Alternative Reality For Illusioned Humanity by Santosh Jha (books to read for teens txt) 📕

human brain has much more developed and evolved pre-frontal cortex, which has much advanced capacity to process information in metaphoric or representational format or mode. In simple terms; human brain has this capacity to create an understanding that something can or does ‘represent’ other thing, or something can be accepted as a symbol/metaphor for other thing. This very capacity made languages possible for humans. Science believes, this representational faculty of human brain probably also engenders a strong sense of Self, ‘I’ or what we may call the Consciousness. Language, and for that matter this sense of ‘I’ or consciousness is also a strong emergent sense and feel of the ‘representation’ or symbol of the collective and cooperative information processing.

It is probably not that humans have this facility as exclusive. Chimps also have pre-frontal cortex but it is only 17 percent of their brain whereas human brain has 33 percent of pre-frontal cortex as compared to total brain size. But, science believes, this difference creates some ability of representational or metaphoric processing of information, which the human brain states receives. This is somehow exclusive. It is said, the very early human species, we call the cave men, could create cave paintings 10-15, 000 years back, but the chimps could not even in contemporary time! Why blame the chimps; other animals also do not delve into any painting skills. This also indicates to the fact that this probably exclusive faculty is the critical energy behind all arts and artistic expressions humans indulge in. However, still, we cannot say it is exclusive to humans as whales, even dolphins have complex sound and body movement patterns, which they clearly use as mode of communication for different situations. This is also a language as different sound patterns have different meanings and signals attached to them. Moreover, we must not discredit animals, birds and many species in oceans for being ‘un-artistic’. The birds have marvelous dance patterns and sound patterns, which they use for mating communications. They are pure art with great symmetry. The group movements of dolphins, whales and many other sea species are artistic too and they communicate something they all understand. This too is representational and metaphoric ability. But yes, humans have it most sophisticated and most complex. Humans have the brain size as well as the specific portion of the brain that matters. This hypothesis however, must also factor in many other aspects, which might influence how humans perceive Reality, apart from this hypothetical difference in prefrontal cortex.

Moreover, scientists have also begun to understand that the developed prefrontal cortex and its dominant share in brain plexus facilitates something, which probably stands humans higher in the linear progression of evolution from animals. It is like a major step or jump on top of the linear evolution of humans from animals. This facility is what the scientists say the prefrontal cortex does as ‘supervisor’, ‘organizer’ or ‘witness’ of the brain. The cortex part of the brain probably witnesses and mediates in the information processing of other parts of the brain. As the cortex does so, it probably engenders this sense or feel of Self, ‘I’ or consciousness. We all have the sense that what we accept as ‘I’ or self, feels like something ‘within’ us, which presides over the body and mind and even regulates them. This special feel of humans is probably the exclusive facility their brains can engender. We also know, this very feel of Self or ‘I’ is the most calamitous element of human life-living, responsible for most ills and troubles of human society and cultures. Probably; this mega theatre of Intuitiveness is an emergence of this ‘witness’ brain state.

Anyway, we discussed it all just to arrive at this critical hypothesis that human systems, with its small but crucial difference in body-mind make up or genetic expressions, becomes massively different from their animal counterparts. With our difference in the way we humans process information from external as well as internal milieus, we could create a complex world of thoughtfulness, languages, artistic expressions and cultures. Most importantly, we created a rather strong sense of personal and subjective Self, the ‘I’, which may be accepted as the sole trouble monger of the cosmos. It all happened because we did just one small thing differently – we processed the ‘Information’ differently. In other words, we humans are the rare ‘Media’ of Information processing, which not only processed Information but also created a massive and complex plexus of self-created parallel information – the Representational or Metaphoric Information. Theoretically; what we are doing in this eBook so far is all metaphoric! Phew…!

What probably has happened in the last 10,000 years of organized life-living and cultural evolution of humans that we have become Slaves of or Prisoner of our own created metaphoric and representational Realities. We are prisoners of the same facility, which separated us from animals and stood us way above them in linear evolutionary chain. We are prisoners of our own language, we are prisoners of our own cultures, we are slaves of our own systems and most importantly; we are slaves of our own consciousness. We created metaphors of Reality with the information we processed and this ‘metaphor’ or Symbolical Reality became so colossal, complex, organized, controlled and now conflated-depraved that we finally became prisoners and slaves of it. This hugely powerful and massively brilliant brain facility of ‘Thoughtfulness’, which is like the shining singular instrument to create infinite possibilities to humans, became so enslaved by the metaphoric realities and representational truths that it has now become the sole weapon of human self-destruction and annihilation of the ambient milieus and systems of humanity. We need to understand that…

Scientists assign great value to one big difference between human system and animal system that is – how very differently human and animal new born take time to develop and mature. Human new born is probably the only one in the entire millions of species of earth, which takes months and even years, before it could begin to perform all roles and tasks that a grown up does. A human new born can’t even move its head at the time of birth. In sharp contrast, most animal new born stand up on their legs, move around with its mothers and start doing most things for its own survival, within a few hours of its birth. What this big difference means for humans?

This area is also still open to scientific philosophization as no definitive theory is available yet. It is hypothesized that because of long duration of developmental cycle of human new born, it is dependent on its parents, immediate family, local milieus and cultures for whatever Information it may receive for brain processing. As we talked earlier, the human child is a ‘tourist’ forced to opt for a ‘packaged’ and ‘guided’ tour plan for its stay on earth. Therefore, a human new born, symbolically or even pragmatically, is a ‘slave’ of an information plexus, which it has no control over and no Free Will to choose. This is in stark difference to an animal new born, who freely moves in its commonly available natural milieu with all other animals and has direct, first-hand and unfettered access to all information. It also has more personal space and ‘Free Will’ for opting out choices, which it may not avail, because of strong and entrenched wired instincts of collective living discipline.

Most importantly, the scientists hypothesize that because a human new born is ‘fed’ selective, skewed and already metaphoric Information; it grows and evolves into a young person with pronounced subjective and personalized consciousness, Self or sense of ‘I’. The animal newborn however has more generic consciousness, much in consonance and symmetry with most others in its species or herd. This ‘specific’ consciousness, with iron-identity and pronounced subjective sense of being, makes it difficult for a grown up human adult to form assimilation and integration with other fellow humans in larger and diverse milieus of humanity. The ‘enslaved’ consciousness, with restricted, localized and ethnicalized metaphoric information base has seeds of conflict, chaos and confusion in human societies and cultures in contemporary times. Worse; this slave consciousness is susceptible to have different timeline and different sense of presentness and contemporaneousness.

In that sense, humans are destined to evolve into a conscious being, who are more and more a ‘prisoner’ or ‘slaves’ within layers of ‘walls’ they themselves create. It is primarily because the human new born acquires consciousness not in open-innate milieu but in humanly erected House of subjective walls, having bricks and mortars of local, ethnic and deterministically subjective faith elements. This is what Buddha said after attaining wisdom. He probably emphasized on the need of dismantling the ‘walls’, which block the free flow of innate, unadulterated and unfettered Information. He probably emphasized on the need to ‘de-culture’ the mind consciousness and selective cognition of the depraved, situationed, superficial and restrictively representational Information, in the form of ambient culture and belief-systems.

There is a famous story about how dominant and populist cultures make people their slaves and make them behave as if they are prisoners of their own castles; not even aware about the slavery; rather happily conceited about this status of slave. The story goes like – There was a German philosopher, in the late 19th century, who lived in England. He was a bachelor and therefore, every day, he would come to a tavern and would have his dinner there. Every day, he would arrive, take out a gold coin from his pocket and put it on the table. He would eat his dinner calmly and as he would finish, he would take the gold coin back in his pocket and go away. This was repeated for many months. The waiter, who served him, finally could not resist his curiosity and one day, as he grew in confidence with him, the waiter asked the German philosopher why he took out the gold coin from his pocket and why he took it back every day. The philosopher said, ‘I have resolved that I shall drop this gold coin in the charity box for church, hanging in the corner of the tavern, if any young man coming here would talk on a topic other than women and horses and that too the pedigreed ones. Six months have passed and that day has not come. Young men of different shades come but they only talk about women, horses and their pedigree. That is why this gold coin is not being put to charity and I have to take it back.’ The story exemplifies the slavery of humans, which their cultures land them in and they are not only unaware, but relish it.

In the case of Buddha, we find the same enslavement, when we enquire objectively about the then existing and predominant culture of ancient Indian civilization around 2500 years back, when he lived. We gather from history that the culture Buddha was born in and lived had turned hugely ritualistic and religion was monopolized by handful of wealthy priests, who had the propitiating patronage of powerful ruling oligarchs. More importantly, ethnicity and identities were very pronounced, resulting in perpetual inter-racial and inter-regional conflicts. Most importantly, general prosperity was sufficiently high and therefore, ‘artistic metaphorization’ of life-living had resulted in much abstract idealism and depraved practicalities, vitiating the overall sanctity and sanity of societal structures. The culture at best was of vitiated Information and therefore of abstracted reality. The assimilative symmetry and community cohesion was in shatters. This was precise backdrop for the enlightened Buddha to summarize in his first few words after he attained wisdom that humanity needed to break free of the ‘incarcerating walls’ of vitiated cognitions and depraved Reality. This situation we can see even in contemporary cultures. The enslavement is more pronounced and diversified in contemporary cultures. Buddha is long dead!

What we need to derive from the discussions so far is the very critical and cardinal idea of Liberty. Humanity thinks and unreasonably feels proud of the scammed reality that only