Awareness I : Overriding Autonomic Processes

Aware : we all know what the word means. But most people are only dimly connected to their Awareness - they are oblivious to much of what is going on around them. Of course there can be an overload of information here, so some of it does need to be filtered out. Some individuals' filters will register almost anything of importance, while others are mostly blocked and in serious need of cleaning. But so what - it is quite obvious that some people walk around mostly in a daze, while others are keen observers - what is the issue ? Well, the consequences of a lack of Awareness are in fact quite numerous, especially in the context of the individual interacting smoothly with the rest of society.

What we are discussing here is the ability of Awareness to override mental autonomic processes in certain situations. Technically, an autonomic function is usually associated with the part of the brain that handles automatic processes that don't require operation on a conscious level - for example breathing. For the purposes of this discussion, I am defining an autonomic process as any mental pattern that is ingrained in our brains to handle situations in life that are processed (usually) at the subconscious level. For example, applying the brakes on our car when the car in front of us does the same, or opening a cupboard to get a bowl (the bowls are always in the same place, so the pattern of opening the correct cupboard is burned in and used on a subconscious level). We don't usually think of these things as we do them - they are automatic.

But in many cases our ability to interact with the outside world is hampered by these processes, and that's when our Awareness must come into play to override them. When these overrides are absent, the end result can be something as minor as pissing someone else off, or can be a life-endangering situation.

Here's an example of these processes at work, using situations encountered while driving [kinda boring, but gets the point across]. Sometimes the burned-in processes are correct, and need to be overridden - but other times they are just plain wrong.

1. A driver turns on their headlights when it gets dark. Good for them, but it needs to be overriden in poor visibility conditions. You've got a raging snowstorm in the middle of the day, with 50-foot visibility, and these people don't turn on their headlights to become more visible, since the process trigger - 'night time' - has not happened.

2. Some drivers turn on their turn signals only while they are in the turn. A lot of people seem to have this useless process burned into their brains. I can see you're freaking turning already, but thanks for the light show ! How about you flick that little lever like 5 seconds before you turn, that might be helpful to the people behind you.

3. A driver is following another car quite closely - you can see the brake lights pulsing on and off as they try to maintain a constant distance between the other vehicle - usually something like 25 feet behind. Hey, I admire your consistency and pinpoint control, but how about you turn off the autopilot and actually become aware of what you're doing ? Ok some of these people are like 'Angry Person', but more often than not they're just daydreaming, demonstrating another chapter in the unsafe driving manual.


Ok I'm getting rather bored of this post. Let me summarize that often, people are sleepwalking through many corridors of life, and if they became more Aware we would all be better off. Now excuse me, I need to go for a drive, hopefully riding someone else's bumper while flashing my lights and turn signals on and off randomly !