Random Thoughts on Consciousness and Identity

There are concepts in cybernetics of positive feedback loops, whereby actions that receive positive feedback are reinforced and continued, and negative feedback loops, which stop unwanted behavior. In my own somatic awareness, I feel to some degree my environment often influences where my consciousness is focused in my body, where it retreats to my spine if the outside world seems displeasurable or aversive, and it moves toward the skin or flows outward when the world is welcoming or interesting or enjoyable. So, angry people make my consciousness go to my spine, and plushies make my consciousness go to my skin, got it, pretty straightforward. Reinforcement and Punishment are pretty obvious concepts... but is it ever discussed in terms of somatic awareness? Sometimes, but not usually.

I feel like as someone who identifies as a transgender human, my gender recognition has a large impact on whether or not my consciousness is flowing into the world or retreated as far back from it as possible (barring the whole dpdr phenomena where my consciousness has felt a few feet behind my body, which is somewhat related). I know when I found myself in environments or scenarios where I met adverse reactions to not acting masculine, I just generally would check out and either not talk or try to leave (or people please, albeit begrudgingly, and I regret doing it altogether years later, but I feel like most people just try to fit in when they're younger anyway, so I guess I can't give myself too much grief, and it's not like I was ever the shining ideal of masculinity anyway).

I feel like to some degree the whole concept of self is kind of shaky, since most of what we call ourselves was internalized from the outside world anyway, and whether or not one wants to identify with one's actions, traits, or characteristics is to some degree a personal choice. I feel like the self is something that kind of ebbs and flows between the outside world, where if the self is a wave going onto a shoreline, the sand that goes back into the ocean is whatever is internalized from the outside world. Sometimes we impact the world around us, and sometimes the world impacts us. I feel this especially as someone who has to correct people on pronouns all the time, but luckily I'm at the point where I don't question my identity anymore.

I feel like to some degree I dislike when people feel the need to label everything around them, especially me and my gender, but also traits people in the world have, their so-called roles and responsibilities in society, and what types of behavior should be expected from them. I feel like people should be given more reign over their fate. I feel that normality is not something to police and that variance should alternatively be the goal. I don't think it's right that society deems it reasonable to take ownership of people's bodies (either for reproduction or military operations, at least in capitalism it's an exchange of some sort of energy and health for money) or for people to demand that you feel a certain way about certain things (demanding that your emotions match theirs or that your interpretation of some event matches how people want you to interpret it, even if it goes against your interpretation of events).

I feel like a lot of society likes to control things that don't matter, while letting the things that actually cause harm run rampant. Being gay or transgender, having a religion that is not in the majority, literally just being a woman doing anything period besides getting married and having kids, are often villified, discouraged, or made more difficult. Yet, being misogynist, being a bigot, conversion therapy, and hate, usually go completely unregulated, or are sometimes even celebrated. I am by no means trying to provoke any sort of action by saying this, I am just lamenting on the matters that I feel are deemed important by large groups of people who completely neglect the issues I find critical (much like how many scoff at my prizing of gay liberation over lowering taxes). It's funny too, because I feel like most people generally want the same things from a neuroscience standpoint, but the way in which they seek them is just filtered through cultural frameworks or differences in other parts of the nervous system.

Definitely not an original idea, but... I feel like the consciousness flows along this path:

Molecules -> Signals -> Responses -> Behaviors -> Habits -> Personas -> Social Groups -> Societies -> Belief Systems

Whereby some of the levels further along feed-back to lower levels to promote or discourage different behaviors.

Using this system, I by no means want to assert the bunk biological essentialism, nor act like free will does not exist and we all just ultimately run on instinct. Humans have free will, and citing different brain chemicals as a reason to avoid responsibility is the wrong use for science.

I do however think that humans could live a happier existence, and live freer lives, if there weren't people who sought power over others or to take things that don't belong to them. Sadly, because of these bad eggs, now there's this whole societal structure that restricts the freedom of one's nervous system to manifest as an authentic person.

Anyway... consciousness is something I think about a lot.... and identity.... so there'll probably be more of that in the future.