In My Younger More Vulnerable Years, I Often Thought About

In my younger more vulnerable years, I often thought about killing myself. I don’t think it was because I felt depressed, alone, and bitter regarding my existence; I attribute it instead to an impulsive curiosity, best characterized by the little voice that always seems to say with a shrug: ‘I just want to see what happens...’ Now obviously, I didn’t listen, but the question never truly went away; I think it’s important to have a healthy obsession with the afterlife. Despite the difficulty of obtaining practical knowledge, I poured myself into the study of such things, but my palate remained unsatisfied: baseless speculations echoed tumblers rimmed in arsenic. I never found a cure for this affliction of unknowing, but I did find†¦show more content†¦However, much of the mind’s activity is not conscious at all. Until modernity, most of humanity took individual control for granted, believing that the mind was fully under the domain of the conscious self. While this conception of mental autonomy is laudable, it is far from accurate, in both psychoanalytic and neuroscientific models, most of the brain’s activity has very little to do with conscious thought (although it can have a major effect on behavior). Because of the sheer number of variables required to process a response at any given moment, much of this is removed from the conscious aspect of the thought process. In fact, in situations calling for quick and immediate reaction, the body can act without consent of the conscious mind. I encountered this once when happening upon a group of uniformed individuals; rather than finding out why exactly such a large collective had gathered, I turned around and ran as fast as possible in the opposite direction (all the while feeling as though my body had detached from my consciousness). Unconscious thought can directly attribute itself to a reactive perceptual nature, and as a foundation for the conscious thought process it brings into question the severability of the conscious mind from the world in which it exists. Upon further abstraction (at a physical level), the human individual becomes indistinguishable from all otherShow MoreRelatedGrowing Racial And Ethnic Diversity Within The United States920 Words   |  4 Pagesless than two-thirds of Americans younger than age 65 which are non-Hispanic whites. Furthermore, the article stated, â€Å"In the total population, whites could lose their majority status as early as 2042.† Therefore, the United States is changing and will be more diverse in future years. The article also discussed the changes of distribution of racial and ethnic groups in the elderly population in the United States. This change is predicted to start between the years of 2010 and 2050. 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