Invisible cars and other strange things
Published: Thu, 08/13/15
I like cars. So when I am driving around the country (and I do clock up quite a few miles each year) I notice interesting cars when they pass or I pass them. My partner Venetia generally does not. All kinds of amazing vehicles can pass by and they may as well be invisible to her. Following a slightly reluctant visit to a classic car rally recently Venetia can now identify an E Type Jaguar. There were 5 or 6 examples present and we spent quite a while admiring them. So, that is progress of a sort. Anything else is still just a box on wheels (apart from C15 vans, because she drives one.)
So what is going on? The answer is that the brain has an aspect called the Reticular Activating Cortex, I am not quite sure if it is an identifiable part of the physical brain or a process that occurs within the brain. I expect someone will tell me one way or the other. Either way the brain receives massive amounts of sensory information all the time. Just like the machine in the TV series ‘Person of Interest’ we see, hear, smell and even touch everything. Then, also like the same machine, we filter out everything that is not of interest to us. This is how we can have a conversation with one person in a crowded room even though there are 20 other conversations going on at the same time. We have decided to ‘tune into’ the person we are having our conversation with and ‘tuned out’ all the other conversations. We then realise how illusory this is when someone uses our name in another conversation, or mentions a topic of particular
interest to us. Then we realise that our RAC was doing two things at once, filtering out nearly everything except the conversation we have decided to have while still bringing to your attention matters of real interest, such as someone apparently mentioning your name.
If you have read this far then I expect you have recognised this phenomenon in your own life. Perhaps you thought that it was some kind of magic. When you were young it seemed that when your dad bought a new car he somehow brought into existence all the the similar cars to the new one which you definitely had not seen before. Sorry to disappoint you, they were already there. However, having a particular model of car within the family switched on your RAC to recognise similar vehicles.
Not quite magic perhaps but still pretty amazing and a very useful concept to understand. Fully grasping the concept of the RAC is a vast subject which I will return to but the first thing to realise is that the basis of education is the activation of the RAC. If you are going to learn something, or teach something to someone else then progress depends upon two main things. Firstly, the extent to which the RAC is already activated for a particular subject. Secondly, how effectively the student is willing and able to develop the use of the RAC for themselves.
So as a teacher I am looking for what people can see, and what they cannot yet see. This tells me where people are starting from and what progress they are truly making. I don’t just mean at a conscious level but unconsciously, once the RAC is activated we cannot not see the stuff we are tuned into. It is also a good way of finding out if people are really who they say they are. I will give a couple of examples of that tomorrow. Secondly, in order to learn how to learn we have to work with our own RAC. As a Stav teacher I want students to learn to think for themselves, I effectively want them to become their own teacher. That can happen once the RAC is tuned to recognising the relevant feedback.
For example, at Fightcamp last week I took part in a wrestling session. I really don’t know much about wrestling but the teacher, Pedrag is very good and shows things very clearly, so it isn’t that hard to learn from him. However people bigger than me and less than half my age couldn’t throw me but I could throw them. Why would this be when we were both trying to use the same technique? It was simply because my RAC is tuned to show me where my balance and centre of gravity is. For most of my opponents it obviously wasn’t. I don’t know that much about martial arts, the more I learn the less I realise I know. But I do know what I am looking for because my RAC is tuned to look for what it is in a martial technique or application that makes it work, or the factor that means it probably won’t work. That has been the value of my Stav training and practice and the basis of what I teach. If you have trained with me you may have heard
me say. “If you know what you are looking for, you may just find it.” To be continued.
regards
Graham
PS just one of the lessons on the 3 hour plus DVD set from Stav Camp is my talk on AIM in which I try and explain how to analyse and find the most efficient way to train. Also footage on the practical lesson on the same theme using cudgel training. And then of course there is all the stuff with Ivar who is probably the only person in the world who really knows and understands Stav in its traditional form. See the clip at http://www.stavcamp.org