Re: Difference between expectation and anticipation?
Here is the link to the Cassiopedia explanation of anticipation and non-anticipation.
Here is the link to the Cassiopedia explanation of anticipation and non-anticipation.
Deep Survival (p. 83-5) said:Sometimes an idea can drive action as powerfully as an emotion. Plans are an integral part of survival. Plans are generated as one of the many outputs of the brain as it goes about its business of mapping the body and the environment, along with the events taking place in both, resulting in adaptation. Planning is a deep instinct. Animals plan, and a bird that hides seeds has a larger hippocampus than others, suggesting a larger capacity for spatial memory. But planning -- predicting the future -- may be even more fundamental than animal abilities suggest. In his book Complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop points out that "All complex adaptive systems anticipate the future....Every living creature has an implicit prediction encoded in its genes...every complex adaptive system is constantly making predictions based on its various internal models of the world....In fact, you can think of internal models as the building blocks of behavior. And like any other building blocks, they can be tested, refined, and rearranged as the system gains experience."
The human brain is particularly well suited to making complex plans that have an emotional component to drive motivation and behavior. Plans are stored in memory just as past events are. To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn't match the plan.
Memories are not emotion, and emotion is not memory, but the two work together. Mental models, which are stored in memory, are not emotions either. But they can be engaged with emotion, motivation, cognition, and memory. And since memories can exist in either the past or the future, to the brain it's the same thing. You bookmark the future in order to get there. It's a magic trick: You can slide through time to a world that does not yet exist.
[...] we all make powerful models of the future. the world we imagine seems as real as the ones we've experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And in the thrall of that vision (call it "the plan," writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don't go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult. In an environment that has high objective hazards, the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It's a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too.
Buddy said:I was thinking about this question while lightening and thunderclouds were rolling in just a little while ago. Besides the fact that I was expecting rain tonight, there seems to be a part of me that was pre-attentively aware of an imminent sudden, loud crack of lightening or a thunderclap and so when it happened, it rolled right through me without interrupting what I was reading. I wasn't even consciously aware that I was about to hear any thunder or anything. I've been taken by surprise before though, so I already knew that it's important to stay relaxed.
At other times, I've been taken by surprise to the extent that I've jumped out of my chair at that moment and when I tried to anticipate the next burst so as to prevent harm to myself, all it did was increase my stress levels and fixate my attention. I would still be taken by surprise, though maybe not with quite so intense a reaction.
Could this be a useful experiential example of the difference?
Deep Survival (p. 66) said:While the pathways from the amygdala to the neocortex are stronger and faster than the ones going the other way, some ability may remain for the neocortex to do the following: First, to recognize that there is an emotional response underway. Second, to read reality and perceive circumstances correctly. Third, to override or modulate the automatic reaction if it is an inappropriate one; and fourth, to select a correct course of action.
Since emotions are designed to elicit behaviors in a split second, clearly, that is a tall order, and some people are much better at it than others. In addition, there is a wide variation in individual reactions. Some people startle easily. Others tend not to react at all. Some people function better under stress, such as professional golfers, fighter pilots, elite mountain climbers, motorcycle racers, and brain surgeons. And some emotional responses are more easily controlled than others.
obyvatel said:The term "inhibition" which Alexander used has been shown to have far-reaching consequences from modern neuroscience research. At the functional/behavioral level, inhibition means saying "no" to some automatic impulse to respond arising in ourselves. This internal act of saying no is under voluntary control and uses the prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of selective attention and willpower.
We have two types of neurons - excitatory and inhibitory. Excitatory neurons at a basic level ensures neurons fire and propagate signals across large areas of the brain. Inhibitory neurons regulate the activation response. They stabilize the excitation through negative feedback (subtracting from the excitatory pathways) and through what is known as "lateral inhibition", they can segregate areas of activation thus narrowing and focusing the activation response through more restricted pathways. Weak neural inhibition is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy and brain zaps along with obsessive behavior. It seems weak neural inhibition leading to uncontrolled global activation patterns in the brain can correlate with what in Work terms is described as the wrong work of centers, with unwanted mixing of intellectual, emotional and instinctive responses.
We know that our brain responds to the sensory image presented to it by the external sense organs and the interoceptors (internal receptors) located in key areas like the gut, heart etc. So our "mind" learns from body sensations. What happens during voluntary inhibition in this context is interesting. Some research findings indicate that voluntary inhibition structures the subsequent processing of sensory input . Internally saying "no" at the right time can stop an overwhelming response like Peter Levine mentioned in "In An Unspoken Voice"). What Alexander found is that sometimes when the wrong thing is kept from happening by the act of saying no, the right thing happens automatically. At the level of body postures and accompanying instinctive emotions, inhibition helps prevent the wrong response and the right response can take over.
Shijing said:...what distinguished the two situations for you internally? For example, did the emotional component of the two situations differ as a result of your expectation or lack thereof?
Buddy said:This is what I was thinking could be separated out as "expectation" i.e., being ready, but on a deeper level of awareness that doesn't intrude on a conscious pre-occupation.
[...]
This is what I was thinking could be separated out as "anticipation" but I wasn't sure.