Take in he words, the images, and your own reactions. At the end of this section, you might want to play it again and see if you consider the video differently. That is of course the whole idea of this chapter.

​

There is an expression that fish do not see the ocean they are swimming in. We can add to this, that we can't even imagine the world beyond the surface.

​​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the same way as fish, we humans are so deeply immersed in our all-encompassing surroundings that we seldom realize that we can step away from our perceived reality and examine and even change, our perceptions, feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

​

​​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's take that step back and explore some of the relevant key attributes and realities of our shared 'human condition.'

​

There are so many questions... such as:

​​

• Who are we?

• Where are we?

• What are we doing here?

• What is important to us?

• What motivates us?

• How do we function?

• What are our emotions about?

• Where do our thoughts come from?

• Why do we behave as we do?

• What is involved in being a human being?

 

Like studying a cut diamond, let's gaze into the enigma of our lives one facet at a time - with each view not being mutually exclusive, but simply one feature, indivisible from the whole. So, you will find some overlap as we look into ourselves.

​

Let's get way out there to get the BIG picture...

​

What do we see?

​​​

We are...

​

​

Minuscule and lost in the universe

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We exist only on the hardened land masses floating on the surface of this small spinning molten planet we call Earth, surrounded by liquid oceans and under a thick gaseous atmosphere.​​

​

​​​​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we look out to the cosmos it seems boundless.

​

We are each a microscopic dot in an infinite expanse. A grain of sand in an endless desert.

​

Since matter and energy are the same and indestructible, E=mc(squared), we are composed of perpetually metamorphosing, reconfiguring elements. Everything we are has always been and always will be.

​

In the eternity of time, without beginning or end, we are riding on the crest of this present transforming moment.

​

In this vastness we appear completely insignificant, and at the same time we have the sensation of being the conscious center of it all. We hold a sense of 'I', an identity that is separate from what is observed to be a world outside of ourselves. We perceive ourselves existing as part of creation, and equally as distinct and severed from it. According to the tantric vision, this feeling that we are separate from that which surrounds us is only an illusion - our true nature being universal, infinite, and eternal.

​

All that encompasses us and all that comprises us are beyond our comprehension, and so we are consumed within an overwhelming mystery. At times we are struck with a profound sense of awe.

​​

​

Organisms

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are an integral and interwoven strand in the tapestry of living matter seemingly confined to the surface of this planet.

​​​

We are but a beat in the endless rhythm of birth and death. Every day people are born, and every day people die. The very likelihood of our individual existence is statistically so low as to be virtually indistinguishable from zero. Yet, here we are, in this moment, alive. Each minute our bodies create new cells from the food we eat, and each minute cells die within us and are discarded. We exist because of this ever-changing, evolving organic presence.

​

We all trace our biological history directly back to the beginning of life, 4.2 billion rotations of the earth around the sun ago to LUCA - the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Over the millennia, evolution brought about evermore complex organisms which branched into plants, animals, and us - you and I. Human beings appeared about one million rotations ago, and the current version about 175,000 rotations ago. We all share the greatest grandparents. We are all relatives.

​

Each of us experiences ourselves as a cohesive singular entity, though we are in fact a complex integrated community of diversified and specialized cell clusters. In this individual identity we possess a sense of autonomous control over ourselves, though actually we are intimately merged within the surroundings we are imbedded in. Each breath keeps us alive a few moments longer.

​

We are genetically blueprinted. Within this inborn life-span our enmeshed engagement with the environment determines our personal survival and growth, and our collective existence and evolution. Our mortal biological form is but a link in the survival chain of our species - with life a wave passed to us and passed on by us. Our lives are a mere fleeting burst of light. And, then we return back to lifeless materials.

​

​

Survivors

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​As organic matter we have a fundamental relentless biological drive to live. If we did not, we would cease to exist.

​

We take actions and have reactions to stay alive in the face of inevitable death. All the activity of living material is directed to the foundational goal to survive and to thrive. We are driven forward by this inner spirit to be.

​

As much as we pursue life, we will ultimately die from our current state. ​And yet, paradoxically, of necessity organic survival requires mortality. Further generations require the evolution of environmentally adapted revisions.

​

Our personal instinct for survival is combined with the inexorable impulse for the reproduction and continuance of our lineage.

​

​

Sensors

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To exist, sense has to be made out of stimuli. We have a diversity of sensors for the outer environment and of our internal states. Each individual cell, cluster of cells, and person reads the environment around it (perception) and within itself (introception). Our senses receive a variety of stimuli - and then create internal perceptions of them - including light, color, sound, smell, touch, and temperature. Our senses give content to the otherwise empty occurrences of the outer and inner worlds. Sensory communications and the coordination of responses are centralized in our specialized brains.

​

Our foundational 'reptilian brain' is rudimentary. Our sensory apparatus has evolved to identify patterns and make critical interpretations. It is hard-wired to automatically decipher sensation and take action directed to basic survival. We are acutely primed to detect and prioritize threats towards us. We take in the world with a 'negativity bias.' Do I hear and see a raptor which is after me for a meal? Have I been injured?

​​

​​​

​​

​​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

Survival State - Brain stem

The Survival State represents the primal brain and asks the question, "Am I safe?"

The only way to soothe the Survival State is through the creation of safety

consciousdiscipline.com

​

​When a threat is identified, our auto-reaction is the release of cortisol, adrenaline and cytokines. We are programmed to undergo alarm, fear and anxiety, followed with immediate actions to defend - of flight, fight, freeze, fawn or any of a multitude of iterations of these. In pursuit of security, we silently and automatically develop, adapt, and adopt protecting solutions to the dangers our minds believe to be real. Our primal default engagement with the world is at its core fear-based.

​​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diane Musho Hamilton in Everything is Workable (p. 35-36) says, “Fear is a form of intelligence. It tells us to protect ourselves from…Threats to our bodies and physical safety... our relationships... our sense of belonging... our identity or ego... to what we value...”

​

According to Depth Psychologist James Hollis, one of humans’ two greatest fears is stimulus overwhelm – when we no longer have the ability to make sense of our sensations – and become unable to keep ourselves safe. Then we panic.

 

 

Needy

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To exist we have a hierarchy of needs. Maslow provides a credible model that proposes five levels. From the bottom up the needs are:

 

• Physiological - air, food, water, sex, protection from the elements

• Safety – against danger, violence, deprivation  

• Love & belonging – attachment to family, friends, social groups

• Esteem – identity, respect, status

• Self-actualization – empowerment, development, creativity

 

Maslow posited that needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to higher needs. He offered that the lower three levels are essential to inner calmness, while the higher two yield fulfillment.

 

Another way of framing this model is that the lower needs are for survival and produce distress when not met - and so addressing them becomes the prime focus. Once these primary needs are met, unmet upper needs may instill aspiration. The upper needs drive human thriving through growth and change, producing satisfaction. In complimentary ways, both together serve the continued existence and adaption of the human species.

 

David Fessell explains in How to Thrive During Times of Stress and Challenge: Understanding the mental dance of safety and growth, “There is a very real part of you that is the safety advocate and another very real part that pleads for growth. This is the concept of 'multiplicity of mind', … Safety and growth need not be at war. Both are vital needs, contributing to balance and personal development.”

 

​

Mammals

 

​​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are not constructed to fend for ourselves alone, we are a social species. As mammals, humans are entirely interdependent for survival. Particularly at the beginning of our lives as infants and later at the end as elderly, we are completely dependent on others for our basic need fulfillments. Therefore, chief among our needs is attachment to other people.

 

We are physiologically built to be connected to others. The 'mammalian brain' developed on top of the reptilian brain. After our sense of vision, social neurology is the next greatest user of brain space. The mammalian brain contains an overriding, compelling, and complex emotional attachment circuitry. We possess social emotions such as empathy, compassion, guilt, love, camaraderie, loyalty, and many more. We are designed to attune to others. To build social bonds we have ‘mirror neurons’ that replicate inside of us the emotions perceived being experienced by others. And we produce oxytocin, a hormone that evokes feelings of intense union.

​

​

 

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotional State - LIMBIC SYSTEM

This Brain State represents mid-level functionality and asks the question, "Am I loved?"

The only way to soothe an upset emotional state is through Connection.

consciousdiscipline,com

​​

Our minds recognize other humans and project onto them a Theory of Mind. We hold an innate belief of human commonality. We conceive that those of our species feel, think, need and behave in the same manner as we do.

 

Matt Johnson notes in How We Can Feel Deeply Connected to Someone We Don't Even Know,

 

“Within seconds of seeing someone, we’re already forming ideas about their internal world. Of course, we can’t exactly know what another person is experiencing, and so we construct a model of it. It’s our best guess. This process goes by many names including Theory of Mind, mentalizing, or social cognition. At the end of the day, it comes down to creating an internal model of another person’s mind. As social creatures, we do this naturally and without effort.”

 

The mammalian brain makes social meaning out of complex social cues. Diane Musho Hamilton in Everything is Workable (p. 28) says,

 

"We are extremely sensitive beings with highly tuned nervous systems that pick up subtle, energetic cues and unspoken signals. In the past our survival depended on our attunement to each other and the group.”

 

Our social emotional guidance is so finely pitched and intense that perceived separation from partners is heart-breaking, banishment is devastating, and the idea of a world without others questions our very will to live. All alone, we are destined to die. James Hollis says that our second of the two greatest human fears is of abandonment.

 

What comes with living with other human beings are a multitude of duties, responsibilities and roles. Most importantly, collective living requires leaders and followers, decision-making and obedience. There are therefore different levels of power, status, entitlements, and other sources of influence, authority and dominance. In defense of cohesion, predictability and efficacy, social groups also possess various sorts of internal ‘enforcement’ measures to coerce compliance.

 

Each of us is also a strand woven into the complexity of a human social, cultural, and historical fabric. Each relationship is endowed with ritual and tradition. And in and through each bond, we create the shape of our own identity within the group.
 

There is a disparity and opposition between our sense of individual identity apart from others, while also feeling oneself as an integral part of a group. Yet, entangled together, these polarities serve our individual and collective continuance. Depending on what we perceive, to survive we at times instinctively may seek to attach or to separate.

 

​

Tribal

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our social order is grounded in the tribal group. We perceive ourselves as an integral member of specific identifiable groups. We call these memberships family, friends, tribe, profession, society and other allegiances. Sociologist Nicholas Christakis explains that we cluster together with people who are like us. This tendency is called homophily. From a survival perspective, connecting with people who are similar to us is intuitively felt to be crucial.

 

We live in group ecosystems of beliefs and norms that shape us. However, our sentiments and behaviors can also spread to others. This means that we are vulnerable to the information and choices playing out in our networks and at the same time we have the ability to influence people we don’t even know. This back and forth is guided by an impulse for cohesion, sameness, and inter-dependence – shored up by the innate fear of ostracization.

 

Tribal groupings hold shared interpreted realities, perceived threats, values, behavior patterns, emotional profiles, and the further attributes of a distinct ‘culture’. They are cemented together through socialization and enculturation of shared customs. We are all programmed to adopt, come into harmony with, and support the collective ways of the tribes we find ourselves in.

 

What Harari in his book Sapiens calls the ‘super-tribes’ of today, such as ‘nations’, ‘races’, ‘faiths’, and others, all have a structure of sub-tribes within. There is always a dominant elite tribe and a number of lesser, subservient tribes - with varying functions and levels of status. Like a hologram - the super-tribe parallels and so re-creates the essential tribe model – which itself is a hologram of the individual who is a number of distinct cell clusters working in concert.

 

In the same manner that our minds differentiate an individual identity of ‘I’ alongside a ‘you’, we then also recognize other tribal groups aside from our own. The communal ‘we/us’ are created, as is the ‘them/other.’ The perceived exterior groups, via our innate Theory of (collective) Mind, are perceived as pursuing the same necessities of survival.

 

​

Linguists

                            

 

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 

                  How Language Shapes the Way we Think

 

To survive collectively, humans have developed a sophisticated oral communication. Words are labels for meanings. These words are strung together into structured patterns of sentences and paragraphs. Tribes create their own language forms so that information may be successfully transmitted between members. We don't of course just speak randomly. We express what is carried in our minds - the human content of perceptions, memories, and understandings.

 

Language is centered on the making and understanding of noise vibrations - involving a complexity of sounds, and of written symbols that represent these sounds, that are heard or read by others - and who then translate them into the thoughts and feelings they represent.

 

In the TED Talk U-Tube by Lera Boroditsky above, she describes how the 7,000 current languages that humans have created each shape how language users think.

 

We complement our verbal communications with non-verbal behavioral cues, including facial expressions, physical gestures and body movements.

 

 

Meaning-makers

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a complex organic being, living in a hazardous environment, and dependent on dynamic social groupings, it is unbearable to live in anarchy. The world may be sensed as chaotic and random, but to preserve ourselves we are built to expeditiously create individual and collective understandings that we can act on. How we comprehend things determines our reactions.

 

Our brains evolved into complex meaning-makers. On top of the reptilian and mammalian brain layers a third developed, the cortex and neocortex of the 'human brain'. A primary human drive is to make greater sense of the outer and inner worlds. We are constantly seeking to reveal the meaning of what is surrounding and unfolding outside of us – as well as the meaning of our lives within it.

 

​

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

Executive State - PREFRONTAL LOBES

The Executive State represents the optimal state for problem-solving and learning.

This Brain State asks the question, "What can I learn from this?"

consciousdiscipline.com

​​

We are so driven to interpret events that our minds fill in gaps and sort out ambiguities. Where there is a vacuum, we fill in with explanations. For example, pareidolia is the human tendency to see shapes, patterns, and meanings in objects, even when no pattern exists. We cannot tolerate a dissonance between the limited information we have and the existential need for clear comprehension. Leon Festinger notes that when we have a ‘cognitive dissonance’ between perception and yearnings, we will reconcile this into consonance by amending the facts or the desires. We routinely invent and throw bridges of meaning across abysses of uncertainty. We generalize, we invent reasons, we make stuff up so that things appear coherent.

 

Our higher brain also creates consistency between events by creating detached principles, such as fairness, decency, dignity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility, justice and more.

 

Dorothy MacKeracher in Making sense of adult learning (2004, p. 6) says,

​

“…to make sense of experience, to reduce the unknown and uncertain aspects of life to a manageable level, and to act skillfully in ensuring one’s survival and security… humans are meaning making organisms...The experiences humans must organize include both those we sense (feel) from the (internal) environment within our own bodies and those we sense (see, hear, smell, taste, touch) from the (external) environment around us.”

 

Barbey, Patterson and Sloman in To Understand Human Cognition Scientists Look Beyond the Individual Brain to Study the Collective Mind state,

​

“Accumulating evidence indicates that memory, reasoning, decision-making and other higher-level functions take place across people… Cognition extends into the physical world and the brains of others… Without relying on experts in our community, our beliefs would become untethered from the social conventions and scientific evidence that are necessary to support them…Cognition is, to a large extent, a group activity, not an individual one…People depend on others for their reasoning, judgment and decision-making…knowledge is a social phenomenon that depends on community norms, a shared language and a reliable method for testing the trustworthiness of potential sources.”

 

Viktor Frankl, psychotherapist, psychiatrist and author of Man's Search for Meaning, believed the prime motivation in human life is a ‘will to meaning’. He named his therapeutic approach logotherapy – the finding of meaning in events to reduce angst. Considerable research supports that when meaning is created it reduces negative emotional states, enhances positive ones and is ‘protective’.

 

 

Learners 

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Humans store and share experiential meaning-making conclusions for future reference. Added as well to this stored knowledge base are the deep neural imprints of traumatic experiences - frozen in our minds and buried out of sight. As a survival strategy we give meaning to present situations by comparing them to our amassed learning. As change is experienced by us, we constantly take stored understandings to explain the present and anticipate the future. Learning is a means by which we become capable to adjust, adapt and react more successfully within the dynamic environment.

 

So that past interpretations are passed down, we intuitively educate, socialize and enculturate our offspring. We also inter-generationally receive and store information, archetypes, and emotions epigenetically and genetically. Our filed understandings are nested – from personal experiences, through family systems and then within tribal cultures.

 

Bishop et al (p. 13) explain,

​

“Our perceptions of reality are always influenced, knowingly or unknowingly, by a pre-existing framework of ideas, expectations, and beliefs about the way the world is ordered. We see and hear through filters. We may disregard or fail to perceive information that is incompatible with our pre-existing assumptions, or we may interpret it in a subjective, self-serving way.”

​

Mlodinow (2012, p. 190-214) states,

​

“… we also confabulate…Although we think we know what we are feeling, we often know neither the content nor the unconscious origins of that content. And so, we come up with plausible explanations that are untrue or only partially accurate, and we believe them… They have their basis in a repository of social, emotional, and cultural information we all share… The human mind is designed to be both a scientist and an attorney, both a conscious seeker of objective truth and an unconscious, impassioned advocate for what we want to believe. Together these approaches vie to create our worldview… As it turns out, the brain is a decent scientist but an absolutely outstanding lawyer. The result is that in the struggle to fashion a coherent, convincing view of ourselves and the rest of the world, it is the impassioned advocate that usually wins over the truth seeker… the unconscious mind is a master at using limited data to construct a version of the world that appears realistic and complete to its partner, the conscious mind. Visual perception, memory, and even emotion are all constructs, made of a mix of raw, incomplete, and sometimes conflicting data. We use the same kind of creative process to generate our self-image… our attorney-like unconscious blends fact and illusion… our unconscious minds employ that wiggle room to build a narrative of ourselves, of others, and of our environment that makes the best of our fate, that fuels us in the good times, and gives us comfort in the bad (Mlodinow could add 'and takes us down negative rabbit holes as well'.) …we perceive ourselves as forming judgements in a bottom-up fashion, using data to draw a conclusion, while we are in reality deciding top-down, using our preferred conclusion to shape our analysis of the data.”

 

We focus our attention and align our minds on what we believe is important. Our interpretations then generate our perceptions of reality. The product is the creation of our own internal landscape of reference images and stories of what we believe the world is like and what is happening. This construct is what Buddha terms the ‘illusion'. Arthur Miller famously added, “An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted.”

 

 

Habituated

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the interface between our interior and exterior worlds, there are thousands of decisions required to be made every day. To exist, most of these need to be made immediately and without thought. Thinking our way from moment to moment would be crippling, and likely fatal. We need our assessments and behavior to be efficient and to have efficacy.

 

We neurologically inscribe what we repeat - including interpretations of sensations, patterns of meaning-makings, emotional responses, thoughts, beliefs, identities, and stories. Our immense amount of consistent sense-making and reaction becomes ingrained in automatic patterns of neural firing. We call these habits. Depth psychologists term our established cycles of perception, emotion and reaction as ‘complexes.’

 

​

Problem-solvers

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our urge to establish sense, to fill in the blanks, to understand complexity, leads us directly into the disposition to resolve troubles. When we feel threatened, sick, abandoned or socially diminished, we ask questions over what is wrong and what is required to make the situation right. Safety, putting food on the table, overcoming illness, and social acceptance all require solutions. Humans are problem-solvers. We do so first to meet our survival needs and then to fulfill our aspirations.

 

However, under stress we become triggered and regress. The mind closes and defends – relying on neurology that has captured old entrenched learning. Alternatively, when life affirming results occur - be they physical, social or personal, we are wired to experience verifying emotions. Pleasure fills us when we mate, attach to a tribe, or have offspring.

 

When we are in a secure state our minds become expansive – now creative as well. We extend our curious analytic skills to our higher aspirational needs. We problem-solve our curiosity. And so, we create civilizations, produce art and explore the solar system. We even seek to find a meaning for our individual and collective existence. We experience gratifying emotions of strength, insight, accomplishment, mastery and fulfillment.

 

 

Story-tellers

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yuval Noah Harari – in his TED U-Tube, Why Humans Run the World, explains that the fictional stories we individually and collectively believe, shaped by our human neural wiring, then create our patterns of behavior. Narratives are the glue that binds a tribe together. Like a map, our prevailing adopted stories shape the present and the future. They become the sea that we swim in and no longer see. As much as they may seek to protect us, our narratives define, constrain, and at times even condemn us. 

 

 

Unconscious & egoic consciousness

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the human brain function together as one within us. Our brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion neuron cells – each connected to 10,000+ others, yielding an estimated ten trillion to 1 quadrillion (100 times more) nerve connections.

 

Scientists tell us that of necessity about 95% of the time our minds function at an unconscious level. Stimuli are sensed, evaluations against past learning are processed, meaning-making is done, and reactions occur. For the immense volume of sensory input from our exterior and interior worlds, in any given moment these cycles occur contemporaneously. For the most part, the unconscious runs the show.

 

It appears that our unconscious operations divide into matters for our personal subsistence, and also for the ‘collective’. Our intimate fusion with our tribe drives an interconnected commonality of emotions, interpretations and conduct.

 

Bishop et al write (p. 110) “Schemas can operate at the individual level or at the level of a group, or collective. Such group or collective schemas may underlie cultural patterns of thought and behavior…” Lydie Denworth in Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact notes “… that human interaction alters brain wave firing from separate to one aligned, synchronized set”. Not only are there emotional mirror neurons, but also harmonization with cognitive processing of comprehension, communication, and learning. The same as a swarm of birds that are flying in unison or a school of fish moving in concert, we literally become one. It just happens. And so, we have mob mentality, Stockholm Syndrome, or contagious laughter - to name but a few brain-synchronized thinking and behaving. As with the individual, the collective egoic mind creates an illusion of and adapts to the exterior world.

 

In any moment, we may silently dwell on personal needs and aspirations, while at the same time being compliant to the shared common tribal moods, mores, beliefs, behaviors, relational structures, roles and identities. Our identity and its persona transform moment to moment based on our conscious and unconscious perceptions, needs, aroused emotions, stored knowledge and entrenched meaning-making thoughts.

 

Then spectacularly, apparently unlike most other living things, we additionally have a sentience or consciousness – a state of awareness. Philip Goff discusses the scientific challenge of explaining how consciousness emerges within our brains in a helpful article in The Conversation.

 

Our individual consciousness is shaped around a sense of self, labelled the egoic mind. The ego is the personal story of differentiation and identity constructed from personal experiences and environmental cues. Hollis says that “The ego is necessary for the conscious conduct of life.” By now we can see that there is a sense of a unique self that is created in the moment and to the situation from a complexity of stored perceptions, meaning making, emotions, social contexts, attachments, habits, patterns and other variables. There are also deeply imprinted memories of self that are stored as sub-personalities, and dependent on current circumstances may arise, provide reference or be regressed into. We do not have multiple selves, but stored memories to draw on as we shape ourselves in a timely manner to our physical and social environment.

 

At the same time, we are an integrated sliver of a conscious communal egoic self, shaped from cultural narratives and collective experiences - the mammalian part of our make-up that is a component in a collective mind. We are a fragment of a shared group identity, persona and mentality created from collective perceptions, learnings, experiences and traumas.

​

From another writer

​

“…consciousness is not just an individual experience but something much larger—a shared awareness that connects us all. At its core, the “collective consciousness” refers to the shared set of beliefs, values and norms that shape how individuals think and behave within a society. Durkheim described it as the glue that holds societies together and believed that we could maintain cohesion and solidarity through this shared consciousness.”

​

We humans each function with both a personal and a shared unconsciousness and consciousness.

 

​

Masters of our destiny

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We function as individuals, as partners, as family members, as tribe members, within cultures, in a historical framework, over a lifespan enmeshed within the fabric of the human species. We have identities, habits and stories. We see what we have come to believe and do not see what we do not believe. We function mostly in unseen automatic ways, and for short moments with conscious awareness.

 

But the aware mind has an unusual capacity. Almost as a third party, it can observe the conscious egoic mind itself functioning. We can look in the mirror and observe ourselves. That insight places us on the balcony, listening to and observing our performance in the world around us and the world within. It is a place of temporary detachment from the emotions and ideas carried within our individual and collective minds. As Ekhart Tolle describes, we become the listener of the voice in our heads. Dan Siegel in his book Mindsight calls this awareness - being the observer of self. Schon in The Reflective Practitioner speaks of being on the balcony in the moment observing ourselves performing. This detached inner witness of self is at times labelled psyche, spirit, soul, or higher self.

 

In this wakefulness we can be curious and reflect on all that we are. And so, we may have moments of insight. We have the opportunity to take responsibility of ourselves and revise our otherwise entrenched perceptions, feelings, meaning-making, and narratives. We can be the focus of a problem that can be solved. In our self-awareness and of our own volition we have the capacity to choose another perspective, understanding, feeling, behavior or habit. We may decide to be different. This human capacity to make decisions we call free will. Free will gives us the potential and power to save ourselves from programmed ways of being and acting. Indeed, this capacity to transform ourselves appears crucial to the continued survival of our species. By the looks of things, it is in fact our only hope.

 

If you are inclined to, listen again to Shinedown singing A Symptom of Being Human. Can you see the events caught within a historical, cultural context? How about the impulses expressed - particularly social attachment - along with the conveyance of shared emotions and ideas? Did you note the use of images, symbols, language and story-telling, and that there was even a library of collected learning? And the theme over the sense of self-preservation and the survival urge to fit in, while witnessing the band’s artistic self-actualization? Did you see the individual minds and the collective? Did you observe your own pull into the moment, as you connect, empathize and distill meaning? What about the mental processes in yourself and in the artists that were patterned, unconscious and reactive?

 

The video of course is about inner turmoil and fitting in to the surrounding society. So, it points directly to the fact that within our being human are the sources of our own inner discord, our contentious relationships with other individuals, and even our differences with other groups of Sapiens. In our humanness lies the source of our conflicts.

 

Next – let us look at what specifically within our human condition drives the emergence of conflicts, what conflicts manifest as, and what carries them forward – from before the beginnings of human civilization.

 

 

References

 

David Fessell explains in How to Thrive During Times of Stress and Challenge: Understanding the mental dance of safety and growth

Matt Johnson (XXXX) notes in How We Can Feel Deeply Connected to Someone We Don't Even Know

James Hollis

Dorothy MacKeracher in Making sense of adult learning

Barbey, Patterson and Sloman in To Understand Human Cognition Scientists Look Beyond the Individual Brain to Study the Collective Mind

Victor Fankl Meditation from Sinai,

Bishop et al (p. 13)

Bishop et al write (p. 110

Mlodinow (2012, p. 190-214

Arthur Miller

Bushe

Lydie Denworth in Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact

Philip Goff

As Ekhart Tolle

Dan Siegel in his book Mindsight

Schone The Reflective Practitioner

​​