I was at a public lecture and later saw photos of it. In one photo I held my index finger across my lips. A guy sitting before me, whose face I couldn’t see at the time, did the exact same gesture, and the resulting photo looks pretty funny, as if we’re all consciously posing to signal that we’re thinking real hard.
There are other poses of this sort, the thinking monkey meme, Rodin’s Thinker statue… even the sidebar of this very sub has a picture of a lemur whom we recognise as “thinking” because it has its hand on its mouth.
Are these gestures just culturally conditioned? But regardless of whether they’re just cultural or universal – why do they exist?
People like to think of themselves as an individual…
But we’re not. And not just the brain having different parts that may conflict, we have different parts of our body running on autopilot using their own axons and nerves.
Proprioception is one of “extra” senses that everyone has but isn’t in the five basic ones were taught in highschool.
It’s how we can reflexively catch something without needing to see it falling, recognize what’s happening, and decide to catch it.
But that system isn’t just split second reflexes, it’s why we can walk and chew gum at the same time or can ride a bike without paying attention and daydream.
Sometimes that system wants input, but it can’t communicate to your consciousness, it’s not hooked up to the language center to pop a thought into your head.
So it puts your body/limbs into a “thinking position” and your conscious mind starts trying to logic out whatever problem it’s aware of. Hopefully it’s the one giving your body pause.
Like, that’s the whole “oneness” people talk about trying to achieve thru meditation and shit. Getting not just conscious and the various unconscious parts of your mind on the same page, but getting all the independent pieces of your entire body on the same page.
Like the monks who can raise/lower body temp at will. It’s sounds supernatural unless you actually understand how a human is put together, then it’s just a party trick like wiggling your ears. Anyone could learn to do it, but the action isn’t the point, it’s an exercise in getting all the parts of your body to follow the same game plan.
So, less a signal to others that we’re thinking, and more a sign from our body that we need to take a beat and think before acting. For people that think of every human as a single individual, it’s a weird thought. But a human is less an individual and more like an aircraft carrier crammed with thousands of people, who hopefully are all working towards the same goal.