Most People Now 'Think' in Pictures...do you?

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 1 month ago to Ask the Gulch
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I think in both, words/reason and in pictures but it's always the "Words" that allow me to see these pictures.
In a sense, Words are worth a 1000 pictures for me.

Interesting to note, ancient man and probably other mammals think and thought in pictures.
Just think of a familiar path that ultimately lead to the den of a bear...it wasn't pretty,...one's instinctive response to this mental image would be to go the other way and survive another day.

How about you?


All Comments

  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    OH...thought you meant Old icons.
    Not really a thought process, it's hard to tell with the left or those unaware but even a poptart with one corner bitten off...triggers the thought of a gun!
    In other words, relatively simple, innocent picts seem to trigger over the top reactions.
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  • Posted by Ed75 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Single pictures that represent a larger concept can "trigger" memories of larger thought processes or like a computer, when "clicked upon" bring up whole pages.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    The problem as I see it these days is that the pictures are either a distraction, promoting non existent issues or are posted in place of thought and words.
    Either way...we seem to be devolving. I once thought that once the genie was out of the box...(consciousness), that it could never be put back in that box. Sadly... I may be wrong.
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  • Posted by Ed75 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I think that pictures originate only when the words those pictures represent are available to the observer. When we understand what it is that we observe, it is because we have been taught with words to identify those characteristics. Otherwise, if we have no way to relate what we see to the ramifications of that observation, (words versus pictures) we would be helpless. Thankfully, either way we identify our thinking is acceptable.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Correct but today, pictures are used as propaganda, to elicit extreme emotions, to trigger violent reactions or to avoid words, principles and concepts.
    Also, perhaps as well, to make waist and lazy the mind.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 8 years, 1 month ago
    I agree with the premise of the article, but for us older folk pictures and diagrams work equally as well as words. Way back in high school the only math class that I excelled in was Geometry. Hands on experience of working on automobile mechanicals before the advent of electronics was basically creating pictures in one's mind.
    Then taking a month long tech college class in "Maintaining Hydraulic Systems" then seven years working in that field you had to memorize diagrams and pictures to repair variety of components. When my brother(degreed Hydraulics Engineer) came to visit me and showed me photo's of a project he installed for a customer I was able to name the major components in the photo. He was very surprised that I was able to remember such information.
    So, in some ways picture memory works very well if you're using it in a productive area of work.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    That's funny, but that's where the observation comes from...actually a metaphor for one's lack of self control.
    The brain produces vibratory electrical measurable energy...ref. delta, beta, etc, waves, which produces a field of energy outside one's head. This field, I pose, is part of the quantum energy field and is where we are able to inspect our self, observe our own behavior and therefore gain an ability to override the animalistic desires of the brain.
    If you think about it, the brain itself has no ability to view itself or control itself beyond survival functions.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Exactly...now you know what the "I" is; an identity void of ego and I pose, it's our individual "IP" address to all the quantum connections we need and desire.
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  • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Might you elaborate about the mind residing outside the head? I consider it a manifestation of the brain along with the nervous system. I once facetiously called the sexual organs a second brain since they have so much control over so much of human behavior, many times out voting rational thought.
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  • Posted by Stormi 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    That is exactly like when the Hillary camp exchanged e-mails with the CFR, confirming their hared goal of socially unaware people. It was what Rand saw coming when she wrote "Anthem,a wrold without books, with out "I", without light at night. Herds with no thought, no concept of self (as Millennials today), who thought only in the collective. The mind could only grow when the character could read and see the world as "I" - exhilarating for him.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Just as the left brain and the right brain merged to be one, that integration leads to the use of pictures, concepts and words and those integration's lead to moral and ethical behavior, encompassing the natural mutuality we had for others outside the family unit.
    It stands to reason, lack of knowledge, or even faux knowledge, causes the masses to devolve back into the once lost bicameral species we once were.
    This is why, most rulers historically, did not favor educating the masses...they could not withstand the competition.
    Hearken back to a more accurate understanding of the fall of Babylon. Not by the Creator but spoken by the rulers: "We must go down and confound their language...lest nothing be impossible unto them."
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    May your sight, pictures and words continue unhindered Stormi...Join them together as long as you can for more integrated metaphoric pictures and knowledge; which of course, leads to greater and greater consciousness and what I've come to call: Sight of Mind.
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  • Posted by Stormi 8 years, 1 month ago
    I have remarked that the kids are reverting to the Stone Age, in kidding. Actually, now I understand that the texting with symbols and the over use of imogee things ties right into what the author is saying. Then add the drop in IQ and it makes sense. Friends have asked why you cannot reason with some people, because they are picture people who no longer have critical thinking skills - like the journalists and extreme liberals.
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  • Posted by Stormi 8 years, 1 month ago
    As one of the old timers with macular degeneration, I discovered that sight is not to be trusted. Before two surgeries and ongoing shots into the retina, I was seeing telephone pole and street lines as curved, not straight. I would ask my husband, if something was crooked.
    Now, I see that if all you trust is what you see, or think you see, you might have an issue! Luckily, all is straight again, and I can still use our 2,000 plus book library pretty well, at least for now.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    It's the brain that's split...not your mind. It wasn't widely understood, (come to think about it, neither is it today), that one's mind resides outside your head. So Jaynes, like many today, use those terms interchangeably.
    I, in my work, as you know, try to be more specific.
    Besides, I give Jaynes or his publishers, a break because it just plain sounds better to say: The Bicameral Mind and a bit awkward to say the Bicameral Brain.
    Part of the process, and Jaynes later alludes to this, is the left and right brains began to cooperate and in many ways...began to operate as one, on our way toward conscious introspection.
    Your last point in the first par can be put into objective language. One needs a mind to gain a "rationally self interested identity. The bicameral brain only has or develops an ego made up of stuff you've done which one uses to define self.

    A bit of background in reference to the breakdown Jaynes is describing. Everything we did or thought, prior to awareness of self was directed by an illusionary voice. Some voices represented different gods, some their rulers and still yet, others the voices of ancestors. These voices about 2500/3000 years ago, became increasingly confusing between what yours said and what mine said...then the voices went silent...can you imagine the chaos, the confusion. (interestingly, a natural event happened during this time...and I am tempted to think these two occurrences are linked.- (Our magnetic shield became the strongest it has ever been...according to retroactive measuring tech.) We were forced by nature and survival needs, to start thinking for ourselves and controlling ourselves which eventually bore a mind and a cooperation between our left and right brains.
    Just observing the recorded/reported actions of mankind shows they had no conscience, awareness of one's own behavior...just like we see in many today...usually the one's morally outraged, those that rule over you but fail to rule themselves...this is where my premise of the upside down paradigm comes from.
    The process Jaynes painfully outlines is still going on today...globally, only a small percentage of us are actually Conscious Beings; but that doesn't mean we all have mastered our minds, self control and self introspection...sadly...as a species, we have a long way to go.
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  • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Recall that Jaynes spoke of "bicameral mind" and not of "bicameral brain". I look at the brain as being split into two parts which have a somewhat limited connection and can be considered as bicameral. To me, the mind is just a condition of the brain which can be considered a self. Whether the self is split bicamerally is unknown. The degree of selfishness is what is important, in that, only a self can get past living with just imagery to a reasoning with concepts. A self is needed for any understanding of rights and for the creation of empathy and any concern for others by reference to oneself.
    When young I would daily listen to radio serial programs such as Tom Mix, I Love a Mystery, Superman, etc. and create imagery for what I heard. I have always thought in both imagery and words as well as sometimes in bodily feelings. It is a mixture with different parts of the brain working together. In math, I have images of the math symbols and formula before doing any actual reasoning about them as well as new images being created from the reasoning. A bicameral brain of mind is the kind of mind that a Homo Sapiens Sapiens has and needs no breakdown to produce consciousness. It is there whether one wants it or not. One need only be selfish to learn how to use it whether in images, concepts, or combinations of those.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    The other thing that just struck me is that, We dream in pictures do we not? We don't dream in words...and for most, words are only spoken in those dreams...?
    My own research seem to show that 70% of my sample inquiries do not hear words spoken in their own voices in their heads...when they are trying to remember something or rehearsing something...they move their mouths. My sample size of young people of high school and college age is up to about a 1000 now.
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  • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Interesting question...They might form some sort of visual idea by the way something feels...some can navigate once their environment is known to them. There must be some way they can arrange that knowledge spatially.
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  • Posted by starznbarz 8 years, 1 month ago
    My addiction to making pictures is closely followed by my habit of collecting books - the best of both worlds. The satisfaction of a great image is equal to finding a signed first edition in a stack of $1 books - both speak to you.
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  • Posted by $ Radio_Randy 8 years, 1 month ago
    Not to be facetious, but I wonder if a blind person can think in pictures. Imagine describing a blue sky or red sunset to a person born without sight.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 8 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Locked in there way before first grade. I don't quite follow the number dots you are describing. Was that one teachers way of constructing them, or off of dominos or something?
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