Winning peace of mind

My level of peace of mind varies from minute to minute (fast) and from decade to decade (slow). The details are rooted in my genes (nature), in my natal culture (nurture), and in the unexpected (serendipity). 

My human brain is the result of evolutionary tinkering that goes back millions of years in the vertebrates and millions of years before that in the invertebrates. The changes along the way served three main purposes – to spot the dangerous things eg predators, and avoid them; to spot the good things eg ripe fruit trees and move towards them; and to spot the neutral things and ignore them. 

A large amount of the process involves knowing my place in several social hierarchies and thus my chances of mating. [note for the record – I committed to zero population growth in 1971.]

I have the impression that my mindbrain is constantly churning to match incoming stimuli with materials in the memory. Given the enormity of the data processing task it is therefore reasonable and preferable to use crude stereotypes that are fast than to be eaten by a predator while slowly philosophising about the human condition.

As a human being I am linguistically programmed by both nature and nurture. I easily learned to listen to and speak a natal language. And, with a bit of organisation, I learned how to read and write. And, at the beginning of the 21^st century, I have learned how to make my utterances global and instantly available on the social networks of the internet. [note for the record – my blog gets a modest 40 page views per day on average but they come from a wide range of countries]