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“Why can’t you just relax into it?” is a question many of us have asked in frustration with ourselves or others – be it on the dance floor, the sporting field or in rather more private circumstances. The task typically requires us to respond spontaneoSpontaneity is not that spontaneous after all
“Why can’t you just relax into it?” is a question many of us have asked in frustration with ourselves or others – be it on the dance floor, the sporting field or in rather more private circumstances. The task typically requires us to respond spontaneously to external events, without any deliberation whatsoever. It ought to be easy – all you have to do is let go – yet it can be infuriatingly difficult. “Stop thinking about it!” is the standard remedial advice, although cancelling thought with thought is something of a paradox. The retort, “I am trying!”, is equally puzzling, for deliberate intent is precisely what we are here struggling to avoid. So what is this act of choosing not to choose, of consciously relinquishing control over our actions? Our new study, published in Communications Biology, has finally provided insights into how this capacity is expressed in the brain. Told you so. wikipedia, CC BY-SA Astonishingly, this fundamental human phenomenon has no name. It might have escaped academic recognition entirely had the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche not given it a brilliant gloss in his first book The Birth of Tragedy, itself a paradoxical work of philosophy in... Read more