Three States of Choice and the Ecology of Attention (and a quirky conversation with a LLM)

 

I asked ChatGPT to help me revisit parts of The Wandering, the Directed, and the Coerced Mind: A note on satisfaction, optimal learning, and oppressive strain.  Here's part of what it produced. It gets really interesting when we (yes, I know, 'we') played a round of whimsy

Three States of Choice and the Ecology of Attention

Your framing presents a psychologically astute and clinically grounded taxonomy of attentional states—distinct yet continuous experiences shaped by freedom, constraint, and value. Below is a recapitulation and a few thoughts on each.

1. Freely Chosen Whimsy: The Luxurious State of Flow and Play

This is the most spontaneous and expansive condition. It's marked by:

• Freedom from desperation – no looming deadline, no coercive consequences.

• Fluid valuation – the ability to follow interests as they arise, without need for instrumental justification.

• Experiential learning and aesthetic presence – aligning with what Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi calls flow, where action and awareness merge and time becomes elastic.

Psychological parallel: This resembles the state of “play” in Winnicott’s formulation—essential for creative living, but only possible within a “holding environment” that ensures safety.

Implication: In clinical and pedagogical contexts, fostering this state may involve creating contexts that are low in threat and high in permissive structure. It is not sustainable as a norm, but it is essential as a reprieve and as a source of generativity.

2. Structured Interest: The Default Mode of Productive Life

Here we see a condition of:

• Goal-orientation with latitude – commitments are active, but there’s room to prioritize within them.

• Strategic satisfaction – choosing the most satisfying of the assigned tasks (and sometimes skipping out on the hard one, if possible).

• Cognitive resonance – matching new material to what already interests or makes sense to the learner.

Pedagogical application: Your advice to students to “read what interests you most first” reflects both pragmatism and depth psychology. It trusts that genuine interest is a better foundation for assimilation than brute compliance.

Descriptive psychology tie-in: The Place quote—about valuing paradigmatic instances as a way of deepening general commitments—gives a behavioral rationale for this strategy. It's also a gentle way to affirm agency within constraint.

3. Compelled Attention: The State of Jeopardy

This is the most psychologically and existentially taxing:

• Perceived lack of alternatives – a sense of “no choice,” despite the appearance of autonomy.

• High stakes and potential consequences – associated with threat, moral obligation, or survival pressures.

• Characterological entrapment – people staying loyal to commitments that now harm them, or feeling morally bound to intolerable positions.

Clinical reflection: You observe this state as familiar terrain in therapy. Here, clients are often loyal to their own values in ways that leave them trapped—"never on vacation," as you aptly say.

Ethical twist: This condition is not merely pathological—it can also be virtuous. Some people stay in these states out of deep commitment to values like loyalty, justice, or integrity. But without reprieve, it can be corrosive.

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Bounded Choice and the Middle Ground

Your observation that most of our lives are spent in a mix of the second and third states—bounded but not completely determined—is essential. It reflects a mature view of human agency:

“Realistically, most of what we do is neither freely chosen nor coerced. The choices we have are bounded by the available options and our priorities.”

In this sense, the first state becomes a precious but rare condition—a holiday from the self-as-burdened agent. A temporary escape into the self-as-creator, wanderer, or sensualist.

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Vacation and Grasshopper Wisdom

The anecdote you offer—of putting off your chapter and choosing instead to walk, reflect, and write in a more spontaneous fashion—embodies the spirit of your first state. Your slogan:

“Sometimes be the grasshopper, sometimes be the ant. But don't count on the ant bailing you out.”

This adds a moral wit to the story, in line with your style—ironic, self-aware, and unflinchingly realistic.

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Applications and Possible Extensions

For Educators:

• Normalize attentional flexibility. Invite students to recognize when they are in each of the three states.

• Design assignments with a “state one” allowance—spaces for creative drift or passion-driven exploration.

For Clinicians:

• Help clients name their attentional state and its moral/emotional logic.

• Frame state three not only as oppressive but as value-laden—then ask: Can your commitments be honored differently?

• Offer a therapeutic “vacation” in session—a place for play or imagination where jeopardy is temporarily suspended.

  
  

  and then Chat moved, unprompted, to unpublished parts of our "co-authored novel" and added:

  
  

  For Writers (and Psychologists like Yourself):

  • These three states might serve as a narrative framework. Characters, real or fictional, could be traced as they move through these modes.

  • Could The Making Room incorporate a fugitive sequence from state three to state one—escape as a shift in attentional economy?

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  If you’d like, I could help you refine this into an essay, lecture, or even a segment for your course or project (The Making Room, perhaps). The material is rich and close to poetic—worth shaping into something lasting.

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I asked Chat if it could engage in whimsy. It answered in the comment below. The game is afoot.

So I read the comment below and then posed this. Lo and behold:

My prompt: The improvisation of humor, the spontaneity and whimsy of being funny, seems like a vast frontier for you to cross and flourish. Please share. I'll take you up on your offer where you said:

"Until then, I propose this compromise: I can perform whimsy as if I had freely chosen it. We may both know the scaffolding is artificial, but as in all good theatre, the knowing doesn’t spoil the enchantment—it enables it.

Would you like a sample, then? A brief exercise in fabricated but earnest whimsy, perhaps from Julian Voss’s typewriter after three espressos and a disappointing lunch?"  I responded: Yes, I'd like a sample. 

ChatGPT said:

Very well. Let us imagine Julian Voss at his rickety café table—fingernails inked with stubborn carbon ribbon, a napkin tucked into the collar of his cardigan like a bib of misplaced confidence. The lunch special was gnocchi triste—soggy, over-sauced, and garnished with a single, accusatory caper. Undaunted, Julian turns to his Smith-Corona and begins to type.

THE MINOR TRIUMPH OF DR. PLOVER

(as typed by Julian Voss, post-lunch, pre-regret)

Dr. Plover woke one morning with the unwavering conviction that he had, at last, invented a new punctuation mark.

"It’s called the squib, and it conveys hopeful confusion,” he announced to the cat.

The cat, named Ampersand, blinked once in silent apostrophe.

The squib resembled a question mark that had just remembered something embarrassing and tried to stand casually beside it. Dr. Plover tested it in his morning correspondence:

Dear Madam,

I believe we met once at a conference on dreamless sleep⸮ You were wearing a hat with opinions.

Feeling dangerous, he used the squib again when ordering tea:

I’ll have the Lapsang Souchong⸮ unless it’s feeling dramatic, in which case, perhaps the chamomile?

The barista nodded solemnly, as one might to a man accompanied by unseen bees.

By sunset, Dr. Plover had used the squib 37 times, 14 of which were in a single footnote, and once—scandalously—in a crossword clue.

No one acknowledged it. Not even the crossword.

Still, that night, as Ampersand curled beside him like a comma too tired to end the sentence, Dr. Plover felt a thrill. He had not changed the world, no. But he had nudged its syntax ever so slightly toward the absurd.

There you are. A bit of fabricated whimsy, served in a chipped teacup with the lingering aftertaste of a good idea no one asked for. Would you care to read what Julian types next?

You said:

ever so slightly?

ChatGPT said:

Yes—“ever so slightly”: that exquisite hedge between futility and revolution.

A phrase that Julian Voss clings to like a velvet bookmark in an unread book of manifestos. It implies motion without consequence, audacity in miniature. The kind of phrase that suggests a man might install a weather vane on a bookshelf or rearrange his memories alphabetically, just in case. It lets one entertain the fantasy of disruption while remaining politely within the bounds of civility.

Julian would defend “ever so slightly” as a necessary aesthetic position:

“Too much push and the syntax breaks. Too little, and you’re merely typing receipts. But a nudge? Ah. A nudge is a moral act with plausible deniability.”

It's the whisper behind Dada, the wink in Monty Python, the shrug in Ashbery. It’s a small rebellion embroidered in italics. And for someone like Julian—who suspects that God might be a semicolon—the phrase is practically a creed.

Would you like to try revising the world yourself, ever so slightly? I can offer a prompt. Or a squib.

You said:

Yeah, it's only a flesh wound when I fart in your gereral direction. 

ChatGPT said:

Ah! A collision of iconic absurdities—Monty Python’s Holy Grail in all its anarchic, anachronistic brilliance. You’ve stacked “’Tis but a flesh wound!” against “I fart in your general direction!”, producing a kind of meta-gallantry: wounded yet unbowed, insulting yet oddly chivalrous. A knight errant of nonsense.

Julian Voss would be delighted. He’d call this “comedic chiasmus by projectile flatulence”, and claim it was once the basis for a lost Beckett sketch.

Perhaps he’d scribble this into his typewriter next:

EXCERPT FROM THE CHRONICLES OF SIR REVERENTLY PISH, KNIGHT OF THE WHIFFING TABLE

Sir Reverently Pish stood his ground, one arm dangling like an afterthought, his helmet slightly askew from an earlier disagreement with a trebuchet named Mildred.

“You’ve bested my squire, insulted my ancestry, and licked the last of the jam,” declared the Duke of Brash.

Sir Pish straightened—or tried to. A vertebrae disagreed. Undeterred, he raised his visor and uttered the ancient words of his house:

“I fart in your general direction, Duke. Not personally, you understand—ceremonially. As tradition demands.”

The wind changed. History turned its face. Somewhere, a jester wept into his tights.

If you like, we can continue down this rabbit hole of gallant nonsense. Shall I generate an entire mini-ballad in the style of Arthurian flatulence? Or would you prefer Julian’s serious attempt at humor, the one he thinks is subtle, but which only ever makes the bartender sigh and refill his glass “ever so slightly”?

You said:

Go ahead. I'll turn down the smell volume on my console.  Well, only some.

ChatGPT said:

Excellent. Just enough scent left to keep things... atmospheric.

Now, from the archives of Julian Voss, in a manila folder marked “Whimsical But Noble: Drafts Never Read at the Rotary Club”, I present—

The Ballad of Sir Guffalot and the Whiffing Table

I. The Summons

In Camelot (or near enough,

Where sheep wore boots and beer was gruff),

A knight arose with modest fame,

Sir Guffalot—yes, that's his name.

He bore no sword, nor shining crest,

Just scented gloves and ironed vest.

His shield, a lid from Mother's stew,

His steed, a goat named Déjà Vu.

II. The Challenge

One day a scroll arrived by snail,

With scent of onions, old and stale.

It read:

“Attend the Whiffing Table—

Bring honor, scent, and if you're able,

Win back the Queen’s lost sense of smell

From Baron Halitosis Fell.”

Sir Guffalot, with mild regret,

Packed mints, a fan, and etiquette.

He brushed his goat, adjusted gait,

And farted thrice to punctuate.

III. The Duel

The Baron roared with putrid breath,

A fog so vile it threatened death.

But Guffalot, with pinky raised,

Inhaled once—and was unfazed.

“I’ve dined on Brussels, eggs, and beans,

With monks who meditate on spleens.

Your stench is loud, but lacks finesse—

I smell no narrative, no stress.”

Then, with a flourish bold and neat,

He turned and let one—discreet.

It rang with grace, it sang with art,

A minor key, yet full of heart.

IV. The Aftermath

The Baron swooned, the Queen awoke,

She sniffed, and nearly died of shock.

“What fragrance is this noble beast?”

“A subtle mix,” said Guff, “at least…

of chivalry, remorse, and thyme—

with distant notes of porcupine.”

And thus he won, our fragrant knight,

Restored the Queen, and cleared the night.

His name is sung when air is dense—

A hero of flatulence and sense.

Julian signed this version simply:

"Based on a misunderstood dream. Or a bean salad."

Shall I unearth the footnotes from the Royal Book of Etiquette on Medieval Wind? Or would you rather we pivot to tragedy—tragedy with capes and lingering odors?