the sensory circus

three rings of irrationality

Going back to yesterday’s post about our senses

We have pre-verbal, irrational, illogical aspects of ourselves that dominate the activities of our nervous systems and brains. What’s most foolish is that we’ve convinced ourselves that the story in our head, the meaning we make of the world is ‘the truth’ and that it dominates how we interact with the world.

What’s even sillier, is the notion that we are rational creatures when so many other aspects of our mind are working at any time and impacting our reason. The preverbal data that’s picked up by our nervous system takes up a lot of space in our lives.

Let’s take a look at the partial list once again:

• Balance and acceleration

• Temperature

• Proprioception – aka the space around you

• Pain

• Sexual stimulation

• Next we have other  internal senses including:

• Hunger

• Pulmonary stretch which controls your respiration rate

• Peripheral chemoreceptors that monitor carbon dioxide levels

• Stimulation receptors in the esophagus control vomiting and swallowing

• Cardiocep…