Why do we do what we do?
There are so many variations of what people like to do, but we're not in the habit of questioning how this vast array of actions came into being.
This is especially so if something is enjoyable. Happiness doesn't provoke analysis the way sadness does.
Surviving required adapting. Over millions of years, our adaptions have become highly complex. They have been spread and blended all the way around the globe - as have the slight differences within our bodies.
Although loosely similar, our brains structure have an individual fingerprint. We are the same in one sense, but but one of a kind in another, just like plants in a field, or birds in a flock.
Our brains are all wired to receive information, store memories, sense, and store patterns, and rejuvenate memories into thoughts.
When those memories, our stored patterns, and reality triggers are recombined in the the neural wash, we are able to generate new and novel thoughts - a surreal mash-up of time and space that is usually only allowed to re-enter the cerebral cortex when it is closely resembling and reflecting the world around us. It is in fact, a micro-projection of the future, which the brain will then use if it seems to trigger our sense of 'doing the right thing'.
This is not the right thing, 'morally'. The brain doesn't know what a 'moral' is. It knows about it's event memories, and pattern memories, from social interaction. 'Doing the right thing', for everyone, is usually following a path to short or long term gain - in whatever area our survival centre deems able to be translated into modern culture.
Basic survival behaviour and sophisticated social interactions are one and the same thing. Our ability to operate in a group has not just been fundamental to survival, but a also product of it.
In out chaotic past the organisms that adapted for co-operating outlasted any non-socialising variations. This is not just for reproductive reasons, but also in conflict, or any other dangerous situation the group is always favoured over an individual.
You can think of the brain as a feedback mechanism. Each moment in reality is generating a 'sensory song' which floods the neural network and then causes our memory network to vibrate in sympathy.
We're not only remembering 'now', but constantly creating an electro-organic structure inside an organ.
Stunningly, contained in that same structure are recursive memories of what the structure used to look like. These 'memories of construction' form slices of time that allow us to travel back in time, at least in our minds. This awareness of change in a structure, over time, is the basis of this theory for why we have become the pre-eminent 'constructor' species on the planet.
So how did it happen?
There are so many variations of what people like to do, but we're not in the habit of questioning how this vast array of actions came into being.
This is especially so if something is enjoyable. Happiness doesn't provoke analysis the way sadness does.
Surviving required adapting. Over millions of years, our adaptions have become highly complex. They have been spread and blended all the way around the globe - as have the slight differences within our bodies.
Although loosely similar, our brains structure have an individual fingerprint. We are the same in one sense, but but one of a kind in another, just like plants in a field, or birds in a flock.
Our brains are all wired to receive information, store memories, sense, and store patterns, and rejuvenate memories into thoughts.
When those memories, our stored patterns, and reality triggers are recombined in the the neural wash, we are able to generate new and novel thoughts - a surreal mash-up of time and space that is usually only allowed to re-enter the cerebral cortex when it is closely resembling and reflecting the world around us. It is in fact, a micro-projection of the future, which the brain will then use if it seems to trigger our sense of 'doing the right thing'.
This is not the right thing, 'morally'. The brain doesn't know what a 'moral' is. It knows about it's event memories, and pattern memories, from social interaction. 'Doing the right thing', for everyone, is usually following a path to short or long term gain - in whatever area our survival centre deems able to be translated into modern culture.
Basic survival behaviour and sophisticated social interactions are one and the same thing. Our ability to operate in a group has not just been fundamental to survival, but a also product of it.
In out chaotic past the organisms that adapted for co-operating outlasted any non-socialising variations. This is not just for reproductive reasons, but also in conflict, or any other dangerous situation the group is always favoured over an individual.
You can think of the brain as a feedback mechanism. Each moment in reality is generating a 'sensory song' which floods the neural network and then causes our memory network to vibrate in sympathy.
We're not only remembering 'now', but constantly creating an electro-organic structure inside an organ.
Stunningly, contained in that same structure are recursive memories of what the structure used to look like. These 'memories of construction' form slices of time that allow us to travel back in time, at least in our minds. This awareness of change in a structure, over time, is the basis of this theory for why we have become the pre-eminent 'constructor' species on the planet.
So how did it happen?
