To Be or Not to Be in Focus…

Estudia: Okay, Phi, your last dialog suggests another question. If sensations are automatic, and perceptions are outside our control, then how can our thoughts or actions be free? After all, what is left to us beside this conceptualizing business you said you’d talk about later?

Philo: Good point. By its nature, we do have these automatic processes of our consciousness, but we are not moved to action outside of our control. At least not in terms of free thoughts or actions. Touch a burning hot stove and you will move automatically without thought, but that’s not what you mean. You are asking about your volition, your ability to make conscious choices and decisions and determine your intentions. Thoughts or actions like you’re talking about are “free” if the decision involves a choice between at least two possibilities. The outcome depends on your decision and it could have been something else if you had made a different decision. That’s free will at work.

Estudia: Okay, I choice to study philosophy, at least talk with you about it, and I spend time with you and learn hopefully. I don’t have to do that. I could choice to watch TV or go bike riding. That certainly seems free and no one is going to convince me my choice was determined.

Philo: They aren’t. The sensational and perceptual levels of awareness are automatic and you don’t have a choice there. No volition, but on the conceptual level, the story is different. Your basic choice is whether you are going to use your mind on the conceptual level. You have a choice to think or not to think.

Estudia: When I’m awake I get the feeling you are right. Sometimes I just don’t feel like facing the chores that need doing, or thinking about anything, and I don’t turn on my mind. I meditate or watch a dumb TV program.

Philo: And perhaps suffer the consequences when reality presents itself with your next test. You are talking about the primary choice that is required for volition. You have to focus your mind on something first before you can make any choices. To focus or not is the primary choice and makes all other conceptual processes possible. You have an autonomic system that controls your heart, lungs, stomach and other bodily functions but not your mind’s conceptual ability. Lots of things in the subconscious mind are automatic, like feeling an emotion, but even they are subject to change via introspection. The mind is very complex but to use it you first must focus.

Estudia: Hummmm... So the primary volitional choice is not to sense things, or even perceive them, but to choose to focus on something.

Philo: Exactly, sort of. The choice is that you must chose to focus your consciousness. You don’t have to. You can listen to me with your mind in an unfocused state and with lots of thoughts and imagines flashing into your awareness. You’re in a fog, so to speak, you’re listening, but you’re not “hearing” what I’m saying. I could be hypnotizing you for all you know and you’d remember what was said in your subconscious but, could not for the life of you, remember consciously what we discussed. You can’t understand anything like this. You have to focus, which means you have to be alert mentally with a purpose of wanting to understand.

Estudia: Then focus is like setting a goal? I have to direct my consciousness to grasp fully what is going on “out there” in reality.

Philo: Right. You would be in focus if you have committed yourself to obtaining complete awareness of reality. You don’t have to be in full focus all the time but the more you exercise focus the better off you will be. You can choose to just listen on the perimeter and catch a thought now an then while reading a book and seeing the words and understanding there meaning but not grasping there true impact, while getting a massage that feels wonderful but which you don’t fully relish. There are lots of levels of focus.

Estudia: Kind of reminds me of how I struggle to grasp your thoughts about the nature of reality and consciousness sometimes. Maybe the reason I’m having it not stick in my mind is that I’m not fully in focus.

Philo: Maybe. It’s not easy being in full focus, but if you are striving to grasp clearly what we’ve been saying you have chosen to focus and you will understand, at least up to your ability, as opposed to someone content with just a vague idea of what we’ve been discussing. You’ll be far better off for your effort.

Estudia: If I don’t understand something, does that mean you aren’t focusing?

Philo: No, you don’t have to be all knowing. Omniscience is not the meaning of focus or full awareness. You only have your past knowledge to build upon and you have all the thinking skills of your mind to work with, but they may not be enough to understand some aspect of reality at that time. But if you have made the attempt with all means available to you, you have been in focus. If you got drunk and didn’t think clearly, you certainly couldn’t say you were in focus. Drunks and many people in general do not choose to focus so their minds are not active or goal directed. Reality is just a blur for them and often they suffer the consequences. Wandering out of their traffic lane, having an affair with a meaningless whore, buying an inferior product because it is too much trouble to focus on the merits of all available.

Estudia: So I have to always be in full focus?

Philo: No, you can enjoy moments of relaxation like sunning at the beach with you’re mind wandering, but when the surf is suddenly sucked out to sea and a strange feeling that a tsunami is coming, you’d best change your level of focus fast and get moving.

Estudia: What if I’m just evading something I don’t want to think about, so I decide not to focus on it?

Philo: If you are aware that you need to think about something and make a decision, but refuse to raise your level of focus, then you are evading. If you do this often enough, it becomes a habit. Like the guy who knows he needs to go find work, but goes to the bar instead. Or the student who needs to prepare for the next test, but decides to go to a concert and enjoy the music and drugs. This type of habit of not focusing will create anxiety and life will become more threatening. When you evade you elevate a feeling over the truth. The drunk wants to feel the pleasure of non-effort and becomes anxious about not having a job. The student and his music fail the course and his anxiety increases.

Estudia: What about if you know you have a pain and avoid thinking about it or getting it checked by a doctor? Is that not similar?

Philo: You would be evading thinking about a problem which could become life threatening. You want to believe that your problem will go away. You wish for it to go away. The drunk, the student, the patient all elevate a wish above what is.

Estudia: So it is wrong to choose to be out of focus and it is wrong to choose to evade specific situations, right?

Philo: To evade you have to make a choice. To be out of focus doesn’t necessarily require a choice on your part. The passive drifting thought process is not immoral. It is wrong to choice to not focus when you need to, this is evasion and it is immoral. Objectivism holds that evasion is the primary vice because all other vices are based on the evasion of some aspect of reality.

Estudia: Wow, that’s powerful. Let me think about that for a while. CU, later.