We are comfortable with familiar words, thoughts, assurances, certainties, promises. Why aren’t we disturbed, alarmed, by our willingness, our eagerness, to be comforted? Why is reassurance comforting when our desperate demand for it is greater than any other reason to accept it?
When on autopilot things just seem to happen, there’s no sense of agency, at least not at the micro-level. It’s like riding a bike, you intend to ride, but the riding itself just happens.
Some consequences of this at the subjective level: a feeling of effortlessness, of unblocked flow, of naturalness, also of lost-ness, adrift-ness, a sense of being a spectator in one’s own life.
Conscious living requires more work, is more challenging, less ego-driven, affords more learning and discovery. Unconscious living is easier and cozier, more ego-centric, reinforces old patterns of thought and behavior.
Each has benefits and liabilities. Move fluently between them, as the situation demands?
Driving my car without thinking about what I’m doing doesn’t seem particularly ego-centric - however if I was driving my car whilst checking myself (or being a spectator), this would just be more self-centred confusion
Seeing a house on fire won’t do much unless one truly cares about the well-being of the house and its inhabitants. And, unless people feel the house is theirs or their tribe’s, they probably won’t care urgently.
I was thinking more of unconscious psychological living. If you are not actively unraveling your psyche, you are probably strengthening it. The delusion of the ego-self seems pretty universal for homo sapiens, we all seem to fall prey to it, mistaking thought/memory for actuality.
The psyche (thought/memory/ego) can unravel itself to a certain extent I think. But it will always have blindspots, things it can’t (or refuses to) see and understand about itself. I mostly think I know what I’m doing, but again, I’m probably missing a bunch.
If I was convinced the surgeon didn’t know what he was talking about, I’d hit the Internet and find a reputable surgeon. That’s assuming it was a mechanical issue surgery is able to fix. If otoh it was a psychological ailment, unless I was utterly paralyzed with fear/anxiety/depression I would probably either let it slide or try to fix it myself.