Please note: This is very much a work in progress! Please read, enjoy, and then write me some feedback to BG2006 @ whiteworld. com. I'm particularly interested in which parts you find interesting and which parts you find confusing. Both are things I want to know to make this better. Thanks --Roger
The human brain is a hard working organ. Not only is it huge (compared to other animals), it's complex and high performance. The concept that we use only ten percent of our brain at any one time is a popular myth. Strokes and other brain diseases showcase just how high performance the brain is. In spite of how important the brain is to life, Mother Nature lives with these brain disorders because she doesn't want to trade off any more of the brain's performance against solving the disease problems. She loves that performance!
Strokes and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) show how even the flow of blood through the brain is high performance. MRI scans of the brain -- the way scientists measure brain activity -- actually measure blood flow, not electrical activity. The idea is that where the blood is flowing more abundantly more electric activity (thinking) is occuring. The fact that this indirect measuring works well indicates that the body is actively controlling where blood goes in the brain, and this means that active control is more efficient than just flooding all the brain with sufficient blood all the time (which is the really simple, really reliable alternative).
Strokes happen when this blood flow control system breaks. Given how devastating strokes are, Mother Nature must hate them with a passion. The fact that she permits them means that Mother Nature is pushing the brain design envelope very hard in favor of performance. It's a trade-off similar to that which is going on between fetus head size and childbirth mortality.
So, given that Mother Nature has lavished a lot of time and attention on the brain, what has she come up with in the way of brain organization?
Thinking is a complex and high performance activity. To improve thinking performance, thinking is going to be subdivided into smaller and simpler activities that work together. I draw my inspiration for what follows from my work with computer data communication systems. Computer data communication is another complex activity that is accomplished by breaking down the activity into smaller, more manageable, pieces that then coordinate with each other.
I call this concept that I have come up with The Human Thinking Stack.
The Human Thinking Stack has a hierarchy of four parts, plus three auxiliary parts.
The main stack consists of:
And the three auxiliary parts that help out are: Perception, Instinct and Memory.
Lets talk about these parts, moving from simple to complex and fast to slow.
The reflex parts of the thinking system are the best understood. They take place outside the brain, and they are designed for speed, which means they are simple to study. The goal of reflex is to translate a simple input into a simple action quickly. Reflexes are fast, but very limited in the scope of inputs they deal with. Reflex is also decentralized, the nerves that handle reflex tend to be close to the muscles and sensory organs they serve. An example of reflex thinking is the control of leg muscles that happens even when a person is standing still and talking (talking in this case meaning: not thinking about standing). The leg muscles are tightly controlled -- meaning there is quick and active response by the muscles to each change in a person's posture -- but the brain and concious-level thinking have nothing to do with this control.
Reflexes are not happening in the brain, but they are still very much a part of the thinking process. Evidence for this is the phenomenon of "phantom limb" -- if an arm or a leg is amputated, the brain will quite often still "feel" sensation come from that limb. Phantom limb indicates that the thinking system is so strongly adapted to getting messages from the lost limb, that when real messages don't come, some part of the thinking system that is still in tact fabricates messages and sends them on to the rest of the nervous system.
A common but less obvious example of phantom limb may be the "ringing" some people hear in their ears when they are in quiet places, or when they start losing their hearing. The brain expects an input from the ears, but with quiet or hearing loss it's not getting that input, so it makes one up.
These examples indicate that thinking is a body-wide activity.
Habits activate reflexes. Habits are not thought about, but they are learned through repeated practice. Once again, they are fast and they deal with a limited range of inputs, but they are higher level than reflexes and they can be learned and unlearned. Habits deal primarily with physical activity, which distinguishes them from the next step up in the thinking stack, morality. An example of habit thinking is getting dressed in the morning. You do it, but while you are doing it, you think about other things.
The place where people are most sensitive to developing good habits is when learning a sport. The better a person's habits, the faster and more accurate they are while playing, and, the more time they have to spend on "playing heads-up ball." This is why practice, practice, practice makes a person better at a sport.
Morality in this context is not about good and evil. It is about having made up one's mind. Morality handles those thinking topics that you have already thought about and made a decision on. If someone brings up a topic that morality thinking can handle, your response to the topic is quick and decisive. Morality is like a habit, but unlike a habit you still think about morality issues when you are dealing with them. An example of morality thinking is what happens in your brain when someone asks you, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?" You know the answer to this, whether is Democrat, Republican, or other, and can give the answer quickly and smoothly. Building up morality thinking is why public schools hold fire drills. A real fire comes rarely, but if people have practiced even a little, morality thinking can take over, and getting out of the building happens quickly and smoothly.
Much of our day-to-day living is handled my morality and habit thinking, but not all. That which is strange, that which is novel (new) is handled by the top level of the thinking stack: judgement.
Judgement thinking handles that which is new and different. That's it's purpose in the thinking stack. Whenever you try something new, it's judgement level thinking that's going on.
Judgement level thinking is slow and hard to do, but it's the only level of the thinking stack that can handle new situations, and come up with new ways of handling old situations.
To feel and example of judgement thinking in action, try doing something you haven't done before. A simple example for you may be trying to write with your off hand, another may be playing a familiar tune, but in a different key. Do this for a little while, and notice:
This is judgement thinking in action: it's tiring, it's slow, it's clumsy, but it can handle new things. If this new task were something you planned on doing regularly in the future, Judgement would be screaming for Morality and Habit to learn this stuff, so it could get "off the hook." -- and this is what beginner practice is all about. Beginner practice is having judgement do things, but in the process it is training first morality and then habit to take over.
The thinking stack does most of its work by processing sensory input -- which is perception -- and issuing orders to muscles. But this basic process has many assistants. Two of the most noticeable are Memory and Instinct.
Memory and Instinct both tie in to the Thinking Stack mostly at the Judgement Level. Judgement may ask Memory, "Have I seen something like this before?" and memory will offer some related information. Judgement then works the memories and the sensory input over and decides if what is happening is familiar enough that a morality-level response is suitable, or if the situation is so novel that judgement must keep control.
Memories are what the thinking stack remembers about previous events. Memories are tightly tied to previous events. Instincts are "memories" that come up without reference to any previous events. In humans they come to judgement as "suggestions" that "now would be a good time to do [something]", or "this is a good way to think about what you are now experiencing." Many instincts are triggered by aging, and many of these are well recognized. "Coming of Age" is all about changing instincts. There can be other triggers as well, such as getting married, and having children.
Instincts are suggestions to judgement. They can be followed, or not. If they are not followed, they will slowly fade, but while they are active they can be very powerful and pursuasive.
Our brains, like computer systems, have different kinds of memories. Some are quick retrieval and some are slower. Like computer systems, the brain is pretty good about making memories from the various memory systems come up to the conscious level seamlessly (transparently is another term), but there are some times when it can't. One common piece of information that is usually "archived" is our internal "map" of the world. This is why if you approach someone who is not walking around or working in an information booth and ask them for directions, they take a while to give you an answer. At first "they know they know", but only later can they actually tell you the information.
What is happening is the brain usually stores our map in some kind of archive. When we get ready to go some where, the brain knows we will need our map, and part of getting ready is having the brain transparently pull our map out of archive and put it in ready memory. It stays in ready memory until we finish our trip.
When someone comes up and asks directions, the brain is surprised, so it takes time for it to get ready to do "map stuff." The "I know I know this." feeling is what is called in computer terminology a "pointer" to the information. You have a pointer in your brain to the map, but the map itself is stored where it can't be reached by active memory.
Other things get stored as well. I remember being approached one day as I walked out a restaurant after lunch. The person came up and said, "Hi." and we proceeded to engage in small talk. I knew I knew this person, but I could not, for the life of me, remember anything about him! I was in Provo, so my brain was actively searching my Provo people archives... nothing... Novell (where I once worked) is in Provo... search Novell archives... nothing.... The longer our small talk went on, the more distressed I got inside. "Who was this person? Why can't I 'place' him?" The conversation went on for five minutes with me sounding like the 1970's "Doctor" computer program. (You say you had a good time in Florida? Excellent! You say your mother is feeling well? How wonderful!), then we said good bye to each other. It wasn't until he said, "Good bye." that he mentioned Toastmasters, a social club that I had belonged to... in Salt Lake City!
Ah!!! That was a key clue. Memories finally started flooding into my conscious! I was so relieved! I immediately remembered that he was a Toastmasters member, and that he was a very boring person. That's why I hadn't remembered him.
The odd part of this story is that for the next three days, I couldn't stop remembering new things about him. I remembered the speeches he had given, and that he was boring. I remembered where he worked, and that he was boring. I finally started yelling at my Archive, "Yes! Yes! Enough! I'm not going to meet him again, and yes, he's boring!" Nowadays I don't think about him at all, but this story is something I remember easily.
This is an example of the brain's archive system in action. And the moral is: If you know you know something, just wait, it will come to you.
Play a sport is almost by definition a high performance activity, particulary if it's a competitive sport. Both the mind and the body must be tuned to the activity. Lets talk about what thinking changes occur as a person masters a sport.
The first stage of mastering a sport is being a beginner. At this stage neither the brain or the body are really sure what to do. Hint: It's a novel situation, which means the judgement level is going to be very busy. What the judgement level is busy doing is training the morality, habit and reflex levels what to do. The judgement level says, "Do it this way..." and proceeds to do a very slow clumsy imiation of what should be done. After judgment does this a few times, the other layers start to say, "Yeah.. yeah... I get the idea... let me try." and a person starts to get better.
Then comes the long and tedious part of mastering a sport: the practice, practice, practice. Practice is all about getting the morality, habit and reflex levels to handle the various sport tasks effieciently, so that the judgement level can get out of the picture. It takes practice, practice, practice because there's a lot of experimenting that must go on, and there's a lot that the lower levels have to learn.
Then comes the long and tedious part of mastering a sport: the practice, practice, practice. Practice is all about getting the Morality, Habit and Reflex levels to handle the various sport tasks efficiently, so that the Judgment level can get out of the picture. It takes practice, practice, practice because there's a lot of experimenting that must go on, and there's a lot that the lower levels have to learn.
Once a sport is mastered, a person can play "head's up ball". The Judgment level can analyze what's happening around the player, while Morality and Habit take care of the routine matters such as body position, ball control, and where to move next.
A person is playing, and doing pretty well... then the big moment comes... and Judgment loses it's nerve. It says, "You Morality and Habit guys haven't practiced long enough. I'm going to handle this!" and it does, and for the critical moment the player gets Judgment level slow and clumsy again. The player has "choked", and all his or her teammates groan in despair. With experience, and more practice, practice, practice, Judgment layer gets smart, and stays out of the way even at tense moments.
Panic Thinking happens when the brain is faced with a difficult, tradeoff situation. It faces a situation that is both novel and must be reacted quickly to. If the brain senses that it is experiencing something new, then Judgment must handle it. But, as we discussed earlier, Judgment thinking is slow and clumsy. If Judgment senses the situation is an emergency and requires fast thinking, then it switches into Panic Thinking mode, and does it's best to imitate Morality thinking's speed.
In Panic Thinking mode what Judgment does is shut much of itself down. It does this by quickly focusing down on one goal that must be accomplished... just one. Once the goal is picked Judgment then ignores all sensory input that isn't directly related to accomplishing "the one goal."
This is why people do crazy things when they are in emergency conditions. A famous story of crazy action is of a mother who runs out of a burning house. Once she is out, and a bit safe, she yells, "My baby!" and runs back in. So far, so good... a noble and heroic action... except her baby was on the lawn crying at her feet. The Panic Thinking explanation is that while the mother was in Panic Thinking mode, her brain had ignored the sensory input concerning the crying baby -- the mother simply hadn't noticed.
Panic mode thinking comes in two flavors, the short term and the long term. The short term mode is attached to the adrenaline rush that comes with an immediate crisis, such as getting out of a burning building. The long term flavor comes with being in a long-term threatening situation, such as being a soldier in a war zone.
Both conditions produce a focusing down of judgement. In both conditions judgement is ready to make "snap decisions" and comfortable with getting them implemented in a hurry, and in both conditions, the choices made during the panic will often look very silly and very expensive when the panic subsides.
The difference is long term panic thinking is done without any linkage to an adrenaline surge.
Examples of panic thinking don't come up often in real life, but when they do they are usually vivid. Here are some examples from my life.
When I was attending Dixie College in St. George, Utah, I lived in a rambling, two-story apartment building in the center of town. I was on the second floor. One Friday a first floor tenant left for a weekend trip, but not before he or she had let a lit cigarette fall between the cushions of their couch. For a day and a half, the couch smoldered undiscovered. I had been in and out of the apartment building several times on Saturday, and I remember thinking, "My, the windows in this hallway are sure dirty." and "Boy! Someone in here is smoking pretty hard!" The thought that there was a fire in one of the apartments never crossed my mind.
I was at home that evening, studying, when the smell of smoke in my room rose sharply. Then I thought, "Fire?" and I started getting scared. I opened the door to the hall, found it filled with smoke, and I shut the door. "Fire!!" I thought. "What do I do now!" The adrenaline surged through me.
"OK, I'm leaving. What goes with me?" And I quickly ran through my mind what I would take: Clothes... no, stereo... no, Wallet... have it, Cat... YES! And I looked for the cat. I gave myself one search of the apartment for the cat, then I would leave. I knew where the emergency exit was, and it was four feet from my door, so I didn't think getting lost in the smoke would be a problem.
I found the cat, and I was very, very careful to approach it calmly, so it wouldn't run off and hide. I got it, and I was very, very careful not to crush it with my adrenaline-surcharged grip.
I walked into the smoke-filled hall, turned left, took two steps and opened the door which lead onto a large porch that was the roof of part of the first floor. This was my emergency exit. Good, the door opened easily! Surprise, there was a screen door! I started to open that... it was stuck... I rattled it... just rattled it, mind you... it came off at the hinges! Yes, I was adrenaline-surcharged, all right! I walked outside to the safety of the porch, carrying a black kitten in one hand, and a screen door in the other. I was a sight! But Task A was complete: I and the cat were out of the apartment and in relative safety. Judgment would now let me define a Task B, if needed.
I put the cat and the door down -- no need to risk more adrenaline-related damage -- and I walked to the edge of the porch to see where I would jump down, if I had to jump down.
The apartment landlord was in the parking lot, and so was a firetruck. Good! I didn't have to worry about telling someone about the fire. The landlord was shouting at me, "Don't Jump! Don't Jump!"
At the time that seemed like a most curious thing for the landlord to be telling me to do. I would decide if jumping was necessary, not him.
The Landlord and I talked a little bit -- he in the parking lot, me on the porch/roof -- I don't remember exactly what was said, but I determined that the fire was in only one room, I was not at risk, I would not have to leave the building that night, and I wouldn't have to jump. Not quite immediately, I stopped looking for the best spot for jumping down.
I was relieved... and I quickly got the shakes. I had been really, really scared. My First Response Therapy for that scary experience was to find my camera in the apartment, and start shooting pictures of the event. I shot pictures of the firefighters, and the burned room, and I felt better.
That was my most vivid experience dealing with an Acute Panic situation. I got scared, I got an adrenaline rush, I focused on getting out with my cat, I succeeded, and I determined that that was all I had to do. As the panic subsided, I helped it subside more quickly by doing something very familiar to me: shooting pictures of things I am interested in, in this case, the cause of my panic.
In 1968 I was told I would be spending a year in Vietnam... an all-expenses-paid trip, courtesy of the US Army. It is only in retrospect that I realize what a Panic situation I was headed into.
My year in Vietnam was a Panic situation because it was both novel and dangerous. I knew there were times when I was going to have to act quickly, and those times would come in a place and a situation that was strange to me. So, Judgment was going to be carrying much of the load, but Judgment would have to make quick choices. When you have to make quick choices, and you can't use Sport Thinking, it's Panic Thinking.
Ninety percent of war is pretty routine and boring, so no difference shows up between regular thinking and Panic thinking. But I remember one time when it did. Our outfit went to the shooting range to do a routine practice in shooting our weapons. At the shooting range, we were doing our practice next to an Aussie outfit that was doing their routine practice in tossing hand grenades. They had a big pit built into the earthen berm that was the backstop for the shooting range, and they would toss their grenades into that pit.
They were doing their thing, looking bored, and we were doing our thing, looking bored, until one of their people said something like, "I missed!" and another shouted, "Loose grenade!" In less than a second... less than a second! Everyone in both groups was on the ground with their heads covered. Everyone! Even though this was a novel situation, a loose grenade at a rifle shooting range, no one stayed standing. No one said anything like, "What should I do?"
The grenade went off, and everyone got up, dusted themselves off a bit, then continued doing what they had been doing... looking not quite so bored, but definitely not spooked, either.
This was life in Vietnam, and Judgment had a different role to play than it did when a person was a civilian in the USA. This is an example of long-term Panic Thinking.
A year is a long time. During that year, Panic Thinking became a habit. When I returned from Vietnam, I did not return to normal USA thinking immediately. It was a slow process. I remember an incident that happened two or three years later. I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike leaving New York City. I was in a small sports car surrounded by huge, rumbling semi-trucks when one of them blew a tire. What I heard was an explosion, and I ducked... deep... it was not the safest of things to do in such circumstances, but in this instance I survived without further incident. The interpretation of the noise as an explosion, and the action of ducking were relics of Vietnam thinking.
Just as going to Vietnam in 1968 was novel and dangerous for me, the flying of jet planes into the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon in 2001 was novel and dangerous for the people of New York and the people of the Bush Administration. It is not surprising that the Administration focused down, and it's not surprising that a lot of the American public supported them as they did so.
It is not surprising, but it is disappointing, and their actions became classic Panic actions. They were actions that felt quite reasonable at the time, but in retrospect look like huge, expensive mistakes. This transformation of action taken from looking quite reasonable and decisive at the time to silly and expensive in retrospect is the main hallmark of panic thinking.
Can an experience be just too novel, too strange, for the brain to deal with? I believe so. Here are two examples from my life.
Once when I was a teenager, my parents complained to no one in particular that our dog "begged" too much -- it would move around after dinner looking sad at people, hoping that someone would give it food. I thought, "Hmm... maybe I can fix that. Maybe if I feed the dog something bad-tasting instead of something good tasting, it will give up on begging." The bad-tasting treat I prepared for my dog was a morsel of hot sauce-covered meat. When the dog came begging, I gave it the meat.
The dog clearly didn't like it, but to my amazement it continued to beg. I gave it another piece, and one more after that. Then I stopped. I was getting kind of spooked, but even after the third piece, the dog was ready to take another! How could this be?
A week later the dog was begging, so I fixed up another piece of hot sauce meat. This time, all I had to do was offer the meat, and the dog ran away! Ah hah! It had learned... but it had taken time.
I saw this happen a second time years later when a different dog of mine first encountered a skunk. That first encounter was comic. The dog acted like it didn't have a clue what was happening when the skunk sprayed it with stink the first time, so it kept going after the skunk. It barked at it! The skunk obligingly sprayed it again. The second spray blinded my dog, so it finally gave up... and came running to me for solice!
"Whoa! Stay away!" I laughed. I spent the rest of the morning cleaning stink off the dog and me.
The dog hadn't learned that day, but two months later, when a skunk we never saw left some skunk stink near the house, the dog got visibly nervous. It had learned, but it had taken time.
These are examples of a situation being so novel that even Judgement can't figure out what to do. In the first case, my dog had never experienced me, its trusted master, giving it tainted food. In the second, the dog had never experienced what a skunk can do. In both cases Judgement was as clueless about the correct action to take as the rest of the brain was. But, with time, Judgement figured the situation out.
This phenominon explains why people watching one-of-a-kind events, such as robberies or car accidents, can be unreliable about what they saw. The event was just too novel for their brains to record well at the time.
Likewise, when people mock President Bush for sitting around for seven minutes doing nothing when he heard about the second jet hitting the World Trade Center, they are forgetting that those WTC jets were the first suicide hijackings the world had ever witnessed. The first! There had been nothing like that event ever before in history. That whole disaster was simply too novel to comprehend at the time... by anyone.
What can a person do to avoid panic thinking? The simplest answer is transform it into Sports Thinking. Practice unusual events so that they are not novel. This is the reason school children do fire drills. If a real fire comes along, students and teachers can use Sports Thinking to get themselves out of a building quickly, rather than having to rely on unpredictable Panic Thinking.
Another example of transforming Panic Thinking into Sports Thinking comes from the autobiography of Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot. He writes that before he flew a plane he always read up on it. He read the manuals, particularly those that described features and emergency procedures. In so doing he was building up his Morality library so that Judgment could call on Morality more, and he could do more sports thinking in emergencies.
"I believe! I believe with all my heart and soul!"
A person can believe strongly in something, but that doesn't make it true. When a person believes strongly in something, and it's not true, that person is living with a delusion.
There are also people who profess to believe in something, but really don't. Such people are called hypocrites.
Is there a relation between hypocrisy and delusion? I believe so. I also believe there is a relation between delusion and lifestyle.
Many people say they don't like hypocrites. They don't like hearing that someone is saying one thing; professing to believe it; and then thinking and acting in a different way. But there are some professions that are notorious for supporting hypocrisy, so hypocrisy is not detrimental to survival in all cases of the human condition. Likewise, delusion seems to have survival value in many instances of the human condition.
One example of delusional thinking producing a positive result is Christopher Columbus' belief that he could sail from Spain to India. Christopher Columbus was enthusiastically convinced that the world was much smaller than his contemporary Spanish scientists calculated it to be, and his enthusiasm resulted in funding. He never made it to India (his contemporaries were right), but he got lucky, and instead of starving to death crossing a combined Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, he discovered a new continent.
Is there a relation between hypocrisy and delusion? I believe so. I believe that hypocrisy is an uncomfortable state of mind -- few people wake up in the morning looking forward to spending their day bald-faced lying. So what happens with time is that hypocrisy is transformed into delusion. Delusion is a comfortable state of mind. The mind will remain comfortable with a delusion until "harsh reality", in the form of some personal experience, conflicts with the delusion.
This is why people who have been powerful for a long time tend to have weird ideas -- their power supports their delusions by insulating them from harsh reality experiences that would puncture their delusions. This is also the role of sycophants -- they help the powerful sustain their delusions.
The body has a thinking stack. It does so to improve the performance of the thinking process. The fastest and simplest thinking is reflex, next comes habit, then comes morality, and finally the most complex, slowest and clumsiest kind of thinking is judgment thinking. Judgment thinking is slow and clumsy, but it's the only kind of thinking that can deal with new circumstances.
Judgment thinking is assisted by perceptions, memories and instincts. Memories are what we learn from experience. Instincts are suggestions that come to Judgment without any previous experience.
When a person gets into a situation that is both novel and requires quick thinking, Judgment handles it, but Judgment tries to imitate Morality's speed, and goes into Panic Thinking mode.
Panic Thinking can be triggered either by quick events, such as trying to get out of a burning building, or it can be triggered by longer term events, such as going to war or witnessing a scary disaster.
Panic Thinking often produces some really ugly results, so, when possible, Sports Thinking -- practiced thinking -- should be used instead.
Hypocricy and delusion are both about dealing with condtions that are not real. In the case of hypocricy, the practitioner knows they are dealing with an unreality, in the case of delusion the practitioner does not. Hypocrisy is not a comfortable state of mind, so the successful hypocricy practioner's thinking will often evolve into delusion. Delusion is a comfortable state of mind, until some "harsh reality" intrudes.