The Disaster Reaction

[Telarus]

Interesting Cram, good to get a glimpse of the current model. Thanks. So, here I'm going to rant about my occult studies and how this ties into the subject at hand.

In Sanskrit the word Karma means Action and at the base level the language does not distinguish between 'physical' or 'mental' Actions. From my studies, the mystery schools also posits that Karma(Action) carries a type of momentum. Much in the same way that accelerating a stone with your arm carries that action to the stone, which will then send the stone through the air to deliver that action/energy to the object the stone is thrown at... mental Karma has a momentum, in that once a memory has been activated that energy has to 'go somewhere'. Thus, 'activating' one memory will tend to send that momentum towards the closely related 'nodes' and 'activate' them as well. Now, Korzybski and certain Buddhist sects have also noticed that this 'mental momentum' will also activate muscle responses (which is why a purely abstract model of memory fails for me). In your example, remembering your birthday cake may cause your stomach muscles to spasm or cramp.

In NLP they use a technique called 'anchoring' where, while in a 'zoned out' or 'hypnotic =P' state('imprint vulnerability and similar states' -RAW), the Programmer will physically touch certain parts of the Subject's body firmly while feeding them abstract verbal information (usually heavily weighted towards the person's primary sense-memory mode, sight/hearing/smell/taste/touch). This reinforcement is usually used to assist the Subject to get back into the 'trance' at later sessions, as the Programmer is activating enough memory nodes related to the "I'm in a trance' node to activate it as well. It is also used to anchor other suggestions and feelings, recalling them with another firm touch to that location when the Programmer needs the subject to recall that thought/feeling.

Now Zen, and the similar practices that recognize that we spend too much time allowing our mental momentum to jump around unintentionally activating the next memory, and the next, and the next ...have developed techniques that will 'short circuit' that chain and allow our mental energy to return to stillness. This stillness or 'No-Mind', according to those schools, seems to be the most efficient mental state in which to interface with THIS MOMENT RIGHT NOW. The moment of Now, and all the Karmas(Actions) occurring in the moment of Now seems to get lost to us when we allow the mind to take the path of least resistance and jump from abstract memory to abstract memory.

Umm, yeah... maybe more exposition later.

[Cramulus]

[WARNING: TANGENT]

Man, semantics is cool.

I was recently musing on how the memory model I described in my last post ITT is very similar, if not identical, to the network model presented in the Art of Memetics.

Telarus' points (about zen and NLP) are quite relevant because they interface with similar looking networks. We're dynamic creatures, and because we can map those similar ideas on top of each other, we can take widely different fields - psychology, memetics, zen, and NLP, and synthesize all that information into a plan of action. That's bad ass.