How to Fix the World

If were going to make a better world, we need to understand what that means and what we need to pay attention to.

This is a model of Self-World engagement taken from Walter Freeman



This is a rather complex diagram that is not exactly easy to explain, so I'll just you the bare meaning of it all: the self (the mind) is connected to the world through basic feedback mechanisms occurring within our body - endogenously - and with the body-in-the-world - exogenously.

I'll take a simple phenomenological example to highlight how this works in life.

You walk past a girl in the library whom you find attractive; you look at her; she looks back at you. You turn away; she turns away.

Simple? Not quite.

First, why did you even look at her? Because you saw her, you'll respond. Yes. But again, why at that moment did you look? And you're response; did you plan on that? Or did it just happen?

Phenomenologically we can discern things that are happening which occur unconsciously. And this is basically how human beings are: we attune prereflectiviely to the world around us; we are feeling creatures at our root: descartes couldn't have been more wrong that to assert his existence as a matter of thinking. Thinking happens AFTER the feeling; it is a personal interpretation. What ultimately matters is what we feel.

In the above diagram, our motor systems feed into our attentional networks; this supports evidence from neurobiology which shows that mirror neurons are primarily motor based; its the observed motor movements we see which feed into us and unconsciously educe a feeling state (as an eruption within the limbic network), which we than interpret - unconsciously - and appraise, which determines - again unconsciously - our next protension into the next moment.

Thinking has 3 basic properties; first, it is largely intentional; and within any intentional stance is a 3 fold structure of retention (what just happened) current perception, and protension (whats expected to occur next).

Its important to know this, because without knowing this you become unaware of how the world about engenders certain perceptions; certain intentional stances; and ultimately certain behaviors.

A basic principle of the new science of non-linear dynamics is that all systems have parameters: or limits. Right now were all learning of the limits of our planetary system; that we cannot just do as we do unconsciously - "business as usual" - indefinitely. Eventually we encounter the limits of the system. All systems - our bodies, our minds, our planet, have limits.

This thread, admittedly, is simplistic. But it is meant to just sketch out what needs to be attended to if we want to fix how we experience ourselves and how behave with one another. In taking this position I'm also implying that this world is pathological. I could define the various problems there are but that would derail me too far from my theme; suffice to say that the various geopolitical and interpersonal problems have the same basic cause: human beings acting without being aware of how and why they act.

Cultures which do put these considerations under analysis are famously much more diplomatic and tolerant of disagreement; take Buddhist Tibet, or contemporary Democratic cultures as an example. When the simplistic - and instinctive - sensorimotor, emotion and environmental feedbacks are interrupted; and the conscious mind analyzes what is happening within itself and between itself and the larger system it is a part of (society or the planetary life system) it can stop and prevent the enactment of unconscious behaviors that are being induced from without by non-linear dynamics: that is, together, the "culture" which forms, draws us insistently into certain topographical and geometric forms of being

This world is riddled with dualities; and we can describe these dualities from a larger sociological perspective as Narcissism vs. Masochism. That is, certain people become very strong and "successful" - the so-called "haves" of marxist theory; while other people struggle, suffer, which internally, within them, is a strong - yet very unconscious - masochistic urge - the "have nots".

The conditions of society in this sense bifurcate human beings into these two camps; and these two camps emerge because the locus of individual focus for each human being is mostly identical: the instinctive 'programming" of historical evolutionary patterns.

The patterns are more epigenetic than genetic; they arise as biological patterns imprinted within our cells "above" the genes themselves; these methylation and other forces which turn certain genes "on" or "off" incline our subjective minds along a certain course of thinking; and the thinking itself - it's very ontogeny, is borne from the body-culture nexus; the culture 'attunes' the biology to a certain way of being. And the biology inclines the mind to support the creation of a type of culture.

Fixing this situation means learning how certain lower order systems feed into larger order systems. Overall, we can say that there is an isomorphism between our thinking, or relating, and the cultural reifications which ultimately emerge. What we thus need to do is correct things at the various levels to "bias" the various systems, the superordinate "society" and the lower-level individual, to see things from a more holistic perspective.

Because emotion happens and we are moved by emotion, the way to "transcend" the suffering and bifurcations we create into "rich and poor" and various other classes that put the "strong' into an indifference and the "weak" into a want, is to appreciate how it is we become who we are.

I do not think the world is by any means "evil"; its certainly better than in the middle-ages; but we nevertheless need to progress more, to the point where our subjectivities and who we become fall within our power of influence. So that the world we emerge into is one where the context impresses upon us a feeling that makes living less a struggle in dueling dualities, and more what it is: an existential experience of Being-in the-world.

I think this is over-complicating things in my opinion. The easiest way to change the world is to change yourself. Be the change you wish to see in the world. When you open yourself up to love then you begin to love others, no matter their race or background. That is the problem with the world today, lack of love for other life.

If enough people change themselves, the world will follow.

"You want to save the world don't you? Can you save the world before saving Yourself? And what means being saved? Save them from what? From Illusion!?Salvation is to see things as they already are. All that is required is a change of understanding. You are neither the body nor the mind! That is the real difficulty. The person must disappear. There is no birth, there is no death, there is no person. It's all an illusion! Now you know the Nothing."~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

My beloved gurus words, rather mySelf in another mortal frame, teaches that who and what we truly are is the Immortal Unborn. You already are The Supreme Being.

I will reiterate this on ATS a million times if I have to as people don't understand the Truth is simple. Consciousness, The Entire Manifest Universe. The Electron itself will only last 100 billion trillion years. But the observer is beyond time and space and is unlimited. You think you are human because you as the all pervading awareness wears a human flesh suit. Time and space give rise to the illusion of separate objects but it is all One.

At the highest dimension there is no time there is no space it's all happening in the Eternal NOW. Every possible Universe that could exist already exists simultaneously.

a reply to: Astrocyte

You assume it's broken?
Why?

a reply to: Astrocyte

To fix the outer world. Fix the inner world.

a reply to: Astrocyte

..are you a rosicrucian, by any chance?

a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

Is it complicated? Yes. Is it over-complicated? That depends on youe view. Is science over-complicated? Or do the details of the natural world - both whats 'out there' physically and what occurs within us, phenomenologically, neurobiologically, and between us interpersonally.

The more deeply you understand a phenomena, the better equipped you are to influence it.

That said, I do agree that it could be reduced to the simple: to change the world change yourself; or be 'the change you want in the world;. However, I study the 3 main levels of interaction; intrapsychic (whats occurring 'within your mind'); interpersonal (how past relationships create intrapsychic structure); and neurobiological (how the brain takes in and categorizes information along homeostatic needs; so, for example, a stressful early life experience will become associated in the brain with a 'negative' marker; the amygdala will become alerted once the visual sensors pick up a salient environmental cue; new people? If you were relationally traumatized as a youngster, your brains amygdala will alert the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary and adrenal stress response; hypothalamus synthesizes corticotrophin releasing hormone; which causes the pituitary gland to synythesize adrencorticotrophin - which increases mental alertness; eventually ACTH reaches the adrenals and cortisol - a long lasting molecule - a steroid, gives the body greater energy by breaking down fat cells.

Whenever you feel constricted emotionally - it is this - and it's connection with a particular environmental-biological interaction, that generates this reality we experience.

So it is not simple; and I personally find it tremendously interesting; as does contemporary neuroscience, psychology, education, philosophy, economics. Most thinking people should be interested in these things.

a reply to: UNIT76

No, I'm a Freemason-Knight Of Columbus-Order of the Golden Dawn-Anthropologist.

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

Because it is. SBHG (small-band-hunter-gatherer) societies show us that the world as it is is purely a result of early-life relational dynamics. This has been proven and it's becoming increasingly impossible to deny it as the evidence from the epigenetics of neurobiological development comes in.

Michael Meany of Mcgill University and many other neuroscientists are showing. To explain; theres the whole scientific protocol of a control and an experimental group. The experimental groups mother was separated from the rats pup at birth so that the rat pup never gets what usually happens; grooming and licking. Then the scientists opened up the rat pups head to check out what was happening epigenetically within the neurons of the relevant areas (amygdala, hypothalamus). What was found was that the genes in areas controlling the fear response (amygdala) had more connections with the hippocampus. Inside the cells nucleus, methyl groups were attaching themselves via the chromatin to particular genes. In rat pups that were groomed, there was little methylation; in rat pups that werent groomed; alot of methylation. What does this mean? This means environmental information was 'training the brain' to respond anxiously to innocuous situations; also, the rats pups of parents that 'neglected' them had no social skills; again, epigenetically coded within the rats pups neurons.

So, the picture is not "some people are genetically biased to be more social and empathic", but, rather, a persons neurobiology can be predisposed[/.] by an earlier generations epigenetic influence (it transmits itself from one generation to another, up to three or four generations); but that the largest factor in determining the future personality is relational environment in the early years; the baby learns how to 'expect' the world; his adaptations - and underlying neurobiology - is shaped by these experience; and the lowest areas, the brain stem nuclei, begin to allocate homeostatic resources, offering the attention and intelligence (cortical areas) 'this much energy' for a behavior. Based upon previous behaviors; and to which the brain has based itself with real-life epigenetic and other molecular effects (such as receptors between neurons for a particular neuroechemical that plays a role in the production of anxiety or dissociation)