Instinctive Perception

After a very long time, I did struggle to think of a suitable title to a blog of mine....!

Even now, I ain't/am not, quite sure! (whether it is 'the' apt one'!)...

Well, (or ...While) we all know, most varieties of life forms learn instinctively (or, let us say, for the sake of.... our couch-potato-convenience, 'they have it in-built' in them!)....

Kids of monkeys just know how to climb... Kids of fishes know how to swim... Kids of lions tigers, etc know how to hunt their food.. Also, the mom's of these kids do not get admitted into maternity-ward, nor do they take the kids to a doctor to find out 'what ails them'...

While we all know... (what I said above), what baffled me was... these life-forms/species, even know what to do when there is a natural calamity like an earthquake/tsunami etc... Some 7 or 10 generations prior to that would not have seen such a calamity, in those small creatures!

Okay... doesn't matter to us (only some botanist/biologist... 'needs' to know these things, to 'somehow' get his doctorate, etc... and our food is linked with the salary that comes with an assured job that we have already with us !)...

Now, when our memory doesn't suffice as a point of reference... 'google it'... It is so comforting!

Are we humans, really stripped off, of 'such' perceptions? Some few people , at times turn out to be right, when they blurt out their 'gut-feelings'... instinctive-feelings... whatever (Hey....!!... the use of 'feelings' ... only confuses us further! Feelings seem to relate with 'emotions' apart from the feel of heat, taste, smell, pain, etc... because... it is a 'feel' of that 'gut' an abstract thing, .... when we already don't feel anything-more, about what passes down the throat!!!)....

When somebody exclaimed “eureka”... was it a result of a 'thought-process'?... the abrupt 'discovery'? (The deer clearly 'discovers' whether the tiger/lion.. prowling within its striking-range is hungry-enough or not.. and that-decides... whether to run away to safety or not... Unlike most of us who run away from a cockroach/home-spider/chipkali-lizard/etc...! Now, keep debating whether that deer 'refers' to its data-base server, the memory, or the brain's processor/whatever, before deciding!)...

The learning-curve... We know, kids have it more!

So, there is a 'chance' that their instinctive-receptivity is slightly better, since the data-base has more of 'free-memory' than occupied bites! (Oh! I bungled... the base where the data is stored, not the base-of-data-bulk!)....
Big-people (scientists, who had nothing better to do, when their credentials reached far higher than that of anybody around them, to 'now-ask'.... what are you doing?), tried observing 'babies' to learning to swim (they dropped the babies into large tubs of clean water), tried observing babies discover the typewriter keys, when only one of them was kept unlocked and the rest cannot be depressed, and a key 'a' corresponds to mention of/hearing-of a 'sound' designated to it... They say, the learning is faster (and without much of adult-intervention!... School teachers are said to 'interfere', rather than intervene... and it is psychology which says so, about our education system!)

The question that I see before me was therefore... 'are we humans endowed/equipped with lesser instinctive-receptivity, than other species?'... or “is it that we somehow ended up allowing a continuous interference of memory-reference, which effectively blocked this instinct-receptivity?...

When a mosquito bites, the cells around that place 'fight back' and we feel the swelling, itch etc... The instinctive response is still available... When medicines are unavailable, we still get-well, but with a slight delay... meaning, medicines are right within us too!...

Somewhere, I started suspecting the word 'intellect' to be linked with instinctive perception (while the mind, with its memory 'looks' for something that is already pre-supposed! At banks, people search for a 'difference' in the books of accounts... and just-keep-searching.... Elderly people 'look' for the specs, and kids remind, “grandpa' it is right on the top of your head”... These are examples of memory-driven-searches, where our sensory tools are directed by thought to focus, not allowing inputs, as they are on the outside!... The 'difference' , the culprit was right under their 'noses' with several 'ticks' against it, but the discovery happens later when looking at it with a 'blank-mind')...

Another interesting thing is, we easily spot a stone, but tend to overlook a snake coiled nearby it!

What happens, when we happen to preserve this 'instinctive' learning, via observations not dominated by mind, its memory etc?

What happens, when our 'safety-concerns' keeps tagging us along all the while, quite needlessly too.. and thus-perhaps, blocking that instinctive urge to observe+learn?... I don't know! I can clearly mention my own experience, for instance... I did 'expect', that my colleagues around 'may' feel persuaded to observe, why I 'happened' to be doing things a little faster, and with far-better accuracy too? It is about 'data-entry'... a very safe example, when odds are against me... The learning of 'how to key-in', was only when the gadget is/was available, and that happened when the proverbial-learning-curve was supposed to have faded out, with age... I happened to do it more than twice as faster than 'average' people around! It got 'noticed'... The monitor, monitored by eyes at far-off-place echoed having noticed it.. People around 'sensed' a threat... the bosses might ask, “Can't you too do something closer to it?”... And ironically, the 'bosses' ended up imagining my 'limits' to be beyond their imagination-too!,... Actually, they did not allow their own equipoise to function, logically-atleast... They scrambled to throttle me, probably driven by their target-chase, to somehow-get-things-done, rather than expanding their potential to reach untapped resources in 'resources of other humans' around!.. Well, my senses were 'normal'... I could see, the situation was not going to be any different, even if re-located (as offered to me later during an exit-interview)... Like any rubber-band, there was indeed a limit, up to which I could be stretched, and beyond it, it was just going to be 'stress' and not stretch!... I quit!... But that is not the point... Two divergent ways of deploying 'observations' neither of them accompanied by “instinctive-intellect”, or rather, an observation not driven by memory-oriented-concerns! For me, it was almost like an animal which moved out of the 'danger-zone' a little ahead of humans... (Yep/yes... several others 'dropped-out' prematurely, even without the gold of the 'golden-handshake', but not without significant damage to their nerves!)... If somebody were to ask me (and they did too), 'why quit so early?'... like a dumb animal, say a donkey, I too gaped at them, fumbling for words to be superimposed on my gut-feeling the sensation that 'when going gets tough, the tough get going-out'!

This 'repulsive' response is not something new for me... What was new was the 'deep-instinctive' communication that seemed to 'seal' the bond of a perpetual relationship, between two pairs of eyes, that of mine, and the teacher, when they met for the very first time, ahead of any known form of conventional communication!... Almost like a humble timid and tiny creature like me sensing the imminent, obvious and irreversible spiritual-gulp from a giant-predator, right in front, reassuring so mightily, that any escape from it is now... out of question! (Oh! Only a mind can question! Animals don't question us, ever!)

Yours (whatever in me that persuaded a blog of this kind),

psn (28th of April, 2015)