static pictures, each differing from the
next by a measurable difference or jump, and the joy or sorrow which moved
us so in the play of the actors on the moving film, becomes a static
manifold of static pictures each differing measurably from its neighbour by
a slightly more or less accentuated grimace."

 

A movie in slow motion enables an observer to see processes that are too
fast at the normal speed to see and detect.  Today we film things, slow the
film down to the slow-motion speed and learn a lot about the dynamics
involved in various activities and experiences. 

"If we increase the number of pictures in a unit of 'time' by using a faster
camera and then release this film at the ordinary speed, we get what is
called slow motion pictures ...   In them we notice a much greater
smoothness of movements which in life are jerky, as, for instance, the
movements of a running horse.  They appear smooth and non-jerky, the horse
looks as if it were swimming."

 

Next we can slow things down even more for an even more thorough study or
modeling.

"The above ... is the best analogy ... of the working of our nervous system
and of the difference between orders of abstractions.  Let us imagine that
someone wants to study some event as presented by the moving picture camera.
What should he do?  He would first see the picture, in its moving, dynamic
form, and later he would arrest the movement and devote himself to the
contemplation of the static extensional manifold, or series, of the static
pictures of the film.  It should be noticed that the differences between the
static pictures are finite, definite and measurable."

 

All of this highlights the power of taking any experience and viewing it
from multiple perspectives.

"The power of analysis which we humans, possess in our higher order
abstractions is due precisely to the fact that they are static and so we can
take our 'time' to investigate, analyse, etc.  the lower order abstractions,
such as our looking at the moving picture, are shifting and non-permanent
and thus evade any serious analysis.  On the level of looking at the moving
film, we get a general feeling of the events, with a very imperfect memory
of what we have seen, coloured to a large extent by our moods and other
'emotional' or organic states.  We are on the shifting level of lower order
abstractions, 'feelings', 'motions', and 'emotions'.  The first lower
centres do the best they can in a given case but the value of their results
is highly doubtful, as they are not especially reliable.  

 

So we need both perspectives.  With both the emotional experience and the
considerate thoughtful understanding of an experience, different levels of
our brain is activated.  And because of the order of the brain levels, from
lower to higher, we also need to bring the lower emotional processing up to
the higher levels so that we can understand them.  That's what allows us to
take control of them.  Doling that is as Korzybski here said, a "survival
mechanism" for us humans. 

"Now the higher order abstractions are produced by the higher centres,
further removed, and not in direct contact with the world around us.  With
the finite velocity of nerve currents it takes 'time' for impulses to reach
these centres, as the cortical pathways offer higher neural resistances than
the other pathways.  So there has to be a survival mechanism in the
production of nervous means for arresting the stream of events and producing
static pictures of permanent character, which may allow us to investigate,
verify, analyse, etc.  It must be noticed that because of this higher neural
resistance of higher centres and the static character of the higher
abstractions, these abstractions are less distorted by affective moods.
For, since the higher abstractions persist, if we care to remember them, and
the moods vary, we can contemplate the abstractions under different moods
and so come to some average outlook on a given problem.  It is true that we
seldom do this, but we may do it, and this is of importance to us." (pp.
578-9)

 

So in your Movie-Mind -the neuro-linguistic challenge is to welcome and
embrace experience at the lower and the higher levels, to feel them
emotionally and to understand them conceptually.  And after you have taken
the time for analysis, investigation, to verify, and to contemplate, then
take your "knowing" at that level and translate it back down to the
emotional level so that you can experience it fully in your neurology.  In
Neuro-Semantics, we call that the mind-to-muscle process.

 

 

Diagram:

 

 

 

                                                Cortical: Higher level
abstractions                                             Further removed

                                                (Relatively static; analyze
static pictures)                               from the outside world

 


 
________________________

 

                                                                Thalamic
thinking

                                                    (Emotional / reactive,
excitable)                                           Close to life

                                                          State induction -
mood                                                     can be stupid

 
Semantic disturbances

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

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