our own private ocean (1)

Steven Rose estimates the activity of the conscious mind as 100 bits per second. The comparison of this to the sensory flux and mental processing is even more striking, something along the lines of thimble, cathedral and ocean. Which brings me back to the question [...]: how is communication possible? Given the amount of processing which so vastly outstrips the senses, what is there to stop us disappearing into our own private ocean? Indeed, what is there to stop us abandoning any semblance of reality for a private fantasy? Clearly this is an option. But what prevents it from being obligatory?
[...]
Given the grandeur of the human mind [...], one might ask why consciousness is so relatively puny. Why a bubble floating in all that cognitive space? Perhaps we need to reduce out interior awareness, to avoid complete paralysis in the face of the simplest decisions. A highly filtered subset of the sense flux is prioritised, disproportionately in terms of magnitude, but not in terms of survival. In positive terms it is a lifeline, ensuring we have some connection with 'reality'. Obviously, it is important not to be lost in one's own innards if there are tigers on the prowl. But as with pain, sometimes nature overdoes things. Our insensitivity to our own vastness causes us to persistently underestimate people, especially other people.


Randolph Healy, from 'The Wandering Wood' in Vectors: New Poetics, ed. Robert Archambeau (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2001), pp. 88-89. [emphasis mine]