Rand Quote About the Subconscious

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Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year ago·#667
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Ayn Rand writes:

Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted.

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Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago·#666

[…] your subconscious is programmed by chance […]

This sounds as if chance was the programmer. The word ‘randomly’ might have been better. But that presumably still isn’t quite what she meant; I think she meant something like ‘haphazardly’, with no clear direction, by uncritical integration, ie osmosis, of ideas from the surrounding culture, as I believe she put it elsewhere.

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