imprints

still reading the same thread over at ballastexistenz, it's fascinating, the parallels. And what's so cool about it is how open everybody there is about their experiences - there's none of the so-called 'NT' bullshit about pretending it never happened. In fact, I wonder if that could essentially be the definition of NT: The ability to pretend that heinous shit that really happened to you never happened. Whaddya think? Am I on to something?

Second verse, same as the first: We're pattern-matching creatures. It's considered a feature, not a bug, the most basic aspect of humans that supposedly differentiates us from the rest of the critters. That, and our overgrown limbic brain (to be discussed elsewhere, maybe.)

So, if that's a given (and I'm going to assume it is, for the purpose of this post), then we tend to imprint experiences in a way that allows us to use said experiences for future reference. Sort of like a massive data-base, a big flip file of experiences that we then use to catalog current experiences into a sort of primitive binary of 'safe' versus 'not safe'. Or at least that's my best understanding/explanation of things at the moment.

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This comment tickles more thoughts:

I much prefer not being reminded that I’m seperate from things around me…

Reminds me of yet another thing I read 'somewhere', about someone from a culture where, when she moved here ('here' meaning, a western culture, forget which one - she was, I think, from somewhere in Africa, possibly South African? Fuzzy.) Anyway, she described the most major culture clash for her as shifting from a world view where she really didn't think of herself as a separate being, was not so aware of herself as an 'individual' the way her new roommate in this new culture was. Quite a shock for her, and quite a revelation, for me, reading her comments. Wish I could find a link, but that was in a Google land long ago and far away, not sure how I ever stumbled across her in the first place.

I'm going to speculate and guess that not all cultures experience 'individuality' the way Americans do, exactly because of the aforementioned early childhood experiences of 'detachment' rather than attachment. In other words, our hyper-individualism (here in the U.S.) is a direct outgrowth of our childrearing practices, that separate mother from child far too early for the child's healthy sense of self. Contrary to western belief, this 'healthy sense of self' includes a really intense sense of interdepence, rather than the fierce (and false, I believe) sense of so-called 'autonomy' (or 'independence') that is so revered here.