unconscious juggling

The unconscious mind works with information as an array of probabilities. It isn't decisive, but so influential as to be akin to the puppet master. The conscious mind being the puppet, of sorts, where all this information is reduced to the choices we make.

Much like in politics, the choices we make are almost entirely a matter of the information we've been able to access and understand and how it's been skewed. Maybe I've become too aware of my own mind to justify myself the way others do. I want to, I try here and there, but I fumble because I don't even buy my own bullshit.

Consciousness yields lots of nonsense. The unconscious is beyond our ability to explain. I have to take lots of guesses. I have to take shrooms and study dreams to look for clues. I hesitate to explain to others that my views are solidly backed by my hallucinogenic experiences.

A lot of this has to do with the neuroscience I've been reading up on lately, too. It's a juggling act, maintaining information from numerous disparate sources to work into some integrated concept of what's actually happening, within us and around us. It's precisely the sort of juggling act which the unconscious excels at.

Consciousness can only hold one thought at a time. We can jump from subject to subject, sometimes very rapidly, and that's nice and all, but the unconscious can probabilistically assess a hundred different subjects at the same time. Everything the conscious does depends heavily on that - without knowing it.

Inherent to this dynamic is that we can't even comprehend the sorts of equations our unconscious is making, let alone how it prioritizes things, and how we're actually motivated. e.g. when we lash out defensively, even as we insist we don't feel attacked. When we can see all the factors that go into that reaction, it all makes sense. Consciously though, we're more inclined to scramble, to make excuses and rationalize, ex post facto nonsense.

Both parts of the mind are necessary to actually function. Ideally, they work in a perfect harmony of some sort, as opposed to incessantly tripping over one another. I'm inclined to think better communication between these two parts of ourselves could facilitate that, but it's far from easy. The ego balks at the overwhelming scale and chaos of the unconscious mind, when we can get any glimpse of it at all.