Things so horrible you never want to be in the situation to find them out #167

[andrewducker]

Collecting your own stool sample is _exactly_ as unpleasant as you'd imagine.

Comments

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

actually, after concentrating enough to read this properly, I think the only pre linguistic experience I've ever had was that first time on magic mushrooms. I've always assumed my I was what I said or thought now what I was. Did I even exist before i learnt to read? i have precious little subjective evidence of it. I think cos if I don't I am nothing.

[andrewducker]

Well, consciousness seems to rely on the same abstraction level as language, so if you can't talk about something you almost certainly can't think about it - we need to find the edges on things to be able to comprehend them (cf the way that religious experiences/alien abductions/etc are interpreted in varying different ways).

But you have non-linguistic experiences all the time, you just aren't conscious of them. When you're driving along, in a flow state, and arrive at work with no real idea of what happened between leaving home and arriving at the office - that's you so wrapped up in non-linguistic experience that you have no conscious experience of the situation. It's possible to do this with almost any task that's become so internalised that you no longer have to think about it to do it - which is why buddhist monasteries set monks to simple tasks (well, one of the reasons) - keeping the body occupied and the mind free can act as a kind of meditation.

I zone out at work fairly frequently, and 'come to' to find that I have an understanding of how to make something work, with no real idea of where the answer came from. It's a terribly handy knack to have, letting your unconscious do all the work :->