Anyone know this questioner's conundrum?
September 29, 2010 8:20 PM Subscribe
Anyone know this questioner's conundrum? the statement I'm searching for describes the attempt of the speaker to "not think of you" and subsequent efforts to avoid the seemingly inevitable results of thinking about the elephant when trying like crazy not to, heeding the exhortation "DON'T THINK ABOUT AN ELEPHANT!". My inclusion of the elephant reference is as a descriptive aid, not part of the musing of the speaker, by the way.
Tao? Buddhist? Zen? Certainly meditative, but all I got on Google were answers pertaining to present-day songs and the like.....
Ugh. It is something of a brain-teaser, but highly enlightening in its treatment of helping one get around the mental chatter that seems to predominate thinking. Or, not thinking, in this case.
I can find it in none of my books, nor on the net.
I can't be the only one who has read this. Not certain about the era in which it originated, nor country, although if I were to speculate madly I'd say Japan, perhaps? Arrrgh. Frustrating. Damn ADD. Thanks, folks-I'll try and check back in ASAP.
Yeah, it's the unconscious monitoring process that tehloki's link talks about.
In literature, Edgar Allen Poe described a similar phenomenon as the "imp of the perverse," the feeling that drives you to do the opposite of what you are trying to do (like the way you sometimes get the urge to jump off a cliff when you stand near the edge) as far as I can tell it's the same thing as the UMP.
posted by phoenixy at 8:43 PM on September 29, 2010
In literature, Edgar Allen Poe described a similar phenomenon as the "imp of the perverse," the feeling that drives you to do the opposite of what you are trying to do (like the way you sometimes get the urge to jump off a cliff when you stand near the edge) as far as I can tell it's the same thing as the UMP.
posted by phoenixy at 8:43 PM on September 29, 2010
I misread the point of your question. You'll probably want to disregard my link.
posted by jsturgill at 10:01 PM on September 29, 2010
posted by jsturgill at 10:01 PM on September 29, 2010
I use the metaphor of "don't think of a white polar bear". You may be conflating that with the Zen metaphor of the blind men and the elephant? Its a pretty frequently used way of talking about the way trying to avoid a particular thought increases its frequency. Its a standard part of my "mindfulness" lesson as well as some OCD related psychoeducation.
posted by gilsonal at 11:27 PM on September 29, 2010
posted by gilsonal at 11:27 PM on September 29, 2010
Another way of thinking about this is that the instincts, and the "unconscious" mind, process positive statements... but not negative statements.
That is, the unconscious does not know the meaning of "not".
Your sensory imagination can make a mental image of a polar bear.
But if you tell someone to not make an image of a polar bear, your listener's imagination must construct the anything-but-polar bear or not-polar bear with, of course, the mental image of a polar bear. The not-polar bear may be erased after a split second, or have a giant X drawn on it, or whatnot... but always, the thought of not-X begins with the thought, and feeling, of X.
Every time you tell someone not-X ("Don't think about this all night!"), emotionally and imaginatively, they first must register X.
Emotionally, through speech, not-X equals X.
Of course, there's absolutely no way someone can possibly begin to imagine uses for saying something like, "There's no method whatsoever by which you can put incredibly fun possibilities into people's minds, possibilities that they are absolutely not going to spend several moments thinking about, or not thinking about, because that might be more enjoyable than some might want, and it's absurd to think about having more and more varieties of fun, just because you know there is not one person who would do this, if he or she decided not to do this...joyously."
posted by darth_tedious at 12:03 AM on September 30, 2010
That is, the unconscious does not know the meaning of "not".
Your sensory imagination can make a mental image of a polar bear.
But if you tell someone to not make an image of a polar bear, your listener's imagination must construct the anything-but-polar bear or not-polar bear with, of course, the mental image of a polar bear. The not-polar bear may be erased after a split second, or have a giant X drawn on it, or whatnot... but always, the thought of not-X begins with the thought, and feeling, of X.
Every time you tell someone not-X ("Don't think about this all night!"), emotionally and imaginatively, they first must register X.
Emotionally, through speech, not-X equals X.
Of course, there's absolutely no way someone can possibly begin to imagine uses for saying something like, "There's no method whatsoever by which you can put incredibly fun possibilities into people's minds, possibilities that they are absolutely not going to spend several moments thinking about, or not thinking about, because that might be more enjoyable than some might want, and it's absurd to think about having more and more varieties of fun, just because you know there is not one person who would do this, if he or she decided not to do this...joyously."
posted by darth_tedious at 12:03 AM on September 30, 2010
I know this is specifically what you're NOT asking for, but I think working backwards might get us there. Which is funny in this case, but here goes. The phrase "Don't think of elephants" (recently used in the move Inception, and was the title track of the last song on the soundtrack, by Hans Zimmer) was a title of a book "Don't think of an elephant" by George Lakoff. Prior to this, Lakoff would often use that phrase in his presentations and lectures to explain his theory of conceptual metaphor, which was first elucidaded in a 1980 book by him and Mark Johnson, called Metaphors We Live By. These theories are based around the idea of an image schema or a frame. Frame Semantics was first illustrated in Charles J. Fillmore's seminal work (PDF) of the same name (1976). Both of these theories naturally emerge from Immanuel Kant's account of schemas, among other things of course.
There are a lot of other avenues to explore, but I think the introduction sections to these theories, articles and books will lead you down to the person or work that first instantiated the idea into the public consciousceness of not thinking about schemas or frames as a philosophical or spiritual exercise.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:07 AM on September 30, 2010 [2 favorites]
There are a lot of other avenues to explore, but I think the introduction sections to these theories, articles and books will lead you down to the person or work that first instantiated the idea into the public consciousceness of not thinking about schemas or frames as a philosophical or spiritual exercise.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:07 AM on September 30, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure if this is related or not...
Years ago while crossing the Mississippi river, someone told of a story about how there was a slippery bridge (not sure if it was over the Mississippi or not) which had a large number of cars crashing and falling in the water. Someone figured out that it was the signs which said "Danger: Don't Look at the Water". Because people would do all that negative imaging stuff and then look right at the water even if they weren't going to do it before they read the sign. When the signs were changed to say "Watch the car in front of you" then the drivers kept their eyes on the road and their driving was much better and they had fewer crashes.
I, of course, can't find any mention of this by searching so I don't know if it's an urban legend or not. But it seems to be an example of what you are talking about.
posted by CathyG at 7:31 AM on September 30, 2010
Years ago while crossing the Mississippi river, someone told of a story about how there was a slippery bridge (not sure if it was over the Mississippi or not) which had a large number of cars crashing and falling in the water. Someone figured out that it was the signs which said "Danger: Don't Look at the Water". Because people would do all that negative imaging stuff and then look right at the water even if they weren't going to do it before they read the sign. When the signs were changed to say "Watch the car in front of you" then the drivers kept their eyes on the road and their driving was much better and they had fewer crashes.
I, of course, can't find any mention of this by searching so I don't know if it's an urban legend or not. But it seems to be an example of what you are talking about.
posted by CathyG at 7:31 AM on September 30, 2010
Response by poster: Holy smokes, all excellent answers. But I'm the problem here, clearly, trying to put into words my gnarled and twisted memories.
I'll try and paraphrase-this may make it clearer. It's a paragraph long, more or less. The speaker says something along the lines of "When I try not to think of you, I think of you. Instead, I'm going to try not thinking of not thinking of you..." This is a horribly abridged version of it, possibly rendering it as unrecognizable as my original attempt to describe his/her thought process.
If it weren't such a fascinatingly concise bit of thinking in the first place, I'd have just had a beer and chalked it up as another one of life's great mysteries, but as I remember, it will translate easily into other languages and therein lies my compulsion; to share with another in another culture, in their language.
You folks are the greatest, though, and I appreciate the leads. Now I'm curious about the things you've all tossed over here.
It's somewhere, I just know it.
Thanks.
posted by girdyerloins at 11:05 AM on September 30, 2010
I'll try and paraphrase-this may make it clearer. It's a paragraph long, more or less. The speaker says something along the lines of "When I try not to think of you, I think of you. Instead, I'm going to try not thinking of not thinking of you..." This is a horribly abridged version of it, possibly rendering it as unrecognizable as my original attempt to describe his/her thought process.
If it weren't such a fascinatingly concise bit of thinking in the first place, I'd have just had a beer and chalked it up as another one of life's great mysteries, but as I remember, it will translate easily into other languages and therein lies my compulsion; to share with another in another culture, in their language.
You folks are the greatest, though, and I appreciate the leads. Now I'm curious about the things you've all tossed over here.
It's somewhere, I just know it.
Thanks.
posted by girdyerloins at 11:05 AM on September 30, 2010
Response by poster: Jeez, one could be forgiven for thinking that, by my age, I'd have learned how to read by now.
tehloki and bottlebrushtree have the process in hand-but the thing I'm looking for is a person putting into words their attempts to not think about another person, as if they were speaking with that person.
Anybody care to wager that as soon as someone comes up with it, I'll find the darn thing on a slip of paper in a checkbook somewhere a week later? Yikes. Good thing it's only ADD, not Alzheimer's.....On second thought....
posted by girdyerloins at 11:22 AM on September 30, 2010
tehloki and bottlebrushtree have the process in hand-but the thing I'm looking for is a person putting into words their attempts to not think about another person, as if they were speaking with that person.
Anybody care to wager that as soon as someone comes up with it, I'll find the darn thing on a slip of paper in a checkbook somewhere a week later? Yikes. Good thing it's only ADD, not Alzheimer's.....On second thought....
posted by girdyerloins at 11:22 AM on September 30, 2010
Maybe you're thinking of the book Knots by R. D. Laing. It's a collection of examples of paradoxical and circular thinking. Here is a sample:
There is something I don't know
that I am supposed to know.
I don't know what it is I don't know
and yet am supposed to know,
and I feel I look stupid
if I seem both not to know it
and not know what it is that I don't know.
Therefore I pretend to know it...
posted by euphotic at 4:25 PM on October 8, 2010
There is something I don't know
that I am supposed to know.
I don't know what it is I don't know
and yet am supposed to know,
and I feel I look stupid
if I seem both not to know it
and not know what it is that I don't know.
Therefore I pretend to know it...
posted by euphotic at 4:25 PM on October 8, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by tehloki at 8:32 PM on September 29, 2010