http://news.sfsu.edu/consciousness-has-less-control-believed-according-new-theory

∞ This is not a new theory.

That voice in your head -follows- the action. It does not lead it. It does its best to try to explain what you do and see and hear to yourself, and undermines your memory at every step, encoding your experiences and your actions in the few words you know instead of in rich sensory impressions. It shouts down your actual experiences. Further, because of your limited vocabulary, it ensures that everything you remember that has happened to you happened only in terms of merely the tiny collections of words and concepts you understand.

That makes memory a lie. That makes your knowledge of your own history impossible. That is how you can know that the voice is false. A scribe. A narrator. A myth-maker. A critic. A follow-along. A suck-up.

Consciousness is your collection of tropisms and aversions, your honest awareness of them unmoderated by the potential lies and vocabulary-limited stories of your internal voice, and your desire to moderate and control your tropisms and aversions to make yourself the representation of the person you would like to be using the parts you were given and the tools at hand. Every piece of this happens before the internal voice speaks, using tools for which there are no words.

The internal voice -can be- a tool, but isn’t by default, without training, no more than you are born knowing the 19 rules of inference or any mathematics beyond the simply comparatives of “more” and “less”, “plenty” and “insufficient”. The internal voice has to be constantly analyzed for myths and lies and patrolled for the echoes of voices of other speakers, of ghosts and demons, and you have to learn how to make it shut the hell up so you can think and pay attention. Until you can control the voice, you are far better off without it.

— @[1491116490:2048:Laszlo Xalieri]