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> I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. This makes so much sense… I al
by cortesoft 2y ago
> I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips.
This makes so much sense… I always find it interesting that I think of “me” as being mostly my head, and I figure that is probably because that is where my eyes and ears are.
If I didn’t see or hear, it makes sense that my fingers would be what I think of as me.
- kqr 2y agoI think much of it may be just that you're adapting to your culture. I'm not convinced there would be a strong head-bias unless we knew that's where the brain is. The gut is a good contender for other locations of "me". It's where we feel a lot of our feelings.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoWe feel things in our gut? I know the saying "gut feeling", but I thought it was just a saying.
- kqr 2y agoSome primary feelings are more pronounced in hands and feet (anger), others in face (interest) but many express themselves strongly in the gut (surprise, happiness, disgust, fear). In my culture we are often not taught to pay attention to our feelings (especially men, I suppose) so it's easy to miss these cues. I certainly didn't notice until I had some training in it.
- spangry 2y agoWhat kind of training did you do? I have trouble figuring out how I'm feeling and want to get better at it. I'm particularly bad at noticing when I'm stressed, and by the time I notice I'm already redlining.
- kqr 2y agoI can't explain it briefly nor do I know what it is called, but it consisted of a series of weekly lectures from a psychologist who was good at this stuff. Then some homework in between, which had themes circling around decomposing complex feelings into more basic ones, mindfulness, communicating needs, etc. It is easily the most adult-preparing course I have ever taken, but I really stumbled into it as part of something else and I wouldn't even know how to point other people in the right direction since I was not the one organising the whole thing.
- vidarh 2y agoIt's to an extent just a saying, probably based on it often feeling like that, in that the physical sensations of some feelings are linked to parts of the body. But specifically with respect to the gut, the gut has a huge number of nerve cells that act like reward neurons, can directly trigger changes to hormone levels, and has a very substantial direct connection to the brain (the vagus nerve), so it's reasonable to say that we do genuinely have "gut feelings". https://www.science.org/content/article/your-gut-directly-connected-your-brain-newly-discovered-neuron-circuit https://www.science.org/content/article/your-gut-directly-co...
- thinkingemote 2y agogood example would be: butterflies in your stomach
- mewpmewp2 2y agoBut that's extremely rare, and it's rare enough that I'm not sure if it's stomach or also includes the chest, because if I have felt something like butterflies I think it's actually more in the chest area or full body.
- magneticnorth 2y agoI have only mild anxiety, but "butterflies" or other anxiety-related sensations in my gut are not at all uncommon for me.
- Aerroon 2y agoWe definitely can. If you go on an elevator and it starts descending you should definitely feel that.
- slfnflctd 2y agoThere are some cultures/languages in which their word for what most English speakers use "heart" for (as in, source of emotion) is instead the same as their word for "stomach". I want to say this was in Papua New Guinea but I can't remember for sure.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoWeirdly enough we have that in English too - "gut feeling", etc. Languages are weird.
- qup 2y agoI'm going to chime in to say something I didn't see anyone else mention, which is that your gut has neurons and it probably can make decisions, aka gut feelings. https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/your-gut-second-brain https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/your-gut-second-brain
- GreenWatermelon 2y agoAnxiety has a strong effect on one's gut, of that I am certain.
- jessekv 2y agoWhen embalming bodies for the afterlife, Ancient Egyptians discarded the brain, but preserved many other organs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excerebration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excerebration
- thinkingemote 2y agoI understood that people in pre modern times thought of the "me" as the heart. I'm not sure if that meant they thought this was where thinking occurred but where the emotions lived I imagine.
- adastra22 2y agoOr it is simply an observation that when the heart stops, the body ceases to be conscious. The functioning of the brain was not visible without modern tools.
- scotty79 2y agoMaybe this came from being hungry a lot.
- the_gipsy 2y agoEven further, the early greeks thought that it's your lungs / chest / breath which is life.
- namaria 2y agoAlcmaeon of Croton identified the brain as the seat of thought as early as the 5th century BCE.