The 3 most complex systems in the known universe requires we "be the landlord of" our "mind."

Covid19 (and most other catastrophic threats humanity faces) is the consequence our persistent failure to grasp the irreversible connections between the three most complicated systems in the known universe. 

1)      Our natural environment.

2)      Our neurological system (brain/mind: both an asset and a burden)

3)      Our immune system.

Recognize that the second two are primarily defense systems of every advanced life form -- engineered by evolution (or God if that’s your understanding of the universe) to keep the individual healthy and thriving while living in the first system we call nature. 

Most human suffering, injury, disease, and death are the result of damage, malfunctions, or ignorance of the second two.  Nature’s disasters are usually catastrophic on a relatively local level. And humans are relatively effective and efficient at responding and recovering from those.   Understanding and paying adequate attention to the dysfunction of the other two systems will usually prove catastrophic eventually.  And when it comes to pandemics, globally.

Thus, the vast majority of human suffering, injury, disease and death on our personal, local, national and global level are self-inflicted by the largely unexamined purpose and best function of the second two.     Covid19 hits both of these systems with a baseball bat. 

And the greatest systemic flaw is not in our immune system.  It is in our mental capacity. 

Specifically, in our persistent resistance to doing the deep thinking needed to properly engineer our human made systems to navigate the problems that we have created with them.  Especially with their inevitable interactions with the first system in this rant, the environment.    

Our mind did well in protecting us from the harmful aspects of nature. But it went too far in believing our health, freedom, security and sustained prosperity could exist while abusing nature or ignoring it.

While our immune system is too often weakened by personal choices we make as individuals, a vast majority of damaged immune systems are caused by flawed economic, political or religious systems we humans have created.  The poverty, war, genocide and other forms of injustices these three human created systems have unleased did benefit some.  But on the whole they have been beneficial to the spread and evolution of pathogens which inevitably prove disastrous or catastrophic to our personal and global health, freedom, security and prosperity.   

If Covid19 hasn’t educated you on this fundamental reality we may have to wait until the next pandemic, one more harmfully consequential may be needed. And this is inevitable. 

If our mental systems refuse to re-engineer our economic, government, religious, media, and cultural systems, our immune systems will most likely be unable to protect us.  And that level of civilization that  half of us in the world has enjoyed in comfort for the last few decades…will cease to exist.  

The great tragedy is that these fundamental mental problems and flawed human systems have always been known by some.   Each of the religious prophets have known them.  But their followers rarely walk their talk.  Many modern seers, experts, and even bi-partisan Presidential Commissions have identified flaws in our human systems in many forms.   But the majority of the public, policy makers and even liberal and conservative organizational leaders have intentionally ignored them.  These publications are jokingly referred to as “Dust Collectors”. 

   

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

“Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought and hostage to the character of those thoughts.” Sam Harris

In one sense, our minds have become too smart.  Once it has created an idea it believes to be true it becomes an infection of the mind that then acts like a mental immune response system that rejects any other idea that might dislodge it.

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."  - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939.

Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr once argued with Carl Sagan “that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation”.  That “some humans will survive, but…will be scattered [without] a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.”

As hunters and gatherers, we were fine. But once we started separating ourselves from nature, we softened ourselves and started believing we were in control of our destiny.  And our successes are now making it too difficult to reverse course.  Covid19 might change that, but given the rapid evolution of weaponry and war, we do not have much time.

The human capacity for abusing any technology (bio, chemical, nuclear, cyber, nano, money…) is as exponential as the advancement of these technologies.  And, our linear thinking capacity combined with our flatline or failing government capacity to adapt to this rapid change…will NOT end well.

Transformational personal and government change is now needed to accept out global interdependence and to codify global systems that ensure we are responsible with our personal and national freedoms.  National sovereignty exercised irresponsibility anywhere in the world we live in cannot protect us. Political borders (mental constructs) and walls won’t stop dangers such as viruses (natural or human made), environmental, or economic problems.

Essentially, if we continue to fail to observe and respond appropriately to the real world that we inhabit and depended on for necessities of life, health, security, and sustainable prosperity, we will lose it all.  

George Lakoff describes our evolutionary problem by writing that our mind is hardwired for “direct causation thinking”.  Note that most government ‘solutions’ are responses to problems, instead investing in prevention.  That requires much deeper “systemic causation thinking” that elections every two, four or six years does not reward.   Policy maker must react most effectively with the world around us if it intends to protect American lives and freedoms, instead of just protecting our flawed Constitution, which they have sworn an oath to protect. 

Our human engineered systems must abide by the laws our Founding fathers referred to in our Declaration of Independence as “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.

Most other problems come from the tendency of most Americans and our policy makers ignoring the credible warnings we/they are often given.  We too seldom exercise our Constitutional right to “peacefully…assemble” and “petition the government for redress of grievances.”  Forget preventing grievances.  That seems to be un-American.   We only rise when we have them and believe elections are our only solution.  

Elections are fundamentally flawed if we have collectively failed to educate ourselves on the key issues.  Voting is now more of an emotional decision that one of deep thought and deliberations.   

Unless ‘we the people’ change, our ‘direct’ and ‘short-term thinking’ our elected officials will remain addicted to their existing political, religious, and economic ideologies.  And they will continue to hold us all hostage to Covid19 and most other major threats. 

Paid lobbyists or enraged activists pushing unexamined assumptions, fake news, or conspiracy theories, will not prevent the obvious or the inevitable.

Step one may be taking a step back to examine how our mind actually works.   The cognitive sciences has many useful concepts.

First is recognizing that our mind is NOT who we really are.  It’s only a voice in our head.  A voice that attempts to understand who we really are.  And does a damn poor job of it.  Most of what our mind believes is what our mind wants to believe.

   

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Henri Bergson, French Philosopher and Educator

We are really a social animal.  We have basic needs including love and an evolutionary mission to protect ourselves (our body), as well as the bodies of those we love.    

Our mind was originally a problem-solving tool doing these things.  But with human consciousness came the recognition that there is a ‘me’…and there is a ‘you.’  And an ‘us’…and a ‘them’.  

The ‘me’ started to discover or invent certain differences or distinctions.  And this became our ‘identity’.  And these had to be protected at any cost.  As groups grew into tribes that occasionally bumped into other groups and tribes it became important to distinguish between them.  Then integrate peacefully or destroy them.

Obviously, our history of integration (including mating between Neanderthals) had more survival value than the destruction of others.  Tragically, our mental identities we cling to have inevitably led to technological systems capable of killing nearly all higher life forms on earth. 

We became so successful as a species and the mind essentially lost its original job of solving problems. And started defending identities.

Since then, our creative mind has been creating problems instead of solving them.   And this includes our separation from nature. 

Nature was not comfortable - or safe.   So, we started engineering a safer and more comfortable world using tools, concepts and eventually our ideologies that disconnect us from nature.  And life was easier and good.  So good we largely forgot about our dependence on nature.  The cost for that error will be high if we persist on maintaining flawed perceptions like independence or learned concepts like national sovereignty, free trade, or unregulated capitalism.   

Our minds chose these other priorities because that is what they believe work.  And humans will continue to kill and die for them.  War, genocide, wealth, selfishness, comfort…  Or, our mind will unintentionally ignore poverty and these other injustices as we go about our comfortable or distracted lives.   Until the chickens come home to roost.  Covid19…and eventually unprecedented global warming or the use of WMD may wake us up.  But not all of us.  The greatest flaw of the human mind might be its capacity to believe ANYTHING! 

Our minds created an illusion that things are separate.  Einstein noted this illness long ago stating “A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

I know most minds have a hard time even hearing this quote’s wisdom.  And an even a harder time accepting it as a reality that would actually inspire an adjustment of habitual harmful behaviors.   I’m guessing some who are reading this now are already searching for exceptions - or a clever comeback - to defend an idea that their mind has already adopted. 

For the most part our minds will continue defending ideas, arguments, concepts that we have accumulated via culture, education, religion, self-interests, political party, nationalism, and/or economic ideology.  And, ignoring fundamental principles like the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God (the golden rule).  But nature always gets the last vote.

Our core problem is that our mind has decided that defending its own ideas are more important.  The mind’s arrogance is even maintained by very smart people.  It may be that the smarter a mind is, the harder it is for that voice in their head to yield to reality.  They think it is who they are…instead of just a voice.   And any challenge to that voice essentially challenges the concept who they think they are.  And it must be defeated at any cost. 

Welcome to today’s world where those who worship freedom at any cost.  Like the cost other people’s freedom and security.

The mind’s defensive reactions conveniently blocks its capacity to deeply analyze alternative narratives, conflicting facts, or functional possibilities.  Or, simply allows the mind to ignore these other ideas all together - with the thought “That just crazy”.  The new idea may be.  But chances their mind, and most minds in our world are at the effect of a disease the medical community has termed 'anosognosia' (pronounced uh-no-sog-noh-zee-uh).  It is a mental disease that may best explain the human condition 'when a person suffering a disability is unaware of that disability'.  [Watch 2004 movie “Downfall”?]

In layman’s terms “How healthy can you be if you are well adjusted to a profoundly sick society (US), culture (Wallstreet), ideology (white supremacy), religion (David Koresh, Branch Davidians), government (Third Reich), philosophy (Unabomber)… 

We all have some element in our lives that appear crazy to another person’s perceptions of what’s normal, important, or valuable. 

Covid19 is now teaching us science and our interdependence better than any lecture, rant, quote, or textbook.  It is revealing the structural faults of a system that was rigged, ignored and papered over for decades.  If you were monitoring the news you would have noticed things most people ignore have been getting worse…while the things they like have been getting better. But now gaping economic inequalities, rampant ecological destruction, and pervasive political corruption are all obvious to most.  And as one system destabilizes, expect others to tumble down in tandem – or in a cascade known by researchers as “synchronous failure.”

Independence is an illusion.  It is NOT a fundamental principle that can be found in “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” or one of the “Self-evident” “Truths” mentioned in our Declaration of Independence.  In the Declaration, the word ‘independence’ was intended to mean a reasonable political separation.  And politics is fundamentally what humans use in an attempt to get along together.  Humanity is still seeking a political system that works while operating under human laws.  Laws that usually ignore the “Laws of Nature and Natures God.”

Conclusion:  It is the failure of human systems and structures to adhere to the “Laws of Nature (these should be self-evident to most) and Nature’s God (think ‘Golden Rule’ or ‘justice for all’)” that result in most threats.  Pandemics and other infectious disease threats are the best teacher of the fact that we are all interdependent on one another’s health, security, and cooperation.  Our concept and codification of “independence” is lethally flawed.   We need a holistic ‘one world, one health’ approach.  The health of all living things is irreversibly interconnected with the health of our economy, infrastructure, democracy, security, freedoms, civility, religious practices, and every other aspects of our earthly dependence.  The three most complicated/complex systems in the Universe must work in sync for us to survive.

"If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it."
-- Stanley Garn  (1922-2007) American human biologist, professor of anthropology

"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."   -- Thomas Jefferson

No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us. – Ludwig von Mises  (1881-1973)

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." - Bertrand Russell 

It is difficult for our mind to grasp the profound concept that it is NOT who we really are.  It is a wrestling match we must win, and win every day. 

A teenage wrestler from Rockville was the world’s first ever 19 year old Gold Metal Olympic heavy weight champion.  He beat the best Russians and Iranian heavyweight to do it.  His Dad gave him the best coaching advice I’d ever heard.  “Be the landlord of your mind”.  He did, and took leave of a culture that wants comfort, fun, feeling good and looking good, and raised his sights to the almost impossible.  Now he is as impacted by this pandemic as most of us are.  

Connect the dots!  See the web of life!  Achieve ‘justice for all’.  Or, prepare for the catastrophic conseqeunces.  Cw