Conditioned To React, Not To Think

A Responsive State Of Mind

Are our posting habits, incessant scrolling of feeds, and culture of clicks and likes really driven by deep seated desires, self-compulsion, self-image and insecurity? Maybe.

Or have we merely conditioned ourselves and our biological reactions/responses to stimuli of software, devices and social conduct? To meaninglessly and mindlessly engage in tasks or behaviors and tell ourselves the story that best fits our world view about why we do it? We are already engaged in machine learning, we are the machine and we are entirely unaware.

Although we’d like to think otherwise, we didn’t “like” that post because it was funny, or had a cute cat or baby in it, we didn’t even see it. We’ve merely taught ourself through repetition to do and think so. At some stage we internalized “that’s what people do, how I’m supposed to look, feel, act and identify in this situation.” Might be from a show, movie, watching some else but the point is that now it’s reactionary.

When responding to the present, we’re interacting with something old, from the past. It’s just easier, more efficient,comfortable and we don’t have to question the consequences. We don’t even have to think about anymore.

We’ve adopted, learned and adapted ourselves overtime to act and be the person who we sought to be and let ourselves become though lifetimes of personal and cultural experience.

Our behavior, inputs and reactions to stimuli dictates how we think, perceive and ultimately accept the world we live in. We love to think we have free will, a centrally controlled sense of self, soul or control over our consciousness yet it’s existence of remains illusory to the best minds and sciences that have ever existed.

We are simple, binary organisms, built of algorithms that survived and evolved over time through cellular mutations to form the experience we’re having today. Organisms having a human experience.

And we have the power to create and shape that into whatever we’d like as long as we’re actively engaged with our present state of mind.

Whatever that is.

Raw Thoughts

“Being a tortoise is cool because you get to win the race.” (Gary V) and in the long run, rabbits are second, if they even finish at all.

SUCCESS IS THE JOURNEY

What you got — the outcome, the prize, the accomplishment — doesn’t matter; it’s what you have up, what you learned along the way and the people you help that does. Goals are bullsh*t. They’re just experiences to stack. Life’s a journey, end the process of giving; of time, attention and energy. The rest is for the dogs to fight over.

THE EXPERIMENTER & THE NARRATOR

We have two selves, one of experience and one of narration. The rational experiencer is binary and calculated in decision making, judging through our sensory receptors the averaged overall net effect of our circumstance. They feel the really pain, know the really impact and have minimal influence except when we’re at the edges of security. The narrator runs the show, without any sense of duration or presence. Their judgements are irrational, paced on peak or end experience, to produce and create the story we’ll tell ourselves and others for the comfort of knowing (mistakenly) why.

ONLY > BEST

“Only” is better than “Best”. Instead of fighting to prove or be the best or brightest, be the only one thinking like that, doing that, looking at or engaging from that perspective. Bring more to the table, to the conversation, the problem, the interaction that what everyone else is.

CONFIDENTLY SATISFIED WITH YOUR LIFE

At any point in your life, with whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re working or whom ever you’re spending your time and energy on we should be comfortable, if not excited, in saying that,”I’ll probably do this for the next 3–5 years. And I’m pretty happy about that.” And if that’s not you right now, or tomorrow, or the day after than it might be time to reevaluate. It’s your life, do what you enjoy, find purpose in and help others through; and do it with the confidence and poise that you’ll be happily committed for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, do what you’d rather be doing; and do it now.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 303,461+ people.

Subscribe to receive our top stories here.