What Keeps Us from Action?

If you can do it, should do it, and want to do it, what are you waiting for? Many things in life that we excuse or misplace blame for are not created by what we do but by what we fail to do. Maybe we just procrastinate and just don’t get around to action. Or maybe it’s just a thought, something that we think would be nice to do, but we just aren’t serious about it.

What keeps us from action? Can, should, and want ought to be pretty compelling. A few years ago I was asked by a group of editors to write a chapter on “Neurobiology of Agency” for a scholarly book. Don’t worry. I won’t burden you here with what I wrote for the book chapter. But that task caused me to reflect on agency from the perspective of  the everyday issues of what we do and fail to do.

Have you pulled off the road of progress?

Souce: Unsplash

Some possible answers come from my own experience. One excuse is that we just can’t seem to find the time. That won’t wash. Whatever we do in life, we have found or made time for. Final choices are matters of priority, and sometimes we don’t prioritize well.

Fear is an obvious cause of inaction. There are many kinds of fear that cause inaction. There is:

•        Fear of failure.
•        Fear of being different or out-of-step.
•        Fear of rejection.
•        Even fear of success.  

Fear of failure arises from self-doubt. We may think we don’t know enough, don’t have enough time or energy, or lack ability, resources, and help. The cure for such fear is to learn what is needed, make the time, pump ourselves up emotionally so we will have the energy, hone our relevant skill set, and hustle for resources and help. These things can be demanding. It is no wonder there are so many things we can, should, and want to do but don’t do.

All our life, beginning with school, we are conditioned to consider failure as a bad thing. But failure is often a good, even necessary, thing. The ratio between failures and successes for any given person is rather stable. Thus, if you want more successes, you need to make more failures. This truth is recognized even the corporate world, and the most innovative companies practice it. Jeff Dyer, in his book The Innovator’s DNA, says the key to business success is to “fail often, fail fast, fail cheap.” It’s o.k. to fail, as long as you learn from it. Our mantra should be: “Keep tweaking until it works.” This is exactly how Edison invented the light bulb. Most other inventors and creative people in general have operated with the same mantra.

Fear of being different can cause people to join groups, causes, and lifestyles that are not be good for them or even harmful--criminal gangs are an extreme example. The corollary is that bad social commitments make it harder to experience better alternatives. Not everyone can be a leader, who by definition is different from the crowd. But all of us are better off when we are our own person, march to our own drummer, become “captain of our own soul.”

Fear of being different often arises from personal insecurity and lack of confidence. These are crippling emotions and one’s life can never be fully actualized until they are overcome. This comes to the matter of self-esteem. One thing many people don’t realize is that self-esteem has two quite distinct components: self-worth and self-confidence. Self-worth is given (by being valued and loved by others, by God). Self-confidence cannot be given−it has to be earned. People who lack the confidence to “put themselves on the line” deny themselves opportunities to enjoy the fruits of success. Their life becomes a vicious cycle that begins with lack of confidence, lack of agency, lack of success, and increased justification not to be confident.

If we are different, the in-crowd may reject us. Rejection is certainly depressing. Nobody in his right mind wants to be depressed. But no life can be fulfilling when it is lived to satisfy the opinions others may have of us. We need to be true to ourselves, to trust in our values and standards. If who we are is not worthy of such trust, we can certainly fix that. This dictum lies at the heart of Socrates’ great admonition: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Fear of success is often learned by watching how others have failed to adjust to success. Witness the entertainment celebrities who end up committing suicide. Most of us probably know personally some people who have become conceited, aloof, condescending, arrogant, or otherwise unlikable as a result of their success. We don’t want that to happen to us. But when we surrender to our fear of success, we affirm our lack of trust in ourselves. Do we really need to reinforce such lack of self-trust?

So, when life offers you the chance to do something you can, should, and want to do, just DO IT!

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Reference:

Klemm, W. R. (2015). Neurobiological perspectives on agency: 10 axioms and ten propositions, p. 51-88, in Constraints of Agency, edited by Craig W. Gruber et al. New York: Springer.

"I Observer"/"I Avatar"

As a young adult, I bought crime novelist Mickey Spillane’s premier 1947 novel, I, The Jury. Before it was made into two movies, the book had sold 3.5 million copies. In a flurry of action, Spillane wrote it in 19 days.

In ways generally unrecognized, the book captures the essence of the existential “I” that we all carry around in that three-and-a-half pound of mush inside our head. The protagonist of the book’s narrative, detective Mike Hammer, featured his “I, Observer,” who witnessed the deliberately intended painful murder of Jack Williams, a close friend who had saved Hammer’s life during a WWII combat incident. Hammer’s “I, Observer” felt the injustice, pain, and grief of the murder. Hammer’s “I, Avatar,” acted to achieve revenge on the killer.

All real live humans have these two “I’s.” Our “I, Observer” is a witness to the events of life. We experience life as if we were given a ticket to watch the game of life as it unfolds. Our “I, Avatar” responds to what it sees to act on our behalf. We take actions that we think are appropriate ways to respond. The difference is that the one I is “captain of its own ship,” while the other I is the sail of its own ship, unfurling as the wind blows.

One way to recognize one’s own dual I’s is in the dreams we have every night. Our “I, Observer” consciously witnesses a dream, whether we later remember it or not. In such dreams, we are aware of the story and maybe even of our role in it. Normally, however, we do not intervene to alter what happens in the dream. Even our own actions are just witnessed, not modified, as if we were watching ourselves in a movie.

Photo by Daniel Hohe on Unsplash

There are, however, other dream occasions, apparently relatively rare, in which “I, Avatar” takes over in a dream to steer its course in the real time of the dream. These so-called “lucid dreams” are apparently not the default mode of brain thinking in dreams. Maybe “I, Observer” is the default mode of operation in both dreams and in wakeful life.

It does seem clear that the mode sometimes switches to “I, Avatar.” Our I becomes an agent that intends to act in response to what happens to us. “I, Avatar” reasons on the issues, decides the most appropriate course of action, constructs an action plan, launches activity, and adjusts action in response to the emerging consequences.

Neuroscientists don’t know how the brain switches between observer and avatar. In fact, some neuroscientists believe that the brain has no avatar, only the observer. These scientists enlist this view to support their contention that humans lack free will. If your conscious mind has no capacity for agency, then it surely cannot exert free will. All willed action would have to be pre-determined or driven by uncontrolled forces, like the sails of a ship. Such a view precludes a captain who can adjust the sail positions.

Most neuroscientists likely agree that Observer and Avatar, if it exists, are creatures of the brain. The brain must construct those creatures the way that it constructs everything else—that is, in the form of nerve impulse representations. This basic fact was made most compellingly by the Nobel Prize studies of David Hubel and Torsten Weisel, who noticed something astonishing as they moved recording electrodes up and down in the visual cortex of awake cats who were watching scenes on a screen. A given neuron was inactive most of the time, but occasionally fired off a burst of voltage pulses. They later proved that a given neuron was sensitive to only a small feature of the image, such as a small line segment. Other visual cortex neurons were sensitive to other small segments, and they likewise selectively responded with impulse discharge. Together, all these neurons could reconstruct the image. A key point is that the image is not in the cortex. Its representation is there, in the form of nerve impulses.

The logical extension of such facts is that the brain experiences and acts in the world via its nerve impulse representations. Both the observer and the avatar must be likewise constructed of patterns of impulses, likely differing depending on whether the I is operating as observer or avatar.

This way of thinking about selfhood also resolves the mind/brain enigma. Mind is not some ghost floating around in brain. Mind is the material existence of nerve impulse representations of experience and thought. The concept of “mind over matter” is nonsense. Mind IS matter.

No one knows how the brain decides which mode of operation to use. The Observer mode seems preferable as a default, because it is the collector of information and experience that can inform the Avatar should action be beneficial to the brain and body in which it is embedded. Without the Avatar, however, our personhood is a victim of circumstance, compelled to act in predestined ways that may not be beneficial or wise. We can argue that the Avatar is the brain’s way of saving itself from its own foolishness, of counteracting adverse circumstance, and of advancing one’s agendas. The trick of successful living is the ability to switch into Avatar mode when it is needed. When we fail in life, we should ask I, Avatar, “Where were you when I needed you?

Source:

Klemm, W. R. (2014). Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate. New York: Prometheus.

Bad Dreams May Be Bad for Your Mental Health

Mental health professionals have historically thought of bad dreams (e.g., emotional distress, nightmares) as reflecting underlying mental dysfunctions that are buried in the unconscious and only become consciously accessible in dreams. Freud, Jung, and colleagues, popularized this view and assumed that dream analysis could unmask the mental problem and thereby open a door for treatment. There is an alternate way to think about dreams that is still compatible with the classic view, but adds a new dimension for improving mental health.

Freud’s Missed Opportunity

What classical psychiatry seems to have missed is the possibility that dream content has effects of its own that may be aggravating the very psychological problems that therapists were trying to treat. We humans consciously recognize what our brains are thinking about in episodic states of sleep interruption in which the brain becomes activated and the eyes show darting movements, as if the eyes are visually scanning the dream content. These stages of sleep are known as REM, for rapid eye movement. In REM, the dreamer is not only aware of the dream events but is often an active agent within the dreams. In these so-called “lucid dreams,” the dreamer may even be able to willfully alter dream content.

The transient state of consciousness that arises repeatedly throughout a night’s sleep enables unconscious influences to emerge in dreams. If that content is a “bad dream,” it has a reinforcing effect on the thought dysfunction that is causing problems during wakefulness. We all know that repeating negative thoughts during the awake state reinforces the flawed thinking. Conventional therapy aims to help patients redirect negative thoughts and feelings in ways that are more positive.  In dreams we normally just let the negative thoughts run their course, which has the effect of strengthening the undesirable thoughts. In fact, negative dream content during dreams may be more deleterious than the same content during wakefulness, because modern research has shown that a major function of sleep, both dream- and non-dream, is to consolidate recent short-term memories. The dream content of dreams is immediately reinforced during the return to sleep. Unlike memory consolidation during wakefulness, sleep blocks out interfering sensory and cognitive processes during the memory-vulnerable period immediately after learning.

Personal Anecdote

Because to our knowledge there is no research in this area, I can only provide anecdotal reports that this premise that dream content may be a cause as well as a consequence of emotional distress. I have had a lifetime of bad dreams, off and on. Some of my unpleasant dreams recur, such as forgetting where I parked my car, or being lost, or being in a complex, unresolvable situation—all of which reinforce a feeling of inadequacy. In such dreams, my brain is teaching me to think of myself as inadequate. That is surely not healthy. No doubt there are others who have similar bad dreams, and assuredly there are other kinds of bad experiences that occur in everybody’s dreams. The point here is not to explore what these dreams mean, but to recognize that such dreams may be aggravating the emotional problems that cause the disturbing content in the first place.

In the example above, my brain is programming itself to reinforce a feeling of helplessness and inadequacy. Night after night, year after year, this becomes a psychologically destructive force. Clearly, a solution would be to make yourself stop having such dreams. How might this be done? One possibility is that you could decide to be more aware of the content of each dream, both during the dream itself and afterwards, as during a nighttime bathroom break and upon awakening in the morning. During wakeful periods right after a dream, you need to tell yourself that these dream ideas are wrong and unhelpful. Tell your brain to stop punishing yourself like this.

In wakeful states, we know that it is possible for positive self-talk to program the brain for more constructive thought. We ought to be able to program our subconscious in a similar way during its operation during sleep and in the dream review right after awakening. So in this case, you should chastise your brain for any bad dream, and consciously insist just before going to sleep that your brain only generate dreams that are entertaining, helpful, or at least neutral. The assumption is that your mind can tell its brain what to do. After all, the brain is programmable, and you get to do much of the programming. This simplistic strategy seems to be working, as the incidence of my bad dreams has markedly diminished.

No doubt, there are more robust strategies that could be developed. Learning how to have more lucid dreams could help ,because in that state the dreamer might be able to veto negative content as it starts to emerge. In addition, corrective positive reinforcement self-talk needs to be cemented in long-term memory and that can be strengthened by retrieving positive self-talk immediately after awakening from a bad dream. Also, it is important to hold such self-talk sessions under conditions where memory consolidation is not impaired by distracting activity or thought.

To learn more about how our minds work, see my inexpensive, lay audience books, Mental Biology, and Memory Power 101, available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

What Am I? What Are You?

I am an agent, one who does things like think, feel, believe, choose, plan, and does things. But what is it about me that makes me an agent? Obviously, my agency arises from my brain, as does yours—but where and how?

The starting point for an answer has to be based on how the brain does everything else it does besides create my “I.” The principle is that the currency of brain function is the nerve impulse. More specifically, the brain models my inner and outer worlds by creating representations of sensation, memory, and thought in the form of patterns of nerve impulses flowing in specific neural networks. I call these Circuit Impulse Patterns (CIPs). For detection of a specific visual image, for example, the image is represented by one set of CIPS in the visual cortex. A different image will generate a different set of CIPS in the visual cortex to represent it. Documentary basis for this conclusion was provided in the Nobel Prize work of Hubel and Weisel. The same principle applies to all other mental forms of representation. That is, for example, one set of CIPS carries out the command of my “I” to type this sentence. Another set of CIPs carries out the command of my “I” to get up out of my chair and take a break. In short, everything my “I” chooses to think, feel, and do is implemented by a specific set of CIPs.

The circuit nature of the nervous system is fundamental. I have, for example, a circuit of neurons that begins in my foot, projects into a specific spinal cord segment of neurons, and these in turn project back to leg muscles that make me lift my leg if I step on a tack. Nerve impulses carry the sensory and motor information in this circuit. Additionally, this spinal circuit has reciprocal connections with various circuits in the brain that collectively inform me of pain and may also modulate my behavioral response to the pain. This information is likewise carried by nerve impulses.

So now we must examine my “I.” What is its nature? How does it get created? How is it that I know I have stepped on a tack, have generated a stream of cursing, and am aware of any other associated behaviors? Is it not likely that this “agent” of selfhood inside my brain is itself a set of CIPs? This set may operate unconsciously or consciously. I likely am not aware of what is happening in my spinal cord. I most certainly will be aware that my foot hurts and that “I” am responding to the pain. This “I” serves as an avatar that mediates my interaction with the world my brain is representing via CIPs.

Now, this brings us to the issue of conscious awareness. That too may be implemented as a set of CIPs. The CIPs of consciousness are equivalent to an avatar that the brain has instantiated to act consciously on behalf of its perceived interests. My avatar can reflect on the meaning of various sets of CIPs circulating within the global workspace of brain. The avatar can access and influence these various CIPs sets, because it too is a CIP set that connects physically to the other circuits and communicates in the shared language of nerve impulses.

This means that the conscious avatar can do things via its integral connections with other circuits. This capacity for agency refutes the contention of many scholars who have the unfounded belief that consciousness is just an “observer” that cannot do anything. Because the CIPS of my conscious avatar can do things, it means that it can implement choices and decisions that it makes.

This brings us to the issue of free will. The CIPs of my conscious avatar most certainly are affected in automatic ways by its connections to other CIPs. Thus, much of what my avatar does is not caused by free choice. Such actions result from inherent circuit connectivity and the programming of prior learning. On the other hand, because my avatar CIPs have their own existence, they can create representations for many alternative actions, including creative options that it had not been taught by prior experience. The avatar CIPs can reason about the pros and cons, and make a choice that is neither pre-determined nor inevitable. In short, my “I” avatar has the capacity for some free will.

The CIPs of my avatar allow me to be conscious, to think, feel, and choose with some degree of freedom. To reframe the dictum of Descartes:

I am, therefore I think.

References

1.       Klemm, W. R. 2016. Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will. New    

York: Elsevier.

2.       Klemm, W. R. 2014. Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate, New York: Prometheus/Random House.

3.       Klemm, W. R. 2011. Atoms of Mind. The “Ghost in the Machine” Materializes. New York: Springer.

4.       Klemm, W. R. (2015). Neurobiology Perspectives on Agency: 10 Axioms and 10 Proposition, Chapter 4. Constraints of Agency. Explorations of Theory in Everyday Life. edited  by Graig W. Gruber et al. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, Vol. 12, p.51-88.

5.     Klemm, W.  R. 2012. Sense of Self and Consciousness: Nature, Origins, Mechanisms, and Implications, p. 111-138, in Consciousness: States, Mechanisms and Disorders. Edited by A. E. Cavanna and A. Nani.  Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers. Open access available at https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=38801

6.        Klemm, W. R. 2011. Neural representations of the sense of self. Archives Cognitive Psychology. Advances in Cognitive Psychology. 7: 16-30. DOI 10.2478/v10053-008-0084-2.