There's a new network TV series named The Irrational I decided to watch starting back in October. The main character is a psychologist who survives a terrorist act, a bombing of a church that left him with burns on over 60% of his body and scars on his face. Given my fascination with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro it seems natural that I'm drawn to principles that are used in solving crimes in the series, particularly in that what we perceive and remember are actually quite unreliable in terms of what the reality is.
After only two episodes I found myself hoping that the show catches on. If the show does more than entertain, people might be prompted to review and reevaluate their own memories and experiences, which has become "truth" in our culture. And as people can acknowledge that their perceptions and memories have in fact always been colored by biases which are varied in origin, they will be prompted to seek a truth from outside of themselves.
My personal observations & memories are no less subjective than anyone else's so I need to examine and identify my own biases. For example, in this week's episode, they show the results of an experiment where subjects are instructed to observe in order to observe a specific question. The results are that because of fixating on identifying a specific fact, we typically completely ignore other things that occur. I need to examine how often I'm looking just for the answer I want that I ignore answers that refute the agenda or answer other questions that need to be asked.
My first instinct is to justify/defend; it's hard to stay in the moment. or as the character Charlie Crews (played by Damian Lewis) once said during an episode of Life:
"I wasn't in the moment.
If I'd stayed in the moment, if I'd stayed present I would have been OK but I didn't.
I was thinking about where we were going next. So I left the moment when I should have been completely in the moment which is when people usually leave the moment because the moment is just too much!
The moment is pretty much almost aways too much!
I was thinking about where we were going next."
It seems to me that the #1 enemy of mindfulness is probably the iPhone. Most people's eyes are glued to their phone 24/7, even when they're with a group of people. I've managed to resist the enemy by sticking to a flip phone. I display it proudly and tell people that I'm not going to be the guy who comes home from the beach with white marks across my chest resulting from staring at my iPhone the entire time. This suggests that I was already aware of the inherent dangers of anti-mindfulness.
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I started this post almost three months ago, and I've had some time to examine the concept of mindfulness. I haven't done much to practice mindfulness since then, in part because it seems to me that the real subject is what mindfulness seems to solve - and that mindfulness is not necessarily the only solution. It might be more accurate to suggest that anti-mindfulness has taken such a toll resulting in a level of stress that makes intentional mindfulness extremely difficult.
I have no answers, yet it occurs to me that it might be to tied to appreciation of simplicity for simplicity's sake; maybe it's enough to enjoy something without feeling the need to justify/defend the emotional response. I remember a dinner night at the park during the pandemic, telling some of the people how I'd driven home after a strenuous day at work, enjoying the cool breeze with the windows, chewing on some ice, no one else on the road and the level of contentment I felt at the moment. I could see from the expressions on their faces that they were tracking the moment with me.
As someone who appreciates cuisine, not to mention the mastery of cooking techniques, I'm somewhat bemused how some people collect restaurants like badges; they merely want to be able to say that they've eaten there even though they couldn't really identify what made that particular restaurant special. I'm *really* amused by folks who drop major coin to consume Wagyu burgers. Wagyu beef is special because of how marbled the fat is; grinding it to make a burger is like taking a piece of Venetian glass and shattering it to make a stained-glass window. But who's to say that I'm no less... frivolous by preferring to patronize "authentic" ethnic restaurants and being able to identify the unique characteristics of the eight major regional Chinese cuisines and making fun of Americanized places like Panda Inn?
Or being able to identify that like I did Saturday night that someone took a different harmonic route instead of a basic V-I from F to Bb by taking the F in the bass, sharping it to become 3 of D7 which started a V of V of V of V of V of V (D/G/C/F/Bb) chord sequence. There's a musical genius out there named Jacob Collier who IMO is destined to reshape the concept of jazz by himself because of his understanding not just of harmony but also of rhythm. Yet whenever he talks about what he does, he always does so from an emotional perspective. For example, to describe what's commonly referred to as an anticipation, Collier describes emotionally as the sense of wanting to come 'home'.
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