On Incarnation
January 19, 2020

     Try this: tie a washer or some similar small weight to the end of a string and hold the opposite end of the string between your thumb and index finger.  Prop the elbow of the same arm on a table and let the weighted end of the string hang down.  Still the weight with your opposite hand, but then, having let go with that hand but without moving your arm or the fingers holding the end of the string, begin to rapidly repeat an instruction in your mind, such as "up-down" or "left-right" or "circle right" or "circle left" or "stop".  Do not say the instruction out loud, but repeat it over and over in your head.  And again, don"t move your arm, hand, or fingers.

     The weight will follow your instructions – slowly at first, but it works.  You can even take it through a series of instructions.  I like to put it through some paces, seeing how long the washer takes to transition from one instruction to the next.  Calisthenics for small hardware.

     I think I was in fifth grade when I was first introduced to this trick by the teacher of an art and science enrichment program I was enrolled in.  At first, I thought it was magic, the eerie, ouija-board kind.  It freaked me out a little.

     I still think it's magic, just not the supernatural kind.  It's more the isn't-the-world-amazing kind of magic, or the Bill-Nye-the-Science-Guy kind of magic.  Turns out, the trick works because of a phenomenon called the "ideomotor effect", which describes various motions that we make without perceiving or intending them, and what triggers them.  Apparently, most of the focus of research on the ideomotor effect is on motions unconsciously made, tiny imperceptible shifts within us made in response to exposure to an idea, mental image, or verbal suggestion.  For example, if I told you to imagine yourself sucking a lemon, your mouth will almost certainly secrete a little extra saliva in your mouth.  (Didn't it?)  And if I told you to imagine yourself standing out in a cold wind, you would most likely curl your body forward and pull your arms in closer to your torso, even if only just a tiny bit. 

     The ideomotor effect figures prominently in studies of hypnosis and in the psychology of body language, particularly the science of facial expressions, which are unconscious to a large degree.  

     The washer-on-a-string trick raises the question of how our mental processes generally, whether conscious or unconscious, affect the world around us.   In one sense, this is utterly mundane.  We experience our day-to-day lives as a series of decisions to take actions, followed by the actions.  We decide to get out of bed, then we get out of bed.  We decide to have a bowl of cereal, then we find ourselves in front of the pantry, granola box in hand.  The electro-chemical neural pathways that express the process have been well outlined by scientists, even if their implications are not yet well understood.  So the fact that a weighted string moves to the beat of a series of brain signals coursing down my neurons, in a way I cannot perceive or detect with my unaided senses, is perhaps not particularly mysterious.

     But in another sense, the fact that our thoughts take physical form in the world – that they are, and are becoming, incarnate – is awe-inspiring, perhaps even "miraculous" in a way.  There is doubtless much about the process that we don‛t yet understand, including whether our perception that our thoughts "cause" our actions is an accurate way of conceptualizing what actually happens.  And for non-scientists like me, wrestling with these questions is something we can only do vicariously, dependent as we are on those who are directly observing, testing, and analyzing the pertinent phenomena.  

    But the potential philosophical implications can be glimpsed and explored by those outside the scientific priesthood.  If I can move a weight on a string with no apparent physical effort, what else can I move?  

     Mountains?