Like all animals, our organism responds to existential events and stimuli. These create feelings, which may be communicated to others in body language.
However, inspired by the uncertainty of our prefrontal cortex our Mind creates precarious abstract ideas or beliefs, each of which produces its own doubts and fears. These fears of the Mind generate emotions. In fact, it is these emotions, created by the Mind, which provides the energy for the Mind's abstractions.
Many of the Mind's ideas or beliefs are often reflected in our facial expressions, a manifestation of the emotions of our Mind,which have also become part of our body language.
It is odd to note that humans (in particular in the West) appear to look so different from one-another, even within a single family unit the offspring acquire very different facial features, individual mannerisms and body shapes,far more varied than elsewhere in the animal world. It seems unlikely that it is purely due to the genetic mix. Perhaps the excessively over-active human Mind has so many permutations of ideas, beliefs and illusions that no two people think the same way, and therefore do not look the same, whereas animals only need to communicate instinctive and intuitive feelings.
Our Mind's world is dominated by the vast pool of emotions it has created.
It is possible that the specific combinations of emotions experienced by a mother during her pregnancy have some affect on the development of her foetus and this may explain the mental and physical differences between individual humans.
The diversity of the opinions and beliefs of our Mind is additional evidence to support my theory that we are immature or undeveloped species. If we were mature, we would be in more accord with one another, and would be mentally and physically more alike.
Our feelings and our emotions tend to be mutually exclusive. The stronger are the emotions generated by our Mind, the weaker are our biological feelings, and vice versa. Men tend to have stronger emotions while women tend to have stronger feelings.
Passion is another significant invention of the Mind.
Passion arises out of the Mind's excessive interest in material things and people that boost our fragile ego. An excessive interest can be inspired only by an excessive need. An excessive need can be generated mainly by an excessively infatuated Mind's wishful ego. After all, the idea of excess could only have been invented by the Mind's power of transcendence. The energy required by passion seems to be provided by the fragility or precariousness created by the ego's excessive pretensions.
The self-made ego's fragility caused by the Mind's excessive aspirations, creates misery. This is, perhaps, why passion is commonly associated with suffering.
One could sum up most of human life by saying 'It is the Mind's pretensions that create needs, and it is the uncertain and insecure Mind, conceived by the uncertainty of the prefrontal cortex, that generates the Mind's desires, aspirations and pretensions'.
Passion, which is another great arbiter in our lives, reduces, or even obliterates, the efficiency of our senses, our perceptions and our reasoning. Excessive passion can be a consummate enemy of serenity and wisdom.
Courage is another invention of the uncertain Mind.
In spite of their rationality of challenging the odds, the Mind considers courage a Virtue, "Audaces fortuna iuvat"("fortune favours the brave") is the foundation of many misfortunes. Courage is essentially an inflated ego's pursuit of recognition. The opposite of the courage of the Mind's ego is prudence, a wise attribute of a rational brain. Dominated by the Mind, our culture often considers men of courage to be heroes. The glorification of heroes contributes to the Mind's domination.
Love must be one of the most discussed subjects of all time. With the appearance of the Mind's wishful and fragile self, which tends to be more inflated in man than in woman, came the antithesis of love, self-love. Man's self-love and the self-love of women with highly inflated egos, can become an extreme passion.
Judging by the increasing numbers of single people, we can deduce that self-love is spreading, rapidly transforming our communities into masses of isolated, lonely and depressed individuals.
The Mind must have been a major contributor to the development of our verbal language. Since man is a neotenous animal with an infantile mentality,he would have regarded his Mind an exciting box full of things to play with. The ability to make different noises provides an excellent toy, and in the act of playing with this man developed and expanded his verbal language. In today's vernacular one might say he put a 'spin' on grunts and snarls.
In fact, if we do not develop our verbal language in infancy, when the Mind is particularly playful and exuberant, and when everything is a toy, we have difficulty in developing it later in life.
It is also apparent that by playing with language we developed another aspect of our uniqueness, lying. Lying itself is one of the most significant developers of language. Operating as it does in a state of doubt and uncertainty, the Mind has great difficulty in accepting or recognising the truth and the plain truth requires very few words.
Lies must have been inspired by the Mind's wishfulness created by its uncertainty. Initially the Mind lied to itself as it struggled with doubt, developed its imagination, creating wishful beliefs to relieve its uncertainty. The Mind, having lied to itself, then externalised these lies in order to convince others of their worth.
We created myths to make sense of our wishful beliefs and give them substance. Like everything else in our Mind's world, we became enthralled by these myths andin playing with them to excess,we developed mythomania, another grand cultivator of language.
In essence, we created new words in order to materialise or realise our illusions. We became preachers of our myths, of our beliefs.
This theory about the driving force behind the development of our vocabulary is supported by the Mind's invention of the rhetoric, oratory, demagogy or hyperboles, and in our passion for storytelling, and fiction.
The use of the subjunctive in many languages is a significant proof of the Mind's uncertainty.
The reason the Mind found lying so compelling and satisfying is that it requires a denial of reality, which causes tension, which causes an increase in adrenaline i.e. lying provides excitement. This excitement is easy to see in infants and adolescents, whose Minds' are at their most active, and in adults with infantile and adolescent mentality who are compulsive liars.
Lies are often more successful than the truth because they are more exciting, they arouse us and generate aggressiveness. This aggressiveness is often reflected in a liar 's raised tone of voice and hostile gestures.
As I have said, the Mind finds it difficult to recognise or accept the truth. The Mind, in essence, fears truth as truth limits the Mind's most precious asset, its freedom to lie to itself and to others.
It is no surprise that particularly refined language can be found in effusive and lyrical poetry, because it is here, under the auspices of "poetic licence" that the Mind is most free to exercise its highly imaginative and creative abilities.
On the other hand, those of us who reach the serenity of maturity have less active Minds, and tend to use more laconic or proverbial language and less pantomime.
The connection between the Mind and language can be exposed when we experience trauma or extreme fear. Shock interferes with the Mind's activities and can leave us struggling for words or actually speechless. When our Mind is paralysed, we loose our ability to be articulate (and quite often speak the truth despite it being the last thing we would wish to do).
There are scientists who insist that we have a special instinct for language, my answer to that is that we are a neotenous species with the longest infancy in Nature in which instincts are not properly developed. If we had had more developed or stronger instincts, we would never have developed the Mind and would have had far less a requirement for verbal language. The truth requires few words to express it, no rhetoric, or metaphor or subtlety or any other kind of embellishment.
Verbal language gave the uncertainty of our prefrontal cortex a tool that also inspired our Mind's idea of the theatrical with its illusions, mannerisms, artificiality and façade. Our Mind has excelled itself in its stage management of the more developed countries of the world. Shakespeare astutely observed,"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players", and today we find it hard to separate the real world from the external representation of the world of our Mind.
One of the most ridiculous manifestations of this ability of the Mind to create its own world, far removed from reality, is the popularity of "Kitchen Sink Dramas" (now known as Television Soaps), and their latest incarnations, the absurdly named genre "Reality TV", all accompanied by music to underscore the required, and fake,emotions.
Transcendency, which encourages the Mind to raise its expectations and create greater ideas or stronger beliefs, can reveal even more of the nature of the Mind's world.
Most probably our transcendency originated in our Mind's uncertainty. Being born out of uncertainty, our Mind's ideas, fantasies and beliefs are free of restraints and limits.
The Mind is proud of its inventiveness but we have to take into consideration that throughout history, man has done things because he can, not because he should. "What man can conceive, man will achieve", is an adage that sums up the some of the amoral excesses of scientific 'progress'. There is no innate pattern in our brain, which 'a priory' can judge an invention as good or bad for the rest of humanity or the planet,before it is too late. Besides which, any puzzle, once mooted provides all the nutrients the Mind craves, excitement, occupation, identity, and purpose - the all-important journey towards proof of superiority.
The Mind invented all kinds of supremacies, that one individual, one ethnic group, a religion, apolitical system or party, a culture or even a whole civilisation was superior to all others.
We are so proud of our species that we became convinced that we carried at least 100,000 different genes. When, some years ago, it became possible to accurately count them and compare the human genome to other life forms,scientists were seriously offended to discover that not only do we have less than 25,000 genes, but that we share almost all of them with every other living thing on the planet. Now their sense of superiority has been peaked they are probably striving to embellish those few uniquely human genes with rare properties that confirm our superiority.
Because they are uncertain, most of our Mind's inventions tend to become inflated, big ideas are appealing to the infantile Mind, as "big" is impressive and therefore important.However, these inventions and ideas subsequently overreach themselves and, in the process, create more uncertainty.
Overgrown illusions can become delusions; fantasies can turn into hallucinations, freedom into prisons of chaos, beliefs into fanaticism and desires into greed or avidity, and the desire to explore becomes exploitation, all this in order to satisfy the ego.
Only the transcendence of an autonomous prefrontal cortex could have incited the Mind to conceive the idea of absolutes, implying total freedom from limit or condition. Absolutes opened the way to all kinds of tyranny, which can create endless uncertainties and anxieties.
Infinity makes no sense in the real world. Eternity, so important to many religions, is in fact inert, and thus nullifies time, life and the concept of eternal life after death.
Mind's transcendental potential creates excesses. The Mind is often proud of its excesses, its superlatives and its hyperboles, considering them original and eccentric. Excess implies more than enough, which is irrational in itself.
We find excess attractive because it involves challenge, which is exciting. Excitement generated by the Mind noticeably limits the efficiency of our senses and our rationality, and consequently qualifies and perpetuates the Mind's dominance. In fact, it is the Mind's excitement, caused by the excess of its ideas or beliefs, which presents the greatest obstacle to reaching a better and more mature humanity.
Excesses in ideologies or beliefs lead to revolutions, wars and genocide. Even scientific and technological progress contributes to these excesses of the Mind.
Some of the most comic excesses are to be found in the sexual desires of our Mind.
Excessive sexual desires can easily become perversions. We are the only species to practice these extremes. The more excessive the sexual desires become, the more they can be perverse or vicious.
Not having a natural system that prevents the Mind's excesses, we have been forced to introduce all kinds of legal systems and laws to try to limit or eliminate them. These, however, have become counter-productive by breeding another kind of excess, that of a lack of individual responsibility. We now tend to be more conscious of the law than the act behind it, "I will not drink and drive because I don't want to be caught", rather than "I won't put myself or others in peril".
With its curiosity and inquisitiveness, the prefrontal cortex must have inspired our scientific achievements, which we believe have brought us closer to understanding the mechanisms of the world, and universe in which we live.
Yet, despite all these impressive scientific achievements, we have not succeeded in counteracting the irrational world of the Mind's beliefs and fantasies and we are dominated by its religions, ideologies, doctrines and dogmas.
One reason for this is that the Mind's abstract world of beliefs is more aggressive than the truth, and another is that believers tend to accept only facts that support their beliefs and to ignore or dismiss anything contrary to them.
It seems even the basis of our modern science has to be 'The Principle of Uncertainty.' The Mind, apparently, is capable of only seeing what it wants to see.
Moreover, as the Mind is the master of so-called 'brainwashing', it can convince us we see significance or value where there is none.
Surrealistic art for instance is a creation very characteristic of the Mind. This genre exhibits great uncertainty, arbitrariness, deviation, and perversion. It is not surprising that the surrealists idolised the Marquis de Sade, as surrealistic art 's provocative attitude is consistent with the intimidating aggressive attributes of the Mind's world.
The Mind, created by uncertainty, tends to be superficial and instantaneous in its reactions and reflections and this prevents it dealing with the future.
As I emphasised at the beginning, life consists of suffering in search of lesser suffering. Any reduction in suffering is a pleasure. This implies that any pleasure reduces an organism's vitality. As we experience pleasure, the efficiency of our senses is reduced. Pleasure, therefore, can be a risky business. We have, however, a defence against excessive pleasure, as pleasure can, after a while, become unpleasant, an irritation, sickness or even a physical pain. In fact, stress hormones appear to accumulate in the body whilst it is experiencing pleasure. This is probably why a continuous state of physical bliss is impossible to achieve.
The pleasures of the Mind consist of the gratification of the Mind's beliefs, aspirations or fantasies.
These pleasures are distinctive because they tend to be insatiable. The Mind's power of transcendency, at the moment of gratification, often creates a greater desire, quashing the gratification. Although the pleasure-to-pain defence is there, the Mind's desire to transcend its pleasure is stronger, and the alarm is overridden.
The Mind's increasing pursuit of pleasure can become an obsession and, in fact so too can the whole pleasure-to-pain cycle. In fact, a recent study showing that inflicting pain can excite the pleasure centres of the brain,lead to the comment that we have apparently "evolved into animals that enjoy inflicting pain".
Like many other animals, we have intuition with which all of our senses fully cooperate and in which the individual and the collective memories play important roles. In fact, the more active are our senses and the more efficient are our acquired and inherited memories, the more developed is our intuition. However, dominated as we are by the Mind's strong beliefs, which reduce the efficiency of our senses and of our memories, the less developed is our intuition. A strong believer can totally lack intuition.
In the world dominated by the Mind and its beliefs it is difficult to achieve wisdom because beliefs cause tension that prevents serenity, and it is only with serenity that we can attain wisdom.
The Bible stresses that 'Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom'. Any fear tends to bring out our archaic aggressive legacy, which is far from being wise. In fact, religious persecution and wars have often been inspired by a fear of god.
Some people insist that 'Peace of Mind' brings with it some kind of wisdom, but there is no 'Peace of Mind' in a Mind dominated by pretentious beliefs.
Having removed the need spend all our waking hours on basic survival, and our inactive hours on rest and recharging, we are now the only animals that have time to wonder why we exist and to form these pretentious beliefs. Inactivity is regarded as laziness rather than recuperation, and we worry about getting enough of the 'right kind of sleep'. This causes restlessness and agitation, and provokes a sense of urgency and a need to hurry or rush, which destroys serenity and wisdom.
Ironically, by increasing the sense of urgency we seem to reduce free time. Urgency 's objective is its own excess because in it we reach a lasting instantaneity in which free time disappears. The phrase in English "Rush Hour" when, in most major cities, all traffic comes to a halt, seems to illuminate this perfectly.
A sense of urgency and the desire to rush are also great enemies of achieving a wider and deeper knowledge. Speed can also increase our irritability,which can damage our health and social tolerance. What is more, a sense of urgency pushes efficiency to its limits creating inefficiency.
With the appearance of the Mind came myths and religions. Myths and religions became an essential part of the Mind's belief system that still, after thousands of years, influences most of our mental activities. In its state of uncertainty, the Mind could only explain the world around it through its speculative beliefs. These doubtful beliefs continue to perpetuate the uncertainly of the Mind.
Karl Marx announced succinctly that religion was"the opiate of the masses",only to have his own system of beliefs become another, extremely successful, 'opiate of the masses'.
Monotheism is another invention of the Mind. Only a prefrontal cortex, autonomous of the real world, could have inspired a belief in one omnipotent god.
In this state, the prefrontal cortex might also have inspired the Mind's one and only omnipotent wishful self. In fact, the idea of a single and all-powerful god is based on the belief in a wishful self, in extreme transcendency. That our wishful ego might have invented the idea of a unique god is evident because man considers himself to be the centre of the universe. Monotheism is mainly a male belief. Like man, this god loves and worships only himself; like man, this god practice jealousy, rage, intolerance and vindictiveness; like man, this god is seldom moved by the suffering of others and like man, this god considers women an inferior species.
After conceiving the idea of an omnipotent one and only god, man went on to invent his most wishful and egocentric credo, that god created man in his own image. Thus man aspired to his ultimate belief, that of his own superiority.
In indulging in this amusing fantasy of the Mind, man did not realise that an omnipotent god would have had some difficulty in creating anything because omnipotence is not creative. In its excessive growth, the omnipotent achieves the opposite of itself, which is impotence, disinterest or unconcern.
Hope is an important part of the Mind's world. Thriving on uncertainty, hope has an interest in perpetuating itself and its creator, the Mind. Hope is closely related to the uncertain Mind's pretensions and aspirations.Horace was right when he wrote, "Put aside trifling hopes". Milton was right when in 'Paradise Lost' he said, "So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear". Dante was wrong to frighten sinners by inscribing "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" above the portals of hell. He was wrong because hell, where there is no hope, is also a place without anxieties, fears, worries or despair. Seneca writes,"Qui nihil sperare potest, nihil desperare" ("He who does not hope does not despair"). Moreover, Seneca was also right when he declared, "Cease to hope and you will cease to fear". Without fear, we are in a better position to achieve love, sympathy, empathy, sharing and understanding.
We are the only animal to have hope. This is due to the fact we often place ourselves in situations beyond our capabilities from which only a miracle can save us. Disappointed hope brings us to despair. The word 'despair' is the opposite of spes', the Latin word for hope.
Hope often aims for miracles, which are contrary to the laws and order of Nature 'created by god'. On the other hand, our Lord entitled us to rule Nature and therefore entitled us to change god 's laws and his order of things.
Hope and a belief in miracles encourages adventurousness and risk taking, which is unique to our species.
We love adventurousness and risk because they are exciting. However, excitement, created by hope and a belief in miracles, limits the efficiency of our senses, perception and reasoning, which in turn limits our ability to realise our aspirations.
Hope also plays a role in developing superstition, which creates anxiety, and this reduces our ability to cope with our problems.
Hope consumes a great deal of our energy, which otherwise could be used to alleviate or solve the problems left unsolved because of hope. A concentration of hope tends to reduce our sensitivity, which limits our alertness.
For some people, hope is a narcotic drug that desensitises and helps them avoid or escape 'cruel reality'. In the world of illusions and fantasies, everyone tries to realise his daydreams. This creates 'cruel reality'. Day dreams, being pretentious, can only be realised at the expense of other people's dreams. Unscrupulousness is part of the nature of the childish world of illusions and fantasies, and this is what makes the world of illusions, fantasies and daydreams the real 'cruel reality'.
In fact, the best escape would be to deride our pretentiousness, our self-deception. This can be easily done because, as Goethe said, "We are never deceived, we deceive ourselves". What we are able to do, we are also able not to do.
We seldom realise that illusions and daydreams isolate us, increasing our sense of loneliness and precariousness. This in turn increases our anxiety, fear and despair, frustration and stress and our stress-related diseases and mental disorders. It is a fact that in the world of illusion and daydreams, the consumption of tranquillisers, sleeping pills, narcotic drugs and alcohol is a serious contributor to the "cruel reality" that this world creates.
The Mind invented prayer. As with hope, the idea of prayer predisposes us to place ourselves in irrational or absurd situations from which only prayers can save us. We might not have found ourselves in these situations if we had not had the idea of prayer in our Mind and if we had not had a naïve belief in the power of prayer. The power behind the idea of prayer and belief encourages our pretentiousness. The Christian Church, by cultivating a belief in miracles, encouraged our capricious aspirations.
Prayers too can become a narcotic drug as they help people escape from reality into a world of fantasies and illusions. This narcotic effect of prayer is even more pronounced when accompanied by chanting or wailing that induces a trance.
When we pray to god for changes in our life, we in essence offend our Lord. We offend Him because we ask Him to change His will. In His omniscience, God is supposed to have His reasons for placing us in the situation we are begging Him to change. By praying to him, we challenge God 's will, and, what seems paradoxical, we challenge God's will in the name of our Christian hope.
We claim to have made progress in many fields. However there is one field, that of the happiness, in which, judging by the miserable and dangerous world we live in, we seem to have failed. Moreover, the more miserable we are, the more obsessed we are by the pursuit of happiness.
Guided by the Mind, our pursuit of happiness tends to increase our unhappiness as it encourages our expectations and increases our pretensions. In countries where material wealth is considered an important part of happiness, the middle classes and the rich seem to be more miserable than the poor are.
A wise person quickly realises that climbing social, economic or professional ladders increases precariousness and loneliness that in turn increases fear, anxiety and unhappiness.
Chasing happiness gives rise to tension and aggression, which can produce excitement, but reduces serenity and wisdom, which are essential for happiness.
Ruled more by reason than by the Mind's wishfulness, wise people try to avoid desire by embracing modesty and humility, which is something anyone can do.
Many people consider that power can bring happiness. Power is unable to bring happiness because it cannot provide serenity. Power cannot provide serenity because, lead by its power of transcendency, it wants more power and more power brings more fear and uncertainty. In fact, extreme power tends, ultimately, to bring extreme irrationality or madness.
There is one power that could lead to happiness, and this is the power of rationality over the Mind's desires and its excesses. However, being reasonable, this power is not aggressive and so easily eliminated by the Mind's belief in its power of will.
The USA is the supreme power in the world and yet its citizens are more frightened, both at home and abroad, than any other nationality on the planet.
The Mind's belief in the importance of individual freedom, in whose name millions have perished, must be closely related to the instability of the prefrontal cortex. Only a prefrontal cortex's precarious autonomy and detachment could have inspired the Mind's idea of individual freedom. In Nature,there is no such a thing as freedom, as Nature is ruled by the exacting laws of the real world.
Any increase in uncertainty increases individual freedom, and any increase in our individual freedom increases our Mind's uncertainty. Thus, could it really be achieved, we would find a state of total freedom unsettling and disorientating in the extreme, in fact total chaos.
Any increase in our individual freedom also increases our discontent, because we are, by nature, a social species. In fact, by replacing the cult of individual freedom with the cult of the community we could achieve less unhappiness.
Man's cult of individual freedom and independence can bring the most fearful isolation and loneliness.
The urge to mature is implicit in infancy. It is, in fact, the prime directive of the infant to become an adult, but in order to do this it has to gain its freedom from the restraints of its parents. For most animals on earth the transition from infancy to adolescence and onto full adulthood is governed by physical development linked to a specific pattern of behaviour of the parent or parents, and the species' community at large.
In man, however, the Mind, already fraught with the uncertainty of infancy and fascinated by the excitement it generates, finds the idea of freedom and independence even more anxious and sensational. Instead of allowing us to follow the natural pattern into rational maturity, its domination clings to the intoxication of the infantile mentality.
In this, Peter Pan reflects the aspiration of man alone, there is no such thing as Ethel Pan except when woman tries to copy man.
Many romantic philosophers insist that 'man is born free', forgetting that this freeman is often immediately baptised, circumcised or initiated into some belief, transforming the freeborn man into a slave of the Mind's beliefs.
Many insist that man is also born with an insatiable desire for freedom. However, by being insatiable the desire for freedom tends to lead to excessive freedom in which uncertainty can become extreme.
Our pursuit of individual freedom and individual independence has produced an increasing number of a new species, single people. Single people seem to go around in a vicious circle of loneliness, which leads to anxiety and fear,which leads to an increase in selfishness, self-love, and self-centredness, leading to an even more profound loneliness.
Another ludicrous creation of the Mind, inspired by the uncertainty of the prefrontal cortex, is the idea of freedom of choice, a dearly protected aspect of democracy.
The mature or well-developed brain, that functions rationally, has no need for choice or hypothesis. Thus, freedom of choice can only be irrational, adventurous, destructive or suicidal. In fact, it is this irrationality that makes us different from other species.
In his uncertainty, man creates an either/or 'hypothesis, i.e. either I do this or face the consequences. In our uncertainty we tend to choose the 'either', not out of freedom of choice but out of fear of the 'or'. In fact, it is this fear of the consequences that provides the energy required by the Mind in its pursuit of the 'either'.
The tragic-comic side of the Mind's "either/or" reasoning is that in its fear of the consequences, the "either" tries to annihilate the "or" in order to exert its predominance, extremism and fanaticism.
We seem to be paying a heavy price for our worship of the abstract world, invented by the Mind, its fantasies, fairy tales and wishful beliefs. This price consists of the Mind created psychosomatic diseases, mental disorders, cancers, heart problems, high blood pressure, asthma, obesity, obsessions, depressions, phobias, superiority complexes, sleeplessness, paranoia, believers' aggressiveness, Mind enhancing drug addictions, and fanaticisms, all of which are becoming more prevalent.
Allergies, food intolerances and even our preferences are another area where the Mind and its imagination have exacerbated our condition, sometimes with fatal consequences. If we based our intake on our senses and intuition,we would rarely consume anything that was not fit for us to eat.
Another of the Mind's absurd attitudes is its vanity. Vanity limits the efficiency of our senses, thus increasing our isolation and loneliness.
One of the Mind's ugliest dispositions is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy involves pretending to be what one is not. Being in essence a performance, hypocrisy induces stage fright or performance anxiety, which is stressful.
As it eliminates authenticity, hypocrisy obstructs the ability to predict, thereby increasing stressful uncertainty. The practice of hypocrisy helps to develop the Mind's cunning, with its deviousness and short-term opportunism. Cunning is increasingly being confused with, and used as a synonym for, intelligence. Our habit of being hypocritical is further evidence that the human being is an immature species.
One of the Mind's serious disorders is its tendency first to create prejudices and then to lean on them. The Mind's prejudices limit our intelligence and the ability of the Mind to improve.
"Errare humanumest" as the Latin proverb states. In fact, as we live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, but with our Minds operating according to some rigid system of beliefs, we make many errors. Making errors may be forgiven, but what makes us ridiculous is our tendency to maintain and repeat them.
The Mind's love of music is self-induced. We may have developed our love of music because of its power to divert our attention away from boring or worrying reality in favour of the Mind's world of fantasy, insouciance and ecstasy.
Chanting or church music are able to transport believers into the fantasy world of the Mind where our sensitivity is dulled and we may even reach an exalted state of trance.
Traditionally, soldiers marched into battle to the accompaniment of martial music, the purpose of which was to distract them from fearful reality.
The more we are dominated by the Mind, the more we seem to be attracted by music. It is noticeable that in maturity people's active love of music tends to lessen and become less intense.
Poetry is another stimulator of the Mind as it draws mainly on the Mind's imaginings and fantasies. In fact, poetry seems to have no other purpose than to stimulate or to exercise the Mind's imagination. In its uncertainty our Mind tends to like lyrical poetry above all other forms.
Another creation of the Mind is imaginary physical pain or ache. This pain is conjured up in order to hide from reality,an offshoot of the fight, flee or hide syndrome.The Mind's imaginary pain can distract the Mind's suffering caused by its failure to realise its expectations or its pretensions. If the Mind subsequently succeeds in realising its expectations or pretensions, the 'pain' disappears.
Thus, the Mind is able to generate a feeling of physical pain for opportunistic reasons. Significantly, Human beings are the only animals to react to a placebo. In fact, many over the counter medicines are being taken for their placebo effect, that is not for a specific 'headache' or 'stomach ache', but merely because they make the taker just 'feel better'.
As progress tends to amplify the Mind's pretensions and expectations, increasing frustration and failure, a greater number of people suffer from imaginary aches or pains.
Many hypochondriacs are victims of their Mind's failure to realise their desires or aspirations.
Our Mind invented ideals of freedom and by doing so placed us in a curious prison from which we fear to escape, for if we escaped we would have to face reality, the enemy of our Mind's world.
The Mind's idea of personal freedom and independence, by increasing the fears of the individual, brought about major changes in the quality of our lives. It replaced the rational attitude of a social species, which is co-operation, with the irrational, aggressive and destructive attitude of competition.
This competitive attitude allowed our Mind to devise its anti-social, unfriendly and unscrupulous economic system, capitalism. Many people insist that we carry 'selfish genes'. In reality, we have no selfish genes we have pretentious selfish Minds. In fact, a person, with just the genes they were born with, is likely to be more selfish in infancy or old age, when he is more fragile and more frightened, than in adulthood when he is better developed.
We are positively more generous and more co-operative when we feel well,when we are content and when we are less frightened.
Many scientists believe that our altruistic and co-operative behaviour is inspired in us by those we feel a kinship with, by relatives who have similar genes in common. This contradicts the evidence showing that individuals of the same ethnic group or same family can often be highly competitive towards each other, and even kill each other in revolutions, or civil wars, inspired by the Mind's competitive ideologies or beliefs.
The comic natureof the Mind is clearly apparent in its pursuit of arrogant absurdities.
An extreme example of this is Nihilism, when the Mind, failing in its efforts to arrive at the truth, invented the idea of a total denial of objective truth.
With Nihilism, the Mind completed a vicious circle,which started with doubt, progressed through speculation to scepticism, which feeds doubt. Adrift in its uncertainty the Mind has no anchor on reality, which is an essential component in recognising and comprehending the truth.
Hypothesise is another activity of the Mind that obscures reality,as it is guessing based on the Mind's wishfulness and it perpetuates the Mind's uncertainty.
The Mind has created a fundamental absurdity by making a mockery of logic and reasoning. Our brain's process of reasoning uses mainly inductive and deductive logic. Induction implies arriving at a general truth based on observed instances and deduction implies reaching a conclusion based on generalisations. However since our perception of reality is clouded by the activities of the Mind, our observations are highly suspect. To base a conclusion on generalisations influenced bythe Mind's prejudices, religious creeds or ideologies, which are likely to be socially, politically or culturally imposed, is ridiculous.
Simply stated;the brain is being asked to perform the impossible task of finding logical solutions based on illogical and unreasonable presumptions, no wonder we are confused.
A man 's brain and his pre-frontal cortex are, on average, larger than that of a woman's. This is possibly due to the pressure of man's irritating neoteny on his central nervous system. A man's pre-frontal cortex is less integrated with the rest of his brain and body,and is therefore more uncertain and unstable than that of a woman's. His cognitive powers tend to be slower and more pedantic. He finds it less irritating and more satisfying to concentrate on one subject at a time.
Woman 's brain is better integrated with the rest of her brain and body, and she tends to be more in touch with her intuitions. One reason her brain and pre-frontal cortex may not have grown as much as men's is because intuition requires less processing, less activity, and is therefore less irritating. She is better at rapid, often instant, cognition of reality. She maintains a general overview of any given situation or circumstance and because intuition requires less concentration she tends to be able to do several, especially routine, tasks simultaneously.
This is perhaps why more men are attracted to the predictability of mathematics, physics, statistics and engineering and the singular focus these subjects demand. A woman's intuition requires no scientific verification, calculations, reflection or research,before being acted upon. Her metier is organisation and quick, realistic solutions to problems.
Of course, neither men nor women are infallible, and their different reactions to mistakes are also worth noting. A man's ego will not let him admit the humiliation of a mistake, he will either persist as if it were not a mistake, or try to turn it into a virtue or victory or blame something or someone else. A woman tends to dismiss the mistake and go onto the next hurdle, expecting her intuition to absorb any lesson the mistake may impart.
Men take more time to reach conclusions and therefore are more prone to be influenced by their Mind's strong beliefs, prejudices and self-deceptions. Women 's faster and intuitive processing barely involves the Mind and leaves little time for its influence, however intuition also tends to prefer paths of least resistance (or confrontation), i.e. she is most likely to follow her men folk 's lead.
Considering the following exchanges may clarify the above:
He thinks: "She is always interrupting, and doesn't let me finish what I am saying".
She thinks: "I've heard what he has said, I know what he is going to say next, and I have already gone onto the next thing that occurs to me because of what he has said".
He thinks: "She hasn't listened to me, I haven't finished, and I can't listen to her because I have not finished what I wanted to say, and she has changed the subject, and I can't take on another subject until I have finished this one".
She thinks: "Why is he going back to the subject we have discussed and concluded, and why is he getting angry?"
If it is about a problem or fact and he is right:
He thinks: "She does not seem to have heard me, or acknowledged I am right, and hates admitting she is wrong".
She thinks: "OK so he is right, big deal, he doesn't have to go on about it, it is already in the past - does he want a pat on the back?"
If he is wrong:
He thinks: "I know she is right, but I can't admit it so I shall just carry on putting my case".
She thinks: "He never listens to me, and I know I am talking sense"
If she repeats herself:
He thinks: "Why does she always nag?" or "That's just what I meant, why doesn't she listen?" or "Why do women have to be right all the time?"
She thinks: "Why can't he just admit I am right and let's move on, why is he angry?"
She says: "You're right, do you want (a drink, food, something)?" or "you are wrong" and wants to just forget it and move on, and will start to do anything that will take her away from the argument.
He thinks: "Now she is ignoring me, I demand her attention, but she is too argumentative and always has to have the last word".
Memory plays a significant role in the difference between the way men and women function.
A woman operates mainly on intuition and has no memory of the process, nor does her faster processing give her time to dwell on memories. Since man, on the other hand, ponders more, he has time to consider past experiences,and these can make his processing slower, and sometimes more suspect.
Without memory she is at a loss to explain her actions, if challenged. This tends to make a man feel that she is making arbitrary decisions. Since a man remembers his processing he can put it into words, which may be one reason why he tends to lead.
The only instance of unconditional and intuitive communication between women and men is between a mother and her male offspring, and then only for a very few years. This 'umbilical' connection is so clear and satisfying that men, unwittingly, try and fail to find it in all their subsequent relationships. Their nostalgia for people to depend on, and their search for those who will be dependent, is further proof of their sustained neoteny.
Memory can hinder rationality, memories are evoked by emotions, and the Mind can manipulate them for its own purpose, such as the survival of its illusions. This phenomenon enables both men and women, when indoctrinated by powerful and fearful leaders, to perform brutal and destructive acts and, when called upon to take responsibility for them, maintain the belief that they are innocent of any atrocity.
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