The Hyperactive Mind

What is the opposite of happiness? Saddness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this.The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is – here’s the clincher – boredom.  -Timothy Ferriss. The 4-Hour Workweek

This is the era of the information revolution. We are no longer limited to the amount of knowledge and information we can access. In developed societies, the average human can access more information in a single day than previous generations would see in a  lifetime. Because of this, in the same way that early humans’ spines evolved into walking upright, so are our minds evolving into handling these larger loads of information. This is obvious, given that our minds must now function at a faster pace to process the increasing loads of information. This also means our minds are more active than ever before.

Addicted to mental activity

Yet for every positive there is a negative. Many minds, through stimulation from various information outlets such as internet and tv, have become so active they are now hyperactive. Hyperactive minds NEED to be active. They need more stimulation, more entertainment, to feel good. But life is not always interesting or entertaining, and this is where we find the negative side to this mental evolution. When a hyperactive mind can not find the mental stimulation needed, they become bored, and boredom, as this article by Scientific American describes, plays a great role in mental illnesses, personality disorders, drug addiction, and other disorders that are typical of developed societies.

Explaining the addiction

There is no scientific theory as of yet to explain why some people’s minds are more prone to become hyperactive. However, I like to dig deep into things until I find a logical answer without sounding too far-fetched. So here we go. Firstly we should acquaint ourselves with the concept of Highly Sensitive Personality (HSP): Highly Sensitive Personality (HSP) refers to a person having the innate trait of high sensory processing sensitivity… May process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems. (wikipedia). Since an HSP will process information “more deeply”, this means that the information they digest is explored in more detail than by the average human, which means they posses a greater degree of curiosity. This leads them to often over-analyze the information or to “over-think” a specific situation. This over-analysis means they become more mentally invested in that specific subject or situation. This mental investment can drive the HSP to take said information to a personal level, leading them to identify with it more so than others. This also means they feel a greater sense of gratification from the stimulation or experience. For example, if you are an HSP, you would feel greater satisfaction from social acceptance than someone who is not an HSP because you take it “more personal”. You would also feel greater satisfaction from seeing something entertaining, a new experience, succeeding at something, or doing anything that would be considered good, than someone who is not an HSP. By the same token you would feel greater dissatisfaction from things that would be considered to be bad, such as rejection, failure, boredom, or experiencing or witnessing some injustice. The main idea here is that an HSP is inherently highly affected by duality, by the good and the bad.

By being more sensitive to duality, meaning, by possessing a higher sensitivity to feelings of good and bad, HSPs’ are more stimulated by an experience than other people. Yet, all people posses varying degrees of sensitivity, HSP’s happen to have the highest. We can speculate then, that the reason why some people are more easily bored than others is that they experience heightened emotions more easily since they are more sensitive, and this can create cycle of stimulation seeking to maintain or relive those emotions, and, as stated before, when they can not find that stimulation they become bored and unhappy until they find something else that stimulates them. This gives rise to the hyperactive mind, a mind addicted to mental activity and stimulation.

Everyday more and more people are experiencing a hyperactive mind to a certain degree. Those who become easily upset, who are depressed, who are moody, into drugs and alcohol, those who are addicted to the internet, etc, are people with manifestations of a highly active mind. In fact, any type of addiction can be attributed to the uncontrolled pursuit of more stimulation. But now we understand that an elevated sensitivity to duality, being greatly affected by good and bad emotions, is what causes a hyperactive mind. What is interesting about duality is that it is a fiction of the mind, it exists only because of our thoughts and judgments. In reality there is no good or bad, everything just is. A person is neither good or bad, a person is just a being who have made certain decisions which may or may not be in accordance with your beliefs, this drives us to label them as good or bad. In the same way, events such as death are neither good nor bad, they just exist, and we interpret them according to our benefit. So we can say that being sensitive to duality is a manifestation of being sensitive to the mind. What I mean by this is that people with high mental activity are more sensitive to what goes on in their mind tells them than people with lower mental activity. Mental activity and sensitivity go hand in hand.

Psychopaths

This is very important to understand because it implicates that the higher the mental activity of the individual, the greater the effect of their thoughts  on their emotional state. For example, it takes a simple critscism to upset an HSP. This is contrast with those who are at the other extreme of the sensitivity spectrum, people with lower emotional ability, or scientifically known as “psychopaths”. As defined by wikipedia, a psychopath is a person with enduring anti-social behavior, a diminished capacity for empathy or remorse, and poor behavioral controls. As I will show, a psychopath is characterized by a low level of mental activity, and this is what diminishes their capacity for empathy and remorse, which in turn allows them to be mostly unaffected by stimulation and experiences. To prove this we only need to take a look at most people who are in power such as politicians and executives. These people have the least degree of sensitivity to their thoughts, for the most part. A person with high sensitivity to their thoughts would never get to these positions, because the thought of themselves being in charge of whole armies or of entire companies would be a greater emotional burden on them. Certainly, a person in a high powered position can not let remorse or empathy affect them or their decisions. Making decisions that negatively affect thousands or even millions, or waking up everyday knowing that countless people have died because you decided it was best to wage a war is not something that you would withstand unless your have a low sensitivity to thoughts. So a low level of mental activity is needed in order to be unaffected by all the emotional stimulation and burdens that come with these positions of power, in most cases. This not to say people with lower mental activity don’t seek stimulation or have addictions, they do, but that is something beyond the scope of this post. So we can see how a low mental activity will bring to a person the same characteristics associated with psychopathy, hence it is safe to say that a psychopath has a very low level of mental activity.  If you’d like learn more about the relationship between power and psychopathy I highly recommend this book by psychologist Kevin Dutton

From chaos comes virtue.

I have briefly gone into the subject of psychopathy for two reasons, to contrast the other extreme of an HSP, and to show that there are benefits to  low levels of mind activity, the benefits being the ability to withstand high stress and be unaffected by external stimulation. Of course there are also negatives to being a psychopath, just ask a serial killer.

So if you had the chance, which would you chose, HSP or psychopath? The good news is you don’t have to chose either. Those who chose to take the path to improve themselves will find virtue. They will find that there is a “third path”, the path where you consciously chose the best of these two personality extremes.

In order to find the third path one must first identify chaos. You must realize, not just know, that the more active the mind is, the worst you will feel. If you are not feeling good right now, it is due to your mind being active with negative thoughts. If you feel good now it is because your mind is being stimulated by excitement, and you will feel bad later when that excitement is gone or the novelty has worn off. You will encounter that feeling of “emptiness”. This high level of mind activity is chaos.

Enter virtue. We have learned something from psychopaths, their low level of mental activity allows them to be unaffected by things which would cause negative emotions in others. Virtue comes to you when you gain this ability. When you are able to, consciously, become unaffected by fear, worries, anxiety, excitement, or any other emotion, you will be able to say yes to success, to be present in the moment, and live in a calm yet aware state of being. A state where mental activity is minimal yet you are fully conscious. If you understood this post then you already posses the sensitivity needed to become aware of your mind and its activity. All you need is the will to maintain your mind under your control.

Make it a daily practice to be alert to your thought streams, and you will notice that while you do this your thoughts quit having a grip on you. Just sit there for a few moments everyday and wait until thoughts come to you, once they do just notice that you’re thinking. When your thoughts quit their grasp on you, mental activity lowers. The more often you do it the lower this mental activity becomes until you enter a thoughtless state.  Entering this thoughtless state as often as possible will allow you to become used to it. Do you become psychopath when you’re an in a thoughtless state? Do you faint or fall asleep? No, because you’re entering this state consciously, meaning your consciousness is still there, in fact more greatly so than in someone who possesses some mental disease that lowers their mental activity. Do you feel sad or angry when there are no exciting thoughts going through your head? No, you will only feel peace, a peace which you will enjoy. The peace of feeling as if you do not need anything from the world because you already have acquired it. You have acquired the joy of living.