Nonrational, Nonretentive Cognitive Style (NNCS)
John L. Waters
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John L. Waters
February 22, 2002
Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
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What is NNCS? NNCS stands for nonretentive,
nonrational cognitive style. While functioning in
this cognitive style, a person isn't able to argue in
defense of his or her behavior, feelings, or idea.
This is because the NNCS cognitive style is
irrational.
Moreover, when a person is functioning in the
nonretentive nonrational cognitive style the emotion,
thought, or activity just comes spontaneously and
automatically as in a dream or in a hypnogogic or
hypnopompic image, or the process is presented by an
internalized so-called spirit guide, god or goddess
figure or the idea just comes by sitting and drawing
it out or writing it out. It's just that certain
persons develop a nonrational nonretentive cognitive
style. In school, however, the retentive rational
cognitive style RRCS is emphasized. In our society
almost everyone is almost always functioning in the
RRCS. RRCS is the normal and respectable way to be.
Here are a few examples of adults who often functioned
in the nonretentive, nonrational cognitive style:
A. Socrates. A recognized genius of antiquity. An
inner voice sometimes guides him. Plato states this
in the "Apology."(1)
B. Srinivasa Ramanujan. Recognized Hindu mathematical
genius. A sacred image repeatedly inspires him. The
family goddess Namagiri appears when he is about to
envision a new mathematical formula.(2)
C. August Kekule. Pioneer German organic chemist. He
visiaulises atoms and watches his visions to get ideas
he applies in his scientific theorizing and
experiements. Visions lead him on. Quote and
reference.(3)
D. Leonardo da Vinci. Famous artist and scientist of
the early Renaissance. Often Leonardo often went to
look at a certain stone wall and saw images in the
wall which gave him ideas of something to draw or
paint.(4)
E. Albert Einstein. Famous modern mathematical
physicist. Like a cat stalking a bird or a mouse,
this man felt an excitement in his muscles when he was
on the track of an important new idea.(5)
F. Ezra Pound, and other famous poets. The massive
revisions come after the soul's effusive and sometimes
barely sensible outpouring. In Pound's case, revision
was optional and sporadic. (6)
These are examples from famous people. Here is an
example from a recent guestbook entry posted at the
website
http://www.chovil.com/guestbook/guestbook.html
The daughter Aurelia is afraid that her mother has
schizophrenia:
"What a moving story you have. It helps me to
understand this disease since I believe my mother has
schizophrenia. She believes that aliens contacted her
several years ago to use her to gather information
about humans. She also believes that a spirit guide
in a form of a buddhist monk visits here and gives her
directions and advice in her life. I have grown up
with these beliefs and adopted them as my own until
just recently when I realized her stories no longer
made sense to me. What I'm not sure of though, is
that she functions normally in lifeshe is an owner of
a very respectable business firm. She has always been
big about keeping her private life separate from her
business. She doesn't necessarily seem to get worse.
I'm wondering if her daily use of marijuana helps keep
her in checkeven though she maintains she gets
messages from aliens and her spirit guide. Is it
possible for her to actually function so normally
while maintaining such complex delusions, or in some
way, is she not schizophrenic at all? Please help a
very confused and saddened daughter. Thanks,"
Aurelia
McKinleyville, CA Canada- (7)
Note that from kindergarten on you and I were educated
in using the rational retentive cognitive style RRCS.
As working adults most of us went to school for
twelve years or more, and in school children are
taught to retain information and to reason out answers
from facts. Most everyone is trained to think in that
way. The problem is that humans are liable to this
error: We assume that when we follow a certain
process in our brains, that everyone can do the same
thing in their own brains. Like a baby in its cradle
we feel central, and we like to believe that our own
ability is standard, usual, typical, normal and the
right way to be. I might even say the way nature or
"God" intended a human to be!
Filled with the hubris and the personal pride of all
such normal people, we just can't crawl out of our
little wooden world. The truth is that there are many
special human talents, like playing the piano by ear.
Some people can do this, but many people can't.
Another special talent is having a god or a goddess
give you ideas.... well, that's helped some amazing
people. For example, Socrates and Ramanujan. But how
did they practice their skill and get so good at it,
without being identified as crazy by all the
self-righteous normal people? And is it desirable for
society to nip in the bud most all the little creative
geniuses that sit in elementary school?
Perhaps it is valid to picture schizophrenia as the
tip of an iceberg and many adult schizophrenics were
nipped in the bud as children but as mature people
their brains are trying to repair the damage society
unwittingly did to them. Think of the modern mentally
ill person as someone who as a boy or girl had a
dominant NNCS and got it nipped in the bud or blocked
so his or her little brain couldn't develop as well as
it might have in a more nurturing society. Hence our
society is making lots of little blocked Socrateses
and little blocked Einsteins as it were. Think of the
schizophrenics and the bipolars as NNCS swans in a
lake full of RRCS "ducky" people. Quack Quack. Have
you ever watched a duck attack another bird that it
thinks doesn't belong? Go to a big school and see how
the normal children attack the atypical ones.
Now for example, take Jiddu Krishnamurti. Lots of
folks called him K. K was a very poor student and K
did poorly as an RRCS person. Instead, he developed
into an NNCS person. He called this NNCS his
meditation: the empty mind. K was a natural
meditator. He didn't learn any traditional method of
meditation. Nevertheless, K gave long talks which
intrigued and inspired many people so they came back
and brought their friends. K was recognized as a
"spiritual" teacher, but people accustomed to RRCS
had difficulty understanding K and some academics
dismiss his writing as vacant or meaningless. For
example, in the July/August, 2000 issue of Skeptical
Inquirer Magazine, Martin Gardner writes:
"I have done my best to try to read some of these
books without falling asleep. It is hard to
understand how the author of such vapid ideas could
have mesmerized listeners, most of them women, when he
lectured, and to have captured the admiration of a
great physicist.[David Bohm]"(8)
After studying the life and works of J. Krishnamurti,
many working psychiatrists would diagnose K as having
a disorder. These same experts would even diagnose a
disorder in other spiritual persons recognized as
inspired by millions of people. In fact, the moral
code many Westerners still try to follow was coined by
a person who experienced both visual and auditory
hallucinations. Indeed, Moses saw a bush appear to
burn, and a voice spoke to Moses out of the bush.
Martin Luther threw his inkpot at a visual
hallucination he said was the devil. So what superior
ethical system can the rational retentive academics
and the psychiatrist-experts in whom they trust
provide, and what is their evidence that this new
moral system is better? Huh?? Many shrinks and other
hubris-ridden humanist-intellectuals have never
thought this matter through. Furthermore, unlike the
writins of Moses, the modern humanists write in a way
scarcely anyone who hasn't a Ph.D. can understand.
They are ultra-exclusive. The wise teacher is not.
It's easy and natural for a gifted RRCS person to
assume that other people can and should do what he or
she does. It's difficult and unnatural for a gifted
RRCS person to remain aloof and circumspect so that he
or she realizes that there are indeed many different
gifts of mind and not all of these gifts of mind fall
under the category of RRCS. But gifted academics and
medical doctors (who all were gifted enough
academically to receive MD degrees) tend to be blinded
by the natural hubris previously mentioned. Even a
child has this hubris when he or she assumes that all
the other children see and hear what he or she sees
and hears. Nevertheless, some children sense more,
and others sense less. Different persons notice
different things.
Another example is music. One can be very gifted in
music but not be able to read music. Example: Stevie
Wonder. There are just people who have an
extra-special talent. But in many cases, the
educators expect every student to be smart in the same
way they are, ... and they know nothing about the many
other ways of being smart. There's that old bugger
hubris again.
Some children just have a special habit or facility
with NNCS...like Ramanujan, like Socrates, like Jesus,
Moses, and a slew of others, including so many
atypical children who become diagnosed as psychotic
after they have gotten the idea that God, or the
fridge, or the TV is giving them ideas. Sure, they
get some wrong ideas. So did you when you were first
learning history, Latin, algebra, and when you were
first learning to ride a bike. Perhaps many mental
patients are persons who as children were punished for
using their abilities in the way most natural and most
productive for them. Was it really important for
Einstein to be able to quote whole paragraphs out of
books and do arithmetic in his head?
Now imagine a new society with a new school in which
the little Einsteins don't become the butt of jokes,
and the little Krishnamurtis don't get beaten every
day because they are so slow in the RRCS way. The
young Einstein did make children laugh and the young
Krishnamurti was beaten with a cane every day because
he was considered stupid. Can you imagine a new
school in which each and every talented child is
recognized, encouraged, and meaningfully taught? We
have met the enemy and he is us, dressed up in our
caps and gowns and clutching our advanced degrees.
To understand this new teaching you need to learn more
about NNCS. But you can't learn NNCS from the modern
educators, educational psychologists and psychiatrists
because they consider the NNCS person to be mentally
disturbed. To the modern experts, the NNCS person
needs to be "corrected." There is this natural hubris
in children and in adults who have gone to schools in
which this hubris is reinforced. Talents differ. If
most people are mainly talented in the RRCS way, quite
a few children are more talented in the NNCS way. In
addition to the few prominent persons already briefly
discussed, many other existing records reinforce this
view.
To review the existing records, study the lives and
works of those few recognized geniuses who managed to
keep their gods a secret and become accepted at least
by a small subculture in the mass of RRCS people. Most
such NNCS people, however, aren't able to keep their
gods a secret and integrate well into the culture of
RRCS people. They need special help in a special
community whose educators are unusually adept and
wise. With the help of these adepts, many persons
with a chronic mental disorder or predisposed to a
mental disorder will become more creative and less
destructive... without needing to be medicated. This
claim needs to be tested.
Can this idea be tested scientifically? Certainly.
There are different tests.
One test is to take two hundred young children and
randomly select one hundred of these children to go to
a special school in which all the children spend about
three hours a day with teachers in RRCS activity and
an equal amount of time with teachers of NNCS
activity. The other children will be controls. They
will just go to an ordinary school.
Each child in this group of two hundred children will
be examined regularly and all samples of the child's
work will be kept. The children who go to the special
school won't be forsaken after graduation, because in
mainstream culture presided over by certified
psychologists and psychiatrists all the emphasis is on
being "normal" and that just means to be primarily a
RRCS person. Note how concerned Aurelia is over her
mother just because her thought process isn't always
RRCS! Think of the other family members who are
concerned because one of their members is just gifted
in a way that the experts can't even begin to fathom.
Note: This testing will create a scientifically
legitimized new subculture in whichever local county
or district is the first to run the test. Note also
that not all science is inexpensive, easy, and
perfectly safe. Also, the results of new science
aren't guaranteed, and mental disorder is a complex
issue. But hey. This integration of RRCS with NNCS
is indeed the science of inspiration, and the science
of soul, which puts each
"Messiah-Christ-schizophrenic" on the same level with
you and me, as the hubris that was in us even when we
were little gets slowly dissolved away by the
universal solvent of science as science marches on.
References:
1. Socrates: Go to the website
http://www.wsu.edu/tildedee/GREECE/APOLOGY.HTM
accessed 2/4/02 at 11:42AM
2. Ramanujan: Go to the website
http://www.millersville.edu/tildedeidam/m301/raman.htm
accessed 2/4/02 at 12:02PM
3. Kekule: I've still got to find the book or the
website where this is described.
4. Leonardo: Go to the website
http://www.perceptionweb.com/perc0101/editorial.pdf
page 5 accessed 2/04/02 at 12:16PM
5. Einstein: I read this in a book but I'm not sure
which one.
6. Ezra Pound: Just read one of his books of poetry.
7. http://www.chovil.com/guestbook/guestbook.html (See
page 4 of 14.) accessed on February 2, 2002
8. Martin Gardner, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine
July/August 2000 Volume 24, No 4
4:10PM Sunday, February 3, 2002
10:30PM Monday, February 11, 2002
8:00PM Thursday, February 21, 2002
John L. Waters
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