The mind is a terrible thing to make up.

What does “making up one’s mind” mean, anyway? It could mean, making a decision. However, if one has enough information available, and one’s goals are clear, it should be easy.  Problems arise when: one doesn’t have all the needed information and/or one isn’t clear about one’s goals. Making up one’s mind is easier to do in some situations than in others. For example, the answer to, “What do I have for breakfast?” has a limited number of possible answers, depending on: what’s in the refrigerator, do I feel like frying an egg, should I go out to eat.  On the other end of the scale of difficulty is the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” – a concept that is not restricted just to those in their teen years, or those starting out in the workforce, by the way.

Today’s watercolor experiment: How does one make up one’s mind?

The (unfinished) portrait below is one interpretation of how an mind is made up. An unseen helper holds a mask in front of a blank, featureless head. The helper chooses a mask that has a particular expression based on what the helper thinks needs to be presented to the world to accomplish the blank person’s goal. I venture to say this paradigm is one that would make an early behaviorist proud.

Colors:

The blank face is made up of ivory black and neutral tint. I used my formula to paint the skin tones (cadmium red light, yellow ochre and titanium white). Prussian blue and peacock blue color the blank person’s shirt.

Note: I don’t subscribe to the idea of a dualist nature between mind and body or early behaviorist theory that did not account for an inner mental dialog.  A joke that neatly summed up the behaviorist notion, made its rounds in Psychology Departments at about that time: Two behaviorists were making love. Afterwards, while they were smoking their cigarettes, one said to the other, “That was good for you, was it good for me?”