Key to Concepts, Abbreviations and Strange Words - Preliminary Introduction

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

• 6.- Feedback is a type of transfer of input (mostly to be used as information) from one part of a system (the feeding one) into a process which goes on in another part of the system (the one which is fed) caused by previous or concurrent input from the part which now gets that input in return. In daily life, this concept is frequently used to label the information regarding the influence of previous activity, behavior and speech - of the target of the feedback, on its source.
• 7.- Felt Sensation or "felt sense" for short is the name of those sensations of the body of which we become aware. All of them are related to mental processes. Frequently, when attended to, they are organized and felt as a meaningful whole. These sensations derive from five main sources:
  a) All the time - the ongoing activities of the subjective experience components of the basic emotions.

  advertisement

  
  b) During low levels of activity - natural biofeedback resulting from the influence of the other components of the basic emotions on the various receptors of the sensorium of the body.
  c) While in actual activities - processes involved with locomotion and other purposeful behavior: actual one, tendencies and preparation for future ones are the main suppliers.
  d) When things are as usual - the somewhat less prominent suppliers are those of the biological equilibrium maintenance systems, and of other routine internal information about the state of the organism, supplied by the sensorium.
  e) Most of the time - the ordinary and the extraordinary stimulations of the body by animate and inanimate agents. Included here are, among others, the pains and other sensations inflicted on us by accidents, by bad habits and by malicious acts or negligence on the part of others.
• 8.- Supra-Programs or Supra-Plans are complex brain activation programs which were built during the course of the life of the owner. They are based mainly on innate programs, on supra-programs that were built previously (of innate ones), and on the accumulated memories of the activations of programs in the past.The building of a new supra-program involves various kinds of trial- and-error - actual and imaginary. It is usually based on previous drafts and versions of that supra-program, and relevant ad hoc operation programs which were built in the past. Besides the other components from which a supra-program is built - every supra-program also contains emotional components. More on Supra-Programs
• 9.- Emotional Supra-Program is a supra-program in which the weight of the emotional components is prominent. Often the activation of the emotional components of the emotional supra-program causes an explicit subjective emotional experience or at least a feeling, mood or some sort of a felt sense, which one can attend to.
  For the ordinary adult in our culture the emotions become over the years, more a result than a reason for activity. This process is responsible for the progressively diminishing part taken in our life of the supra-programs in which the weight of the emotional components is very prominent.
  For example, for a grownup man with a broad education, figuring the multiple of seven times four usually does not involve supra-programs highly loaded with emotional components. However, if the seven represents the number of payments he has to make; and the four is the amount of thousands of dollars in each payment; and zero is the sum of his assets and credit - it is most probable that the above computation will involve supra-programs that are heavily loaded with emotional contents. More on the emotional Supra-Programs
• 10.- Trashy Supra-Program or in short - Trash-Program is one of the many important but malfunctioning supra-programs which were constructed during a person's life time. Though their functioning might have been reasonable at the time, it is no longer so. The existence of such programs (plans) is possible mainly because a regular regime of mending and updating of activation programs is not customary in our culture.
  This is so, since even the most important instances of felt sense related to the ongoing activation programs which are the most crucial feedback about the parts of programs that need repair, are seldom attended to. This is mainly because the members of our modern culture are advised not to devote "too much" attention and other mental resources to their emotional processes
  The habit of ignoring sensations of the body, originating from physical, emotional and other mental sources of felt sensations, is itself the result of a Trashy Supra-Program. It was built into each members of our culture, during the long processes of education and socialization(11).
  These activation programs are called "Trashy" because their daily activation, without the proper updating so much needed, causes life to have the kind of low quality that is called colloquially "In The Trash" or "life in the garbage pail". More on the trash-programs
• 11.- Socialization is a general name for the process of bringing up the newborn till they are mature members of society. Most of the efforts of those engaged in this task are devoted to the creation of the supra-programs of the young (though they seldom know it, and think that they are teaching and educating them). The roots of the main trash-programs of a person can be traced back to these processes.