Session 62 - Your Own Reducing Value

As human beings, we are capable of experiencing great emotions and feelings. Man and indeed woman have conquered Everest, come up with the most ingenious inventions, and as we now know of technological advances of the 20th Century and it seems that we can look forward to much much more advances in technology to come.

Say, for example, man per se didn't get involved in science and technology and research. Where would we be today? Would we be worse off or better off?

I'll leave you to come up with your own answer.

When it comes to our feelings and emotions, we probably have no choice but to process them, to experience them, to feel them.

Aldous Huxley was a British Philosopher and writer who contributed to our understanding of psychology and human experience.

He gave us the 'reducing value theory'.  Let me paraphrase. He told us that the function of the mind was to reduce our perception. Millions of pieces of sensory material or data are constantly bombarding our senses. Think of all the sounds around you, you probably hear them yet do you focus your attention on them?  How many different smells can you detect? Walking in a city is a kaleidoscope of colour, sounds smell, and even taste.  Yet we come fully equipped with our very own deletion device to preserve our sanity.

We focus only on a tiny part of all that we could experience or could be aware of. Huxley's reducing value enables us to filter out much of what is going on around us. It's really necessary if you were capable of processing all of what you could experience might cause you a mental breakdown.

Finding equilibrium, a balance in our mental health is so important.

Have you ever tried to communicate to someone about an experience you had, only to realise that it's well nigh impossible to truly and fully communicate to another an experience in its entirety so that the person listening to you experiences the exact same feelings.

Difficult indeed. Words indeed are inadequate.

Each person experiences life in their own way.  Two people looked out the window, one saw mud, and the other saw stars.

I know you get it.

Be powerful.