Wednesday, December 29, 2010

History, Animals and Frontal Lobes... Oh My!

So I was having a conversation with a colleague about human nature vs human behaviour and the difference between humans and other animals, and as i started delving into the uniqueness and result of the evolution of the human frontal lobe, they kept inquiring, "what caused the first man to behave like a sociopath?".  I postulated that it was the scarcity of the basic needs of life, quality of life, and sound mind and social state. The list of which looks like this:

Basic Necessities of Life (Biological)
· Air
· Food
· Water
· Sleep
· Medical Care
Additional Necessities For A High Quality of Life (QoL)
· Shelter
· Clothing
· Education
· Energy
· Transportation
· Communication
Necessities for a Sound Mind and Social State
· Personal Purpose (Passion, Hobbies, Pursuits)
· Recreation
· Community (Family, Friends, Colleagues, etc.)

By definition, it is mankind's search for this "List", in an environment where these items are not in abundance,  that causes biological issues, low quality of life and unsound minds and social states.  So let's revisit the history of the first sociopath.  People tend to describe human history as "just the stuff that happened to us". This is true for all other animals, however, it is the way our frontal lobe developed that seperates us from all other animals. Ours is the only frontal lobe that can envision alternative outcomes thus allowing us to design a strategic path to the future we desire.  If humans are the only animal that can design and seek out a desired outcome it means human history was the result of our attempts to design our own future. The problem is, the information available is only as good as the science, data, and information technology at the time. So without sufficient information we are destined to seek the future we always wanted before we know what is good for us. Therefore, human history is merely the collective result of insufficient information being available at the time we made decisions on what we wanted our future to look like. As mentioned earlier, in order to design a future free from sociopathic behaviour we need to discover a way to achieve The List, in abundance, for all mankind.  The only truly reliable tool we have available is the scientific method of discovery and problem solving.  Therefore life must simply become a progressive set of social experiments whose hypotheses are continually tested and analyzed until a better hypothesis emerges with the end result being The List.  This all sounds great except that politics, religion, and money, even though they should be regarded as social experiments, were designed to be exempt from testing. All three require faith for their existence. Faith is defined as belief without evidence. Rejecting these established notions is a revolution of the mind we must first achieve.

No comments:

Post a Comment