Abstract
This paper summarises the discrete phenomena of how ideas exist, their primary
role of shaping human circumstances, and how the human brain creates and uses
ideas. The paper then relates the factors considered to issues of human spirituality
and essence, stressing how humans as a species share a common underlying structure,
this underlying causal psyche the driving force of the expression of our existence
in the world in which we live.
Contents
Imagination and emergence of creativity
The neural system coupled with the model of psychology enables consciousness
as a ‘scratch pad’ upon which ideas can be created, manipulated, tested and
assessed prior to the individuals committing themselves to action.
In effect, what happens when events visualised or imagined the person invokes
the appropriate sensory/intellectual responses without the actual event occurring.
This can be viewed as the person synthesising Step 1 of the
diagram above. The person is now using their neurological systems as imagination
to create a simulation of a fart, as best we are able. This is much less than
the real thing, but gets close enough for us to view and consider the idea
and its implications.
As an aside, as a young man I had front teeth damaged, and they had to be
removed. It was in the age of nitrous oxide (laughing gas), this had such
an affect on me they had great difficulty in bringing me out to the induced
unconscious state. Then, for many years after, upon thinking of the incident
I could still distinctly smell the mask about my face with associated strong
feelings of fear, and anxiety. This an example of the system being able to
even reproduce smells under sufficiently extreme circumstances.
It is hard to imagine the circumstances of the first humans, the first homo-sapiens-sapiens.
It does not seem logical that they had the same language or comprehension,
as do we today. They did not have the thousands of years of shared understanding
of the events of their environment. Evidence of the emergence of understanding
can be seen in, say the emergence of perspective in art, or in the categorising
of events explored by Alexander Marshank8
(largely recording seasonal changes and moon phases from tens of thousands
of years ago). Whether or not the interpretation of the markings by Marshank
is right, within the theory developed here there has to be evidence in the
archaeological record of the very first steps of humans recording and categorising
events important to their survival. Marshank suggests his work is such evidence,
but if not, then there has to be others, for classification of events is the
only way ideas come to be, and long term memory while effective is helped
enormously by permanent records. This has to have had a beginning, and if
not Marshank, then there will be some other somewhere.
With the individual able create, store, remember and use ideas, and with the
first steps at socially sharing and recording of ideas, then in a few short
generations humankind is bound only by culture binding thought, and not by
the constraints of any environment which humans quickly learn to overcome.
Once ideas begun, then sub-categories could and would emerge. So a horse has
a head and tail. It then follows that a whole category is created of just
heads or tails. So there are horses head, reindeer head, human head, head
of enemy, and so on. Once categories and sub-categories created, then these
able to be combined, so a human head is put onto a horse to create a mythical
beast, imagined but never seen or sensed, human imagination reaching beyond
perception, but still rooted in the elements of perception.
I propose here that the initial steps in this process did involve clear sub-categories
being ‘re-located’ to create imaginative new structures and creatures. Evidence
of progression in painting styles and technique abound, and from this simple
beginning we see emerging the complexity of imagination we have today, with
humans overall far beyond merely ‘re-locating’ sub-categories or categories,
but defining and developing and seeing objects and structures for which there
is no physical counterpart, nor there ever will be.
The human spirit and the search for
a soul
My theory of the person (based upon the understanding of cause and the tools
of science that follow), and solution to the mind/body problem presented above
enable full explanation of all that is human, no other factors are required.
Specifically the theory does not include a soul. At an early stage of theory
development I pointed out the issue of soul was implicated, but by systematically
applying the tools to the system under study, then a soul would emerge as
a necessary component or it would not, there was no prejudice in either direction.
What eventuated was a theory offering full causal insight and understanding
that did not contain any element not already known and understood, and it
did not contain a soul. This does not mean necessarily it does not exist,
but it is definitely not needed to understand ourselves as a species (in fact
I go further, and suggest that the theory provides understanding of sentience
beyond merely human sentience, since it contains as its base the understanding
of ideas and how they arise and used in managing any and all environments).
The fact of a soul not arising in the analysis, nor needed for understanding
of people does leave several important issues to be explained.
While recovering from my heart attack some years ago in an Auckland Hospital (Greenlane), I was interviewed by two young medical interns. They were researching and interviewing people who should have died and did not. They had been conducting interviews for several years. After completing the interview, I asked what had they discovered? With some embarrassment, they stated that they had not got beyond the fact that some people had a greater will to live, not very scientific they added. Maybe not, I replied, but very human.
4. We have a spirit of great fighting quality, yet with others, not. Why and how?
These are the elements that make us human, the true central issues shaping a person. These things are not physical, nor biological, though they have profound biological consequences, at times determining who lives and who dies. When the will to live dies, so the body dies, and we die irrevocably, and irreversibly.
My theory of the person states categorically we are much, much more than the sum of our parts. The extension beyond our physiology is in our understanding, beliefs and feelings. Our spirit exists, but determined by most what we embrace, not by what we are born with. Within my understanding of people, their spirit is their core, but one created that we can nurture or we can ignore, at our peril. And when due or ready, we can also let it go, at which time life itself may go, certainly, any fullness of life is readily lost, if not life itself.
Spirituality as a quality of being
9
I would describe a spiritual person as one who has achieved the following.
These qualities are more than being at peace. More than the simplicity of meditation or any other tool and in the living elegance of such people all the elements in the model transcends themselves, the whole being immeasurably beyond the sum of its parts.
Such people are not always gentle, nor always kind. They may be passionate,
sensual, and sexual. They can and do choose to protest, being willing to destroy
false images to protect what they see as essential. But never is it done casually.
Living every moment precious seems to so fill their life that at the moment
of death they can be content. And when they feel their destiny fulfilled,
they are at peace with death and when it is due, do not unduly resist. But
when believing their life to have purpose yet unfulfilled, they resist death
with all their spirit and will.
Some years ago, the mother of my first wife, Mary was her name, died. I had grown up with Mary known her and been close to her for forty years; even after I divorced her daughter I was always welcome. I loved Mary. She was a person of boundless energy, committed to supporting and nurturing her family. Mary had been alone for decades; her husband had died peacefully in his sleep. The day before she died was a summer picnic with the whole extended family at a wonderful beach near Nelson. Mary was busy all day, full of life and lovingly embracing and being embraced by her two daughters, grand children, brothers, nieces, nephews and children. Mary died peacefully that night. My son, then early twenties, asked me why she died, it was a shock to him. I tried to explain she was full, her life virtually complete. Now perhaps it was coincidence, but then perhaps not. I do not think she would choose to die, but when it came, I do not think she would fight.
Just a year before, my own mother died, also called Mary. She had been very
sick for several years, but had fought hard to keep to life. She was emaciated,
and only a shadow of the woman she had been. I was out of town when she was
admitted to the local hospital. Upon visiting, I walked past the woman dozing
in the chair, not recognizing mum, she had deteriorated so far, so fast. We
talked, I told her I loved here, and said, “This is it mum, it’s time”, we
cried and held each other; she asked me to bring in my children next day,
which was a Sunday. I did, she perked up for them. Then early Monday morning
I received the phone call I knew would come, Mum was dead. Were Mum to return
right now, I have no more to say, it is all at peace.
My first real experience of death came with my father, who died many years
before. He had a stroke bought about by a rare brain disease itself due alcohol
abuse. I visited him this day, relations with dad had always been slightly
strained, I loved him, but we were not especially close. Dad felt life had
let him down, he was bordering bitter, and I knew not seeing a lot of point
to it. Sitting beside his hospital bed, I sensed he had something he wanted
to say, but it would not, did not come. He told me to go, to leave him he
needed to sleep he said. I arrived home, and as I walked up the step and through
the front door, I could hear the telephone. My wife was holding the phone
out to me as I rounded into the hall with her expression telling me all I
needed to know. Dad died as I drove home. Looking back, I became angry with
myself, I saw it, death lurking, he knew. I would recognise it again and did
with mum. Moment’s precious slipped by, and I have tried not to let that happen
to me again, although not always successfully. Were dad here, I have things
I would want to say even though I have made my peace with the moment passed.
These examples carry strong overtones of reality or choice therapy of William
Glasser, Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls, and the existential therapy of Irvin
Yalom and Rollo May10. In each, in
there own way, a key to understanding people is to understand their life place
or space, and the meaning of that for them. Issues of goals, purpose, meaning,
sense of destiny and relevance are all key aspects to understanding and otherwise
making sense of what people do and the psychic forces in them that sustain
or erode their experience and sustenance of their ongoing existence spiritually,
emotional, and physically.
My theory integrates these approaches to therapy, retaining the therapeutic
process and techniques, but offering a vastly improved theoretical rationale
for the application of the technique.
In February 2003 I attended the World Federation of Mental Health Conference
in Melbourne. There seemed to me two main themes, first focus on mental well
being11, and second, focus on the
abusive and degrading nature of much current mental health practice in most
parts of the world. An underlying issue pervading the conference and forging
much of the debate on both of these issues was the underlying medical nature
of existing rationales and theories of psychiatry (note, not psychology, which
was not given any great regard at this particular event). Cognitions can and
do result in firing of sensitised neurons, these in turn can raise adrenalin
levels, alter heart rate and have affects on other metabolic factors. This
alone establishes a clear mechanistic pathway whereby cognitions impact physical
well being. The over-developed psychiatric medical model of human cognition
is in need of overhaul, with the theory summarised here being a vastly improved
model.
One particular presenter, discussing stress and aging, presented some research
information on the relationship of religious beliefs to stress in life. It
showed that those of extreme religious belief, zealots, were most prone to
stress, as were those of no religious belief, while those with sincere, but
sensibly held religious beliefs were most buffered from the impact and affects
of stress. No rationale was offered, and the discussion struggled to make
sense of this information from any physical medical point of view. My model
offers a ready explanation: zealots become stressed when they cannot force
upon the world their point view, and those with no religious belief are more
prone to existential disenfranchisement from their own existence, compounding
any specific stress situations. Those with sincere, but ‘normal’ levels of
religious belief are buffered from such existential disenfranchisement with
the simply answer to ‘why am I here?’ as “God’s will’: If they believe that,
then many existentialism issues will not impact them, or not so to the same
degree. Cognitions and life experience, all closely tied to issues normally
referred to as ‘faith’ and ‘hope’, but with real, explicable affects on health
and mental well being. I am not religious, but regard it as crucial to have
a faith and belief system greater than oneself, one that gives point and purpose
to one’s life, and this being one way in which we nurture our spirit, the
driving force of our will to be and expression our existence.
In yet another example, I have known Pete for twenty-eight years, a long-standing
good friend, one on whom I could depend. In February 2003 we lunched, Pete
myself, and our partners. Started the New Year, after not seeing each other
over the holidays. Then, in April there was a car smash, Pete crossed the
centre line and collided head on, his wife was killed and he suffered badly
damaged legs, and a severe blow to the head. For the first month or so in
hospital, he was recovering and grieving quite badly, as would be expected.
During this phase he would say,” I killed her”, and would cry uncontrollably
for long periods. I would often sit and hold his hand while he recovered himself,
which he always seemed to do when I was there, but from what I was told, not
so when others present. Then after about two months, the nature of his psychic
state changed, he would talk as if his wife was still alive, that he had talked
with her just recently. He would also talk as if he had been to work for the
day. Upon being challenged, he would say, “Oh yea”, and cry. Then in just
a minute or two, he invited me to come to his home and have dinner with him
and his wife later in the week. His grief would disappear entirely. He was
tested, and it was found that his memory had suffered and there were signs
of neural deterioration some prior to the crash. Within two months, the person
he had been was gone, in its place a person I did not understand, or know.
To him, she was not dead, and all efforts to challenge this view had been
given up. He was slow, depressed in movement, speech, attitude and appearance:
His spirit broken, no purpose, no future, only an imagined present, in which
he works each day (despite the fact he is in a home), and him and his partner
having marriage problems so she is not here today. The official cause is elderly
dementia, medical model. On the last visit, six months after the accident,
he was quite fluent, he cried much, when asked if he wanted to talk about
it, he said he did not know, and did not think he could cope. We left distressed
for Pete, but feeling helpless, powerless. Somewhere, somehow, I feel, he
must find in him the resources to fight his grief and his guilt. It seems
to me that there is unquestioned neural damage, this compounding and being
compounded by the cognitions and existential trauma. Medical models for human
existence are simply, painfully inadequate, and too often allow psychiatrists
too much latitude in one direction, medical dominance, an overbearing attitude
of we know best; and enable them to do far, far too little in the directions
that could and would help people, bringing back to them some life, albeit
restricted by medical circumstances (in this regard, neural deterioration
is similar in my model to say, being quadriplegic, an enormous difficult life
problem, but not impossible).
Closing remarks
We are more than our cells and biochemistry, more than our genes and our upbringing.
Beyond either of these are our choices, rooted in ideas and the evolved ability
of us, as a species to see in our minds beyond our environment, to see good
and evil, right and wrong, and with effort to chose for ourselves and stay
with our choice, should we have the strength and courage.
With these papers is set the new path, soundly and deeply grounded in the
understanding of the environment, its differentiation the very source of our
thought, of our ideas with these the very core of our spirit making us different
from all known species. In the understanding of ideas, lies the essential
insight into cause and the tools for effective creation of meaningful theory
and models in social science that take us far beyond statistics and mere conjunctions
built on math.
It is our cognition that makes us what or who we are, not our neurochemistry.
And in the models offered lie better integration of the necessary nature of
our cognitions and their causal impact on us, and in this understanding comes
the insight into how to help those in need and how to build and enhance the
life and existence of all.
Most of all, in these new models lays the potential for us, all of us to see
the common structures that make us all the same. The essence of spirit lies
in everyone, and the driving forces of this spirit are the same in us all.
Differences of race, creed, and politics merely shallow variations on the
true underlying structures that gave meaning to these common threads, that
meaning being minor variations on the themes across cultures giving rise to
a mere appearance of differences. In the models may we find the true understanding
that we are all the same, we merely express it differently.
Notes