Deconstructive Perspective.

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This is a habit I have with many things, but I tend to do it more with living organisms than anything else due to my biology-based education.... but if I'm looking at a person or something for any length of time, my mind tends to break them down into components. I see separate limbs, skin tension, muscle movement, bone structure, positions of the internal organs.... etc. It is like I'm looking at a moving one of those exploded anatomical models, and far moreso with people who are showing a lot of skin.
It tends to sometimes result in my staring at people, watching their every movement with a bizarre fascination. I swear they must think I'm some sort of pervert, but I'm more fascinated with what is going on under the skin than the surface of it.

Then sometimes I'll do it with buildings and vehicles too, if I have any sort of knowledge into how they are constructed. I'll start seeing the support beams, framework and suchlike rather than the surface of the building.... like I'm mentally stripping down my surroundings to their basic components. And I'll do it all the more if I'm stressed... like somehow seeing the world from a purely scientific and impersonal perspective gives me some level of comfort.

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I'm supposing at least SOME other people here do this, right?

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[Edit : I accidentally posted this as a reply in another thread a few moments ago. Hehe... whoops! ^_^;]

This depends on my knowledge and actual interest. So for example I do this all the time with web-sites, since that's my job. I see the (potential) processes running on the server, strip the forms in database records and so on and think into details, how the programmer may have solved a specific problem.

When reading a book about bio-chemistry some years ago, I was quite fascinated by thinking about what's happening within the muscles of my hand right at the moment I was turning a page or in the receptor cells of my eyes, when reading the letters (Mainly which chemicals had to be transported, activated or would react with each other).
I had this habit for buildings too, when I was learning technical drawing for architecture, but lost it when I quit that job. (But still, when seeing a construction place, I think about the plans they have and the ways they organize their work)

Done that myself a bit... I look at sites and try to imagine the coding in my mind, until I run into something I couldn't do myself.

The crazy thing is, I'm usually wrong.
People usually code their sites in ways totally different to the approach I'd use to get the same result.... which is sometimes amusing.



Anyhow though... the problem with my doing it with people is that it very much objectifies them, and I get the feeling they don't like that much. I don't really care though, to be honest. They're just sacks of meat, bone and organs to me.

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Last edited by SotiCoto on 30 May 2008, 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe it's just to do with what interests you. When I look at license plate numbers on cars I often try to put the numbers together in a true statement of arithmetic.

I try to look at attractive women that way. It's a conscious mechanism I've tried to develop over the years in an effort to counteract my unsatisfied instinctual attraction towards women.

Do you think of people the way you do, for similar reasons, or is it an unconscious process?

I do this with things, concepts, and systems I am interested in, I like looking for the "engineering" underlying everything.

Well, I'm a sociologist. *Thinks* Ehhhh... if I did that it would consume all my mental energy, unless I was out in the wilderness all by myself.

But when it comes to certain things I specialize in (such as cultural studies)... ehhhhh... I'm not as bad as I used to be. I'm fond of deconstructing today's youth subculture (i.e. a bunch of kids running around pretending its 1977), though I'm not as mean about it as I used to be, or frequent for that matter. At any rate, I often wonder whether or not kids realize that the music and fashions they're into today are so derivative of past phenomena that were around when their parents (or even grandparents!) were their age. Such is the state of postmodern popular culture. It's like it's about to hit the ceiling and recurve onto itself... if it hasn't started doing so already.

I do this when I'm outside a lot. I just let my eyes wander over whatever I'm looking at and let my vision go kinda fuzzy and then focus on one thing until I've figured out what makes it work/why it's there and then move on to something else. I think it's because I just *have* to know why something works the way it does, and if I can "obsess" on something little then I won't be thinking about what I should be thinking about (i.e. jobhunting, bills, car problems, etc), and I do it as a way to relax/avoid things. I've caught myself doing it when I've been really stressed and was out driving, had to remember to focus on my driving!

I get accused of not paying attention or staring at things/people a bit because of it.

A bit of both.
Sometimes I'll do the opposite though. Sometimes I'll just imagine the people around me are non-descript point-loci .... and it usually helps me get things done faster.

I certainly do have a problem with my instinct drawing me to stare at attractive people, and sometimes I will tend to deconstruct them to avoid thinking about it, but generally that results in staring all the more, which defeats the purpose. If I can help it I just stare straight ahead past them or close my eyes.

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I personally don't do it, but I remember a topic in which many users described the same or similar way of breaking things down to parts in their minds. Or, in their childhoods, also with their hands hehe. I just can't remember which topic it actually was...

I wonder though, maybe it's got to do something with being drawn to details and being able to sort details out of a bigger context/needing a lots of effort to perceive the bigger picture and not just the parts (= easier to keep to the parts)? Just a spontaneous idea.