JGeropoulas
The Living Force
After watching the video below, I think a better title would be “How Neurobiology and Quantum Mechanics Shapes Our Experience of Consciousness”. As someone with minimal knowledge of physics and neurobiology, I thought there were a lot of intriguing details with important implications to consider. Also much of what is discussed relates to concepts and practices in the Work (e.g. self-awareness, external consideration. the value/challenge of emotions).
It's a well-produced video with engaging graphic illustrations. The only negative is that the text is often too dark to read easily, so I compiled a partial transcript (below) of some of the interesting points which prompted this post [my comments are in brackets].
What do y’all think?
Athene’s Theory of Everything
(elsewhere entitled, THE AWAKENING – Quantum Mechanics of the Human Brain & Consciousness)
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbh5l0b2-0o
It's a well-produced video with engaging graphic illustrations. The only negative is that the text is often too dark to read easily, so I compiled a partial transcript (below) of some of the interesting points which prompted this post [my comments are in brackets].
What do y’all think?
Athene’s Theory of Everything
(elsewhere entitled, THE AWAKENING – Quantum Mechanics of the Human Brain & Consciousness)
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbh5l0b2-0o
While the following documentary keeps clear of metaphysical correlations and is solely focused on scientific verifiable data, it also has philosophical repercussions.
The human brain is a network of approximately one hundred billion neurons. Different experiences create different neural connections which bring about different emotions. And depending on which neurons get stimulated, certain connections become stronger and more efficient, while others may become weaker.
Rudiger Gamm, who was a self-admitted ‘hopeless student’ who failed at math, went on to train his abilities and became a human calculator.
Rationality and emotional resilience work the same way. These are neural connections that can be strengthened. Whatever you are doing at any time, you are physically modifying your brain to become better at it.
Since this is such a foundational mechanism of the brain, being self-aware can greatly enrich our life experience.
Specific neurons and neurotransmitters trigger a defensive state when we feel that our thoughts have to be protected from the influence of others. If we are then confronted with differences in opinion, the chemicals that are released in brain are the same ones released to ensure our survival in physically dangerous situations. In this defensive state, the more primitive part of the brain Interferes with the rational thinking. And the limbic system can knock out most of our working memory, physically causing narrow mindedness.
We see this in the politics of fear, in the strategy of poker players or simply when someone is stubborn in a discussion. No matter how valuable an idea may be, the brain has trouble processing it when it is in such a state. On a neural level, it reacts as if we’re being threatened, even if this threat comes from harmless opinions or facts that we may otherwise find helpful and could rationally argue with.
Social validation increases the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain and allows someone to be more emotionally stable and to become self-aware more easily.
When we experience an emotional or perform an action, specific neurons fire. But when we observe someone performing this action or when we imagine it, many of the same neurons will fire again, as if we were performing the action ourselves.
These empathy neurons connect us to other people, allowing us to feel what others feel. And since these neurons respond to our imaginations we can experience emotional feedback from them as if it came from someone else. This system is what allows us to self-reflect.
The mirror neuron does not know the difference between self and others and is the reason why we are so dependent on social validation and why we want to fit in. We are in a constant duality between how we see ourselves and how others see us. This can result in confusion in terms of identity and self-esteem. And brain scans show that we experience these negative emotions even before we become aware of them.
But when we are self-aware, we can alter misplaced emotions because we control the thoughts that cause them. This is a neurochemical consequence of how memories become labile when retrieved and how they are restored through protein synthesis.
Self-observing profoundly changes the way our brain works. It activates the self-regulating neocortical regions, which give us an incredible amount of control over our feelings. When we’re not being self-aware, most of our thoughts and actions are impulsive and the idea we are randomly reacting and not making conscious choices is instinctively frustrating.
The brain resolves this by creating explanation for our behavior and physically rewriting it into our memories through memory reconsolidation making us believe that we were in control of our actions. This is also called backward rationalization, and it can leave most of our negative emotions unresolved and ready to be triggered at any time. They become a constant fuel to our confusion as our brain will keep trying to justify why we behaved irrationally. All this complex and schizophrenic subconscious behavior is the result of having vastly parallel systems in our brain.
There is no specific center of consciousness, the appearance of a unity it, in fact, each of these separate circuits being enabled and being expressed at one particular moment in time.
Our experiences are constantly changing our neural connections, physically altering the parallel system that is our [experience of] consciousness
The transfer of information between neurons becomes optimal when their activity is synchronized. This is the same reason why we experience cognitive dissonance, which is the frustration caused by simultaneously holding two conflicting ideas in our mind.
Will is merely the drive to reduce dissonance between each of our active neural circuits. [rich idea to ponder--is it true?]
Evolution can be seen as the same process, where nature tried to adapt or ‘resonant’ with its environment. By doing so it evolved to a point where it became self-aware and began to ponder its own existence. When a person faces the paradox of wanting purpose while thinking that human existence is meaningless, cognitive dissonance occurs.
The left cerebral hemisphere is largely responsible for creating a coherent belief system, or order to maintain a sense of continuity towards our lives. New experiences get folded into the pre-existing belief system. When they don’t fit, they are simply denied.
Counter balancing this is the right cerebral hemisphere, which has the opposite tendency. Whereas the left hemisphere tries to preserve the model, the right hemisphere is constantly challenging the status quo. When the discrepant anomalies become too large, the right hemisphere forces a revision in our world view. [French developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, labelled these two processes as “assimilation” and “accommodation” respectively]
However, when our beliefs are too strong, the right hemisphere may not succeed in overriding our denial. This can create a profound confusion when mirroring others. When the neural connections that physically define our belief system are not strongly developed or active, then our consciousness, the unity of all the separate active circuits at that moment, may consist mainly of activity of our mirror neurons.
This is not the result of some “core self” giving commands to different cerebral areas. All the different parts of the brain become active and inactive, and interact without a core. Just as a collection of pixels expresses itself as an image, the collection of different neural connections expresses itself as consciousness. At every moment, in fact, we are a different image—a different entity when mirroring, when hungry, when watching this video. Every moment we become different persons as we go through different states.
If we use our mirror neurons to look at ourselves, we may construct the idea of ‘identity’, instead of viewing ourselves through a scientific view on what we are: a momentary expression of an ever-changing unity with no center.
But if we do this with our scientific understanding, we see something completely different. The neural synergy that forms our oscillating consciousness goes far beyond our own brains.
We are much more than the waves of energy emitted by our two hemispheres interacting electrochemically. We are just as much the product of our senses interacting with other neurons in our environment. Nothing is external. Mirror neurons allow us to understand ourselves through others. Seeing this activity as just your own while excluding the neural activity of others in your environment would be a misconception
Mirror neurons allow intraorganismal connectivity among a species [i.e. Jung’s “collective unconscious” or Sheldrake’s “morphic field” _http://www.innerlink.dk/a%20new%20paradigm.htm; in contrast, there are indications that defective members of our species, psychopaths, have impaired mirror neuron function http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18599127 ]
Our superorganismal features are also reflected in evolution, where our survival as primates relied on our collective abilities. Over time, the neocortical regions evolved to permit the modulation of primitive instincts and the overriding of hedonistic impulses for the benefit of the group.
Our selfish genes have come to promote reciprocal social behaviors in superorganismal structures, effectively discarding the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’. The brains’ neural activity resonates most coherently when there is no dissonance between these advanced new cerebral regions and the older more primitive ones. What we traditionally call ‘selfish tendencies’ is only a narrow interpretation of what self-serving behavior entails, wherein human characteristics are perceived through the flawed paradigm of an individual identity.
The psychological consequences of [coming to objectively believe that our ‘self’ is a momentary expression of an ever-changing unity with no center] allows self-awareness without attachment to the imagined ‘self’, causing dramatic increases in mental clarity, social conscience, self-regulation and what’s often described as ‘being in the moment’.
The common cultural belief has mostly been that we need a narrative a diachronic view on our life, to establish moral values. But with our current understanding of the empathic and social nature of the brain, we now know that a purely scientific view, with no attachment to our identity or ‘story’, yields a far more accurate, meaningful and ethical paradigm than our individual anecdotal values.
This is logical, since our traditional tendency to define ourselves as imaginary individualistic constants, neutrally wires and designs the brain towards dysfunctional cognitive processes, such as compulsive labeling and the psychological need to impose expectations.
Practical labeling underpins all forms of interactions in our daily lives. But by psychologically labeling the self as internal and the environment as external, we constrain our own neurochemical processes, and experience a disturbing delusion of disconnection.
Growth and its evolutionary side-effects, such as happiness and fulfillment, are stimulated when we are not being labeled by others in our interactions. We may have many different views and disagree with one another in practical terms, but interactions that nevertheless accept us for who we are, without judgment, are neuropsychological catalysts which wire the human brain to acknowledge others and accept rationally-verified belief systems with out dissonance [the purpose and power of external consideration?]
Stimulating this type of neural activity and interaction alleviates the need for distraction or entertainment and creates cycles of constructive behavior in our environment.
Sociologists have established that phenomena such as obesity and smoking, emotions and ideas, spread and ripple through society in much the same way that electric signals of brain neurons are transferred when their activity is synchronized.
We are a global network of neurochemical reactions. And the self-amplifying cycle of acceptance and acknowledgment sustained by the [self-aware] daily choices in our interactions, is the chain-reaction that will ultimately define our collective ability to overcome imagined differences and see life in the grand scheme of things.
Part 2 - The Grand Scheme of Things
Introduction
This is my interpretation of the first few months of Chiren’s work [Bachir "Chiren" Boumaaza _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachir_Boumaaza ] on unifying quantum physics and relativity. While it may, at time, be difficult to follow due to the subject matter’s complexity, it also has some philosophical implications, which are addressed in the epilogue.
[40-minute overview of quantum mechanics theory and research]
Whatever the outcome, it is clear that we have entered an era where science is open to everyone. And if we can preserve unfiltered access to a neutral internet, we can test the validity of our ideas, we can enhance our imagination by making new correlations, and we can be part of the evolution of our understandings of the universe and the mind.
Epilogue
In quantum mechanics, we have learned to approach reality differently and see everything as probabilities instead of certainties. In a mathematical sense, anything is possible. As well as in science as in our daily lives, the extent to which we can calculate or figure out probabilities is determined by our intellectual capability to recognize patterns. The less biased we are, the clearer we can identify these patterns and base our actions on reasonable probabilities. Since it’s in the very nature of our brain’s left hemisphere to deny ideas that do not fit into our current paradigm, the more attached we are to a belief system, the less able we are to make conscious choices for ourselves. But, by observing this process, we expand our awareness and enhance our free will.
It is said that wisdom comes with age, but with openness and skepticism, the key principles of the scientific method, we don’t need decades of trial and error to sort out which of our convictions may be improbable. The question is not whether our beliefs are right or wrong, but whether or not being emotionally attached to them is more or less likely going to benefit us. There is no such thing as a free choice while being emotionally attached to a belief system. The moment we are self-aware enough to realize this, we can truly work together to figure out the real odds of what will benefit us all the most.
