The Intuitive, the Counter-Intuitive and Cognitive Dissonance

[Mole]

The intuitive response to cognitive dissonance makes perfect sense - because they intuitively avoid pain and seek comfort.

While the counter-intuitive response to cognitive dissonance is, well, counter-intuitive - it doesn't make intuitive sense.

The counter-intuitive, rather than seeking to avoid pain and find comfort, seek to discover the new.

So for the counter-intuitive pain and comfort are secondary to discovery.

The infancy of humanity was spoken and intuitive which gave birth to religion which is entirely intuitive.

But literacy gave birth to the counter-intuitive - almost no one learns to read and write intuitively - they are compelled by law to go to special institutions called schools which specially trained staff, called teachers, to learn to read and write. And it is in becoming literate that they learn to think counter-intuitively.

More books, for instance, are translated in to Spanish in one year than have been translated into Arabic over the last five hundred years. This illustrates the intuitive nature of Islam is based on the spoken, not the written word.

And of course other religions are intuitive as well - just as astrology is intuitive - creationism is intuitive - even alchemy is intuitive - and MBTI is intuitive. All are pre-literate.

So it is unnatural to leave the intuitive world for literacy, but the prize is new discoveries.

And it turns out new discoveries far outweigh the pain of cognitive dissonance.

 

[entropie]

What should we do then ? Die ?


(Btw. you did not relate creationism to religion, did you ?)

 

[heart]

Religion may be intuitive and precognitive but we can learn about our inner-selves from the symbolism in it. Everything in this world has value if looked at with the proper perspective.

 

[Mole]

What should we do then ? Die ?


(Btw. you did not relate creationism to religion, did you ?)

No, dear Entropie, you should take the hint.

You should acknowledge we have moved from a spoken culture to a literate cuture, and take the hint.

But what is the hint?

It's really simple - we are now moving from our literate culture to a new spoken culture via electronics - the telegraph, the telephone, the television and the internet.

Take the hint - and move your eyes from the rear vision mirror to the windscreen - it's right in front of you - now.

 

[Ilah]

Spirituality is intuitive.

Religion is not. Religion is about knowing doctrine. You have to study it to know the "right" details. Priests and Rabbis have to go through many years of study and book learning before they are officially ordained. Many protestant preachers have the same requirements.

And most churches encourage children to go to Sunday School as well, to learn their faith. But if that is intuitive, that shouldn't be necessary, they should just know it. Or perhaps only intuitives know these things and S types need to study it. Actually intuitives tend to get their own ideas about faith, so I guess there is a point in making sure they know the "official" truth.

Ilah

 

[Totenkindly]

Spirituality is intuitive.

Religion is not. Religion is about knowing doctrine. You have to study it to know the "right" details. Priests and Rabbis have to go through many years of study and book learning before they are officially ordained. Many protestant preachers have the same requirements.

And most churches encourage children to go to Sunday School as well, to learn their faith. But if that is intuitive, that shouldn't be necessary, they should just know it. Or perhaps only intuitives know these things and S types need to study it. Actually intuitives tend to get their own ideas about faith, so I guess there is a point in making sure they know the "official" truth.

This is more my framework and I easily follow this explanation. It sounds like Victor is using different definitions for "intuitive," however, which makes for some confusion. Can you explain your framework a bit better, Victor?

 

[substitute]

I'm sorry but I totally disagree... "no pain, no gain" has always been a completely intuitive concept to me...

 

[Totenkindly]

I'm sorry but I totally disagree... "no pain, no gain" has always been a completely intuitive concept to me...

Surely you want to edit that.

 

[substitute]

...and the ration of Spanish to Arabic book translations illustrates more the number of native speakers and the awareness/openness of those speakers to foreign culture, literature etc, and their demand for it. And Islam is very much based on the written word. Between the Qur'an and Sahih Al-Bukhari's Hadith, together with a myriad du'aa for every occasion there's a written rule for just about every aspect of a Muslim's life.

In pre-Islamic culture however, there was a marked difference in perception of reality from that of the Roman empire. Our English word 'reality' stems from the Latin word 'res' meaning 'thing'. Denoting that in the inherited Classical way of thinking of the West, reality is all about 'things'. Tangible things. In Arabic the word is 'al-haqq', which as an entirely different root, meaning the opposite: reality is all about what's between, behind and beneath 'things'; it's about what causes, binds and moves 'things'.

Which is interesting...

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Moved from Philosophy.

 

[Mole]

This is more my framework and I easily follow this explanation. It sounds like Victor is using different definitions for "intuitive," however, which makes for some confusion. Can you explain your framework a bit better, Victor?

Yeah sure. I am using intuitive and counter-intuitive in a completely different setting.

My setting begins at your mother's knee in the warmth of your own home where you learn to speak the language of your mother.

And it ends when you are taken out of the loving arms of your mother and compelled by the State to attend a special institution with specially trained staff, in order to learn to read and write.

And this free, secular and compulsory education in literacy has only been available very recently in a few developed countries.

In historical terms, universal literacy has just arrived and only in a few privileged countries - most of the people in the world remain in a spoken culture - they are illiterate.

So at the first part of my setting, we learn to speak our language in our home. We learn naturally - we learn intuitively - we learn a spoken culture - and we learn the habits of thought of a spoken culture - and it is these habits of thought I call intuitive.

My intuitive has nothing to do with intuitive in MBTI.

And here comes school - it is compulsory - there is nothing natural about it - almost no one learns to read and write spontaneously.

Literacy is counter-intuitive. And the literate learn counter-intuitive habits of thought.

These counter-intuitive habits of thought have been overwhelmingly successful.

For instance, we intuitively know that the sun goes round the earth but we know counter-intuitively that the earth goes round the sun. And almost all of science is counter-intuitive.

We know that greed and usury are bad but we know counter-intuitively that private greed produces public prosperity - thanks to the great economist Adam Smith.

All politicians seek to intuitively increase their power while liberal democracy is counter-intuitively based on the limitation of power.

Intuitively we know to avoid cognitive dissonance because it is painful but we know counter-intuitively that cognitive dissonance leads us to discover new things.

In short the spoken culture comes from our own infancy and the infancy of humanity. While the literate culture is coming into our majority.

But our spoken culture has given us a great deal such as poetry and religion but it is the literate culture that has given us the modern world.

But once again we are moving on from the literate culture to the electronic culture. And the electronic culture is very much like the old spoken culture. In other words the new electronic culture is once again teaching us intuitive habits of thought.

 

[substitute]

yeah but considering that you're learning that 'spoken' culture FROM your parents, who have been very heavily influenced by the 'written' culture, is it really not just a spoken form of the written culture that you're taught on your mother's knee?

 

[Mole]

yeah but considering that you're learning that 'spoken' culture FROM your parents, who have been very heavily influenced by the 'written' culture, is it really not just a spoken form of the written culture that you're taught on your mother's knee?

It is how you learn it that matters. All children are programmed to intuitively learn a language, they learn it intuitively, quite naturally.

But they do not learn to read and write naturally, intuitively.

I feel the objection you have raised above is clever but it is only semantically clever.

It is as though you haven't understood what I have said but you feel driven to make a clever reply.

I find such cleverness at first irritating but after a while, tiresome.

 

[Mole]

...and the ration of Spanish to Arabic book translations illustrates more the number of native speakers and the awareness/openness of those speakers to foreign culture, literature etc, and their demand for it. And Islam is very much based on the written word. Between the Qur'an and Sahih Al-Bukhari's Hadith, together with a myriad du'aa for every occasion there's a written rule for just about every aspect of a Muslim's life.

In pre-Islamic culture however, there was a marked difference in perception of reality from that of the Roman empire. Our English word 'reality' stems from the Latin word 'res' meaning 'thing'. Denoting that in the inherited Classical way of thinking of the West, reality is all about 'things'. Tangible things. In Arabic the word is 'al-haqq', which as an entirely different root, meaning the opposite: reality is all about what's between, behind and beneath 'things'; it's about what causes, binds and moves 'things'.

Which is interesting...

I checked on Pakistan. They claim a literacy rate of 15% but they include in that 15% anyone who can sign their name. So most of Pakistan is illiterate.

The fact that their holy book is written has nothing to do with universal literacy or the infrastructure necessary to deliver universal literacy. Pakistan has neither.

In the madrasses they learn their holy book off by heart like poetry. This is similar to our holy book which was until recently was only read aloud in church.

But the literate world is moving on to the electronic world which is like the spoken world.

So we have three cultures operating side by side - the original spoken culture of the last 200,000 years and the modern literate culture less than 200 years old, and the new electronic culture of the present moment.

 

[substitute]

It is as though you haven't understood what I have said but you feel driven to make a clever reply.

I find such cleverness at first irritating but after a while, tiresome.

Alternatively, I could've just misunderstood what your point was, and genuinely answering, in good faith, what I thought it was.

I find such quickness to judge and insult a stranger at first puzzling, but after a while, irritating.

I was talking about the actual culture the person is 'receiving' and its relationship to what literacy exists in that culture, as opposed to just the medium in which it's transmitted. The theoretical life narrative you talked about in your post just prior to my second one in this thread seemed to be talking about people in a Western society. You talked about people being raised by their parents in a spoken environment and then at a young age being taken, from then onwards, into the literacy-based environment. Furthering that point, I felt it pertinent to point out that before the child goes to school, the culture they're already aware of and the language they speak is still heavily influenced by literate culture, as it's transmitted to them by their parents, whose initial intuitive understandings have since been heavily edited and supplemented by the written culture you described.

As for the literacy ratios of countries such as Pakistan, you make a good point. This is parallel to medieval Europe, where around 15% of people were literate, mainly clergy and the occasional nobleman or merchant. The language was still strongly influenced by the written word however, as can be seen by the way that French romances became popularized by being retold and enacted everywhere from village squares to royal courts, and the language used in these stories and poems was imitated.

I was in fact thinking about how your points conjured in my head the age old question as to whether art, in whatever form or media, reflects or directs the culture in which it exists.

 

[Nocapszy]

More books, for instance, are translated in to Spanish in one year than have been translated into Arabic over the last five hundred years. This illustrates the intuitive nature of Islam is based on the spoken, not the written word.

This may be and probably is the result of your holistic perspective, however it is not proof.
It gives light to the idea, and lends equally as much support to plausibility.

And of course other religions are intuitive as well - just as astrology is intuitive - creationism is intuitive - even alchemy is intuitive - and MBTI is intuitive. All are pre-literate.

So it is unnatural to leave the intuitive world for literacy, but the prize is new discoveries.

And it turns out new discoveries far outweigh the pain of cognitive dissonance.

I fear few understand what you mean.

I agree.
Seeking to completely banish submission to cognitive dissonance from my repertoire is an ongoing struggle for me.

 

[Nocapszy]

Victor, what is your stance on archetypes?

-- That is to ask, to your understanding, what is the purpose of an archetype in the abstract? I don't mean to ask about whichever already literary or otherwise archetypes already in supposed existence or whether you agree with them or not. Only about the idea of archetypes.

It appears that the Intuitive, and the Counter-intuitive take on qualities of actual extant characters by your thinking.

 

[Mole]

Alternatively, I could've just misunderstood what your point was, and genuinely answering, in good faith, what I thought it was.

I find such quickness to judge and insult a stranger at first puzzling, but after a while, irritating.

I was talking about the actual culture the person is 'receiving' and its relationship to what literacy exists in that culture, as opposed to just the medium in which it's transmitted. The theoretical life narrative you talked about in your post just prior to my second one in this thread seemed to be talking about people in a Western society. You talked about people being raised by their parents in a spoken environment and then at a young age being taken, from then onwards, into the literacy-based environment. Furthering that point, I felt it pertinent to point out that before the child goes to school, the culture they're already aware of and the language they speak is still heavily influenced by literate culture, as it's transmitted to them by their parents, whose initial intuitive understandings have since been heavily edited and supplemented by the written culture you described.

As for the literacy ratios of countries such as Pakistan, you make a good point. This is parallel to medieval Europe, where around 15% of people were literate, mainly clergy and the occasional nobleman or merchant. The language was still strongly influenced by the written word however, as can be seen by the way that French romances became popularized by being retold and enacted everywhere from village squares to royal courts, and the language used in these stories and poems was imitated.

I was in fact thinking about how your points conjured in my head the age old question as to whether art, in whatever form or media, reflects or directs the culture in which it exists.

Thanks for your reply.

I am operating from one simple point of view and that is, "the medium is the message".

Intuitively, normally we think the message is the message - I mean it makes sense, doesn't it?

But counter-intuitively we can think, the medium is the message.

So I am juxtaposing those two thoughts, "the message is the message", and "the medium is the message", to create cognitive dissonance.

So I want you to experience this particular cognitive dissonance.

Intuitively we try to resolve cognitive dissonance logically. But cognitive dissonance calls upon us to discover - to discover something new.

And to discover is not a logical act, it is a revelation.

 

[Mole]

Victor, what is your stance on archetypes?

-- That is to ask, to your understanding, what is the purpose of an archetype in the abstract? I don't mean to ask about whichever already literary or otherwise archetypes already in supposed existence or whether you agree with them or not. Only about the idea of archetypes.

It appears that the Intuitive, and the Counter-intuitive take on qualities of actual extant characters by your thinking.

I guess archetypes seem to me to be abstractions.

And I do think abstractions are just as essential as the concrete.

And it is the dynamic relationship between the concrete and the abstract that is enlivening.

And yes, you are right - I am very prone to abstraction myself - but I know I must come down to ground sometime.

So I try to parachute in from the abstract, personalised archetypes of intuitive and counter-intuitive to land on concrete examples. I mean I think the fun is relating the archetypes, or the shadows in the cave, to the bright, coloured living world.

On my right shoulder is an Angel called, "Intuitive", and on my left shoulder is an Angel called, "Counter-Intuitive".

And they whisper in my ears.

 

[Mole]

And to discover is not a logical act, it is a revelation.

Or like John the Baptist, we prepare the way for Christ.

Or in other words, we prepare ourselves to receive a revelation.

Part of this preparation is to let go, for a while, our cognitive faculty of logic - as we prepare ourselves to receive a revelation - a new discovery.

Of course our logical mind does not take kindly to being put to sleep, even for a while, 'cause our logical mind is there to protect us. And if we put ol' logic to sleep, we will be vulnerable as we receive our revelation.

But vulnerability is the essential condition for revelation.

And whereas logic keeps us safe, revelation brings us joy.

So you pays your money and you takes your choice.