THE MIND

It would seem that the autonomous activity of the prefrontal cortex, in its state of uncertainty,caused an aberration, the Mind and its world of imagination, fantasy, illusion and self-deceit, and the constant irritating uncertainty of the prefrontal cortex provides the energy the Mind needs for its activities.

The infantile or juvenile playfulness inherent in the neotenous state of man's existence reinforced and sustained his prefrontal cortex in its creation of the Mind's unreal world.

The prefrontal cortex's uncertainty generates doubt,which in turn triggers the activities of the Mind such as cogitation, exploration, speculation, enquiry, and guessing.

The autonomous prefrontal cortex appears to be the main source of the Mind's consciousness or awareness. This overt sense of self is an activity of the Mind that requires energy to sustain and drive it. This energy comes from the uncertainty of the prefrontal cortex and is apparent in the arousal, excitement or tension it creates.

In its search for less uncertainty, our prefrontal cortex generates inquisitiveness. In fact people, with more fertile prefrontal cortices, such as infants or those with infantile mentalities, are the most inquisitive, making them more restless, agitated and more consciously aware.

If our prefrontal cortex was more synchronised with the rest of our brain and body, if we had more developed innate patterns of behaviour, with more automatic conditioned reflexes, making us react, without hesitation, to internal and external events, we might never have developed our Mind nor become consciously aware.

In other words uncertainty generates hesitation, which is an important source of conscious awareness, thus without hesitation there is no awareness.

In its uncertainty and confusion man's prefrontal cortex inspired the Mind's exceptionally pronounced selfishness, self-centredness, self-obsession and aggressiveness.

Being more mature than man, with her prefrontal cortex better integrated with the rest of her brain and her body, woman is more able to develop the beneficial attributes of a social species such as helping, nurturing, sharing, protecting, defending, guiding, caring and sense of organisation. With man in his neotenous state, these female attributes enabled our species to survive the hardships of life of the African Savannah.

We are more curious than any other species and our exceptional inquisitiveness is another indication of our prefrontal cortex's uncertainty and insecurity. In infancy our prefrontal cortex can be particularly insecure and uncertain, and therefore extremely curious.

Once it manifested itself man fell in love with the Mind and, as with all other irritants, he fed it. In fact, since man discovered his Mind, he started using drugs that were able to stimulate the Mind's creative activities. The conscious use of intoxicants must have coincided with the advent of the Mind.

The following considerations may contribute to the plausibility of my theories:

1. We tend to forget that Cartesians in fact intended "Dubito, cogito ergo sum", preceding "thought" with "doubt", "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am".

2. There is evidence that, due to its agitated activity because of its uncertainty, our prefrontal cortex and our Mind consumes an inordinate amount of energy.

3. Due to the uncertainty in which our Minds operate, we are the most unpredictable animals on the planet.

4. The Mind's unpredictability must have inspired its primary negative activities, such as treachery, swindling, cheating, deception and deviousness. These became the pillars of the Mind's cleverness, which is considered superior to intelligence and more useful than wisdom. This could be the reason why the Mind and its values, which have been dominating us for millennia, have not been able to improve the quality of our life.

5. The Mind, because of its emotional and excited state,is the enemy of serenity without which we cannot attain intelligence and wisdom, contentment and happiness.

6. The Mind is proud of its creative ability, its constant and passionate quest for innovation: this, in fact, is the most obvious sign of the Mind's perpetual discontent with the present. Innovation sustains its instigators, which is the Mind's uncertainty and instability. The Mind tends to become obsessed with innovation and novelties, which can easily become a mental disorder, neophilia.

7. Our endless obsession with the quest for innovation creates a progressively more uncertain world. Furthermore, the Mind's innovations and novelties increase our desires and pretensions, which cause more frustration and discontent.

8. Boredom, or a fear of being bored, is a major cause of crime, substance abuse and anti-social behaviour. Boredom emanates from the Mind's frustrated pretensions or ambitions, and creates a sense of threatening emptiness and insecurity. This is much more prominent in men then women.

9. There is evidence that people who are more fragile, more frustrated, sickly or handicapped often have more creative, imaginative and ingenious Minds than the strong or healthy. A clear example of this can be found in individuals with schizotypal personalities, (a minor form of Schizophrenia, generated by a disorderly prefrontal cortex) who are more eccentric, imaginative, creative or innovative than the majority of so-called normal people.

10. Another instance of the Mind's abstract and often extremely absurd creativity is apparent in another disorder of the brain called Synaesthesia in which the normally independent sense centres are linked in extricably. For some people this means, for example, that certain sounds evoke a sense of seeing a certain colour, or bring a certain flavour to the mouth or a letter or word written in black, can appear coloured.

11. Disciples of the Mind's beliefs are prone to hypocrisy. This can become comic in the extreme when they try to excuse or protect their position. Consider the fact that the Pope, the leader of a Church based on a belief in miracles, when sick, goes to a modern hospital rather than Lourdes or Fatima, or that American Christian Fundamentalists pontificate about the values of freedom and democracy.

12. Our world seems to be dominated by the more devious, deceptive and unscrupulous amongst us. In fact, it also appears that those with the most fertile Minds have a better chance of reproducing themselves, than those who carry a genetic advantage.

13. The Mind does not contemplate the real consequences of its actions but tends to live in the here and now. Itappears to project into the future with hope, but this is only wishful and speculative aspiration.

14. Blinded by the Mind's illusions and delusions our rational brain is unable to anticipate the crisis that will be created by the continuously increasing human population of the world, which will out strip the natural resources we rely on for life.

15. When we are free from the everyday activities of the real world,during holidays and festivals, we tend to fantasise more and to become more speculative and adventurous. For instance during WWII, when I interviewed refugees (in my work with the Red Cross), I discovered that many had made the decision to flee around their birthdays.

16. When we find ourselves without any physical point of reference, such as in complete darkness, out in space,in the middle of a desert or in open sea, our Mind, free from mundane activities and sensations, is more prone to hallucinating.

17. Our Mind practices another absurdity. It tends to complicate or dramatise life as, by increasing our suffering, we gain the impression that our lives are more fulfilling and interesting and therefore more valid. Our Mind creates unnecessary problems in order for us to feel alive.

18. Our Mind loves to complain. Complaining gives us a sense of importance or superiority. In fact, we will seek out situations that provoke complaint, such as electing leaders we do not like.

19. The Mind is obsessed with growth, which is the enemy of stability. Growth increases complexity, which increases vulnerability.

20. The Mind's uncertainty invented the idea of competitive games, where the prize for victory is a reduction of uncertainty. However, the cult of victory brings with it the fear of losing, which is detrimental to the quality of life for both victor and loser.

21. The most abominable crime that men have perpetrated against women is to send a mother's child out to kill another mother's child, in the name of their Mind's ideological or religious beliefs. For a mother to lose her child for no more than philosophical speculation goes against every instinct she has for the welfare of her offspring and her community.

22. Communities that eschew the wisdom of women tend to be in conflict or go to war more often.

23. There is positive evidence that people who live in a community are better off and live longer than those who live alone and isolated. Therefore,one of the most nonsensical ideas for a social species suggested to the Mind by the independent activity of the prefrontal cortex must be that of individualism, of individual single and independent existence. Individualism alienates the members of a society from one another, increasing the individual 's fears, anxieties, selfishness, intolerance and non-cooperation.

24. The cult of Individualism leads to the idea of individual Human Rights, which started with the French Revolution of 1789 with its famous declaration that all men (but not women) had the right to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. In their euphoria, the Minds of the French Revolutionaries did not allow them to realise that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity actually contradict each other, nor appreciate whether the concept was in the best interest of Humanity, let alone Earth.

25. We would have a better quality of life, and a healthier planet now, if, instead of individual Human Rights, we had drawn up a charter of Individual Humane Responsibilities based on the Maternal attributes of the females of our species.

26. With the Mind and its beliefs came another of its ugly inventions, hatred, a powerful source of aggression and violence in the world, and only humans hate. A believer hates whatever or whoever opposes or derides his beliefs.

27. Our belief in our superiority is a wishful belief of the Mind. Doubt and uncertainty create discontent in the Mind, a fear of not being in control and therefore a feeling of inferiority. The Mind's pretentiousness leads it to strive for superiority.

28. The Mind's quest for superiority has become our obsession. This obsession is fuelled by the fact that a sense of superiority, once achieved, stimulates the parts of the brain dealing with contentment, satisfaction and pleasure,and this has influenced a great deal of our lives and our behaviour.

29. We have developed cultures in which drinking Champagne, consuming Caviar or driving luxury cars are signs of achievement, providing us with a sense of importance, and feeding our belief in our superiority. Associating with, or aspiring to be, celebrities, famous or notorious, has the same effect

30. One of the uglier aspects of the Mind's obsessive pursuit of a sense of superiority is that it is always achieved by abusing others, which in an extreme form, becomes sadistic.

31. Our sense of superiority can even be threatened by a mechanical or technical piece of apparatus, such as a car or a computer. When these break down or fail us, we can feel inferior, which offends or annoys us. In order to placate the Mind's rage and regain our sense of superiority we can find ourselves shouting, swearing at it, or even hitting or throwing it.

32. Giving orders or scolding others for making mistakes makes us feel superior, and being obeyed has the same effect, increasing activity in the brain 's pleasure centres, hence the striving for promotion or positions of power.

33. Guards, in concentration camps or prisons, who shame, abuse, torture or inflict pain on inmates, can actually feel so superior that they experience ecstasy. We are the only animals to make others suffer for the sake of our excitement or pleasure.

34. The victims of our sadistic nature are made to feel inferior, which activates the parts of their brains dealing with distress, generating sadness, depression, impotence and ultimately can lead to suicide. It also disorganises the immune system leaving victims vulnerable to many diseases and disorders.

35. One of the most damaging wishful creations of men's Minds was, and still is, his aggressive superiority complex over women. Women's intuitive response to this however is to develop maternal pity.

36. Child abuse, especially by a parent, is the saddest and most insidious of our Mind's perversions.

37. The Mind's idea of superiority must have inspired the idea,and the pursuit, of prestige, which is another of the Mind's creations that wastes energy and resources.

38. Men, who believe that being seen to be busy gives them an air of importance, tend to occupy themselves with superfluous and unnecessary activities.

39. In old age, when the Mind's sense of superiority begins to be eroded by a growing awareness of mortality, some people start to denigrate life and only seem to seethe ugly side of it. It is as if their final act is to talk themselves into being in control of their death, and in this way, they maintain their sense of superiority.

40. However, a growing awareness of death brings an increasing fear of it and as the Mind tries to placate or fight this fear it seeks to conquer it. One weapon it created was the idea of immortality, with comic and playful absurdities such as life after death and heaven as its ammunition.

41. Another weapon or tool in the fight against the fear of death came when Man noticed that seeds falling on the earth and being covered by it, reappeared again. This observation may have been one reason why our ancestors started 'planting', or 'burying' their dead (and even some dead animals) hoping that they might reappear again.

    When those buried did not reappear, the Mind's imagination invented the idea of a world of life after death. When no one ever returned from that underworld, the Mind created the ideas of reincarnation and the eternal soul.

42. A great deal of procreation, artistic creation and quests for fame or notoriety have been inspired by our Mind's desire to survive after the body's physical disappearance.

43. Our Mind's fantasy world might have been encouraged, from the beginning, by our dreams, as their absurdities, incoherencies, irrationality and ridiculousness are very alike.

44. It seems that many of our dreams appear to be irrational and unintelligible because of a lowered efficiency in our processing of external and internal stimuli during sleep.

45. If we are under the influence of drugs or alcohol during sleep, our dreams can become extremely incoherent, giving us nightmares or hallucinations.

46. It is common for political or religious leaders (past and present) to take their dreams of the night and transpose them into daydreams, visions, prophetic illusions, apparitions, revelations, and even into a mystical awareness of the supernatural, which become their Mind's beliefs.

47. The Mind's pretensions brought about strain and stress, stress-related diseases and metal disorders. By their very nature the Mind's illusions, pretensions, aspirations, hopes and expectations can never be realised, this generates disappointment, humiliation, mortification, suffering and misery, all of which are highly unhealthy. That the Mind gravely impairs us can be seen from the fact that meditation, which reduces the activity and tension of the prefrontal cortex, also improves the efficiency of the immune system and reduce heart disease.

    The Mind is not only the source of the ridiculous it is also the main source of dramas and tragedies. In fact, it is our Mind, with its straining pretensions and excessive ambitions, which rules our lives, influencing our mental and physical health and the manner and timing of our death, rather than our genes.

48. The Mind's state of uncertainty only allows it to operate in the present, without regard to future consequences. This induces an unnaturally fast rhythm in our actions and reactions, creating impatience and restlessness leading to a desire for more speed, all of which reduce our ability to focus our attention or take care. This exposes us to all kinds of errors and accidents. In fact, we must be the most accident-prone animals in Nature.

    If we functioned according to our organism's natural rhythm instead of being dictating to by the faster and more careless rhythm of our Mind, we would be less accident prone, healthier and happier.

49. If intelligence consisted of knowing how best to adapt to the environment and its changes, then the Mind, by wanting to change the environment to fit its pretensions, rigid beliefs or prejudices is the antithesis of intelligence, and its enemy.

50. Intuition is the ability to sense reality and react spontaneously in the most appropriate way. It is the most vital and precious of all our senses and yet the Mind has progressively suppressed it to a point when it is either just dismissed, or hidden under a mound of superstitions.

    The concept of intuition has thus been somewhat hijacked so please note, when it is mentioned in this book,I am referring to the astute connection all animals have with one another and their environment.

51. Proud of the aberrations of his Mind,man calls himself Homo sapiens, unaware that the Latin word for aberration is "error" (a source of accidents).

52. Fascination with the unknown is a clear indication of the Mind's discontent with the known, and the Mind was able to conceive the mystical,mysticism or mystification because of its doubts and uncertainties.

53. Our uncertain Mind is fascinated and intrigued by mystery, conspiracy,the hidden or secretive, after all, the unknown may hold the answer to our doubts and lessen our uncertainty. Thus Freud 's theory about the 'unconscious', a whole world hidden within us, was bound to have a lasting popularity.

54. Fuelled by its fantasising our Mind indulges itself in a creative orgy around anything we do not understand. It created the absurdity of Myths and Legends, and sometimes it based a whole culture upon them, which was passed down from generation to generation, like a blueprint or a kind of DNA of traditions.

    The ability of the Mind to create myths around people, things or events also exercises its playful creativity and is exciting.

    Myth suggest that there is an answer to everything, but it is so bound up in mystery that, no matter how hard we try, we will never know it and this offers an acceptable and enduring escape from the real world. A good story can absolve us from having to deal with reality, especially if it is couched in mystical or pretentious terminology.

55. The Mind fills our lives with paradoxes, two of the most absurd being that the more fertile the Mind the more it obscures the truth, and the more we 'progress' the less we understand one another.

    Each Mind is unique, all operating with different levels of uncertainty, and taking in the world through individual perspectives. The Latin Proverb,"Quot capita, tot sententiae" ("The number of heads, the number of opinions") expresses this succinctly.

    In our attempt to describe, or explain our opinions, we embellish our languages with new words that we think will help clarify what we mean,but this takes us further and further away from reality and the truth.

    The Mind's notion, that we have a right to our own opinions, and freedom of thought, formed the bedrock of our cult of individual freedom (which I later discuss in more detail).

    The Mind's illusions of power, importance or pride,tends produce irrational or absurd opinions, cluttered with words that can lead to misunderstanding, disputes or litigation, and can provoke extreme hostility or violence. Our Mind's opinions make us the most ridiculously contentious species on the planet.

56. Established religions are cultures of poetic licence, based on theories about how and why human beings existed. These were passed by word of mouth until, after many years,they were written down and later translated into other languages. These texts became the words by which communities organised and judged themselves. As human beings developed, they started to refer to the texts to explain new ideas and events. Each generation saw different 'truths' in the increasingly obsolete texts.

    Even after the language of the texts become dead languages, new generations tried to explain all that was to come, in words that now had new meanings. Regardless of the fact that languages change, and words can even take on the absolute opposite of their original meaning, each generation manipulated the ancient ideas to fit contemporary situations. Generations later the original sense was lost and new translations became the word.

    We are so far removed from the communities that first passed the words and stories from mouth to ear, we have no conception of the context in which they were written, nor do we care. It is far more comforting to believe that some ancient storyteller had a greater wisdom than we do, that we actually have his very words, and know the context in which they were written, and that these apply to us, than to have to apply ourselves to recognising the contemporary wisdom that our experience should have brought us. As long as we have THE WORD, we feel safe.

57. Safety is an opinion or an idea inspired and kept alive by the Mind's uncertainty in search of less uncertainty and, paradoxically, it has to maintain this uncertainty in order to sustain the opinion! Our Mind is the epitome of stubbornness.

If the Mind's values were truly consistent with the natural world, and if the Mind was the supreme achievement of evolution, I am certain it would have developed in a far older species (in evolutionary terms) long before the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Here I end the introduction. I am very aware that whilst I have set out to deride the Mind's excessive, pretentious and absurd activities, I have had to use them in order to put forth my contention. If you see the humour in this particular paradox then I have been successful.

Next: The Mind's World

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