Two Three Thirds of the Spectrum
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“Top of the spectrum” means your best, clearest reasoning—
Note:LO SPETRO DELLA MENTE
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For some people, logical thinking consumes more territory than for others.
Note:ASSUNTO COMUNE
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Our energy and focus levels determine our current spectrum position.
Note:ENERGIA E FUNZIONAMENTO
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natural work costs us less energy
Note:ASSUNTO
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personal qualities and habits
Note:COSA PESA
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View 1: The Transformation in How We Make Sense of the World
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mind has a powerful urge to make sense of the universe
Note:IL PROB DEL SENSO
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how the countless pieces at countless scales relate;
Note:METTERE IN RELAZIONE
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big picture.
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using logic.
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UN MODO
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inventing stories
Note:ALTRO MODO
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This is the logic-versus-narrative axis.
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As energy dips and freshness fades, and our thinker makes his way down
Note:IL PASSAGGIO DA LOGICA A STORIA
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using less logic and more experience (what usually works?),
Note:COSA FUNZIONA
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increasingly distractible.
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memories, daydreams, and fantasies
Note:COSA CONTA
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another strategy for building thought sequences emerges.
Note:MAN MANO CHE SUBENTRA LA STANCHEZZA
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It can be hard to turn a collection of memories and ideas into a story,
Note:IL SOGNO....COME COLLAZIONE...COME METTERE INSIEME
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from premise to goal.
Note:METTERE INSIEME...SENSO
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minds are in business to make sense. Logic and narrative are different ways
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The scientist explains the origins of the universe with a logical argument. The religious believer tells a story.
Note:SENSO...FEDE E RAGIONE
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logical argument has predictive power.
Note:PREDIZIONE
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Only the story has normative moral content.
Note:PRECETTO
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Only a fool would pronounce one superior.
Note:COSA VIENE PRIMA
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STORYTELLING
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how satisfying stories are at the end of the day.
Note:A LETTO
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bedtime story
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calming children,
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to tell exactly the same bedtime story
Note:RICHIESTA COMUNE
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if she varied in the slightest particular
Note:CAZZIATONE
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They don’t want to know the story; they want to hear it, as one hears a song.
Note:L ESIGENZA
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the perfect lead-in to dreaming.
Note:VIATICO
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Some adults read themselves to sleep.
Note:NOI STESSI
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Proust
Note:UN CASO SINGOLARE
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Story and dream would blend perfectly.
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Stories are plainly easier to remember than other forms of information.
Note:RICORDO
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Illiterate bards sing long epic poems
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in Liberia remember the histories of whole clans and tribes.
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MEMORIA INCRED
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stories are made for remembering.
Note:DIREI DI PIÙ
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The mythical Scheherazade,
Note:L EMBLEMA DELL URGENZA DI UNA STORIA
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THEME CIRCLES
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They have thematic unity.
Note:STORIA
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A dream is a loose bundle of scenes that change abruptly
Note:SOGNO
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more a set of anecdotes
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we usually discover that they are all about the same thing—
Note:GUARDANDO MEGLIO
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“theme-circling”
Note:NOCCIOLO
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the whole circle points to the center,
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like a mature novel by the eminent V. S. Naipaul.
Note:ANALOGIA DEL SOGNO
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a carefully plotted work that builds to a climax.
Note:STORIA E ANEDDOTI
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the repetitions in a theme-circling narrative, each segment pointing toward the same center
Note:NEL RACCONTO ANEDOTTICO
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Awareness of the theme grows naturally
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To retrieve a recollection, we reconstruct the full scene from our notes—a
Note:SI RIPESCA LIBERAMENTE DALLA MEMORIA
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“Re-creation is the key term here,”
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David Foulkes.
Note:PSICOLOGO DELLA RICREAZIONE
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We are like reporters transforming notes into news stories.
Note:REPORTER
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FROM LANGUAGE TO IMAGES
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Dreaming is storytelling in pictures.
Note:DEF
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“Visualization of the fluid sort that we find in our dreams,”
Note:FORMA DI PENSIERO...GIÀ FREUD
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we teach children how to speak and write but not how to draw;
Note:NOTATO?
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we want precision and conciseness and often rely on abstraction.
Note:CON IL LINGUAGGIO
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Nabokov wonders whether a memory of his first girlfriend will “survive captivity in the zoo of words”
Note:LE PAROLE SBIADISCONO
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uncertain whether words will convey the sensory richness and mystery of memories
Note:DUBBIO
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vision is our primary sense. When we remember the past, we usually remember in pictures.
Note:VISIONE DEL PASSATO
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thinking without Images,”
Note:PERICOLOSO PER COLERIDGE
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the real alternative to language as a form of communication is the body itself.
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BODYLANGUAGE
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We have developed an interest in objective truth.
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legal worldviews are more sophisticated than religious ones,
Note:INDIZIO CHE LO SPETTRO ALTO È SEMPRE PIÙ VALORIZZATO
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View 2: The Transition from Acting to Being as the Main Focus of Mind
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acting and being—what the mind does and how it is.
Note:DUE FATTI SULLA MENTE
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the deliberate manipulation of conscious mental states:
Note:ATTIVITÀ MENTALE
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sensation and feeling: feelings, physical or mental.
Note:L ESSENZA DELLA MENTE
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Spectrum Law: Up-spectrum, the mind is dominated by doing. Down-spectrum, it is dominated by being.
Note:SECONDA LEGGE
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ABOUTNESS DISSOLVES
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Much of mental life has a topic: my car, your car, where to park, Mike and Erica, tension in the European Union, peanuts. And much has no topic: I am dizzy with happiness, in pain,
Note:CONTENUTO...RIFERIMENTO
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I might be giving a lecture about fear, or (on the other hand) I might be afraid. Or I could be both:
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By “sensation,” I mean the many subtle body feelings associated with fear; by “experience,” I mean those feelings
Note:SENSAZIONE...ESPERIENZA
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aware of my sensations or feelings,
Note:DIPENDE ANCHE DALLA PARTE DI SPETTRO CHE PRIVILEGIO
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thinking about,
Note:PARTE ALTA
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Down-spectrum I tend, increasingly, not to think about, but just to be.
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Intentionality is the quality of aboutness,
Note:INTENZIONALITÀ => RIFERIMENTO
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Being depressed is about nothing. It is just a way to be.
Note:SUBIRE => SENSAZIONE
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Franz Brentano,
Note:IL PRIMO A INTRODURRE L INTENZIONE
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from the medieval scholastics, who found it in Aristotle.
Note:FONTI
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states of mind
Note:INT.PROPR DEL
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No mere physical state,
Note:NEGAZIONE
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Only states of mind can be intentional,
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what is specifically mental about the mental?—
Note:LA DOMANDA A CUI VOLEVA RISPONDERE
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The answer, I believe, lies in subjectivism.
Note:RISPOSTA ALTERNARIVA A B.
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subjective face that is visible to you alone.
Note:LO STATO MENTALE E SOLO LUI POSSIEDE INTERNALISMO
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Only our eyes are turned backward. . . .
Note:RILKE
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Animals only look out,
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In terms of aboutness, feelings and music are analogous.
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IL RIFERIMENTO DELLA MUSICA
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Music is not capable of aboutness.
Note:SENZA CONTENUTO
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communicate emotion but not information.
Note:INTERIORITÀ
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THE SPECTRUM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EMOTION
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emotion disrupts thought
Note:ELIMINARE DALLO SPETTRO ALTO
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Early mornings are rarely the time for storms of rage or despair.
Note:MATTINO
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Many dreams are highly emotional.
Note:BASSO
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even our sense of self is shouldered aside. We forget ourselves, lose our selves.
Note:QUANDO LA SENSAZIONE DOMINA
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mere experiencers.
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we are wide open and have no defense against nightmare.
Note:LA PERDITA DI SÈ CI TERRORIZZA
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AT THE BOTTOM OF THE “EMOTIONS SPECTRUM”
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“selfless state of pure being.”
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simple.
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awareness in general has been pushed out of the way.
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We have trouble finding, as well as forming, these low-spectrum memories. We encounter the problem of overconsciousness.
Note:LA COSCIENZA È COSÌ IMNERSA NELL EVENTO CHE NN LASCIA MEMORIA
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TESTIMONY: OVERCONSCIOUSNESS, “CONSCIOUSNESS BURN”
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eyewitness to an accident in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron
Note:ESEMPUO DI OVERCON
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in one instant the boy put out a hand to save himself, in the next he was part of a tangle in the gutter.”
Note:GAP TRA DUE MMENTI NELL INCIDENTE
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Ernest Hemingway
Note:COLPITO N GUERRA
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“A roar that started white and went red
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I can experience something, as I have mentioned, without being aware that I am experiencing
Note:COSCIENZA NN RADDOPPIATA
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I have no basis for memory—except for memory of the sensations themselves.
Note:IN QS CASI
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utter misery, that it cannot be remembered”
Note:THOMAS THE QUINXEY
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“Delphine is so stunned that, later, she does not remember putting down the receiver or rushing in tears to her bed or lying there howling his name.”
Note:ROTH...LA MACCHIA UMANA
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newcomers to Auschwitz saw sights they simply could not absorb,
Note:MRTIN AMIS
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“One seldom remembers a moment when one’s whole self goes into a passionate or violent action.”
Note:RIASSUNTO
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“Nikki was explosive, crazily emotional, and could do and say bizarre things and not even remember them afterwards”
Note:ROTH...ALTRO ESEMPIO
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Georg Büchner’s manic-depressive hero Lenz
Note:UN ALTRO
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“Remember what April was like when we were young,” writes John Banville,
Note:OVERCONSC...TIPICO DEL INFANZIA
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A child’s mind is biased toward the spectrum’s low
Note:BIASED
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Karen Blixen
Note:ALTRI ESEMPI
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sits down and lives.”
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“Boredom is a sentiment not available to the Hottentot,”
Note:DETTO CON DISPREZZO
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PURE BEING AND THE DREAM
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Every night we experience, in dreams, sensation or emotion so vivid as to occupy our minds almost completely
Note:CASO TIPICO DI OVER
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“They slept again . . . , dreamlessly, or so they believed” (Cynthia Ozick, Foreign
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When we hallucinate, we don’t just recall the memory; we reexperience
Note:MEMORIA E ALLUCINAZIONE
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we do not tend to reflect about the dream
Note:NEL SOGNO
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sleep researchers Inge Strauch and Barbara Meier
Note:STUDIOSI
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in dreaming, “we deal predominantly with events of the moment”
Note:LA LORO TESI
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total attention.”
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Foulkes wonders, “How can our awareness of dream events be so vivid, while we are so little aware of what our minds in fact are up to?”
Note:UN IO VIVISSIMO...TROPPO
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THE EMOTIONS AXIS, IN SUM
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As we move down-spectrum, we gradually lose control over thought; we grow passive. Mental states grow more vivid and enveloping. We daydream, fantasize,
Note:RIASSUNTO...ZERO DISTACCO
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Overconsciousness is also a contributor to the other great mystery of forgetting
Note:DIMENTICARE
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infantile amnesia,” Freud called it.
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between two and four years, we recall nothing.
Note:ETÀ DELL OBLIO
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sensations overwhelm us,
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View 3: The Transition from Outer to Inner Field of Consciousness
Note:Tttttttttt
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As we move down-spectrum, we become increasingly inner-focused until, drowsy and with mind wandering,
Note:OGGETTIVO...SOGGETTIVO
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sink into ourselves,
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“deepening himself,”
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Coetzee’s narrator should plunge into a boyhood memory.)
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Spectrum Law: Up-spectrum, we live in the present. Down-spectrum, we tend increasingly not merely to recall but to revisit, briefly to reoccupy, the past.
Note:TERZA LEGGE
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As we move lower, memory takes on its more characteristic function. I am reminded of scenes and events that emerge from memory
Note:MEMORIA
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Our focus moves from outer to inner.
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In the upper spectrum, you dance to the music. At the bottom, you are still dancing, but the music is inside your head,
Note | Location: 796
UN MONDO NELLA TESTA
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BACKWARD IN TIME
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The growing vividness of memories, eventually turning hallucinatory,
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STRANGE STATES ON THE WAY TO SLEEP
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As we approach sleep, our minds pass through strange states that we almost never recall.
Note:VERSO IL SONNO
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we are hallucinating, as when we dream. But the distortions of actual dreaming have yet to begin.
Note:ALKUCINAZIONE CHE NN È ANCORA SOGNO
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Sleep-onset thought is rarely mentioned in any sort of literature, but Charlotte Brontë knew all about it.
Note:UN MOMENTO DI CUI SI PARLA POCO
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THE DEPTHS
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What happens once we have fallen asleep? The obvious prediction is that we continue to move down-spectrum,
Note:SONNO
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sleep-lab studies
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1965 study titled “Temporal Reference of Manifest Dream Content,” Paul Verdone
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elements encountered in reality in the last week;
Note:PRIME 3 ORE
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references moved back in time toward more remote events
Note:DALLA QUARTA
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reversal of this trend occurred toward more recent temporal reference.
Note:POI
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we are chronicle composers observing our own lives, living largely in retrospect.
Note:CHI SIAMO
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A Summary Rule of Thumb
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Spectrum Rule of Thumb: Up-spectrum, consciousness feeds memory. Down-spectrum, memory feeds consciousness.
Note:LEGGE GENERALE
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Spectrum Rule of Thumb: Below the spectrum’s midline, thought is increasingly out of control.
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AXES, IN SUM
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PERSONALITY
Note:Tttttttttttt
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John von Neumann,
Note:MENTE MATEMATICA
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Eugene Wigner said, “Whenever I talked with von Neumann, I always had the impression that only he was fully awake.”
Note:TESTIMONIANZA
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Napoléon was a different kind of genius. He knew warfare, politics, symbolism, big pictures.
Note:IMMGINE...VISIONARIO
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I do “a thousand projects every night as I fall asleep” (Napoléon).
Note:DETTO
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Proust’s alter ego speaks of his “natural inclination to daydream”
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Jane Austen’s Emma tells us that “a linguist, a grammarian,” “even a mathematician” is very different from her; she is “an imaginist.”
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Everyone has a distinct cognitive personality or thought style—a
Yellow highlight | Location: 943
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Note:Ttttttttt
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Only subjectivists and subjectivism can elucidate the deep problems of the spectrum, or at least inch forward in that direction—because only subjectivists can see them.
Note:OGGETTO Ismo UBEE ALLES
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Martin Heidegger
Note:ESEMPI
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van Gogh’s
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in the twentieth century the mainstream scientists climbing higher, rung by rung up the spectrum, like high-wire artists stepping up
Note:SCIENZIATI SEMPRE PIÙ SU ARTISTI SEMPRE PIÙ GIÙ
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The artists were deliberately descending the spectrum
Note:ARTE
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toward pure concreteness,
Note:VAGGIO DELK ARTISTA
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sheer being is a miracle that needs grasping
Note:NN SPIEGAZIONI MA LLUMINAZIONI
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My task in this book is to assemble the fundamental facts about subjective reality,
Note:RIPETIAMO
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the mind in motion,
ORGANISMO
