When I am feeling poorly, there is a part of my mind that seem to be able to veto pretty much any activity I am engaged in except for primitive motor actions. The activities that get the veto seem to be the kinds of activities that would scare or repel a small boy. Even when I don’t feel particularly poorly, my trying to do something extremely scary or repellent to the little boy will probably draw a veto.
The part with the veto power, which I sometimes refer to as the Saboteur, seems to be able to flush my working memory. For example, it can cause me to forget where I put something I had in my hand a moment ago. The thing I had in my hand tends to be something I need to continue with the activity the little boy is trying to veto. If the little boy is putting up a particularly strong fight, then after I retrieve the item, I often find to my amazement that (for no good reason that I can imagine) I have put it down (again) in a different place, but (again) even though I just put it down, I cannot recall where. I recall going through four cycles of misplacing an item and retrieving it, one cycle right after the other. I have some brain damage, which probably significantly impairs my working memory, and I am currently very confused about how many of these “sabotage incidents” would have happened if I had not incurred the brain damage. Obviously, if none of them would have happened if I had not incurred the brain damage, “sabotage incident” is a misnomer, and I am assigning an agenda or a motive to cognitive impairments that in reality have no agenda or motive behind them. I frequently forget why I got up out my chair. I frequently forget whether the pills I just swallowed contain important pill X. Most of these failures of working memory have no rebellious or sabotaging motive behind them: the question is whether some of them do. If the reader has any insights into this, I am all ears.
When I say that the kinds of things that seem to get a veto seem to be the kinds of things that would scare a young boy, the reader will tend to start to suspect that I had a brutalizing childhood, and the reader would be right.
I seem to be in a mood for self-disclosure today. I publish this only because Richard Hollerith is an alias that I do not plan to use for, e.g., job hunting and because I made a note to re-read this comment at a later date to re-consider whether I want it on the public internet. I ask everyone not to quote the personal parts of this comment because of course if I do decide to delete or prune the original, I would be unable to delete the quotes.
When I am feeling poorly, there is a part of my mind that seem to be able to veto pretty much any activity I am engaged in except for primitive motor actions. The activities that get the veto seem to be the kinds of activities that would scare or repel a small boy. Even when I don’t feel particularly poorly, my trying to do something extremely scary or repellent to the little boy will probably draw a veto.
The part with the veto power, which I sometimes refer to as the Saboteur, seems to be able to flush my working memory. For example, it can cause me to forget where I put something I had in my hand a moment ago. The thing I had in my hand tends to be something I need to continue with the activity the little boy is trying to veto. If the little boy is putting up a particularly strong fight, then after I retrieve the item, I often find to my amazement that (for no good reason that I can imagine) I have put it down (again) in a different place, but (again) even though I just put it down, I cannot recall where. I recall going through four cycles of misplacing an item and retrieving it, one cycle right after the other. I have some brain damage, which probably significantly impairs my working memory, and I am currently very confused about how many of these “sabotage incidents” would have happened if I had not incurred the brain damage. Obviously, if none of them would have happened if I had not incurred the brain damage, “sabotage incident” is a misnomer, and I am assigning an agenda or a motive to cognitive impairments that in reality have no agenda or motive behind them. I frequently forget why I got up out my chair. I frequently forget whether the pills I just swallowed contain important pill X. Most of these failures of working memory have no rebellious or sabotaging motive behind them: the question is whether some of them do. If the reader has any insights into this, I am all ears.
When I say that the kinds of things that seem to get a veto seem to be the kinds of things that would scare a young boy, the reader will tend to start to suspect that I had a brutalizing childhood, and the reader would be right.
I seem to be in a mood for self-disclosure today. I publish this only because Richard Hollerith is an alias that I do not plan to use for, e.g., job hunting and because I made a note to re-read this comment at a later date to re-consider whether I want it on the public internet. I ask everyone not to quote the personal parts of this comment because of course if I do decide to delete or prune the original, I would be unable to delete the quotes.