this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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IIRC the "other consciousness" is the internal monologue or internal visualization you experience when thinking
There's a potentially related theory too that the origin of religion is internal narrator thinkers having perceived the internal narrator as a second entity who was issuing them commands and beliefs rather than their own internal dialogue.
These people would claim to be "prophets" and basically evangelize whatever presence they ascribed responsibility for the internal narrator to. Leading to more people believing their internal narrators are also these divine forces speaking to them.
Not to dunk on rural americans, but a phenomena like this could also explain the recent evangelical movement in the US considering how much emphasis is placed on the personal relationship and communication with God, these people might actually just not realize their own thoughts and ascribe all thought process as the voice of the big man himself.
Lived in SE USA most of my life...the majority of the most ridiculous fundamentalists don't have an inner monologue. They speak but there is nothing going on upstairs except life processes.
The way they cling to ideas from others explains why they cling so tightly...they never had one of their own.
Because of this phenomenal outlook they typically adhere to the first idea that comes around and dismiss everything else as false.
Critical thinking is not applicable to everyone.
Absence of an inner monologue does not mean that there is no thought process. I’ve done just fine without one myself. Can’t speak to whatever is plaguing the fundamentalists apart from indoctrination and being steeped in an oppressive culture that’s been fostered over generations.
I have a coworker who I discovered a few weeks ago had no idea internal monologues were a thing. I had to explain that it's a real documented phenomena and that it's actually a minority of people that don't have one. She's pretty damn smart, too. I also play D&D with a guy who has aphantasia. He's also pretty damn smart and you would have no idea he was incapable of visualizing things if he didn't tell you. Him casually mentioning it in conversation surprised people who had known him for years. So, yeah, absolutely no correlation between intelligence and how your thoughts may or may not produce phantom sensory input.
My internal monologue is written. I see letters (they seem typed, but no recognizable font), but I don’t know what it was before I could read.
The only thing I really hear in my head is intrusive- either ear worms or standard intrusive thoughts, otherwise it’s text.
Years ago I had really severe anxiety and intrusive thoughts. I noticed though as my anxiety got better through among other things therapy that the intrusive thoughts took on a new form; Unbidden and often times inappropriate shitposting IRL.
Personally, most of the time I don't really hear my internal monologue. It's there but it kinda tends to get drowned out by a constant swirl of other random thoughts unless I externalize it and talk to myself, but I do hear the intrusive thoughts loud and clear. Add those things together and I like to joke that I accidentally manifested a shitpost tulpa.
Then because I found this thought amusing I came up with an entire character to put to it.
The idea of not having a internal monologue is kinda strange to me. I have a constant internal monologue. Like there doesn't go a moment by without me talking to myself in my head.
I had it a couple of times that my internal monologue was off, usually due to medications or after intense experiences where I just need some space to process. It's the most strange feeling.
You should try taking Finnegans Wake, especially before going to bed, and see what happens. It rewires your internal monologue syntax in some really strange way that is not far from the experience of sleep.
Grandpa gave me some advice...
"Think before you speak. If you think while you're speaking, then you've already failed."
Thanks Gpa...wise words.
*origin of prophets as they are understood today
The first religions were generally flavors of animism.
Makes you wonder what happens to a person who now accepts the voices in their head as divine mandate...
Makes sense, in a lot of spiritual practices I've been involved in, hearing such a voice is believed to be a higher power.
Unless you mean thoughts themselves, and not something similar but deeper.....
I mean that for a lot of these people thought and that higher power are one in the same.
They believe God is a speaker who instructs them via their inner dialogue, or for seers, by "visions" which could be better identified as a similar phenomenon but involving visual thought rather than inner dialogue thought.
Huh, maybe this isn't the "Higher Self" then.. because when I think, I can "hear" a voice in my head, and I can literally make it say what I want....
But when I hear the "Higher Self" it's just suddenly I know something or I'll experience a different kind of silent voice where I can't hear any words... but I suddenly know something I didn't before and it doesn't "feel" like me, it feels like it comes from much deeper in than a mere thought does, there's no "Thought process" in the event of a higher self thing, just realization, and it's usually shit I couldn't possible know, but it's not like I can summon it on command and what it tells me isn't always useful.
Like, one time it told me I'd drink a regular Mountain Dew, not flavored, for the first time in literal years in a matter of minutes.
I disregard it as unlikely, but decide it may be a good idea to get some food as it had been a long day. So I go to Taco Bell, and get my usual drink, a Baja Blast (which is a flavored mountain dew, but the "higher self" specified that it wouldn't be flavored, it'd be the OG mountain dew) They tell me they're out, so absent mindedly I say "Regular mountain dew's fine."
Only after I say that do I go "Wait a god damn minute....."
Obviously this can't be a different form of my thought process that I just don't understand, because how the fuck was it supposed to know the inventory of that exact Taco Bell? Then again, why would a Higher Self care about what drinks I'm drinking... Weird shit like that happens, and since it's always right, I always listen to it, and when it actually comes through in a time of need things seem to turn out fine. I can't explain it, ironically you'd think this would make more really superstitious, but the sad truth is I lost my faith in such things ages ago, it's just the higher self still functions as it does in spite of that.
If you've got an explanation I'd love to hear it
Honestly I'm more impressed by your categorical inventory of the exact kind of Mountain dew you'd been drinking for years.
As for explanation, not everything is owed an explanation. That's part of my issue with the idea of god in the first place, it's an act of trying to define what cannot be explained because for an unfortunate number of people having an answer is more important than not giving one unless you can confirm it's correct or at least approximate or in the direction of a correct answer.
Maybe there is a higher power out there, maybe the supernatural is lurking behind every darkened window and hidden alley, maybe 40k is a prophecy of times to come sent in the form of a table top wargame fortelling the danger of beings worshipped as gods who lust after feasting on our souls, what matters is that all of that is just a story we tell ourselves to pretend those questions aren't still there because an unanswered question is the true incarnation of madness and terror to most people.
God is the King In Yellow, a cloaked masked figure built to contain all the emptiness we fear in the universe.
It's not so much I was categorizing the Mountain Dew, it's that I'd specifically only been drinking flavored mountain dews, so a non-flavored one would have been a clear outliers, just for the record.
I read... Something once and they suggested the past we may have collectively possessed a more direct relationship with rekigi9n like you're talking about. That for some reason or another we don't tend to "hear the voice of hod" like we once did. Out relationship with our internal self had changed. Maybe it was bred out by our tendency to kill the religious folks who disagree the most with whatever the dumpster jour religion at the time is.