Maintaining a Stable World
“Not knowing what is really going on [in the mind] has been the cause of conflict, wars and cultural divides, and now may even threaten humanity’s survival. This is all due to our failure to appreciate the limits of our senses, the selective nature of our everyday consciousness, and our potential for developing a higher, more comprehensive, more connected form of perception and consciousness.”
Robert Ornstein, God 4.0 – On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God”
How Do We Maintain a Stable World?
As adults, we experience our “world” as stable. We arise aware that we are in the room where we slept in the dark last night; that the streets outside are the same as they were, the town is the same, and we speak the same language. But it isn’t always so in a person’s life; the “world” of the young child is not so stable, nor is that of the teenager. Stability is something that we develop as we age.
The Brain as a Prediction Machine
“There is a constant give-and-take in which what we experience reflects not just what the world is currently telling us, but what we — consciously or non-consciously — were expecting it to be telling us.”— Andy Clark
Emotions: How and Why they Operate
Emotions can be complex and confusing. Why exactly do we have emotions? What causes them? How much control do we have over our emotions? Researchers, philosophers, and psychologists have proposed various theories of emotion to explain the how and why behind our complex feelings.
Our Memory and How it Works
Because 75% of the human brain develops after birth, individual worlds are not only molded by families and culture, but by unique individual experiences. From the miniscule amount of information sense organs gather from the outside world, we create an Imaginal World, weaving elements of every experience we perceive and pay attention to. These are our “memories.”
Temperament: Dispositional Differences in Human Nature
There have been many attempts to analyze important dispositional differences. Psychologists have developed different terms for them. One major dimension that's been described, on the basis of many years of research and supported by hundreds of studies is “openness to experience” which is one of what are called the big 5 dimensions of personality; the others being conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
More Featured Books
The Righteous Mind
New World New Mind
Moving Toward Conscious Evolution
Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich
Over millions of years, our minds evolved with quick reflexes to deal with sudden threats, which makes long-term threats like pollution and overpopulation invisible to us. Our survival now requires that we consciously evolve a new mind and new perceptions to adapt.
Moral Tribes
Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Joshua D. Greene
Our innate moral behavior evolved over millions of years to promote cooperation within our group. Each group has its own moral code, which provides a map for how individuals can live successfully within it. Our other innate tendency, to favor our group over all others, is something we need to understand and mitigate to address the existential challenges of our modern global society.
The Mountain People
Colin Turnbull
The story of the IK tribe of northeastern Uganda is a classic study of how a society’s concept of fairness and justice can quickly devolve when its people are cut off from their accustomed means of livelihood and forced to compete for their very survival.
The Matter with Things
Iain McGilchrist
One of McGilchrist’s central points is that our society is one in which we rely on representations of the world as our way of knowing it. Scientific theories expressed in mathematical form, economic models, photographs – all re-present the reality they purport to describe.
Humanity on a Tightrope
Paul Ehrlich & Robert Ornstein
Psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich join forces to explain why the human race has reached its current perilous precipice. To sidestep the fate they say is now barreling towards us will require us to address our “empathy shortfall.”
Beyond Culture:
Edward T. Hall and Our Hidden Culture
Report by John Zada
Edward T. Hall, after spending his early adulthood working and travelling among non-Anglophones, both in the United States and in other parts of the world, became cognizant and fascinated in the deeper layers of culture that he claimed lie buried beneath those more obvious forms.
In the series: Our Mind in the Modern World
- An Ancient Brain in a Modern World
- Our Unconscious Minds
- The Multiple Nature of Our Mind
- Connecting with Others
- Morality’s Long Evolution
- Unconscious Associations
- The Brain’s Latent Capacities
- God 4.0
- Multimind: A New Way of Looking at Human Behavior
- Thinking Big
- Social
- The Weirdest People in the World
- The Righteous Mind
- New World New Mind
- Moral Tribes
- The Mountain People
- The Matter with Things
- Humanity on a Tightrope
- Beyond Culture