I thought that everyone had an inner monologue. I assumed that was the case because I have one, and so in typical human fashion I presumed that the attribute was an across the board reasoning requirement.
I was incorrect.
My daughter broached the subject after seeing a thread on some site she frequents, and she informed me that about seventy percent of people surveyed reported that they have no inner monologue. Of the thirty percent that agreed that they did in fact possess the monologue, the majority of them said that it only materialized in certain situations. Like when they were preparing for a public speaking event, or studying for an exam.
My wife was sitting at the table and affirmed that she’s a seventy percenter with no inner monologue, and her answer has been making me crazy for a couple of days now. For starters I was a little rattled that in all the years I’ve spent with the woman that we’ve never had a conversation about the details of consciousness. Also, I couldn’t and still can’t envision how to think without the monologue. I tried to shut my narration off to experience the quietude of the seventy percent, but I can’t make it stop and now the inability to shut it down is causing me anxiety. So, for the time being I’m abandoning the on/off effort, because stress of any kind just makes my monologue more distinct. Louder if you will, and that’s the opposite of what I was trying to achieve.
So I decided that instead of trying to experience the absence of a monologue that I would make an attempt to describe my experience to my wife. This effort has proven to be more difficult than anticipated. I expected that a habit I’d possessed for as long as I can remember would be easy to illustrate, but I was incorrect once more. All I can manage is imprecise comparisons that don’t capture the essence of the monologue as explicitly as I’d like.
And that’s annoying as hell, because you’d think that a mechanism you use all day, every day, would be a piece of cake to explain. But it’s not, and before I even got around to finding descriptive words for the inner narrative experience, I found myself concerned by the fact that I was unfamiliar with the particulars of a guidance system that’s been piloting my thought processes for as long as I’ve known language.
Epiphanies are illuminating I suppose, but not necessarily a good thing. They increase awareness, but are indifferent to whether the awareness provides a positive result for the receiver. Sometimes illumination produces darkness.
But I managed to extract myself from the annoyance of ignorance of the obvious, and continued the search for comparative words to describe the voice in my head.
The words from my mouth are an echo of the internal narrative that preceded them. The echo producing thought being a fraction of a second ahead of its vocalization. It’s there when I’m reading and it’s there when I’m pondering. It’s like closed captioning where I see the words scrolling across the bottom of my consciousness. It’s a voice without sound, and yet I can hear it clearly. It’s malleable and can shift from topic to topic without any hesitation or mental punctuation. No commas, no periods, just a slight shift and the narrative flows in a different direction.
And did I mention that I can hear it? I think it’s my own voice, but I’ve got to admit that my voice played back for me isn’t how I think I sound, and so the voice in my head that I can and can’t hear, may or may not be the voice that other people hear.
Like I said the explanation leaves something to be desired.
My wife blinked, looked at me and said the description sounded scary and psychotic in about equal measure. She always blinks when she’s buying time to respond, and I know that she’s judging me and that’s what’s slowing her response time. I can tell by the blink and a few other physical tells. Like a slow step back and a look of mild bewilderment. I’m beginning to think that her reaction is also because I’ve invaded her seventy percent serenity.
I should add that during research I conducted on the seventy percent non-narrative types, that they regularly used the word scary to describe the concept of an internal monologue. I inferred that the existence of the monologue is best not mentioned to the superstitious or the religious. That’s how you end up Torquemada torched or strung up in Salem. It’s funny how the people with the vestments, robes and Cassocks always assume the voices are bad news. Like Abnegazar, Rath and Gath before they were banished by the Timeless Ones. It’s probably disrespectful to use a DC Justice League reference to illustrate the blood lust of the religious, but the Timeless Ones have always struck me as sounding pretty fucking epic.
So, lets attribute the voices to some Christian demons. Like Molech, Legion, Abaddon and of course Lucifer. Actually the Legion story is also epic. The guy was human. He lived in a tomb with the crypts of the dead, and at night he would scream from the hills as he cut himself with stones. Luckily for him he ran into Jesus and there were 2000 pigs nearby. I’m not sure exactly where Jesus was, but obviously not in Jewish territory because 2000 is a lot of pigs. Then somehow Legion and Jesus ran into one another. My best guess is the people nearby inquired if the Messiah might be able to do something about the screaming fucker in the graveyard. Jesus agreed I guess, and sought out the possessed man and asked him his name. And the man replied, My name is Legion, for we are many.
Which is actually a pretty cool line. Anyway Jesus powered up, thrust one hand toward Legion and simply said Go. All the demons left his body and flew into the bodies of the pigs. All two thousand of the pigs then died and fell into the sea.
Of Galilee.
Which was I think good news for Legion, but bad news for the pigs and pig farmer. Evidently a miracle for some isn’t a miracle for all.
Anyway.
Fortunately my wife isn’t religious, and so when she encounters odd things that she finds scary, her initial reaction isn’t to inflict some sort of painful capital punishment onto the person in possession of that which scares her.
Once her countenance suggested she had downgraded her alert from that’s scary, to that’s weird, I asked her how the fuck she puts together a thought without the internal monologue. Her reaction was to get offended and accuse me of calling her stupid. In retrospect I should have just asked the question without including the how the fuck part because she was sort of right. I have a prejudice toward my own preferences and assured myself early on in this thought process that an internal narrative was superior to serenity.
But I couldn’t ignore the statistics. If seventy percent of the world functions similarly to my wife, and the planes fly and the hospitals get staffed, then maybe the narrative state of mind is the aberration and not superior?
So, I phrased the question differently and asked her how she makes a decision. Her reply was that she just does. It’s like she has a narrative that she keeps on a short leash and only summons it when required. Once the summoning produces a decision or action then the narrative is immediately dismissed and returns to wherever she keeps it stored. I’ve paraphrased and I also asserted to her that she has a leashed narrative whose appearance is so brief that it doesn’t register on her conscience. She disagrees and insists that she makes her decisions without any narrative at all. She just arrives at conclusions without any voice activated assistance or any language visualization. She can think without visualization or audibilization. I can’t grasp the concept and she can’t describe it any better. She tried, but her description of serenity was just as vague as my effort to describe my narrative situation.
So now I’m not sure what to do. I’ve already caused an eyebrow or two to lift because I’m asking friends and relatives the same how do you think questions that I’ve been asking my wife.
What I’ve learned is that no one can provide a satisfactory description of how their thought process functions in a serenity situation. The monologue people generate words and phrases to describe, and then evaluate and finally formulate thoughts into a decision. And I do it with a narrative.
Language is key here I think. My wifes cousin was here from the Netherlands and I’ve made a mental note to ask him the inner monologue question the next time he facetimes. Because he’s bilingual and the last time he was here I asked him if he thought in English or in Dutch. He replied that he thought in Dutch and then translated to English. This would suggest that language is necessary to express thought.
So I think everyone has the narrative. Some people just have it muted.