Information Hurts Us

Thoughtsome and Jetsam: My theory of how the mind shields more that it absorbs information

Ok, weird thought number 4 trillion and something.

This time on how the brain filters information, and how the strength of this filter differs between all of us, and what that might mean.

Stick with me.

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A bit of background

I was watching a documentary about some people that had taken psychedelic mushrooms. They were all commenting on the electric lights in the room dimming and getting brighter.

“Who’s playing with the lights?”, they would say.

“Is there a power surge or something?”

Then they would ask the camera crew;

“Do you all see the lights fluctuating?”

But the camera crew said they didn’t.

Now, you could put forward the very strong argument that they were experiencing the dimming and brightening of the lights, because they were out of their tiny minds.

And you could well be correct.

But I figure, why waste all the time and lost braincells they invested on this documentary, just to pass off everything they experienced as a surface-level result of “being wasted” or whatever.

Where’s the fun in that?

So, I reckoned I would just think about it for 5 years or so.

And now I’m writing it down.

So, the mushroom documentary. I figure, could there be something more at play here? I mean, they ALL experienced this phenomena with the lights. And what’s more, it would seem they were all experiencing it in the same way and at the same time.

So, what’s that about?

The theory

Maybe the electric lighting that we have has many different frequencies, but to experience all of these at once would be so baffling to the mind, so the mind naturally filters all the unnecessary frequencies out for us.

There is so much information coming in, it could only be reasonable to suggest that our minds shield themselves against far more of these frequencies than they allow in.

So, for the people in the documentary, the substance that they took. Did that simply reduce their filters? Is that what that stuff was doing to them? Allowing them to experience more of the worlds frequencies?

Opening their minds.

Expanding their minds.

Opening the doors to perception!

What about radio frequencies; we wouldn’t enjoy radio if we had to experience all the channels blaring away at the same time, with all the white noise thrown in to boot. We say we tune in to the station we want, in order to have a comprehensive experience of it. But, is it more accurate to think of the radio as tuning out all the other frequencies that we don’t want?

Information

We are always experiencing information; resonating from everything at the same time, all the time. A cacophony of white noise.

But our minds only like to experience a small fraction of that information, so we filter out the rest.

Imagine if we could experience all light frequencies all at once, at all distances.

Imagine if we could experience all noise frequencies all at once.

Imagine all the people.

Sorry. Too much coffee.

But seriously though. Our relatively small brains suddenly wouldn’t be able to comprehend anything. We would be exposed to all the information, but we wouldn’t be able to make sense of any of it.

We would be “mind-blown”.

We would have a wild eyed, thousand yard stare, head slowly reeling. The mind drowning in the information. Our minds would no longer be drifting methodically along on a calm laminar-flowing stream, but instead would be flailing in a chaotic white water hell-scape. Up a certain creek without a paddle.

Maybe this is obvious, now that I write it down. Just feels like I have been taking it for granted though.

The defective filter, the lowered shield

So, in regards to some mental disabilities, is this a disabling of certain aspects of the mind? Or a disabling of its protection against the raw information? Could it be either / both / one and the same thing?

Is this how the neural spectrums that we have coined are borne. Through differences of certain information-shields?

Ok then.

So, what if people did have the hardware, a freakishly excessive neural capacity for instance, to deal with a depleted filter? To deal with a lowering of certain information-shields?

The Math Filter:

Is a mathematician’s genius borne of a filter deficient in blocking out information relating to, say, patterns in nature. But at the same time they have the rare neural capacity to handle the force of that additional information coming in, and the ability to express it through numbers?

The Novelty Filter:

Is a comedy genius someone whose absurdity-filter is defunct? They aren’t any good at blocking out the novelties of life, but also have the admirable ability to organise it, link it to common experiences and deliver it to an audience?

Does someone who is completely humourless have an over-engineered novelty filter?

The Emotional Filter:

Does an artist lack certain emotional shielding perhaps? They feel more, emotionally? Hence why artists often express an emotional pain that goes with their art. But they also happen to posses the hardware to make sense of it and express it; through hand-eye coordination, an appreciation of colour theory, maybe they have learned to play it out for us through piano keys, and so on.

Continuing the emotional thread as I am typing this, I would also suggest that we can and do have our natural emotional filters tested, strengthened, damaged or destroyed through the situations we find ourselves in, the experiences we have and the behaviours of ourselves and others around us.

Trauma, coercion, therapy and journaling for example.

Ok I don’t feel qualified to speak on that really, but at the same time I doubt I’ll now be able to filter out the thought.

Damn.

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What about you? If my theory here is correct, what gifts might you have from a lowering of information shields? What sets you apart?

What about me? Do I have a broken filter-recognition filter?

Does that even make sense?

Probably not, but it won’t stop me from thinking about weird stuff.

Thank you for reading!