Inner-space part 15- Back To The Brain.

So, we come full circle back to part 1 of this series, having (hopefully) fleshed out the core ideas a little bit...


So, where did we leave off?

Ah, yes, we pondered if the hindbrain, our old buddy here...

....was the sole source of all the mischief in the world.

Well, no, there's also bullshit, and that bit of bad software creeps in through the higher brain.



So, we sought to dissect that as well.

And dissect it we did.

It comes down to two things.

We're a pattern finding animal, and like all Darwinian lifeforms, we seek to survive.

And Darwinism isn't too ethically picky about how you survive.
At an animal level, you can go ahead and deceive if you need to, look at the stick insect.

And I used that as the launch off point for "the descent of bullshit".

And in that little essay, I pointed out that where the stuff we call bullshit creeps in, is the added layer of self-deception.

But, the core of that comes down to pattern finding.
Finding the wrong pattern, and hanging onto it like grim death.

Now, this stubbornness has survival value.
If you can't hang onto the pattern of "eat those funny white berries, you die", well, you die.

So, we have to be able to dig our feet in on some sort of reality.

The problem comes in when you interpret the wrong fucking thing the wrong fucking way, and dig in on that.

I'm reminded of one time when I was a kid at school, and got blamed for something I didn't do.

I kept saying "I didn't do it", and I pointed out how they had no evidence that I did it, no witnesses that I did it, that it was just literally out of thin air they thought I did it.
Didn't matter, the answer each time was "well, I think you did it".
I can still hear it, this almost unbroken droning chain of "well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it...".
It was exactly like that.
Almost 10 mindless repetitions at least.
Objective reality didn't matter, they just picked someone, and dug in their feet.

And this has happened in the legal system.
Still happens.
Convictions overturned by DNA evidence, and the victim/witness still swears to the core of their being that the person did it.

The brain is faulty, the mind literally plays tricks.

But, the very fact we're discussing this, means we have the capacity to reflect, and revise, and shrug off the patterns that don't work.
To get at the objective truth through the fog of white noise.

We can take a whole damned WORLD that doesn't work, and throw it out if we want.

That's what this series is really about.

The world we've got, is a world that literally accidentally stumbled together millennia ago, and our ancestors mindlessly ran with it.

We don't have to take it.

It's all made up.
We can make something else up.
Any damned time we want.
That's our power, it's our right, and it's our job.

So, that's what I've been getting at with all the rants prior to this.
Let's put it all together.

After beating the King-Kong/Godzilla metaphor to within an inch of it's life (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) I recapped the slogan series, and boiled that recap down to a series of possible solutions.

Amongst those solutions, an outline of possible ways to lash out, and fight back against this illusory world that's piped at us.

And the core of all of those solutions, is critical thinking, and humor/laughter.

Our brains literally do possess an anti-virus against the bullshit.
The wrong patterns that creep in, and become destructive to us, yet we hang onto them despite them being obsolete and irrelevant.

That's been the struggle of human history.
But, IMHO, despite numerous delays, and reversals, it's still been a slow upward curve.
As I illustrated with this exhaustive little progression chart.
Well, illustrated a bit sloppily, anyway, but still....

So, all of that is the toolkit for fighting bullshit.

But how to whup "Godzilla"?

Well, we cliff-hanged on that here, and I'll be getting back to that finally in the next rant.
Stay tuned.
:)