Last evening Sravani and I went to see our first professional play- Bell Shakespeare's Macbeth. While the performances were good and we had an enjoyable evening, what affected me most though were the thoughts running in my head throughout the duration of the play.
My mind was constantly flipping between watching the performance on stage and the thoughts/ ideas/ memories it triggered. Every once in a while I'd go meta and see myself drifting away from the performance infront of my eyes, and either chide myself for being so self-obsessed or chastise myself for being so unfocused. One train of thought took me from Maqbool to Masala Shakespeare to Stephen Greenblatt to making a mental note to check out Will in the World. Another one was so trippy that I felt amazed to have made that leap in almost-realtime, and which catalysed this post. In the second-half of the play on being told about Birnam Wood having to move before he could be slayed, Macbeth cackles with relief because he knows that a wood moving is impossible. Because I knew that the prophecy would come true, it occured to me almost instantaneously that the wood moving is Macbeth's Black Swan event. It is an epistemic fallacy because he conflates knowing something to be an impossibility with it being an impossibility. After a lightning quick homage to Taleb and Popper, a book popped into my head about which I hadn't thought in months, maybe years - Stanley Cavell's Disowning Knowledge. And my mind did a (imaginary?) somersault at the prospect of independently arriving at the same conclusion as Prof. Cavell (who's book I haven't read, so I'm presuming that's what he's going to talk about).
This is one half of the story. The other half deals with something I've been going through in the last few days. Ever since I gobbled up Tarantino's novel Once upon a time in Hollywood, I've been picking and dropping books, with exasperation and increasing dread, in the hope that something might stick. Till I decided yesterday morning that the reason for my misery was my desire/ addiction to read which stems less from a desire for knowledge than for more nefarious reasons (avoid surprise/ shock, impress others, navigate better etc.), and so decided to read less and learn more from 'life firsthand'. So I literally sat in the train drinking coffee, looking around and feeling pleased with myself for putting an end to my mental gluttony and also warning myself for getting too pleased because I wasn't sure how long I could stay away from my drug fix.
So I was all prepared to watch the play firsthand, let myself be washed over by the sensations and emotions, and to immerse myself in the play. Only that I could do that for maybe 2 minutes before beginning to drift off on the stream of thoughts. Now my question is this- Which is the real/ most genuine me? Is it the one that's taking in the sights and sounds on stage, or the one allowing himself to be triggered by the sensations and going down rabbit holes, or the one who's watching those two and is tired of mediating between the two? Or is it that the first one is an idiot who is being affected by biochemical reactions triggered by those specific sights and sounds, or the second one an off-putting know-it-all who is so enamoured by what he knows that he refuses to see anything without harking back to what he already knows, or the third one a classic example of the modern self-conscious neurotic who is immobilised because he is so unsure of the right thing to do?
My System 1 answer is that ofcourse I'm all three and what I call myself at any point is the aspect which temporarily wins over the other two; There could be more homonculus me-s fighting it out but thankfully last night there were only three strong enough to come to my attention. This hypothesis comes from shallow readings of Prof. Daniel Dennett and Prof. Douglas Hofstadter and Prof. Anil Seth, compounded with the Sante Fe Complexity Podcast and a few other writers, and that I sorta kinda find useful. I don't claim to understand or agree with it but it gives me enough mental tools to deal better with myself. The System 2 answer is something I know even less of but it seems more romantic and more permanent (which also makes me doubt it more). That comes from shallow readings and hearings of Indian Philosophy and Zen, and states that the real you is beyond these thoughts and the only reason you're not able to see it is because you're too attached to these thoughts. I suppose for convenience sake let's call it the Atma. My first question is obviously - why would the atma, presumably calm and intelligent and real, find it so hard to seperate itself from the mind and the body? There is Karma and Vasanas and Buddhis and all that, but that only transfers the question to one of the many previous rebirths when the atma for the first time got entangled with all of this. Without getting too much into that, simply because I've never put in the effort to explore those topics with dedication, I sort of know experientially that there are uses to that philosophical approach. I can clearly see my emotions being in much better check the less I attach myself to them. For instance, the more I question the reason for my anger, the harder it becomes to hold onto it. So to a certain extent, it seems to be useful in managing myself better. So maybe the same is true for my thoughts as well- the less attached I'm to them, the more open I become. Yet, that gives rise to two problems.
One, the notion of self seems to be inextricably tied with memories, thoughts, emotions, behaviours etc. and without those there seems to be no self at all. So when I say to myself, "Let go of your thoughts", am I not giving excessive importance to one thought at the cost of all others? What if that thought is a master parasite slowly taking over the forest of multitude ideas. What if it is wilful stupidity? I know that's a provocative thought but that's because I'm roasting the popular caricature of enlightenment. Two, doesn't that distancing mean moving away not only from emotions, memories and desires but also, eventually, thoughts and is it possible to live in the world without recourse to thought? Everything I know about the world, rules of language and math and physicality, are thoughts, aren't they, and moving away from all that fills me more with dread than with the joy of homecoming. Maybe that is a reflection of my immaturity and identifcation with the wrong things but that state seems like wilful death. I get the sentiment and I'm sure I, like others, fall on the spectrum between no thought and overwhelming thought/ emotion but I'm not ready to embrace absolute thoughtlessness, atleast not yet; As if the notion of I would survive that rupture.
I suppose the desire for thoughtlessness comes not from wanting to be devoid of all movement as much as being unable to control extreme churn. Maybe it is true that the place from which the notion of I comes is different from sections responsible for other sensations vying for attention. Or maybe it is that the notion of I is a loosely emergent phenomenon that itself shapes and shifts depending on many subliminal causes. I mean eventually the entity that seeks enlightenment is also the self isn't it? Why would it want itself to be annihilated if not for self-loathing?
I think there's something deeper at play here. Both sides, the material and the spiritual, have individuals I immensely respect and who're trying to invent and communicate tools for expansion and enrichment of human experience. The idea is not to roll myself up like a rock and live without ideas, thoughts and emotions but find ways to live better with them. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, I'm happy to walk and talk; I've discovered it to be one of the best ways to go about it.
So much to read, so much to learn, so much to walk.
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