RE: Some Thoughts

I think you got it pretty close Vnutz; there is a time differential between the pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for conscious action), and the amygdala (the part of the brain that decides fight or flight and anxious responses). The thing is, the prefrontal cortex takes a lot longer to make decisions, because it processes information so deeply, whereas the amygdala has to make snap judgements geared toward our basic survival in an evolutionary context.

So, when confronted by an emotionally charged situation, you have about a quarter of a second before your amygdala takes over and drives you to do something that might not otherwise do if you had time to reason the situation through.

This comes up often in psychological studies of Buddhist meditation--the idea being that meditation increases your likelihood of "catching" yourself before the amygdala takes over--thus leading to a calmer assessment of a situation and more consciously directed actions. Of course, there are still situations where a fight or flight reaction is called for, but the hope is you'll have more conscious choice in what you do without sacrificing reaction time. This is the "no mind" state talked about in the Zen tradition and in the martial arts, but which comes in handy in any emotionally charged situation--like in preventing you from saying something hurtful when you have a fight with your wife, etc.

That's the bit about the "monk" class that never made it into the Player's Handbook...

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