kitschchaos.com

The value of the Hunch

by Michael Robin Cooke on Jul.28, 2009, under Kitschchaos

The New York times today has an article about Soldiers and how their hunches have saved lives.

All of us know what a hunch is, and we are often wrong enough in our hunches we are quick to dismiss them as unreliable. But in the extreme context of war, it’s becoming clear that hunches are a survival function of the brain.

The consequences of this insight are profound. Your brain would be incapable of helping you with a hunch if it didn’t know something your conscious mind does not.

And here’s where we come to magic. If you work with a model of the unconscious powering magic, this discovery is very supportive. Magic could be thought of as ‘self hypnosis’ on steroids – putting deep into your brain the programming to obtain a desire, overruling the mental mechanisms that prize a status quo.

Certainly this evidence supports the notion of invocation (essentially accepting/believing the mind of a god or person outside yourself is in your mind, allowing you to pick their brain and/or power) giving you the real benefit of fresh insight, perspective and even information. If there’s nothing more to invocation than imagination, it could provide a means to mine information from a brain that knows more than you do.

The brain knows more than we do, clearly. So if you can’t accept magic can hack probability – perhaps the idea that ‘giving your mind permission’, opens you up to insights and being able to recognize opportunities that accomplish much the same thing.

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9 Comments for this entry

  • 100% Mortgage

    Everytime I have ignored a “hunch” or “intuition” I have lived to regret it. Best thing I agree is to follow your instincts, as I believe we are capable of far greater things than we currently know about.

    Go with your hunches.

  • carlcaroll

    We don’t use 100% of our capacities, nor intellectual nor our psychics. Sometimes our sensitivy is more exposed and we can notice this hunch’s; othertimes we just don’t pay attention to them..

  • Earrings

    Thanks.what a lengthy and in depth article but full of useful information

  • babafisa

    all that is lost on the ‘net.Which raises the obvious question of why I’m bothering to comment. But like I said earlier, I like irony! :-)

    • Michael Robin Cooke

      Right, that’s mistaking a hunch for a wish or an expectation. Expecting that this poker hand will be the one to make you money, is less a hunch than wish you’re trying to have feel like a hunch. Expecting that this young man is responsible for the burglary, may be less a hunch and more a product of expectation based on race or who the person reminds you of.

      Which is why I wrote in the piece that regularly our ‘hunches’ are proven wrong.

      The kind of hunch that counts, I suppose, is the ‘knowing’ when there’s no reason.

  • pgarcia

    To me a hunch is something very real. I am still paying very severely for some hunches that I haven’t followed (car accident). The problem is differentiating when is a real hunch or when is your ego telling you something of no use. In my personal experience, a real hunch tends to be a lot stronger.

  • Floost

    Valuable thoughts and advices. I read your topic with great interest.

  • Ventego

    Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.

  • single-parent

    Fantastic article, some really great views

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