Sometime I smile because I am happy, other times I am happy because I smile.
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The oldest fossil records of Homo sapiens where found in Jebel Irhoud, Moroco; they date 300 thousand years. In only the last iota of its existence as distinct species – starting 3.5 thousand years ago, with the Mesopotamian civilization – humans changed their physical and social environments. The most drastic transformations correspond to the dawning of the industrial revolution, 250 years ago, culminating to the ubiquitous use of the Internet, social media and smartphones over the past 20 years. The outcome is that certain of the then adaptive traits have become recently rapidly maladaptive. In the previous part, we just touched upon the hypothesis that wining an argument might have been more important than using logical explanations based on hard facts. Here, I would like to expand on how the maladaptation of our senses in the world we are altering, is affecting us.
“Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action”. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. Derek Bok
“We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable”. Alexander Solzhenitzyn
At various instances in this podcast, I mentioned, "breathe". My rationale was that paying attention to your breath connects you directly to your senses, allowing your thoughts to live their own life, accepting that thoughts are not entities, recognising that they captured your attention away from your breath and patiently reconnecting to the sensation of your breath, again and again, a thousand times. In this manner you develop a new relationship with your thoughts, you let them be, you acknowledge rumination without reacting, you are not intimidated by your thoughts, no matter how rebarbative they might be. In the fourth part, I spent time establishing that thoughts are incidental to the evolution of interneurons that build predictive mental models.
You ask, what is the meaning of life? You do so because you can. Your inclination and ability to ask this question are incidental to the evolution of predictive mental models. These models emulate and predict the specific physical aspects of reality that have determined survival and passage of genetic information from and between species over 3.8 billion of years.
The fact that you can ask this question is an offshoot of your brain's ability to model and predict a reality without requiring sensory input or motor output. Your brain can now ruminate freely and endlessly. The urge we have to ask, "what is the meaning of life", is linked with our nature of being threat detectors. We have evolved because we detect threats and respond to them, all species do. The lack of sensory awareness to the neuronal activity that generates predictive mental models, creates a void, and becomes a threat in itself. Where are these endless thoughts coming from?
“When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.” Bertrand Russell
Between sensors and effectors, the in-between becomes sense, trying to make sense, compelled to make sense. Let go, breathe, and come back to your senses.
We are now at 1 billion years ago, unicellular algae thrive, forming complex structures, some of which will fossilize as multicellular and morphologically differentiated macrofossils.
“Nothing in Biology Makes Any Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” Theodosius Dobzhansky
According to Hoffman and Singh (2012), evolution “shapes perceptual systems to guide fitter behaviour, not to estimate truth”. They state that vision “rather favours fitness of the organism with the external world”.
Continuation and end of episode 1 on vision.
Our brain constructs the visual reality we experience.
How the evolution of the senses led humans to ask the question "what is the meaning of life"?Dr. Yves Sauvé approaches a fundamental question in a thought provoking, compassionate and poetic fashion, based on scientific facts. What is the meaning of life? He invites us to ponder why we can actually ask this very question. We are taken on a journey of how our brain creates the reality we experience, and how our senses evolved from single cells. Between sensing (input) and acting (motor output), neurons interposed themselves to ultimately generate predictive mental models of the physical aspects of reality, which determined species survival and passage of genetic information over 3.8 billion years. We are here because our ancestors were threat detectors, allowing them to survive until being able to pass on genetic information.Brains, such as ours, evolved to a point at which mental models could be generated without any sensory input and motor outputs. Humans can model a reality and fear threats without any sensory inputs and motor outputs. We can ruminate endlessly.Dr. Sauvé puts forward that the lack of sensory awareness of the cellular activity that generates predictive mental models creates a void, and becomes a threat itself. Where do our thoughts come from, we cannot feel them being generated?He proposes that our potential to experience happiness is as infinite as our willingness to connect with our senses mindfully, letting thoughts be thoughts.Between sensors and effectors, the in-between becomes sense, trying to make sense, compelled to make sense. Let go, breathe, come back to your senses.
