Still a workaholic

I am still a workaholic. Despite being several years into retirement I need to be doing something useful and important. After all, the devil finds work for idle hands!

It is therefore cute to note that the mindbrain is busiest when it is not focused on doing anything specific. This is understandable given the need to see ‘patterns’ and ‘agents’ active in the interaction between three sets of data

1. new data arriving from the sense organs,
2. older data held in short and long term memory, and
3. ancient data that is hard wired as instincts, intuitions and various forms of bias.

For millions of years my ancestors lived by foraging (hunting and gathering.) We made a success of it. Go forth and multiply. Forage, fight and fornicate. Make a few tools and enter the lengthy old stone age. Emigrate from Africa. Populate the planet. Exterminate the big game. Exterminate the non human hominids. Homo sapiens rules OK. Farm, fight, fornicate, philosophise and factory-ise

The move from foraging to farming meant that some people were released to engage in tasks other than food production. These included:

1. Pragmatists - shopkeepers, traders, potters, joiners, bankers etc
2. Politicians - princes, priests and their policemen
3. Poets and philosophers - creatives - including story tellers and entertainers

During my working life I was an educator. In the early days I taught science and biology to students. In the middle years I facilitated senior educator’s appreciation of leadership, management and administration. In the later years I focussed on plain language editing of policy documents so that ordinary people would have a better understanding of the issues.

Common to all three phases was the concept of changing minds – mine and those of other people. There has been a paradigm shift based on new thinking about the evidence from evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and meditation.

This is a topic that fascinates me. I read books and journal articles, listen to talks by cutting edge thinkers, and keep in touch with their thinking on the social networks. Thus do I change my own mind; and I keep a blog to record my understanding and thus possibly encourage others to change their minds.

I am still a workaholic.