It took me awhile to connect what we were talking about with the unconscious in class to anything. But I started thinking about the definition of the unconscious and was reminded of a unit that we went over in my philosophy class last sememster. We discussed how, if the unconscious has its own logic, then who's to say that it isn't controlling our decision making? Choosing to eat american cheese over swiss may seem like a simple decision, but isn't it possible that everything we do is determined by past experiences and the impact that has on our unconscious? Is it possible that, if our unconscious does have its own logic, we have no free will? Repressed memories and feelings from experiences in the past that are in our unconscious could be governing everything we do, whether we think it's a conscious decision or not.
Being determined is a scary thought, but if you think about it, every action has a reaction, even if that reaction is formed by our unconscious. Where do our likes and dislikes come from? We don't determine them ourselves when we're born. We can't tell ourselves that rap music is our soul music when in fact it makes us want to kill ourselves. Is there a gene that determines whether or not we like rap music? Not one that I've heard of so far.
So where does this come from? If not our conscious, and not our genealogy, isn't it possible that it is part of our unconsciousness's logic? I'm not sure if we'll ever know, but it seems like a good enough explanation to me! We don't consciously remember every single thing that's happened to us during our life time - it's not all in our working memory. But maybe it's still in our unconcsious. Choosing to go to St. Ben's, although I'm still not sure what the deciding factor was, could have been because of other choices I've made in the past and the effect that they had on me. Even if I didn't think about that when making my college choice, perhaps my unconscious was for me. Kind of scary, huh? Thinking that a different part of us is determining what choices we'll make in the future?
Just something to think about...
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This aligns really well with the blog I did about the Pepsi logo and Obama's campaign; you put it in two different contexts and they mean different things, but they both bank on the popularity (be that rightfully earned or forced through terror like the swastika insignia) of the symbol at its most fundamental level and uses that momentum to curve its meaninga different way.
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