SurrealPolitiks Member Content – Internal Monologue

Today is the first Republican Presidential Primary Debate of this election season, and I’ll be meeting up with some of you in person to watch the event. For this reason, I will not be available to attend the member chat this evening. You are welcome to use the feature to chat amongst yourselves, but I won’t be there and I won’t be recording or streaming this.

But I didn’t want to leave you with nothing, and as it turns out I had an interesting concept to discuss.

At the end of Episode 23, a caller brought up the subject of what is known in psychology as “Internal Monologue” and claimed, much to my surprise, that some people do not have one.

I had never heard this before, and I took this to mean “some people don’t think” which is certainly a plausible theory given the state of our politics, but it did not, at the time, seem to me that this was much more than a means by which to denigrate one’s political opponents.

Adding to this misconception, the caller had framed it as these thoughtless folks were “NPCs” or “Non Playable Characters” from video games, which are essentially unthinking script readers in a game who have little to say besides “You must save the princess” or whatever.

After the show, more substantial material was brought to my attention that really blew my mind. It isn’t that the people being addressed here don’t think, it is that they think in a way that I have trouble even conceptualizing.

My thoughts are words. I “hear” them not so differently than I hear anything else. My entire frame of reference is thoughts=words and this informs my entire experience of the world. The issue here is that some people either have this as a mere component of their cognitive repertoire or experience thought in entirely different ways, most notably in visuals.

In the recording I am releasing in place of today’s member chat, I discuss this at greater length.

If you are not a member, you can become one at https://SurrealPolitiks.com/join

Access this and all member content at https://surrealpolitiks.com/category/membersonly/

See you soon.