January 3, 2010

Are we not the most beautifully designed host for the primitive bacteria and virus. Could it be that we have been cultivated as the perfect host for the first life on the planet. What value does the Virus have...or the bacteria (OK so the bacteria helps to break down other matter). The virus really serves no known purpose except to annoy us. They simply use our cells to replicate themselves. Bacteria exist to survive off of us and other organisms. We could very well be nothing more that the ideal host for the ultimate survival of the virus and bacteria. Are we nothing more than a host for what gave birth to us!! Was this the master plan of the DNA of that simple organism?

September 3, 2009

More thoughts...I have come to believe that as a species we have evolved with two fundamental flaws. One is speech and the other is philosophical thought. Now this may be a little tongue in cheek but if you understand the millions of years of evolution of our primitive brain and the somewhat recent evolution of the thinking neocortex it creates many of the complex problems we face today...

The primitive part of our brain that connects us to the rest of the mammal world has a number of preset functions that served us well when life was so much more basic. How do we outsmart our lunch to eat...and outsmart other predators to not become lunch? Understand our surroundings so we don't fall off a cliff...or how to find or create a safe, dry place to live.

This part of our brain has a difficult time disbelieving. We experience something...it registers as a memory...and until we experience something else that contradicts the first experience, it remains as an absolute belief.

Our primitive brain has no room for ambiguity. Something either is or it isn't.

As our neocortex evolved, this folded mass of brain matter that seems to act as an intermediary for our senses, took on the ability to reason. If something didn't make sense...if we didn't have an existing understanding of something, or it was beyond our current knowledge, our neocortex had to think about it. The unfortunate thing is there were/are so many things that we don't have answers to.

Our brain is a disambiguating machine. It needs to have answers. It seems there is little room up there to store something in the file cabinet titled "I don't have the answer for that!" So what did/does it do? Well it makes things up...sounds easy enough.

To make things worse we developed the ability to speak...now we could talk to others in our social network. "Did you see that?" "Ya...what was it?" The guy that was considered the big kahuna would make something up and the rest would say..."Oh...OK'" And now the brain had something concrete to hold onto. And once it holds a given belief it does not want to let it go. After all, that's how the primitive brain survived...it learned something and held onto that thought to make it through another encounter.