Running commentry

wylo

Hi, Im not sure if this is philosophy but here goes, mods can move it sure if they dont think it suits...

Do you ever think we talk too much?Is it possible that we talk so much that it has embedded a running commentry in our brain. We are either concentrated fully on something, or we are talking to ourselves, almost in an insane like fashion.
For most of us, our whole lives are spent pretty much either hearing words, reading words, or writing words and if not we are thinking words. Unless we are fully concentrated on something else like a melody or a mechanical job or something.
Have we ever thought about what thats actually doing to our brain?

Heres the way I see it, I used play poker, I would spend 5 or 6 hours in a night playing and obsessing over it, I would then go to bed and all thats on my mind is poker hands.

Now , take that phenomenon and instead of it just being a few hours in a night, it is our whole lives.

I guess the point im trying to make is that Im thinking I see the reason why humans turn to distractions to get away from words.
Im also thinking that words are the cause of beliefs, some ridiculous ones, and some not so ridiculous ones. Alot of humans live their whole lives in a state of belief, and if it wasnt for words would they have ever picked up those beliefs?

Is this the whole point of meditation? Cut out the talking for a while?

An absolutely empty mind is ridiculously peaceful, so Im think im going to try get in a small bit of time every day where I dont hear words.

A bit of a random rant but have you any opinions?

Black Swan

wylo wrote: »

For most of us, our whole lives are spent pretty much either hearing words, reading words, or writing words and if not we are thinking words. Unless we are fully concentrated on something else like a melody or a mechanical job or something...

Im also thinking that words are the cause of beliefs, some ridiculous ones, and some not so ridiculous ones. Alot of humans live their whole lives in a state of belief, and if it wasnt for words would they have ever picked up those beliefs?

Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques offers a theory of language and writing that suggests spoken words were to be more valued than written words, and when writing emerged this changed humans from noble savages to a bureaucratic society that ranked persons in accordance with their language mastery; i.e., innocence and equality were lost forever to the written structure of words.

Ferdinand de Saussure saw words as one-dimensional, and consequently lacking sufficient variables to fully appreciate the meaning of the phenomenon the word labeled. The meaning of a word could only be derived from its association with other words, as well as the context in which the associated words occurred; i.e., language was born to better convey meaning.

Jacques Derrida challenged Lévi-Strauss in Of Grammatology, calling the subordination of writing to the spoken word a logocentric fallacy, suggesting that both spoken and written words emerged together, and continue to evolve over time. Further the noble savage of Lévi-Strauss was savage and not noble, rejecting the notion that such an existence before the evolution of words and language was preferred.

18AD

Meditate every day.

Write down something nice you did today before bed, every night.

Works for me.

There's loads of other things you can get to train your mind. Mandalas, tattva cards, counting, music, chanting etc... They're all distinct ways to train your mind. Training the body will also impact your mind.

Thought is a tool. You are not your ideas. I think.

wylo

18AD wrote: »

Meditate every day.

I think I will, not sure why, fun and relaxing I guess,

Write down something nice you did today before bed, every night.

Works for me.

Id be skeptical about this one, does it really matter? Some sort of "self" serving affirmation? Im genuinely asking.
Thoughts about myself are nonsensical to me now, which , as strange and dark as it sounds, is actually a very liberating feeling. Writing down something nice seems more like an attempt to remind myself Im some sort of good person.

There's loads of other things you can get to train your mind. Mandalas, tattva cards, counting, music, chanting etc... They're all distinct ways to train your mind. Training the body will also impact your mind.

Thought is a tool. You are not your ideas. I think

.

I guess I wasnt really looking for help in this thread, just more a discussion on how words affect our brains and more so our beliefs. More a discussion on the idea that listening and translating words all day every day, of your whole life pretty much must have an unusual effect on the brain.

18AD

In what way do you think they affect our brains? Is this good or bad?

Just because beliefs are based on words doesn't mean you have to get rid of words to out belief.

wylo

18AD wrote: »

In what way do you think they affect our brains? Is this good or bad?

Just because beliefs are based on words doesn't mean you have to get rid of words to out belief.

Well, Id like to go for the phrase "too much of anything is bad for yo". Words of course, I believe, are the reason for human success (if thats what we want to call it), i.e. I believe words are why are capable of so much. They are great.

But personally , I thinks words buzzing into our brains all day long is not really good to be honest.
Luckily if you know that they are just words,and can push your own beleifs, then the brain knows they are nonsense. But I invite you take a trip personal issues, scroll down through the pages and see how many problems are caused simply by the person telling themselves incorrect negative things they believe.

Tell a child he/she is useless every day as they grow, I wonder how they will think when they are a teenager?

I guess the point of this is to encourage the slight reduction in words if possible, and to challenge words, check if they are true, all the time.
I think this , combined with silence can offer a far far more relaxing mind.

18AD

wylo wrote: »

Tell a child he/she is useless every day as they grow, I wonder how they will think when they are a teenager?

Do you not run the risk here of blaming words, where the person uttering them is the one that is responsible? It's not the words that do the damage but the attitudinal behaviour, albeit through words.

I think that thinking is something that you should try to refine as a skill. You don't simply become able to think well, it is like any other bodily skill. It requires discipline to do well. So I gather that everyone is just thinking in habitual ways all the time, which may or may not be detrimental, but certainly unrefined.