Thougthts on Defensive processes

We can exist in multiple ways vis a vis a particular piece of information, but ultimately we can speak of two ways of organizing the self.

These two ways are (an idea borrowed from the psychologist Alan Fogel) the "subjective emotional present" and the "conceptual self-awareness". These two represent two ways that are way-of-being-in-the-world can be. They are different because they feel different, and indeed, cognitive neuroscience has described these two states as "reflective" and "reflexive", and the psychologist Daniel Kahneman has called it 'system 1' and 'system 2'.

Fogels description is closer to phenomenology. By emphasizing "subjective", he points out that the phenomenology itself is highly tied to personal feelings, needs, and motivations. In this state, we automatically give expression to our unconscious meanings - or relational histories - and what we are doing in this instant to achieve this need.

Subjective emotional present is feeling-neutral; it is a concept about a class of experiences as they unfold temporally, and psychologically. Negative feelings like shame, fear, depression, anxiety, hatred or jealousy can fall into this class as fluidly as positive feelings like joy, compassion, play, excitement, curiosity, and awe.

Conceptual self-awareness on the other hand is a function of the evolution of the dorsolateral sections of the brain. Extending from the hippocampus, conceptual self-awareness is largely a memory and consciousness process. It is what gives consciousness its power to select and inhibit. Selection and inhibition seem like simplistic things, and indeed, somehow the complexity of our feeling of 'free will' is ultimately reducible to our ability to choose and focus our awareness, or inhibit - at an embodied level (which means the brain stem/vagus nerve) - a particular physiological reaction to a mental percept that aroused a fear. Emotion that spills into the body as a result of a particularly negative percept happens because the mind has not noticed itself engaging in an unconscious, compulsive reflexive process. Self-criticism often happens in these moments; and its our habit of existing with and in these processes, and not extracting ourselves to allow ourselves to perceive ourselves as we act, that creates so much suffering in life.

But it isn't easy to know - and it's a colossal error to think that everyone is equally good at moral psychology. To know the processes and habits of your own mind requires an actual conscious effort, carried continuously, sincerely, and earnestly, over many years. This process is to be understood in the context of neural darwinism, which means that the more frequent the connections between neurons, the more established, efficient, and complex their interactions become. Information flow in the brain is ultimately reducible to synaptogenesis, neurogenesis and myleingenesis: processes that are subject to the selective pressures of a self-aware mind. Because of this, those who have spent their lives, or spend most of their time, reflecting on moral issues with reference to psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary anthropology, and who have also spent much time examining their own experience, have a certain clarity and sophistication in their moral analysis that isn't naturally mirrored by those who spend their time doing other things. To sum this idea up: we are what we do. Our minds mold towards how we relate to the world, which means, our subjective emotional reflexive actions have an automaticity that derives from what we do, whom we do it with, and the moral meaning of what we do. In keeping with a focus on morality - because humans are embodied, reflexive social animals, the needs of our personal self - which is registered at the level of affect - enter our attention as we think about things that serve what we "need", that is, with what we feel. The ultimate result of this principle is that the self, or conscious mind - called the ego, or 'working memory', or the "theater of the mind" - unconsciously "confabulates" a justification for a feeling, as the feeling, being a 'somatic marker' of bodily homeostatic processes, impels consciousness into 'interpreting' what it experiences, and to align cognitions with feelings.

There are certain truths about human nature that aren't readily accepted by academics today, but which I and many others see as fundamental to the human species. These principles are dissociation and idealization. If the mind always inclines to "justify" its experiences, this means that the natural bias of the mind is to 'see the beat', or 'feel the best', that is, to idealize by favoring a positive interpretation on things. A natural corollary of this reality is that consciousness ignores certain things. Indeed, the word "ignore" is problematic as it implies that the content - or perception - has somehow "dropped outside the mind". That if we simply say something about our experience, that means that what we say is true. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Consciousness is not the gatekeeper to perception. Things get in and imply themselves simply by having been noted by unconscious cognitive processes in our brain. The amygdala, on the other hand, is a good candidate for sentinel and gatekeeper of the human mind. As an all around "relevance detector", it takes stock of "threats" - that is, meanings with the environment - as well as noting "opportunities" for positive feedback. The amygdala is there to navigate the complexities of living in a highly nuanced social-environment, but to still carry out its evolutionary function of "guiding the organism with reference to threat and wellbeing"

The amygdala therefore is the cause of dissociation, as well as the 'avoidance' strategy of idealization. The amygdala, in coding the affective valence of each interaction, eventually carves out a personality with a particular propensity for certain reactions - or expectations and anticipations - as a way to predict the world around it. Thus, negative affective responses to a particular facial cue, vocal tone, or gesture, will become associated with a compensatory behavior that was itself 'found', or 'picked up' during some other previous interaction. Positive and negative become 'polarized' in the brain, with the negative 'cues' linked with 'instrumental avoidant' strategies of getting away from the negative affect. Idealization and dissociation are psychological terms for what the amygdala is doing as it 'marks' the external world - and subjective perception - with the affects that are genetically programmed into the typical behavior of the organism.

At which point this begins is arguable, to say the least. Many evolutionary biologists believe that an organism is 'imprinted' in embryo and as a fetus by the level of circulating cortisol in the blood stream, a certain percentage of which passes into the placenta and plays an 'informing' role in the development of the brain. So, even from the get-go, genes are being "acted upon' by the environment of the mothers body, which in turn is 'acted upon' by the mothers own reflexive mental behaviors, as well as the way others in her immediate social world relate with her (which activates her reflexive defensive processes).