These days I give most of my attention to the eighth topic – spirituality. I have reservations about using the word as it means different things to different people. But at root the topic is about changing minds – my own and other people’s.
My underlying idea is that the full potential of the human mindbrain has very rarely been realised – at least in modern times. Human evolution has cruised on a dilute soup of serendipitous and amoral ‘good enough’. However, given globalisation, ICT, and the new neurology, I feel that now is the time for a widespread awakening (re-awakening?) to, and management of, the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious aspects of the mindbrain.
There are options for cultural development and there is now the possibility of consciously choosing this way (eg green and equitable social democracy) rather than that (eg plutocratic, freemarket neo-liberalism). (Ref Naomi Klein as an optimist regarding bottom up policy making and funding.)
I sometimes wonder (a) if the ancestors’ rural world views were indeed primitive, parochial and out of touch with the Oneness and (b) if the mainstream, modern, ungreen, urban world views can be said to be like that. That simplistic line of dualist thinking raises echoes of the 17th century concept of the ‘noble savage’ and a ‘fall from grace’ into ‘dark satanic mills’. But there is also a hypothesis that we had to wait till the Axial Age (800-200BC) for the first flourishing of spirituality and of the mainstream religious movements.
In brief, we can imagine that human nature evolved (is hard wired) to be
(a) spiritual - but there was a fall into the secular as we evolved beyond foraging
(b) secular - but elevation to the sacred is possible through institutionalised religion based on the ‘insights’ of charismatic individuals.
But this may well be a false dichotomy based on ‘points of view’ that are founded on intuition and bias rather than on the ‘facts’ observed by anthropologists. The issue is not either/or but rather both/and. For a matrix showing variations in cultural values see url 002.
The downside default
Most people adapt more or less comfortably to the cultures in which they grew up and now live. They therefore have a concept of what is normal for ‘me’ and ‘us’ and what is different about the cultures of ‘them’.
Individuals have a more or less robust worldview (Weltanschauung) with a host of lesser points of view made up largely of intuitions and biases. And these are what we assume to be ‘reality’. [Note – many cultures have coming of age ceremonies to mark the shift from child to adult]
On the positive side the assumed reality allows for peace of mind and thus ease about being in the world – at least as this is understood by your natal group.
On the negative side this allows for uncertainty and thus for the dis-ease that shows up as narrow mindedness and often as a lethal fear of strangers (xenophobia). ‘You are either for us or against us.’ Lethal xenophobia is rarely far beneath the surface.
Most ‘reasonable people’ displayed horror about 21 recent beheadings of Copts by Islamic terrorists. But that is insignificant compared with for example (a) the French revolution that used the guillotine to implement the policy of “off with their (aristocratic) heads” and (b) Genghis Khan’s habit of making mountains of the skulls of those who thought to oppose him.
And - still within living memory- there is Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Ruanda, WW1 trench warfare and the holocaust. This shows that modern humans are still easily swayed by propaganda to demonise the enemy, to kill those who stand against ‘us’, and to proudly accept a medal for having done so.
And there is slavery, exploitation of the workers in sweat shops, environmental pollution and innumerable etceteras demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man when the rich and powerful (the elitist 1%) can avoid checks and balances to their unscrupulous ways.
The French Revolution (1789-1799) put a stop to the cultural notion of the ‘divine right of Kings’- “Off with their (aristocratic) heads”. This laid the modern foundations of democracy’s quest to ensure the greatest good of the greatest number through – “liberty, equality, fraternity”.
But, arguably, we have moved to the divine right of the super rich individuals and corporations in their gated communities. (Ref: TTIP) And, arguably, when exposed, the rampant inequities are causing the exploited worms to contemplate turning with pitchforks on the plutocracy. (Ref url 3 and 4)
It is interesting to consider why so many inbuilt and readily activated thoughts, feelings and moods should be unpleasant or even painful eg angst, anomie, fear, anger, stress, anxiety, depression and panic etc. It might be a homeostatic feature. Nothing lasts forever - especially thoughts, feelings and moods. There have to be changing reactions to a changing environment. But we must avoid paralysis by analysis. It is insane to be well adjusted to an insane cultural world view. So the various neurosis and psychosis that are especially prevalent in modern cultures might be viewed as highly evolved cultural feedback control mechanisms. (Ref - R D Laing)
A bigger picture
We can view cultural development from a larger perspective by borrowing some thoughts about time from the Big History Project and from Evolutionary Psychology.
The big bang was about 13.9 billion years ago and planet earth came into existence about 4.54 billion years ago. Mammals first appeared about 200 million years ago; primates about 60 million years ago; hominids about 20 million years ago and modern style humans about 200,000 years ago.
Most primates are social animals and group selection will have driven the evolution of increasingly complex cultural systems. It was a slow process in the beginning but it changed gear about 100,000 years ago with the evolution of language and thus of collective learning and of creative and abstract thinking.
There is no forward planning in evolution nor building from scratch. Systems that work are tweaked through selection of the fittest of the random mutations. There is an ongoing play-off between what is best for an individual and what is best for the group to which the individual belongs. (Ref – group selection). Neighbouring groups are in ongoing competition to effectively use or avoid environmental resources. There is thus the deep seated notion of them and us and usually different codes of conduct regarding how to behave in the in-group and the out groups.
There is a serendipitous aspect to (a) the mutations that allow for evolution, (b) the cobbled together nature of innovations, and (c) the multi-cause and effect arrangements within the mindbrain modules and networks. It is thus no wonder that the mental control systems that neurologists have recently discovered are as subtle and complex as they are. (Ref neural plasticity and brain scans of experienced meditators)
States of mind
We presently live with mindbrains that evolved to allow our ancestors to survive in groups of 50-100 as hunters and gatherers in the African savanna. For most of that time we were without language and cultural evolution was mindbendingly slow.
Try a thought experiment – imagine sitting around a fire at night after a successful day of foraging with the group – but language has not yet evolved – what would you be unlikely to not talk about? Note: think about domestic pets.
Then about 100,000 years ago language evolved with associated changes in the structure and function of the pre-frontal cortex - notably the ability to be conscious of being conscious, and to notice what we notice. Cultural evolution blossomed exponentially in the last few thousand years and moved rapidly through settled agriculture and into the bronze and iron ages with hierarchical city states and highly developed division of labour.
If evolution cared about tidiness then it would sweep the no longer useful stuff out of the mindbrain. But it doesn’t, so it hasn’t, so we live in the modern world with the instincts, intuitions and biases of a stone age mindbrain. The good news, however, is that we can, if we are so minded, by taking thought, identify and largely neutralise some of these anachronisms.
Here for example are five states of mind that often appear in my mindbrain:
- Standard = Lots of stuff passes through the attention centre. ‘I’ am on autopilot and thus driven and directed by the unconscious stream of thoughts, emotions and moods which are more often negative than positive. The mind has a mind of its own which tends to demonstrate a negative bias (ref – Hanson). Monkey mind.
- Just sit. Drop off body and mind. Know the silence. Zazen.
- Numinous – the world seems to radiate beauty and spirituality – There is the interconnected Oneness
- Non-egoic flow - in the groove or zone – beyond space and time - no self no problem – wu-wei (non doing but nothing is left undone).
- Mindful witnessing = non judgmental - think about thinking, notice what is noticed – become unattached to thoughts, emotions and moods – insight meditation
- Wilber’s ‘No boundaries’ to the self – be the Oneness
- Self consciousness and neural plasticity – mind over matter – and viceversa
- Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”
- Cutting edge understanding of the unconscious.
- Waken up – Move beyond natural selection – intentional selection under domestication
- Group selection – memetics – gratitude to our ancestors
- The radical potential of mindfulness meditation – be still and know
- the interplay between the conscious (1%) and the unconscious (99%) aspects of the mindbrain
- cultural development involves changing minds and the process can be elucidated through neurology and evolutionary psychology
….ooOoo….
[These reflections are subjective and based on how my mindbrain has been, and is still being, conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity. I have not bothered too much about footnotes.
Briefly I am a left of centre introvert who trained as a Zoologist and lived and worked for many years in the tropics as a teacher, education advisor and plain language editor. I was conceived in 1948, never married and I have no children. I am now retired from the institutions and on retreat in the Scottish fishing village in which I grew up.]]
url 1 - http://sites.google.com/site/steeplessrds/
url 2 - http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/nutshell/values.htm#var01
url 3 https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming?language=en )
url 4 - https://www.ted.com/talks/chrystia_freeland_the_rise_of_the_new_global_super_rich
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