This one won’t be very directed, a bit messy. A sort of compilation of some recent recurring thoughts… I guess to do with morals and mental flexibility with respect to ageing.

About two weeks ago, Luigi Mangione murdered the CEO of United Health Care. His motives something like that of the Unabomber. Both had post-conventional morals, I think they exemplify an aspect of pattern-breaking I not so explicitly talk about in this entry.

I read a bit of the Unabomber’s manifesto, and would like to borrow his use oversocialization here. Oversocialized individuals have been fitted to norms of society so much so that self-deceit is requisite to accommodate dissociative thoughts to norms lest they feel reprehensible emotions. They rationalize their actions to be moral, in line with convention. The Unabomber’s manifesto contains many interesting societal ideas I’d like to think and extrapolate upon, but that’s for another time. What I’d like to express here is the rigidity of thought characteristic of oversocialization. Generally, intelligence is in some way indicated by mental flexibility. We have much of it as children: pondering all sorts of possibilities without dismissing anything on the account of it being trivial or silly. We form base schemas of our world at varying ages, some of these more open than others. Though, open ones, even “Woke” leftist psychology, has its own rails upon which people obediently ride. Most adults relegate one side or the other as inferior to their own. This is the cause of much divisiveness. I don’t mean to propose solutions to world peace here, I don’t think that is possible on the whole scale of our species, but merely want to point out any pattern with which we think, is a pattern nonetheless. The most biologically intelligent people maybe incorporate more into their schemas, but I believe that only captures noise. Trying to develop a rhyme and reason for it all is pointless in my opinion. We should be mentally flexible like children.

Quiet for a second, what sort of thoughts jump to mind? In what way were you in control of this? Do you scrutinize these thoughts? Or immediately accept them? Subsequent doubt that floats to mind do not count as scrutiny. Develop testing strategies, assess your biases, place these thoughts against a rubric. Create a decision tree for what our schema outputs. This is probably as much control as you can have over it. Do you remember the sort of absurd (retrospectively) thoughts that would cross your mind as a child? Gaze out into space, watch quiet fires bob, feel the water tickling your skin. How is any of this natural, possible, and why do we have such certain thoughts about them? Why call juvenile thoughts absurd? It is because our brains have adapted. What do you think now when you see a minority? What do you think when you think of third world countries? Their people? What do their people think? How do you think they behave? Or a person of a college major different or similar to your own? Occupation? Hobbies? Speech pattern? What are any of these that we are able to make immediate judgements?

I don’t like that my mind does this. Imagining myself a squirrel (these gluttons line my college campus), many of these patterns vanish. Dissociating does this… Connecting on a human level (in a secular sense) feels like a perversion of… something. I can only describe it as muddy. The opposite would be connection with your surroundings, humans only a part . Your mouth moves to respond to the brain-decoded signals received from the protrusions on either side of your head. Warmth fills your body, or maybe a ghastly chill, or nothing.

I suppose in a sentence: scrutinize your thoughts; shut them up for a second then really really look. This was not very satisfying to write… I would like to write more concretely. But I guess one of these now and then will indulge the part of me choosing to write this at all.