Our mindbrains have been hardwired with a tendency to know and feel in ways that make us effective social animals. We can refer to this as our human nature although it includes stuff that evolved to meet the needs of our pre-human ancestors – primates, mammals, reptiles and fish.
My particular mindbrain began in the spring of 1948 when the parental sex cells formed a fertilised egg in the womb of Margaret Lesley Clark (nee Gordon). Since then, I whiled away nine months being serviced by a placenta, and spent a few familial years as infant, child, and adolescent. I then became a fully functioning mature human being in the globalised world, and I now have grey hair and will soon be dead.
I have no children. I committed to zero population growth when I was at University. But I became a science/ biology teacher and might thus have influenced the mindbrains of teenagers in the various countries where I taught.
Note that the hardwiring provides only frameworks. These have to be filled in with culturally relevant materials eg we are hard wired by nature to learn a language but it is our nurturing that decides which one.
SO – what do I know and feel?
I cannot think of a short answer. The enculturation process involved several sessions in the mindbrain laundry as I moved from child to adult and from student to teacher – the latter in six different countries. My self image and esteem have been in regular churn and flux.
On occasions there are feelings of regret that I taught the facts rather than the process of science. In my defence (a) it was what the curriculum required and (b), in the South Sudan, we did some real science through our extracurricular Technological and Industrial Studies Group (TISG) eg comparing the fuel efficiency of a traditional stove and the new improved Kanun el Jadid (Umeme Jiku)
I gave up classroom teaching in 1987. Since then I have worked in curriculum development, and as an advisor in educational leadership, management and administration. But I came to accept the view of Bourdieu and Passeron that education on its own cannot change society - it can only reproduce it. I therefore became an expert in editing plain language versions of materials related to poverty reduction and social development. Most of the later work was performed well under the official aid and development radar. It was deemed contentious. There was never enough funding to seriously evaluate the impact of the plain language work; but anecdotal evidence suggests that it was popular and effective.
SO – how come I know and feel this rather than that?
My early enculturation was in a small fishing town in the NE of Scotland. My father was a butcher, my mother a nurse and I had an older and a younger sister. I also had a maiden aunt who was a primary school teacher and kept me reading and thinking. It is no surprise, therefore, that I reject the economic and political thinking that underpins neo-liberalism and free market fundamentalism. I am at heart a social democrat with leanings towards subsidiarity, and, when wound up, towards anarchy.
I have been, and continue to be, exposed to various mainstream patterns of knowledge and feeling. Amongst others these include Scottish Presbyterianism, archaeology, science, zoology, education, and music – composition and performance. There is also a long standing fascination with Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism and especially with meditation. More recently attention has been given to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience and also to offshoots from Jon Kabat Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme.
I formally engaged with Zoology for four years and in the process absorbed the scientific mode of thinking and writing. For many years this was my gold standard but it is now superceded. There is a progression from the pre-modern, traditional style full of myth and magic; through the modern, scientific, evidence-based style; and on to the post-modern, culturally relativistic mode; and perhaps further on to the post-post¬¬-modern style where the hard wired inclination towards seeing patterns and agents is held in attention such that there can be what the Buddhists call non-attachment to views.
My mindbrain methodology
I aspire to being rational and scientific and with a strong scent of scepticism. But I am aware that the unconscious has a mind of its own and is chock a block with both hardwired and nurtured intuitions and biases. And these tend to be (a) the prime cognisers of patterns and agents and (b) the generators of stories with causes and effects. So which stories are to be believed?
The peer review process is vital. When a scientific specialist discovers something new he publishes it in one of the well established journals. Other specialists comment. If there are problems they are brought into the light so that changes can be made. If no problems are discovered we don’t have the truth but rather the best working hypothesis in the light of evidence presently available.
The Big History Project suggests that there are four “claim testers” that help to figure out which stories to believe:
Intuition is your gut instinct. Does the claim feel right to you, or does it feel a bit off?
Logic involves reasoning. Does the claim make sense? Is there a good argument for it?
Authority requires you to think about who is making the claim. Do you trust the source? Does the source have specific knowledge or expertise that gives you confidence?
Evidence is something you can investigate and verify. If you or another person looked at the same evidence, would you arrive at the same findings?
My present point of view might be labelled as post-post-modern scepticism. By cultivating mindfulness I can be non-attached to such best working hypotheses as turn up. I can be conscious of my beliefs being rooted in the ongoing unconscious churn between various modules in the mindbrain and they need not therefore be taken too seriously. There is definitely no need to kill or die for them.
This is a continuous, vital process which is now ICT assisted. The massed voice of the ordinary people can be expressed globally in the course of a few days. The rich and powerful elites are now more readily held to account for their actions. Given my social democratic world view this is a good thing.
Beliefs can be calmly aired during multi-stakeholder processes which encourage and facilitate a wide range of specialists and ordinary people in exchanging points of view. Contributions are thus made to the ongoing redefinition of the Weltenschauung. I am a social animal - my thoughts and feelings find it easy to go with that flow.
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