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I find the “story” of the “imposter” a particularly compelling one because I think the storyteller can sometimes also tell a story that makes the “self” an imposter. The interconnectedness between conscious and tacit knowledge somehow makes this story more understandable to me; we can be at “war” with ourselves.

Here are some links to a talk given in 2007 by Antonio Damasio. It is posted in two parts; the first is 34 minutes and the second 36.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbacW1HVZVk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agxMmhHn5G4&feature=related

Watching these videos really helped me to process some of the things we have been talking about. Damasio talks about the “fast route” to processing information, which he says is emotion and the “slower route,” which he says is reason. This makes sense in the context of emotions, but is somewhat confusing in that we tend to think of ourselves as “thinking” not “emoting” beings first and foremost. This also defies, in my opinion, what the popular mythology surrounding the ways in which we process information is. Damasio purports in the lecture that “we are always in an emotional state,” which in some ways may be obvious, but isn’t something of which I am always personally aware. As in the article we read last week, Damasio asserts that emotion is the frontline and that feelings are our revisionist perceptions of our initial emotion. The only time we experience “neutral states” to borrow Damasio’s wording is when we are unconscious.

Additionally, Damasio says, “Human emotions are largely unlearned programs of automatic actions and cognitive strategies aimed at the management of life.” His notion of “management of life” is this similar to “making new meaning” or something different altogether? If “management of life” is the usefulness of any given story to make meaning in a particular individual it may well be similar to what we have been discussing. Also, the notion that emotions are not learned, rather are innate, softens one’s perception of those who may exhibit behaviors (stemming from feelings which stem from emotions) that are not within the range of what we, culturally, deem to be “normal.” Just as most of us are born with two functioning kidneys, are most of is born with an emotional “toolkit” of sorts which, depending upon a variety of internal and external factors, we use differentially to shape meaning within ourselves and in our interactions with others?  Furthermore he details different kinds of emotion, such as “background emotion” (enthusiasm, discouragement…), and “social emotions” (compassion, guilt…).

*Aside: I’m at a coffee shop as I write this and the song “More than a Feeling” (sung by Boston. Am I so old that nobody else knows this song?) just came on. Weird.

The role of tacit knowledge is still somewhat perplexing. Obviously our brains cannot process and make sense of everything in our environments at once; there is simply too much stimulus. However, is tacit knowledge soaking up and storing its own form of “knowledge” of which we are not aware? And, if so, is it not possible that therapy can reshape tacit knowledge through dealing with the “story teller” which mingles with tacit knowledge, and thus, give new meaning to the implicit nature of tacit knowledge and the explicit nature of consciousness? It seems to make sense that the “story teller” explains the emotion to itself, to the world, through feeling. Because the experience of pain, for example, is something felt acutely in a moment, or over a period of time, but when one is not in pain, one cannot “feel” pain, though one can tell a story about what the experience of pain was like.