Fixated On Concepts
I noticed something yesterday that I want
to explore. I was coming down with the flu. I couldn't sleep. To pass
the overnight hours I played spider solitaire for hours. Finally I feel
asleep for 2 hours.
Knowing that playing spider solitaire was a huge waste
of a limited resource (my time), I decided to spend my time absorbing
highly intellectual material (watching TV).
That's when I noticed it. Every scene on TV, my brain
automatically noticed which person was taller or higher in the image and
told me that I could slide the shorter onto the taller one. I couldn't
stop myself. The effect lasted for the rest of that day.
Quickly I realized the relationship to the computer
game that I had overdosed on, in my weakened state.
That night I purged spider solitaire from my computer.
I also remembered another case of being
fixated on a concept. It too occurred when I had a case of the flu and
had overworked my brain on one subject. I was taking
number theory. I was fascinated with one of the problems, involving properties
of even and odd numbers.
After hours of intense concentration (and not resolving
the problem), I finally hit the sack. I tossed and turned and dreamed of
the people in my life who had even-ness or odd-ness as an essential characteristic
of their personality.
When I awoke, I continued to feel feverish when I thought
of people, trying to extract which polarity they were.
These two cases are suggestive and need to be understood
better by me. Are they indicative of a method of fixation or are they anomalies?
Does this fixation of concept only occur when weakened by illness?
Not over-indulging in continual thought about one scenario
(especially when one actively decides actions in that scenario) is a prudent
precaution with only very limited downside.
See Overlap for another aspect of concept storage.
