A mind of its own

Once upon a time even clever people believed that the earth was flat and heavier than air machines could not fly. There was a lot of myth and magic in those days. These days most clever people, and many of the not so clever ones, know better.

On the bright side it is never too late for people to change their minds and beliefs. The only constant thing is change. Scientists no longer pretend to have embraced the real reality. What they have is the best working hypotheses in the light of evidence presently available.

Note in passing that the good and great, our elders and betters, the ruling elite, fear that changes of view will loosen their hold on power. Free thinkers are banished, tortured and burned at the stake. The streets are knee deep in blood and the chaos of smart bombs.

The human world view remained largely unchanged during the time that we were hunters and gatherers. It began to change more quickly when speech evolved and when settled farming became the normal way of life. This caused distrust within and between different groups of labour. Then there was the mechanisation of agriculture and the clearance of people from the land to be wage slaves in foul factories.

The big change in the last 50 years or so has been in the growing sophistication of our appreciation of the structure and function of the brain. New thinking stems from evolutionary psychology which guides multi-disciplinary consilience from sub sets of many new ways of thinking in the hard and psycho-social fields. Various scanning machines enable neurologists to locate functions of the different parts of the brain. Mindfulness meditation is also coming to be understood as a powerful tool for managing the mindbrain.

The grander point is that the mindbrain is (a) constantly figuring the relevance of signals entering through the sense organs and (b) creating fast reactions and slower responses. Short term and long term memories are crucial for maintaining a coherent world view. Much of the hard wiring that first evolved in our ancestral fish and reptiles is still with us.

The role of the self-conscious remains a mystery. Being all that ‘we’ know it is easy to believe that it is all there is. But it is very much a bit player, a tiny unit that appears after decisions have been made in the unconscious. Mindfulness meditators notice the thoughts, feelings and moods that pass through their attention centre and feel that the mind has a mind of its own. It is like that for me. I lose my ‘self’ in quiet sitting but also in doodling, writing, making music and washing the dishes. 

The Chinese call it Wu Wei (effortless non action) when ‘I’ am lost in the groove and zone and just flow.

New thinking outlines ways to have the mind change the brain (use it or lose it) and for the brain to change the mind. It is never too late to change your mind.

“No self, no problem” (Dogen Zenji)