Thinking In Written Words

Thinking, An Exercise

If you want your muscles to get strong, you need to exercise them. That's a fact. Writing is an activity performed by your brain, an organ that needs to be treated like a muscle, and more. If you don't use your brain, it will lose its capacity to do quickly and efficiently that which it's designed to do: think, invent, imagine, create, solve, decide, write, speak, dream, and similar things. Those are actions. They're all performed by our brains. When you say I, what do you imagine you're referring to? Your brain! Of course, what else?

For some people it's simply impossible to accept the fact that our brains are the organs in our bodies that execute our actions of thinking. All of our memories exist within our brains. Nothing that we imagine, that we decide, think, dream or feel has its origins in any other part of our bodies, but our brains.

What a fantastic piece of design our brains are! They are so incredibly fantastic that we reject to believe that when we say "I", it's our brain the one that's speaking, thinking, deciding, remembering and making choices. We have not been able to design any machine even close in power, to our biological brains. Computers, and the network of them have an incredibly efficient memory system at the service of millions of brains. But they are way less powerful than one single human brain.

We've been able to teach our computers to make decisions. If they're capable of moving robots and robotic arms and robotic storage houses, then they're close, but not quite that close to mirroring what our brains do. Our brains make decisions considering a literal myriad of factors simultaneously. Computers are capable of reasoning down a gigantic hierarchy of if-then-else's at lightning speeds — probably much faster than our brains — but we don't seem to have been able to make any computer consider, simultaneously, variables chosen by the computer itself, in order to end up with a refined decision. Our brains do that all the time, and we don't even know they're doing it!

Also, the most powerful computers — as far as I know, maybe some of you know better — are ordered to consider a preset collection of conditions, including any conditions that might derive from the initial tree node, but not any conditions outside the initial node of reasoning — which is really that hierarchy of if-then-else statements.

The closer we push computers to do what our brains do, the more energy they need to fulfill their tasks. That should give us an idea of the efficiency with which our brains are capable of using energy. The energy we provide to our brains is fed into our system via the carbohydrates of the food we eat. That's all our brains need to function. The modern and most integral dietitians recommend that our calories should come from protein, fats and carbohydrates. We need only 5% of our calories to come from proteins, which leaves 95% to come from carbohydrates and fats. The myth of "high protein diets" for muscle building has been busted. (Please, investigate the details by yourself and let me know what you found out.)

This Was All About Thinking

That's it! We said that at the beginning, and there isn't a good reason — at least, one we could think of right now — to change our minds: this was supposed to have been a thinking exercise. As such, we are free to consider it concluded anytime we feel our muscle — our brain — has worked enough.

And it has! Just as I sat to write this, it occurred to me that, after all, it's our brains the ones that have generated every single piece of culture that exists today or has ever existed on the surface of our planet, The Earth.

And I have questions that were the result of this exercise, and I asked you, the readers, to proceed to finding answers to those questions. Are we getting closer, with computers, to the way our brains work? Have we chosen — randomly, of course — a line of development that will force the increments of technology in our computers to follow a line different from the line our brains followed during evolution?

What then, once your life is over?

Life is special in every way. It's statistically rare, improbable. However, it's great to be in it! Feeling life at liberty is what this is all about. We can't live life focused in worries about death. What happens once our bodies cease to function? So far, we have no connection with those who have died. Once they're gone, we only hear more from them by their acts and deeds, but never ever from them personally. They aren't persons any more, their bodies have ceased to function.

It bothers people to imagine that their thoughts and images exist only within their bodies. It's incredibly difficult for most people to accept that once life ceases, thoughts and images and feelings are gone for good. So, we better enjoy our special state, while we are awaken and alive.

Most matter around us, near or far, in our planet or in our Universe, is not conscious of itself, except us. We are matter, too. We are made from the same atoms everything else is made of. It's true: our combination results in thoughts, feelings, memories, images, creativity, love, hatred, selfishness and altruism. But that's all it is: our very special combination. We are living systems; we are conceived, born, educated; we love, hate, think, get anxious, stay calm, get sick, get well, enjoy, die.

It's important, I would say, not to live under false promises, expecting things which won't be. It's important to be conscious of how valuable our condition—matter conscious of itself—can be. Our cultures seem to be built upon strange grounds: "games" that might have worked at some past time, do not work now. Today we need to face reality as positively as it can be understood by our most careful methods of studying it. It would certainly help to move around using basic scientific attitudes.

Why can't we teach our children that we are alive and, in so being, we are privileged beings? Why can't we help children understand life and death? Anything taught soon enough, will become understandable reality for any being capable of thinking. We hide death from them. Why do we do that? Why do we lie? We cherish honesty and truthfulness, and yet we plan our children's education upon lies—that we dare to call practical. Why haven't we decided collectively that designing our cultures orbiting truths will certainly be more liberating than making people face hidden realities deceptively.

Living is our great privilege. We have some choices. We aren't as free as we would like to believe. We need to be realistic about our true limits. Not everything is possible, however, most reasonably envisioned goals are attainable applying proper methods and strength, will strength. Are we truthful with our children as we speak to them? Do we let them grasp reality in its wholeness, or do we purposefully hide dubious corners from them? It's time, now, to rethink our universal culture. And, yes, it's an absolute necessity, this new culture must be universal. Every single human being must be included. Our planet has already become small enough. We're all incredibly tight together.

So, what matters is your life today, now. We are mandated by existence itself, to enjoy life fully and ethically.

Just a physical body ... "just"?

It's extremely difficult for me to believe that when I think of myself as being "just a physical body" I'm missing something. I am "just" a physical body, but ... what a fantastic entity this physical body is! If we think only for 10 seconds about the incredible number of events that needed to take place in the "right direction" for this "inferior" physical body to exist, then we are no longer going to to say, ever, that "just being a physical body" is not something extremely special in the Universe.

Yes, I am very proud to be a physical body, and a great one at that. I don't have to imagine a supreme being with whom to connect in order to transcend my physical body. And there is no way that I will ever accept that the being inside this body is anything else but one of the functionalities of the body itself. Do you want to call this inner formation "a soul"? Go ahead! Call it anything you wish! However, it won't change what it really is: a physical body with incredible intellectual capabilities.

Our body is a mixture of atoms, fixed into molecules. As an entity, it is simply marvelous. It takes longer for a Sun to form itself and start generating energy to supply to surrounding planets, than it takes, once the proper planet is formed, to generate living creatures. The rare thing here is the planet appropriate for life.

Once the proper planet exists, then the level to which these living entities can evolve depends on time and lots of different and complex conditions. In our case, our species, homo sapiens sapiens, is an extreme amongst the extremes. It's so special! If you conceived for a moment the degree of value that our body has, you would never think that believing of ourselves to be "just physical bodies" is something that needs to be fixed with connecting with "supreme beings". We are supreme beings!

The simple fact that we can conceive our existence, that is, to be conscious of the fact that we exist as aware entities, is already a great marvel in itself. We are aware that we exist, we are aware that we evolve, we are aware of the Universe in which we exist. We have made up a large number of expressions to call our essence and that which surrounds us. We are now aware—if we don't get ourselves lost in the "supreme being" attractive idea—that the simple event of our existence is an incredibly improbable happening in the Universe. And yet, we also know now that, after all, the Universe itself has a tendency to create places where beings similar to us can exist.

We are—something difficult to understand—just one form of life. And life is the concept we have developed so we can name entities that evolve according to a program embedded in helical molecules, perfectly bound together, that we call DNA. We get to become whatever we become—as living organisms—because during millions and millions of years—"year" being just one unit of time, so we can get the idea—molecules of certain elements get together, bind themselves using the free orbits of their atoms and determine to register the bindings into DNA, so the same variations of molecule bindings can take place in almost exactly the same way, time after time after time.

Why do we need the concept of "soul"? Even if the soul, spirit, supreme being hypothesis were true, things would not change for our living condition. We would still need to forego the living paths programmed in our cells and then in our particular creations as a different species. So, what do the souls or spirits need to "come down" to matter—the inferior element—and invade bodies that are already equipped with every single element they need in order be conscious of their existence? If the souls are real, then do they duplicate the capabilities of the physical body?

Everything that traditionally has been intended to be explained as possible only because of the soul, we know now that happens inside the brain. It's the brain and the way its neurons are connected, and they were they interact, that what we call "thinking" happens. Our memories are nothing but active connections amongst neurons. Our feelings and what we call consciousness exist within the brain functions, and the brain itself is only one more organ of the "physical body" they are always under valuing in the name of the superiority of the soul.

I don't even need to ask the question of where the idea of the soul came from. It's useless and we all know the answer. We have learned that different human conglomerates throughout their histories developed different theories to explain what they didn't understand. They created hypothesis and tried to improve them as some deeds were impossible to explain. The soul is the most logical concept to design, since our thought and our imagination almost depict ourselves as separate entities from our bodies. But the fact is that we aren't! Our consciousness, no matter how "superior" it might look to you, is something that exists within the confines of your working organism.

Yes, sadly, when the body stops working, it all ceases to exist. So, the soul doesn't go anywhere? Is there no soul? Then, what is the meaning of life?

Who said that life needed a meaning? Does the Universe need a meaning? Things need meanings only because we abstract them from the flow of events in which they are all embedded. We become real slaves of our beliefs, false beliefs. Why don't we try to concentrate in appreciating the real value of what we are? We are great bodies in an incredible Universe and we know we are! And this is the most fantastic element of it all.