Understanding the Subconscious

Our subconscious is the most powerful computer out there. In a world obsessed with data, precision, and perfection this seems overlooked. Everywhere I look, I see a world that overvalues individuals who lack human qualities like empathy in favour of robotic practicality. They call this logic and rationality. But I see it as an ineptitude to be human. 

While the practical and logical will make a sturdy workforce, they are a far cry from the human pursuit for living our limited life well. This desire to train people to be more robotic, emotionless, and precise with all sorts of tools seems to be an ironic neglect of the most rational processing tool we were born with. 

Look at the mere obsession with AI. What are we trying to do when creating AI? We are trying to implement intelligence—the intelligence we possess as humans—into a computer. The ability to have raw 'thought'. 

Alas, I doubt AI will be able to have an inspired moment to create something to change the world. We aspire to see our creations go through the same process of questioning, confusion, struggle, and realizations we have. This is a very human path. 

It’s beautifully inefficient and that’s what makes life an adventure. This desire for adventure is something I find hard to fathom in AI—at least for my lifetime. The power of intelligence and the ability to creatively produce will remain with the human brain.

I believe that if you look for happiness you'll never be happy and if you search for success you will never find it. I think they hit you—without warning and in an unpredictable fashion—for a moment in time when you might feel some spark of happiness and realize it for the minute before it leaves you again. 

With that in mind, the point of trying to understand the subconscious is not to find it and never have an unconscious thought. On the contrary, given its value, the point is to find ways to cultivate more unconscious thought. From there on, I think the big mystery I would like to learn more about is how to be aware and attentive to it when it happens. 

Far more development for humanity may be possible if people stopped obsessing over tools but looked inward to hone the tools they were born with. They are tools we’ve never been taught to use—rather we were told to forget it and ignore it for much of our development. 

What if the path to logical, rational thought lay in unlearning everything and listening to the world’s most powerful computer in our heads?