Day 5

I enjoyed the acting exercise today. It reminded me of preschool when we all used to be able to play up close and personal without any weirdness. It was fun and incited feelings of cooperation. I liked having eyes closed as that ridded me of irrational insecurities ("will this person want to hold my hand??" etc) It was fun and hard to keep from laughing. I thought my arms were gonna split every so often. Some people need better hygiene. I hope mine was okay. Why were there two circles and one was so much smaller? Big circle should get more effort points (I was in the big circle). We were taught to communicate without sound and there was much head-nuzzling into arms, arm taps and other forms of attempted communication.

It felt very primitive to detach from language & mind and use only instinct and our bodies. I am a fan of natural, instinctive, evolutionarily-supported behavior. Something felt more natural about this exercise than the regular classroom setting. We are likely more evolutionarily primed for comradery and physical communicative gestures than we are primed for formal classroom instruction, yet rarely depart from formality in the day-to-day.

Using instinct instead of our heads was very refreshing since I tend to think too much. It made me wonder what life would be like if I continued to use instinct and "leave my head." I'm sure I'd spend a lot more time with that guy who plays with my mind. I wondered what the benefit of using my instincts would have if others still use their heads. Would those using primarily instincts be at an advantage or disadvantage in such a scenario? What if everyone had to use only instincts for a day? The mind was turned off. That would be cool and probably serve meditative purposes for our over-used minds.

It also helped me understand society... I often wondered how our society has come to create such innovative things that have such disasterous consequences for our future generations. Darwinism proposes that we are inclined toward fitness, yet we eat nothing but junk food and cater to the laziness of America. I've been thinking about this a lot lately due to another class I'm taking. However, this exercise made me realize the vast differences between our instinctual decisions and those born from intellect. Our intellect can greatly mislead us, make us greedy for money, come up with complex ideas that will re-orient us toward a destructive future. Meanwhile, instincts are still oriented toward survival. The lesson in this is to not avoid our minds but it should not take priority over instinct.

Anyway, I went home and allowed my instinct to let me text that guy. He didn't reply at first, and my instinct made me want to run as far away from him as possible (I was insulted). Then, he replied, and alas, we were right back where we started. Nowhere. Good times.