“Brief Analysis on Human Mind”
This essay is written to gain a greater understanding of the human mind through comprehensive analysis. I attempt to do this in light of the principle that with greater understanding comes greater progress.
Our mind is complex, and it is by no means reducible to any single term. However, it is not an entirely isolated or intangible concept. Though every mind is exclusive to each individual, it is also simultaneously accessible by all human beings. This fact makes the analysis of the mind somewhat objective and practical.
To access the nature of the mind, it is practical to seek references from scientific knowledge. Humans’ neuro-physiological framework has theoretically emerged over a million years of evolution. From as early as five hundred million years ago, cells started to interact with each other through chemo-electrical processes. After some time, they formed a bundle of neurons around eyes and mouths that signaled and processed external stimuli through simple action-reaction. Around this time, neurogenic breakthroughs occurred through a series of mutations that enabled spare genes to combine in greater permutations. This precipitated the specialization and sophistication of neuron connections where information was dealt with greater detail and complexity. It was this time that gave rise to the very basic frameworks of the human brain, such as optic tectum, amygdala, basal ganglia, and Hypothelamic-Pituitary-Axis, whose forms became altered yet still exist in humans today. The amygdala and basal ganglia (related to emotions, fear, social behaviors; voluntary movement, habits, motor planning, and execution) remain as powerful involuntary reaction centers crucial for human brains. The same is true for the Hypothelamic-Pituitary Axis, a chain of hierarchical endocrine control systems that manipulates the neuro-physiological response to external stimuli, such as danger or social cues. Thanks to these neurological systems working in conjunction, human ancestors were able to successfully react against a series of survival events, such as fight-or-flight situations and reproductive interplay. From here, one could understand that humans’ neurological systems have emerged out of the practical functionalities in response to the natural external environment.
Another important development that occurred in the brain was the formation and enlargement of the neocortex about one-hundred-forty million years later in the mammalian period, the outer layer of grooves that managed higher-level brain activities. These activities included cognitive function, sensory perception, attention, problem-solving, decision-making, and more. Such development of the outer cortex was accompanied by increased meat consumption, habitual usage of fire, structural change in the body, and the development of complex social interactions. Increased consumption of meat and habitual usage of fire might have contributed to the increased energy consumption for the brain increase. The structural change in the body and the development of complex social interactions might have contributed to increased overload in forming complex neurological connections. Due to the development of the neocortex, the human brain became capable of integration, coordination, and processing of complex information and motor outputs, leading to the creation of tools, the development of language, and the genesis of civilization in the coming days. For example, further development in the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia laid the foundation for language production and comprehension about one hundred thousand years ago. Due to the increased efficiency and sophistication in communication between humans, the ability to speak and understand the language became highly favorable for survival. Proper communication through language presupposed the ability to identify, differentiate, and connect patterns in response to various phenomena in nature, which was highly regarded for survival. Through language, humans began to describe and exchange useful information and patterns to form collective knowledge to a degree that was impossible before. The desire to store and operate on a massive amount of information further prompted the creation of a writing system, which held society in greater order by controlling people in the bureaucracy. Such evolutionary and social origin of language from the development of the neocortex infers several truths about humans’ conscious being.
First, language manifests a stable integration of individual consciousness within a social context, where the essence of consciousness is self-awareness, which presupposes the ability to differentiate something from nothing explicitly or implicitly. For example, to recognize oneself is to know the difference between what “I” am and “what I am not”. This requires the conscious being to dissect the world into different classifications of objects with different meanings in relationship to each other. Here, identifications and subdivisions of objects are crucial because a greater and more detailed differentiation allows a higher resolution of reality that often comes with greater usefulness. The neurological characteristic of the human brain provides the physical capacity to stably integrate information by mediating the perception, attention, and memory to build a coherent mind of being both consciously and unconsciously. The explicit result of this system is enunciated by a language, whereas the implicit result of this system is perceived by intuition. Such neurological components of this system might have created feedback that adapts and reinforces the processing of information to the surrounding environment. However, one has to understand that using language is not purely individualistic, as it is very difficult or might not even be evolutionary beneficial to formulate own independent literary system by oneself. Rather, language has to be taught and trained continuously by constant social interactions, as proven by the critical period theory in childhood learning. Such inevitable connections between individuality and sociality of mind might also explain the deeply anthropogenic and social nature of the human psyche. At any rate, with the increasing power of intelligence, humans have continuously transformed their society with rules, innovations, and perspectives, which affected the very individuals of the society simultaneously.
Second, the human mind is both the subject and the ruler of the psychological system that has been conditioned for survival over millions of years of history where the system itself is by no means perfect. For millions of years, the human body has undergone various structural, physiological, and neurological changes to survive against the ever-volatile law of nature. In this sense, humans have always been subjected to various natural forces that require them to pay close attention to their bodies’ survival cues to prioritize survival in their lifestyles and society. However, as humans advanced their technology and grew the ability to imagine the world metaphysically, they started to deviate from acting strictly by an organic system conditioned by the law of nature. Rather, they started to create their models of the world and actively shape the world by their desire. For example, as nature does not grow crops in such a stable and localized manner, humans changed their lifestyle and environment to fit their need to grow crops stably, the so-called agricultural revolution. Another example is the emergence of ancient animistic religions, where the common characteristics of such religions were attempting to resolve the complexity and uncertainty of natural conditions by sacrificing valuable objects to powerful deities. Humans believed that by pleasing supernatural beings, they could gain minor control over important natural events such as weather, which are crucial for growing crops. Likewise, civilizations worked in a way that conforming to the rule was more important to survival than pursuing the actual survival itself in the long term. For example, being forced to build a pyramid in Egypt or to pay taxes in Rome was not imperative to survive at all in a natural setting. However, thousands of men have done it because a powerful ruler claimed so, establishing the imaginary contract between people through a powerful centralized authority and lawful punishments. These major social premises were often supported by technological advancement and moral doctrines of major philosophies and religions. In summary, agriculture, religion, and social rules were all the byproducts of humans attempting to build artificial reality. Good or bad, such transformation from natural reality to artificial reality demands humans to pay close attention to society’s cues on what should be and what should not be regardless of the natural conditions. Neuro-physiologically speaking, this meant more neurological connections to understand the complex social realities and more inhibition of imminent survival cues, which happens to be an active role of the prefrontal cortex. This was possible because though the physical system of humans was built to suit survival in a natural setting, (1) the social reality and species-level preservation of genes were as important as the direct pursuit of the maintenance of individual genes for survival, and (2) the infinite possibility of manifestation of human’s intricate emotional, behavioral, logical systems ended up being acting more complicatedly in the artificially created world. Neurologically speaking, this is related to brain plasticity, where the structure of the brain changes to match the function required in altering conditions of surrounding conditions.
Third, humans are imperfect beings who constantly hypothesize about the world to reconcile with the capricious nature of being. Here, the word “imperfect” is not to suggest an absolute metric of perfectness, but to note that human tends to label themselves liable to certain sets of values that they are unknowingly in pursuit of. As previously stated, humans tend to pursue meaning, even before the tendency to survive, as they outgrew the rules of evolution through the unprecedented growth of the brain, because regardless of one’s existential purpose, making sense of “something” over other things and deriving “certain” conclusions over other conclusions is the most crude way that humans can interact with the world as existing beings, where each feeling, thought, and act can have different values than another whether it be passive or active. In such an explanation, nihilism is also not an exception because concluding that there is no meaning or conclusion itself is just another form of conclusion, which does not help at all improve the quality of being, since nihilism means to give up interacting with the world in the most fundamental way that humans do, and it is also to counteract the very innate value system that has existed in the human psychological system. Due to this nature, being itself can be very complicated. Being is explained explicitly through consciousness affected by involuntary assumptions followed by involuntary conditions that simultaneously change by involuntary influences. Simply say, humans have vague, incomplete, volatile, and nonlinear control and awareness over possible sets of realities by the scale of favorability. This is problematic because any discrepancy between the hypothesis and the real world is a risk of negative feedback, whether it be pain, social condemnation, or unfavorable circumstances. Moreover, the reality itself is simply too complex to be encapsulated in a completely comprehensive explanation. Often, truths require complex qualifications to justify by varying situations, and without qualifications, one that seems to be true in general could contradict the very statement of the truth. This is the reason why laws, norms, or religions are often very helpful in guiding beings because they can simplify the model of life in gist, and even allude to the part of the being that has yet been explored. However, even these explanations are not fully complete by themselves because no matter how well these measures or symbols (i.e. hypothesis) cover the questions of being, it is virtually ineffective unless the beings themselves actively and willingly apply the hypothesis to test it against the odds of their realities, which, in consequence, are all different even though they might share the same fundamental hypothesis. Only after then, are the beings truly attempting to reconcile with the involuntary nature of their beings and transcend above the arbitrary cycle of meaninglessness through endless trials and tribulations. When this task is done well and repeatedly, people could accumulate greater knowledge and insights that are important to them and get better at the process of questioning and improving their beings in general but also lessen the pain that comes from their innocence and grow the courage that they need to face the most daunting phases of their lives.
In summary, human beings are simultaneously subject to nature/society and transcendental of nature/society, who cast meanings to transform the crudeness of their surroundings and explore why they do such things. Humans can inhabit both the existentially conscious world and the psychologically momentary world, where each of them often collides with one another. Humans have to create hypotheses about everything that they are interacting with, including themselves, the objects, and the people. The wrong assumption about the objects or world results in negative responses, so humans are motivated to live in harmony with their hypotheses. However, there are all kinds of obstacles that are waiting for human beings including the innate natures of human beings, such as limitedness, caprice, fear, and forgetfulness, as well as the constant discord from the external world with which they are interacting.
