I used to think that I knew what was going on. But the more I look at the views of myself and the world that I have, the more I see that happens in me, to me, and by me that just quietly happened. I was impressed by Eagleman's discussion of automatic actions and sequences of actions that humans perform with only dim awareness of what they are doing.
By analogy to your perception of the world, your mental life is built to range over a certain territory, and it is restricted from the rest.
There are thoughts you cannot think. You cannot comprehend the sextillion stars of our universe, nor picture a five-dimensional cube, nor feel attracted to a frog. If these examples seem obvious (Of course I can't!), just consider them in analogy to seeing in infrared, or picking up on radio waves, or detecting butyric acid as a tick does.
If you're like most people, you'll consider your dog to operate largely on instincts, while humans appear to run on something other than instincts—something more like reason. The great nineteenth-century psychologist William James was the first to get suspicious of this story. And not just suspicious: he thought it was dead wrong. He suggested instead that human behavior may be more flexibly intelligent than that of other animals because we possess more instincts than they do, not fewer. These instincts are tools in the toolbox, and the more you have, the more adaptable you can be.
Eagleman, David. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (p. 82, 87 ). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I am gaining respect for the subtlety and complexity, first of my mind and the brain that runs it and then for the whole body that includes it. I like to think I can learn and understand myself but I see that I am too big for me to fully grasp. I wasn't built to comprehend all of me and I can't. I don't plan to hide behind my limits but I am going to face them as well as I can.
