Ishtar's Shithouse Poetry

Imagery, Memory, and Domestication in Human Evolution Human cognition and behaviour are shaped by intricate relationships between sensory perception, memory, and social dynamics. These two seemingly distinct areas—how individuals process pain and how domestication influences traits like tameness and aggression—offer profound insights into both our neurological makeup and evolutionary history. By examining the role of pain and emotional imagery alongside domestication theories, we can better understand how these factors may have shaped human development. Mental Imagery: The Vivid, Muted, Emotional and Painful  Imagery, the mental ability to visualise and recall sensory or emotional experiences, varies widely among individuals and even species . These variations influence behaviours ranging from empathy to aggression, with implications for how humans relate to pain and emotion—both in themselves and in others. Muted Pain and Emotional Imagery in Psychopathy: Psychopathy often involv...

I’ve always thought of myself as intuitive. From the moment I learned the word as a child, it felt like the perfect description of the things I sensed before I should know them. One of my earliest memories is a vivid example of this uncanny intuition—what I consider a type of very mild precognition.  It was my last year of Primary School, and the Christmas play was a big event. That year, our tiny village school—with barely 60 students—had splurged on the rights to play the music from  Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat . The excitement buzzed through the classroom as the teachers began announcing the cast.  We were all crammed into the biggest classroom, fidgeting in anticipation as name after name got called. My own name hadn’t been mentioned yet, but as the roles dwindled and with only a handful of us left, a strange and knowing thought crept into my mind: "No. They wouldn’t... Why would you even think that?",  I tried to shake it off, but the feeling I...

Deep in the shadows, a black cat prowls, Her sleek coat draped in midnight's cowl. Her eyes, twin moons of emerald light, Harbour a world that glows, so bright. In her bright mind, wild rivers run, Dappled with fields, kissed by the sun. Prey of light and dream takes flight, Through the labyrinth of boundless sight. Her owner, blind, feels her friends beat, A current flows where visions don't seep. The whispers tell on where darkness dwells, And in quiet tones, her presence casts spells. The cat, transfixed begins her chase, Across imagined time and space. Her paws strike down on phantom ground, While purring winds of joy resound. The blind one listens, her head held high, Tracing the dance she cannot spy. Each thump, each bash, each chirping sound, The window into a sight unbound. Together they weave a private lore, Of hunter, prey, and bathroom floor. The bond between these worlds so clear, A vivid mind, heard by kindred ear. For sight is not the only way To glimpse the dream...

Introduction to the Proposed Framework The new framework that I have presented, designed to help with understanding mental imagery, now includes fifteen distinct modalities (or " yeda's "), each with a range of four variations in strength:  aphantasia, hypophantasia, phantasia  and  hyperphantasia .   This results in a total of sixty variations leading to over one billion possible combinations of mental experiences. This expanded framework offers a deeper insight into the diverse ways our minds perceive and interact with imagery, unlocking a more detailed understanding of the mental senses. Neurodiversity is the norm, we all possess a unique perspective to bring to the table.  It has taken two years and a lot of feedback from the community to be able to articulate the instant " feeling " or " knowing " I had two years ago when I discovered aphantasia and a door was opened—the topic of neurodivergence suddenly " all made sense ", as did a lo...

Dr. Adam Zeman is a pioneering figure in the study of aphantasia, the inability to produce mental imagery. In a recent discussion with him, I explored the evolving understanding of this fascinating condition, its terminology, and the spectrum of experiences associated with it.  Dr. Zeman defines aphantasia as the lack of mental imagery . Initially, this definition referred solely to visual imagery (or what might be termed visual aphantasia ). Over time, the term has broadened to encompass deficits across multiple sensory modalities, forming what is now referred to as multisensory aphantasia . This includes conditions such as auditory aphantasia (the inability to imagine sounds), tactile aphantasia (a lack of imagined touch), and emotional aphantasia (the absence or reduction of emotional imagery). While we didn’t discuss all the possible senses, I mentioned I am aware that researchers are currently investigating up to 20 modalities. This number wasn’t confirmed during our discu...

Beyond Deficits: Unlocking the Uniqueness of Our Mental Perception Imagination in English, comes from the Latin imaginatio , which translates the Greek term phantasia . Defined in the 14th century. Before this, we had mystics who understood mind far better than modern science does, listing seven mental senses (clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance, clairtangency, clairgustance and clairaliance) and the daimon.  Phantasia in Greek, derived from phainesthai (meaning "to appear" or "to become visible"), refers to mental imagery formed without sensory input. Originally, Aphantasia  referred specifically to the absence of mental visual imagery. All the terms mentioned above pertain to types of imagery, focusing solely on one sense: vision. None of these terms encompass mental senses that are not image or vision-based. The full scope of mental sense perception is not detailed in these definitions, what they do is define the subheading that encomp...