There’s something like a mental motion that I’d call “escalation”. A sudden leap from zero to “aaaaaaah”. you seem to be pointing to the way that brains sometimes escalate in unimportant situations (and build a narrative around what’s going on and why escalation is the self justified behaviour).
I’m currently exploring causal chains. To use one of your examples,
I asked if I could bring a cushion from home for a retreat. I was told yes. I brought it. The cushion was orange, the zendo’s cushions were black, it stuck out, and I was told I couldn’t use my cushion.
I complied, but I was immediately caught by thoughts like “but you told me I could use my cushion” and “now my meditation will be worse because I’ll be less comfortable” and “I’m not as good a zen student as I thought”.
I felt embarrassed, defensive, let down, and defeated. I felt like a failure, like I was 2nd grade Gordy again getting in trouble for being weird.
At the moment of being told, the thought stream built a causal chain like:
1. Ask permission
2. Receive permission
3. time passes, events happen
4. told something that reverses the permission
5. feel “embarrassed, defensive, let down, and defeated. ”
6. I felt like a failure, (Narrative) like I was 2nd grade Gordy again getting in trouble for being weird.
My current interest is in tracking these causal reasoning chains and noticing the moment of 5 that makes the link to 6. Often is feels like 1-4 are agency actions (my choices), but 5 happens to me, (and 6 follows naturally).
Mostly I think of it in terms of predictions and their errors. In this example I expected/predicted the world would look one way and then it looked another, and when it looked another that seems to have triggered a cascade of prediction errors that resulted in a process to try to construct new predictions that also dredged up old evidence from memory to be reconsidered.
There’s something like a mental motion that I’d call “escalation”. A sudden leap from zero to “aaaaaaah”. you seem to be pointing to the way that brains sometimes escalate in unimportant situations (and build a narrative around what’s going on and why escalation is the self justified behaviour).
I’m currently exploring causal chains. To use one of your examples,
At the moment of being told, the thought stream built a causal chain like:
1. Ask permission
2. Receive permission
3. time passes, events happen
4. told something that reverses the permission
5. feel “embarrassed, defensive, let down, and defeated. ”
6. I felt like a failure, (Narrative) like I was 2nd grade Gordy again getting in trouble for being weird.
My current interest is in tracking these causal reasoning chains and noticing the moment of 5 that makes the link to 6. Often is feels like 1-4 are agency actions (my choices), but 5 happens to me, (and 6 follows naturally).
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Mostly I think of it in terms of predictions and their errors. In this example I expected/predicted the world would look one way and then it looked another, and when it looked another that seems to have triggered a cascade of prediction errors that resulted in a process to try to construct new predictions that also dredged up old evidence from memory to be reconsidered.