If I told you, you’d rather be in a state of blank mindlessness as opposed to full awareness, you would object. But that’s the case and I’ll prove it.
You may not know that there are two separate types of waking, mindfulness and mindlessness. That was brought to light by Marcus Raichle using modern brain imaging techniques in the early twenty-first century. Raichle and colleagues used functional neuro imaging to look at the Default Mode Network. The Default Mode Network (DMN) includes brain regions active in awake human subjects not concentrating or working on any particular task. F-MRI and PET scans light up metabolically active brain regions. With a subject nominally awake, allowed to let his mind wander and not focused on a task, the brain regions in the Default Mode Network were active. But just as soon as the subject was working on a specific task or problem, these regions become less active. Depending on the task, for a visual task for example visual specialist areas near the back of the brain cortex, occipital and parietal lobes, spring into action. Appropriate brain regions then get recruited to the task.
The Default Mode Network refers to specific anatomical regions active during this Default mental State. It is the default state because, during down times of waking, with a person thinking nothing in particular, the brain defaults into this less demanding activity. Should anything come up that demands attention, for example for a prey animal the appearance of a predator, for predator who is hungry, prey, an object of sexual attraction etc, the Default Mode is switched off. This is usually in favor of active planning and goal oriented behaviors.
Given the choice, most of us who work, and are made to or paid to be productive, would much rather revert to sit and think of nothing in particular. This is dawdling or wasting time. Our task masters encourage us to be productive all day. They make sure we don’t spend much time sleeping, and are more than willing to caffeinate us all day. Our bosses spare us no mental or physical whips and incentives. By the time we get home if we travel to work, our energy is sucked out out of us. Most Americans then consume caloric food and watch television endlessly, their minds wandering switched into aimless and effortless wandering. Attention if it is present at all, is easily captured and directed by raucous, sexualized and otherwise noticeable stimuli when finally freed of the yoke of productivity forced upon us during our workday.
