Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). Last week I shared an excerpt titled – ‘Social media and its Impact’ from the book titled ‘LikeWar – The Weaponization of Social Media’ by Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking. In this book the authors explore amongst many other things the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Now it seems that we are all trying to find solutions to our various problems, Individually or collectively, but the moment we find a solution there seems to be a new problem that we come across and we wonder why?
Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, and that is because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Understanding Ourselves and Solving today’s problems’ from an article titled ‘An Ancient Brain in a Modern World’ contributing writers are Robert Ornstein, PhD; David Sobel, MD, MPH; and Sally Mallam. Through this and many interconnected articles the authors are trying to highlight that to solve today’s problems, we need to understand more about who we are and how our brain works every day. What psychologists call “normal” consciousness and then take a look at what else it might be capable of.
Understanding Ourselves and Solving today’s Problem
The work of evolutionary psychologists like, Robin Dunbar found out that many characteristics we recognized as human – such as mentalization, sympathy, empathy, and a theory of mind – have been shared by hominid species since at least Homo heidelbergensis (about 700,000 years ago).
By 35,000 years ago, the capacity for abstract thought and symbolic representation had finally become a stable and universal capacity of the human mind and one of the traits that we share with all other humans. It enabled us to communicate in unprecedented ways and build the world we know today.
We were the same human beings then as we are now.
The brain’s age-old strategies to ensure survival in the short term still hang on today, among them are:
What have you done for me lately?
We are short-term animals, animals who look for the immediate gain. We are extremely sensitive to recent information.
“Call me when something new happens.”
Our senses show us the outside world, but they operate to notice change – the beginnings and endings of events. Loosely speaking, their operation follows the axiom, “call me when something new happens.”
Get to the point.
Our mental system determines the meaning and importance of any event and its relevance to ourselves based on a relatively small amount of information. In the process, it throws out almost all information that reaches us to “get to the point.”
Excerpt from ‘An Ancient Brain in a Modern World’ contributing writers are Robert Ornstein, PhD; David Sobel, MD, MPH; and Sally Mallam.
I am sure that you will find this and many interconnected articles thought provoking and interesting read; to read them click on the following link:
https://humanjourney.us/mind/an-ancient-brain-in-a-modern-world
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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