Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Use your brain (II)

I have mentioned previously Noam Renen's aphorisms "Use your brain"

"Use your brain" means "Use YOUR brain".

And this is because much end-gaining comes not from being bad or an idiot, just out of being lazy.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein

The opposite of wrong is wrong

This opens Noam Renen’s aphorisms on Alexander Technique, "Use your brain".
Our intellect – that part of the brain we identify normally with thinking – thinks in terms of logical opposites: black-white, wrong-right, true-false, or in general either A or not-A.
Not-doing A, is not the same as doing not-A. Which is easy to understand intellectually, but difficult to apply in practice.
For example "not tensing the neck" is not the same as "freeing the neck" (which is also not the same as "relaxing the neck", but that is another story).

Therefore (because we confuse not-doing something with doing not-something), according to the trial-and-error plan (an end-gaining aproach), we go from one wrong to another wrong.

The right, is neither A nor not-A, nor a balance of A and not-A. This ‘third’ option is something new, outside the known or habitual, which has the attributes of both A and not-A at the same time.
Conscious Control, is not the opposite of Subconscious Control.