The ever active unconscious

The title says it all. The mindbrain is like the heart. They are both evolutionary products that serve as organs with particular, non stop functions. The heart beats and keeps the blood circulating. The mindbrain thinks, feels and has moods, and causes reactions to the external and internal stimuli that activate the sensory organs (eyes, ears etc).

Why bother? A simple question. But, in trying to answer, the story line gets complicated because we use language to ask and answer the question.

Language began to evolve about 100,000 years ago. It made sophisticated thinking possible and it passed through the generations. Man became the toolmaker and cultural evolution quickly moved people from foraging to settled agriculture; from the stone age through the bronze and iron ages; and from villages to cities and to the creation of empires with elaborate divisions of labour.

Language evolved. It's underlying structure involved sentences with subject, verb and object. And there was a tendency to see patterns and agents (ref Shermer) that gave rise to an abundance of myths and magic.

Truth is culturally relative. Different cultures have different truths which people die defending. But absolute 'truth' is not the issue. From the evolutionary point of view what matters is that the pattern of thinking in group A is implanted in more minds in the next generations than the patterns of group B. Natural selection with survival of the fittest.

Scientific thinking at its best does not deal with truth but rather with best working hypotheses. These are evidence based and groups of them hang together as a world view or paradigm. Once enough countervailing evidence accumulates the paradigm shifts.

The recent accumulating evidence in the fields of neurology, evolutionary psychology, behavioural economics and mindfulness meditation suggest that a paradigm shift is happening in our understanding of the structure and functions of the human mindbrain.

Carl Sagan noted that we are animated and dynamic stardust. That which was once inanimate and unconscious evolved as living and conscious beings.

Some of these beings developed the illusion of themselves as self conscious and invented cultural forms that reinforced the illusion and justified dying for the cause (aka resources).

A marginal few sat in mindfulness and overcame the limitations of language. They thus became awake to and aware of the illusory nature of views generally and of an abiding self. Lao Tzu spoke for the mystical community when he noted that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality”. There is an ineffable Oneness in the unconscious which predates language.

In retirement 'I' practice stillness and mindfulness so that a blissful, non-egoic state of flow captures attention. In the flow state the not-I lets the unconscious produce doodles and stories. 'It' is ever active and very rarely fails to deliver 'stuff'.