David’s description of the exercise we did during the phone call (2 calls back) is not quite how I had meant to present it, but you can listen to the phone call yourself and decide. But his description of his own experience is striking, because it shows how strongly our experience is shaped by the way we organize experience (in this case through consciously picking out abstract aspects of experience such as ‘edge’ and ‘angle’.
Reading this reminded me of a conversation I had recently that might lead you to try an experiment. Someone said to me that race seemed to be the single most essential element of a person. What she meant was that if she met someone, the single undeniable thing about them would be their race. My own sense of this was different: I felt that sex–male or female–was the single essential element. I could at least imagine meeting someone and not noticing what race they were, but I could not imagine meeting someone and not noticing what sex they were (though their might be cases where I didn’t know.) Perhaps you can find a way to try this out in your experience and see what you find.
David’s other, related post is a nice description of a ‘condensed’ experience (not that your experience will necessarily be the same or even similar). The phrase that comes to mind here is ‘melting into’, even though that is not quite what David wrote.
To be continued,
Jack
You’re suggesting a third possibility here: that what one sees first and foremost is not someone’s sex or race, but whether that person/being is hostile or friendly. That certainly seems worth exploring.
I agree that we are almost at the level of instincts. When I studied introductory psychology, I was taught that human beings are motivated by “the four F’s”: food, fear, fighting, and sex. Awareness of race could be seen as a sublimated version of the fear/fighting complex, but I think that it carries a lot of social issues with it also, as do the others, perhaps to a lesser degree.
This list of “the four F’s” seems to me very incomplete. It leaves out positive motivations, such as love, and also more psychological needs, such as acceptance, approval, and security.
As always, though, what matters most for us is not the specifics, but the underlying operation of the communique.
I would like to comment on your second paragraph Jack – ‘…….the single most essential element of a person.’
It took me a while to drop both suggested – race and sex, so I could connect un-primed, and from this found, that for me, intention is key. Irrespective of race or sex which is pre defined, and (as far as I’m concerned) irrelevant (in this context), I feel that someone’s underlying intention is central to any interaction.
So taking your lead, I can’t imagine (let alone allow to happen) meeting someone and not checking them out as they come into my field of vulnerability. And am not sure how otherwise I’d be able to be comfortable given the spontaneity of life. (On re-reading, I’m thinking maybe this is more about natural instincts?)
Louise.