Don't Think, Feel: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

This is when a mentor tries to teach the hero not by ''doing'' but by ''feeling''. This makes sense if the art that is taught here is something like [[Supernatural Martial Arts]]. Action-oriented disciplines to have, well, [[Harmony Versus Discipline|discipline]]. Paradoxically, letting your emotions run and feeling your instincts guide you are not one and the same... [[Comically Missing the Point|but we're not going to pretend that's logical]]. Maybe these mentors simply suspect that their students [[It Was with You All Along|are already driven by serenity rather than negative feelings]] but that their role is to guide that along.

The problem is it can get nauseating for the audience when the mentor goes on and on and on. They say stuff like: "Please, no more! I don't want to communicate with [[The Lifestream]]; I want to see plot happen!" Taking a real approach to it can easily end up as [[Info Dump]] unless you do something creative with it.

 

 

This has some [[Truth in Television]]. When our brains learn a new skill, we learn it step by step. With practice, the process becomes implicit, meaning it can be done without really thinking about it i.e. "second nature" and "muscle memory". In high stress situations, the part of the brain that first learned the skill comes back to the fore, and tries to perform the skill explicitly, as if you were learning it all over again. This is why some athletes have a tendency to "choke" under pressure. Once you start thinking about doing something, [[Centipede's Dilemma|it suddenly becomes very difficult]] and awkward to perform. Of course, this only applies when the skill in question is something you have done a couple thousand times. The reason it becomes so effortless is because we repeat it so often. This approach does not work when trying something for the very first time.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Subverted in ''[[Samurai Champloo]]''. An old hermit tries to teach Jin a lesson by using fishing as an example. The lesson: Going with the flow. If you do, the fish will come to you. He then attempts to catch a fish this way and... fails. "Well... Some fish are going to slip by anyway." May be a [[Double Subversion]], as the advice was still useful.

* When Rossiu from ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' asks Kamina how to move the Gurren, he just answers with "do whatever feels natural!".

{{quote|Mikami: Don't use powers you don't have, you idiot!}}

* There's implication that this trope was used in [[MAR]] after Ginta and Jack are trained for the second time, which is during the War Games. Their master is asked what they were taught and in response launches a pebble at each of them. They both dodge despite being shot at from behind. The humor is explored with Jack actually catching the stone.. and then rolling around on the ground because the pebble was moving at such speed that being stupid enough to catch the thing hurt.

* In ''Rosario + Vampire'', this trope may have been used when Moka taught Tsukune how to sense youki energy.

 

** The Emperor also encourages Luke to "let the hate flow through you!", a path that leads to the Dark Side.

** [[Justified Trope|Justified]], since Jedi training is basically all about learning to use a sense you never knew you had.

** This comes across as more of an inversion, given that he's telling him to approach the situation rationally instead of dwelling on his emotions. Bruce's whole training montage seems to be about taking control of his anger, guilt and fear instead of being driven by them.

* Inverted in ''[[Scaramouche (film)|Scaramouche]]'':

* ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'': "Put aside logic. Do what feels right." Notable since it's actually ''[[The Spock|Spock]]'' saying this.

* Both played straight and subverted in the ''[[How to Train Your Dragon (animation)|How to Train Your Dragon]]'' movie with Hiccup.

** More of a [[Subverted Trope|subversion]]; the boys play horribly.

* A slight variation in [[Bull Durham]] when Crash tell nuke, "Don't think, it can only hurt the ball club"

== [[Literature]] ==

* Played in ''The Subtle Knife'' (part 2 of Phillip Pullman's ''[[His Dark Materials]]''). How to open a door between worlds with the Subtle Knife: transfer your mind to the blade's tip, move the blade around feeling the air around you, and as soon as you perceive a notch, cut.

{{quote|'''Miss Tick:''' "Now...if you trust in yourself...and believe in your dreams...and follow your star...you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy"}}

* Deconstructed in ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]''. It's the philosophy espoused by the looters, who claim to be motivated by love and compassion for others. They hold this to be more important than rational thought, and as a result of their ideals being adopted by much of society, the world's falling apart.

* Subverted in "[[All American Girl]]". The protagonists art teacher criticizes her for basically "free-styling" on a still life assignment by adding in a random pineapple. At first, she sees this as stifling her natural creativity, but the real message is that you have to learn how to draw what you SEE, first, instead of drawing things the way you assume them to be.

{{quote|''You fool, he isn't dead, and your heart knew it. Don't trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you. The trouble with you is that you never really had any hope.''}}

* The novel ''[[Youth in Sexual Ecstasy]]'' gives this advice regarding sex (the actual act, not if you must have it or not).

 

== Web Original ==

{{quote|'''Spencer:''' All right, this one is about centering your qi. Now, we're gonna do it like this! Ready? [stands balanced on one leg]

'''Jonas:''' I got it. I got it. It's like ''The Karate Kid.'' [adopts a one-legged karate pose]

'''Ninja:''' Before you feel, you must...

'''AVGN:''' [[Overly Long Gag|I've had enough!]] }}

{{quote|'''AVGN:''' (fails) Fuck!

'''Ninja:''' Before you fuck, you must use proper protection. }}

* There is an aiming technique in paintball where you point your index finger along the barrel of your marker following the theory that your finger knows what it's pointing at.

* Some actors and musicians explain this as the best way to improvise.

** Expanding on that - by the time you have consciously come up with a move to attack, defend, or counter-attack, you are most likely already on the ground.

* Playing a musical instrument is a particularly refined version of the muscle memory idea. Only once you reach the point where you can play the given notes or chords ''without having to think about them first'' can you actually perform something that (may) resemble music. Then you've got to work on not just ''playing'' it, but actually ''expressing emotion'' while you do it.

** Or faking it, at least. Playing both the instrument and the audience at the same time is easier when the two aren't completely separate processes.

** This is very true. There's a reason all the great method actors eventually ended up neurotic messes, and emotional burnout has been the kiss of death to an otherwise potentially successful budding acting career. When you're so stuck in character you literally cannot get out of it and have a panic attack as a result, serious shit is wrong.

** The moodiness and excessive identification with the character is more a mark of an American school of thought on Method acting, rather than being a true expression of its general principles. In reality, the Don't Think, Feel aspect of his method really was more about generating the character's behavior by examining their motivations, their goals, and then doing what people would naturally do under such circumstances, rather than a forced series of conventional gestures. An example in his first book on the method has his expy (The lessons are presented in story form) basically having a girl do a scene where she's looking for a valuable watch. In her first take, she does a bunch of melodramatic gesturing. In the next, he advises her to work out what the sensible actions of somebody looking for a watch would be, and chain those together to create her actions. In the first example, she's simply doing conscious imitations of emotional behavior. In the second, she's doing what the character would be doing, and expressing the feelings of the character through that.

* Typing. If you want to have any typing speed, you don't think about where to put each finger; it's all muscle memory. You think about what you want to type and your fingers move around without you giving them any direct orders. If you want to remember what it was like before you learned how to type, try using a completely different layout like Dvorak. Suddenly, you're back at step 1. Your typing speed drops enormously until you start building up muscle memory with the new layout. Typing this becomes an hour-long ordeal of 'where the heck is that key' instead of a quick five-minute typing session.

* Flying - you can use the instruments to tell you what you need, but that takes time, and attention away from everything else you're doing. After awhile you can actually feel what's going on in the wings, hear how fast you're going, etc. Not to mention basic control movements, which are much better done by touch than trial and error

* Sailing. Once you learn the basic controls, you are better on trusting your emotions and intuition than looking at the instruments. The only instruments worth of following are compass and echo sounder.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]

[[Category:Stock Aesops]]

[[Category:Skills and Training Tropes]]