Childhood – The Macrostate

I’m greatly excited to get to this point in the story this blog hopes to tell. I’m going to cheat and use lots of pictures this post. One of the last ideas presented was a look at human lifespan through the window of “Capability vs. Capacity.”

Building on that foundation, I want to look at developmental progression from birth to age 18. The work I did back in “the day” used this same kind of template, comparing relative aspects of our journey; however, I was looking at the later parts of life. Childhood was more or less a necessary assumption, by  the time I got to graduate school. As an actor, childhood contained no parts I would likely be cast to play. 


Over a year ago, while volunteering at a local middle school, I had an epiphany. I saw the value of my work in the theatre 35 years ago was applicable to the modern classroom. That is why I began my old quest anew.

The graphic of "infant to geezer" tells a thousand tales. In an effort to find a way to talk about children at any level up to 18 years, I’ve developed a chart to help focus the discussion. It represents a look at the “every-child.” The progression each of us takes from birth to 18 years. It hopes to represent childhood as a “Macrostate.” It intends to represent the temporal relationships between several aspects all we children face on our journey through childhood. There are constants and there are variables. Each individual child in the throughs of here/now are the "micro state." Each child’s variable aspects move one way or the other on the chart, relative to the constant aspects like age.

Age is the top line. Each has a progression of days. Based on this metronome, we can look at correlations and relationships between individuals. Each of the conceptual continuums represented on the chart represents how most perform at any given age. 


Childhood Macrostate = All Children  *  Childhood Microstate = One Child

Developmental phases line intends to show standard physical development. It is quite a journey to go from two half cells; then growing to 50 - 75 trillion living human cells, banded together into a community that perceives itself as one being. I had done this same research some 35 years ago with the adult being. Not until the last two years did I look at what happened before adulthood.

Educational continuum shows the progression of the individual interfacing with educational opportunity outside the home, from birth to freshman in college. DC means day care. PS means pre-school. K-12 is self explanatory. F is freshman in college.

All of you out there excited about brain based research, hang on. You’re going to love this.

The next line on the chart shows Brain Wave Generation capability at any given age. In later posts we will look at the relationship between age, capacity and capability in much greater depth. 


I try next to tell the charts in pictures. 

The next line shows Brain Wave State’s specific manifest capability at any given age on the chart. 

In average development, a child from birth to the age of 2/3 range generates an electrical field with a frequency of ½ to 4 Hz. This is called a Delta brain state. The behavioral capability of this age range is considered a trance state.

Between ages 2/3 years and 6/7 years of age is called Theta. The frequency is between 4 Hz and 7 Hz. This range generates a frequency considered a Hypnagogic State. The picture below shows a boy in such a state. He fights an imaginary foe right here/now. His physical feet well planted in the real and wet world; however, his actions are fully conceived and fulfilled in the land of make-believe.

The next slide shows Alpha State behavior which begins ages 6/7 to 10/11. The Jesuit priests are a very old Catholic order of teachers. They call 7 years of age, “The Age of Reason.” This is the age at which the human brain begins to display traits of consciousness. A brain in Alpha State can generate between 8 and 13 Hz. This brain state begins to look outside itself and nuclear family for bonding and support. These individuals gather together in groups or may run in packs or may become a lone wolf.

Beta state is the last stage of development this chart considers. As beta state develops, the individual manifests the ability to perform concentrated and focused tasks. These capabilities begin age 10/11 years and can generate a frequency of 13 to 40 Hz.  

40 Hz is just the beginning of the journey. An adult, mature and healthy human brain can generate a measurable 800 Hz when needed. I wonder what its speed limit is in Hz during uncontrolled circumstances?

This truth is something that should guide our discussions about children and education. This is also fascinating information to the scholar studying the act of…………anything.

What Happened to the Erase Button?

OK. Sub-conscious self can record and it can play back. 


What if sub-conscious self records a bad solution to a "Now" challenge? 


So, imagine you're 5 years old and you learn a response that helped you survive you're bully big brother. A lot of folks get to adulthood without improving their available choices to respond to all situations. When you get poked in “that way,” you will respond in the same way you did when you were five when your brother poked you. That is, if you have not learned a better way.

Only a small fraction of those non-conscious recorded qualities become conscious accessible memories.


This is an active process, as we’ve explored in several earlier posts. This is a skill, a doing, a verb. This skill can be practiced and perform better and better over time. I’m talking about any creative action.

Another skill to consider at this point is mimicry. The capability to use a memory to relive aspects of an originating experience, turning that memory into a whole new continuum of experience.For example, the second night of a play. It is the same play; however, it is a whole new experience. That’s what a skill is, to be able to re-enact. It may seem silly to state something that seems so very obvious. As we look at developmental continuums, these simple questions become quite profound.

Every time you relive a memory, in your mind’s eye (I) or in a re-enactment, the artificial construct that is that memory tree, is reinforced as being the true action held in that memory. The fact is; it is an artificial construct, and in the same way it was the first time you lived the event.

Even if everything in the individual’s conscious memory is accurate and true, it is only a small fraction of information about the event. There is your non-conscious 50,000,000 bits/sec. processor at work, plus any other witness to the same event, Conscious, Non-conscious, Human or Mechanical. Then there are qualities of the event that we don’t have the sensory or mental capacity yet to perceive. We use tools to help see waves to which our eyes are not yet sensitive. Maybe we are sensitive to such waves, but are just not conscious of that sensitivity. Maybe we just haven't learned that wave yet.

Some folks go to work and perform the same function, the same array of motor reflex patterns every day. “Would you like fries with that hamburger?” the server asks day after day, customer after customer.

Such jobs have short learning curves and become virtually automatic after a short period. However, fry cook or surgeon, it is about the act of. We don’t reconstruct from scratch, we have the ability to re-enact the same pathways amending only what is needed to appropriately respond to the subtle changes in context. Michael Phelps swims the same stroke from pool to pool, competition to competition. He adjusts for the different competitors and pool conditions. It is his endless practice that instructs intent, not free will. Free will comes into play in practicing for the challenges of life. If you’re not prepared for life when it happens, it’s just too late.

The order in which we process information is a critical question to the one studying the act of... I have mentioned the visual illusion in previous posts. 
(See post 11/17/2011) The very structure of determining here/now is a flexible, non-conscious and learned behavior. If something new is to be seen, one must learn how to see it. These skills are learned, from conception through early childhood, with enormous efficiency. We continue learning obviously, but at a much different rate and process. 

Imagine the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software. The longer the software runs, the more the running program affects the functions of said software.

You say, so what. If I get a bad “program” just delete it. The problem is; there is no delete button, no erase button. 


This massive processor has this safety device built-in. The designer must have known that if that button were installed, we would not be able to leave it alone or would misuse it, badly.  Once non-conscious self finds a solution to a problem, even if it’s a really bad solution, it will keep it until it has a perceived a “better” solution to put in its place.

 

For years teaching the creative process, I've used the saying:

“There is no right or wrong in the creative process.

Only what doesn’t work,

what works and then what works better.”

The mind/brain complex seems to have this same protocol. A program that is not particularly effective or not socially appropriate can become increasingly difficult to alter as time passes. The pathway becomes ingrained with repeated use. With no erase button, what does one do?

Two elements are required to effect change in how one chooses behavior:

     1. Train in a “better” solution.

     2. Veto the “negative” pathway when it’s initiated and don’t veto the 

        “better” solution.

Sounds simple enough, huh? The effects of such training occur in non-conscious self. So, you won’t know if it worked until after it happened.

Cool, huh!

At every level that life shows itself to our consciousness, it chooses the action that facilitates the continuation of life. Life selects the option that resists decay into disorder, entropy and finally equilibrium.

It is only when it comes to the systems of human imagination, deep in the structure of the systematic illusion, that this rule comes apart. Our imagination, our consciousness alone has veto.

Record/Play

It’s one thing to experience a personal understanding of the workings of sub-conscious self. It’s another thing entirely to attempt to articulate the same. I guess that’s the fun of this; trying to figure out how to say things that are hard to understand.

The beauty of this subject; all of us are having the subject experience all the time. As with all illusion, it works in a given way for a given reason. Know the reason and the illusion becomes a tool.

Sub-conscious self processes information at some 50,000,000 bits/sec., all beyond our conscious awareness. Non-conscious self can playback recorded responses learned in its earliest moments; and do so right up to the last collective breath of the being.

This huge non-conscious processor can perform highly complex continuums of action; all performed without a conscious thought, beyond not vetoing said action when you finally do become conscious of it. I know this is a different way of looking at perception and intention, but this seems to be the case.

We select our continuum by consent, not by intent. Intent is learned behavior, not consciousness asserting itself. If the continuum of experience is the water, intent is the filter. The filter deselects elements of the flow that the filter was designed to remove. This is how conscious veto works.

As the visual illusion unfolds, we become witnesses to a movie, all happening no less than ½ second ago and most constructed from much earlier memories. The intent exists on the non-conscious level. Intent is constructed from the individual’s belief system. Intent is not conscious, it’s learned.

Non-conscious self responds to an event with pre-recorded actions, pasted together in a continuum that meets the perceived needs of that event. If one is not prepared for the event, responding can be highly challenging. From such moments unintended consequences occur.

Experience isn’t what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Past blog entries suggest our continuums are initiated in the non-conscious processes of the mind/brain. This theory appears to confound the concept of interpersonal communication. The relationship between the actor and the audience is exceedingly complex; however, it is understandable and it can be articulated through its variables. Therein lays the art.

This is a fascinating truth to know. There are near infinite bits/sec of information out there in all the potential universes. Every second non-conscious self processes at least 50,000,000 bits/sec of information, pruning the trees of what it already knows. These are the communication trees of mind/brain that populate the forests of our understanding.

A woman I came to know in the 1990's, Dr. Jean Houston, wrote a book years ago by the name of “Mind Games.” This book was a guide to what Jean called inner space. I found this book in a spiritual bookstore in Davis, CA in 1976.

The second book I bought that day was entitled “Thought Forms.” It was originally published around 1911. Interestingly enough, both books encouraged release of conscious control and letting the continuum of events unfold with your conscious perception playing witness.

What we do with that collective information is what non-conscious self processes to determine the 50 bits/sec flow of information conscious self perceives and presents as now. There is a huge volume of information kept in our memory trees and we may never be conscious of any of it, if we don’t need it.

Two well functioning eyes can send the brain 10,000,000 bits/sec. Out of all that information gathered from the visual field only 40 bits/sec are applied to what is consciously seen. Researchers have found that to be the speed limits of conscious vision. Can you imagine what's in the other 9,999,960 bit/sec.?