During the European enlightenment, the rational, self-conscious mind got star billing. The crude unconscious was hidden in the basement where it dealt with sex, sewerage and other mucky, Freudian stuff.
The individual was king and rational thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) were the drivers in (a) interpreting sensory inputs, (b) planning rational reactions and responses, and (c) monitoring and evaluating ongoing implementation. These are higher executive functions (HEF) and they are housed in the pre-fontal cortex.
New ways of thinking about the structure and function of the mindbrain are evolving. The self-conscious has been demoted to a tiny bit player whose understandings come a fraction of a second after they appear in the unconscious.
The scanning machines of the neurologists provide hard evidence of different nodes of activity in different parts of the mindbrain. They show that there are neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) that are busy parallel processing 24/7, and updating a world view with associated points of view.
In recent times the widely held sociocultural viewpoints of under-developed peoples have been rated as so much myth and magic which nonetheless helped to weld the believers together and to create the politically virile duality of them and us.
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