A mind in need of the 12 steps
Our minds work by addiction. Each time we make a decision, specific synapses fire related to the action being taken and to record the current state of sensing. When the synapses fire, chemicals are released by the axon terminal of a neuron to communicate the action or state of sensing (being); these chemicals, called neurotransmitters, stimulate the dendrites of other neurons and the bonds between the transmitting and receiving neurons are reinforced. The axon terminals are increased in number and even made physically closer, in effect reinforcing the addiction of one neuron to another. The more often these same axon-dendrite junctions are stimulated, the stronger the bonds become. The less often these bonds are reinforced, the weaker and fewer they become. When the bonds are very strong due to repetitive stimulation, they become the “norm”. When our bodies do not fulfill on the “norm” our brain informs us of the lack of that chemical bond through the feeling of “need”. Some of these bonds, and communications, are easy to understand: When we are hungry, the lack of certain chemicals becomes apparent; we’re jonesin’ for food. We solve this by using other neurons to control our hands and mouths to consume protein and sugars (food). The protein, as it begins to break down in our mouths, becomes glutamate, which stimulates the glutamate receptors in our tongues, which in turn stimulate the specific “Yay, I’m eating!” neurons in our brains. The “Yay, I’m eating!” neurons communicate with each other, releasing glutamic acid and endorphins, and satisfy our addiction. Momentarily; once the chemical levels decrease to a significant enough level, the process to satisfy our addiction begins again.
The ability to “reason” is a genetic advantage that humans have over most other animals. “Reason” is the state of understanding, or addiction to, connections. Our ability as humans to effortlessly (and most often unknowingly) make statistical predictions about outcomes of decisions or to predict connections, allows us to know, for example, that when we heat iron to a specific temperature, it becomes malleable and can be shaped into a tool that will give us a mechanical advantage, and therefore an advantage over other animals in fulfilling our addictions which keep us alive, generating maximum utility. Certain “reasons” are innate, as in the previous example, hunger. The more efficiently we can satisfy that hunger, the more advantage we generate for ourselves in survival. Because of this, our minds are predisposed to finding solutions to everything, to find a “reason”, for purposes of maximizing utility. Therefore, we are genetically predisposed to seek understanding. This predisposition is created through addiction to chemicals – recognition of when those chemicals are missing. When we successfully create a “reason” that does not conflict logically with other “reasons”, the chemicals which drive our neural activity are released, and the chemical bonds are reinforced, satisfying our addiction.
Making an Ass out of U, Me and Economics
The science of economics is based upon the scarcity of resources and the utility or “happiness value” of each resource. The combination of these two factors drives the decision making process of individuals and in turn, the masses. When something has a high utility and a high scarcity, it has a high value. The individual will sacrifice greater to acquire that thing. Because of this, we can analyze these two factors statistically and make predictions about the behavior of an individual and of a group of individuals. In other words, we can calculate the addiction level of a group to any individual driver, or group of drivers, of utility. It is important to note, that none of these factors are real, they are merely assumptions made by an individual, based upon his or her biases, about why an individual or group of individuals is making a decision. The only reason the assumptions are defensible is because at any one moment in time, the similarities between individuals and the ways in which their minds function and similarities in the general drivers of utility for each individual are so great that through sampling we can predict, with fair accuracy, the percentage of a population that will act in a certain way. In effect, we are not making a true prediction of reason, but instead, a prediction of addiction levels within a population and the general value of any factor to that population. When the factor itself is not apparent, an economist will make a prediction of what the factor could be. Ultimately then, every “reason” for every decision is biased by the individual who “discovered” the “reason” and by the general biases of the population as a whole. With time, people and the external factors that affect them change, therefore the “reasons” will change.
Groups are more effective than individuals at accomplishing goals, by factors greater than the relation between the number of the group and the number of the individual. In other words, two people are more than twice as effective as one, three people are more than one and half times more effective than two and more than three times more effective than one, and so on. This attribute is described in economics using “opportunity cost”. Effectively, it is the understanding that by sharing resources, reducing transition time between tasks or eliminating multitasking altogether, and by the leveraging through specialization of each individual’s strengths, be them intellectual or physical, the group creates efficiency, maximizing utility at lower overall cost to the group and per capita.
10,000 Years of Organized Manipulation
Over the last 10,000 or so years, organized religion has played a very important role in the creation and perpetuation of civil societies, or “the group(s)”. The following is an excerpt from an essay regarding the basis for and use of religion in early civilization, with regards to judicial systems and social structure:
The inherent control of organized religion over large groups of people was integral in the development of a justice system and its enforcement through the implementation of laws in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hebrew societies. The fear of reprisal from the gods was a common theme that helped manipulate the behavior of individuals throughout the development of early civilizations. In each of these societies, the religious and political rulers relied upon the lack of understanding and resulting fear of their peoples when faced with a subject as overwhelming and hard to understand as spirituality. By instilling specific moral obligations in the youth of their respective societies and promising both spiritual and physical consequences, the rulers of ancient civilizations were able to present laws as well as punishment for disobedience of those laws that would be more readily accepted by their people. The accountability to a deity in addition to the physical accountability to the lawmakers provided for a much more easily controlled society.Are you talkin’ to me?
One tool of early lawmakers which was used to create a desire in their people for obedience of these laws was to present the laws not as simple rules developed by men but instead as divinely imparted wisdom from some important god of their religious beliefs. An example of this is in the book of Exodus of the Hebrew Bible when the Hebrew god Yahweh is portrayed imparting upon Moses “The Ten Commandments” to be passed on to the Israelites. “Moses then went up to God, and Yahweh called to him from the mountains, saying, “Say this to the house of Jacob…” To present the laws in this manner was effective because it provided for not only the physical consequences that could be imparted by the lawmakers but also the spiritual consequences that could be imparted by their god. Since the idea of an omniscient being “god” is not easily understood, the resulting emotion was one of fear of the uncertain.
Another method commonly used in these societies was to portray the person that was imparting the laws as a being either sent by or ordained by a god, as illustrated by the following excerpt from The Code of Hammurabi, “The great gods called me, and I am the guardian shepherd whose scepter is just and whose beneficent shadow is spread over my city.” By illustrating himself as a being that was divinely ordained, Hammurabi effectively empowered himself as a “god-like” being who in turn demanded the same respect and obedience merited the gods, thus portraying any noncompliance with his code as a direct rebellion against the gods themselves, and carrying with it the same spiritual consequences.
Egyptian society took these methodologies one step further, depicting themselves as god incarnate. “The king of Egypt, or Pharaoh (meaning “Great House”), possessed an authority rarely achieved in Western Civilization. He was regarded as a god incarnate who upon death rose to take his place in the sky as a deity, Horus.”
Through this depiction, the pharaoh accomplished not only the demanded obedience and respect that the Hebrew and Mesopotamians were able to achieve, he was also able to manipulate his people to accomplish great tasks on his behalf. The Egyptian people were willing to devote their lives to fulfilling the Pharaoh’s wishes, as displayed by the great pyramids created on behalf of the Pharaohs which sometimes took hundreds of years and many generations to complete.
Throughout all of history, with the effective use of organized religion and the manipulation of social groups with the religious tools of fear, death, and spiritual defamation, great societies were able to control their people and alter social behavior.
Efficient communication is an imperative evolutionary advantage to any social group of animals; from ground squirrels who chirp specific warnings to their kin when a predator is flying overhead, to elephants, able to transmit low frequency “songs” over miles of open African plain, indicating the location of a water source, to humans connected via Facebook sharing recipes with each other that promote healthy living; communication of the “reason” of the individual’s brain computations with the social network, allows for the efficiency effects of group thinking and group action.
Studies have shown that up to 85% of human communication is nonverbal. Most commonly, nonverbal communication is thought of as hand gestures, facial distortions and body posture, but these are not the only possible means. There are other forms of nonverbal communication which are less understood so not as often accounted for. One example of this is empathy; our ability to reason allows us to predict how something or someone is feeling, in a way allowing us to experience the inputs from their senses.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Pheromones and other byproducts of sexual arousal also play a role in communication. Take for example a man dancing closely and sensually with a woman, feeling each other; endorphins are released in his brain which cause certain physical reactions. The hair on the back of his neck stands up to allow for better airflow, reducing the moisture concentration in the air immediately above his sweating skin and promoting the cooling effects of evaporation. The evaporated moisture carries with it the signatures of chemical changes which are taking place in the man’s body. These chemical signals are received in the woman’s olfactory processing center and then communicated throughout her brain and body. Additionally, blood rushes to his lips, and elsewhere, further communicating his stimulation to both himself and the woman, indicating the man’s level of sexual arousal. Through effective communication, even when it is not “known” (a euphemism in this case for “admitted”), the man and the woman cross-stimulate, reinforcing each other’s arousal and increasing the chance of effective mating, which in turn increases the chance of perpetuating their particular strains of DNA. Because survival and perpetuation of genetic information is the goal of evolution, their brains record these senses as “good”, by increasing their addiction to them.
“The family that prays together, stays together.”
Non-denominational Christian “Bible Churches” often refer to themselves as a family, as do many other groups organized for and acting toward a common purpose. As such, the aphorism above can be applied to such groups as an example of how group action can promote stronger groups. One action which is common among non-denominational Christian churches is singing as a group, “praising” or “worshiping” their god. The nature and style of a worship song structurally is one which promotes reverberating harmonies and simple yet alluring melodies. Additionally, the lyrics are often designed to elicit powerful psychological reactions based on the individual’s relationship with their god, in much the same way that the lyrics and style of an opera illicit a psychological effect in its audience, linked to the drama of a romantic relationship. The psychological reactions in both instances are directly linked to our empathy and therefore create an experience of “sensing” something. Most often what is sensed is exactly the same feeling as described in the previous paragraph – endorphins are released, faces become flushed with blood and the hair on the back of one’s neck stands on end to allow for cooling. In an opera, the audience “senses” what the soprano is feeling with the loss of her love. In church, what the congregation “senses” is most often described as god incarnate, or “The Holy Spirit”, the messenger of their spirituality. Because this shared feeling is experienced by the majority, the result is a stronger group as a whole. Because the experience succeeds in creating a stronger group and each of the evolutionary advantages that go along with that, the minds of the congregation record that experience as "good". Over time, the success of these groups, coupled with the memories of the experience as "good", has resulted in "good" equating to "right" from their philosophical perspective. Effectively, creating a physical addiction to spirituality; one which would take more than rehab to overcome. Perhaps replacement therapy with a like, addictive substance. An anti-Christ?
In our current state of being, where variability in strengths and dispersion of those strengths across distances continues to provide an evolutionary advantage, and where science yet remains unable to definitively describe all methods of nonverbal communication, spirituality as a concept continues to provide the best “reason” to the majority, unwilling to transcend themselves or their history, and therefore remains prevalent and effective as a solution to the chaos of misunderstanding.
