Wednesday 29 October 2008

Solving problems, performing astounding feats of mind and body is not a privilege of any class, race or gender.

The threads that contributed to these thoughts

- The human mind is an invaluable asset to be wasted by the monetising societies
- "Use-it-or-lose-it" pruning of brain cells. An on-the-fly brain mechanism for dynamic minds?
- Discrete states and discretisation.

Solving problems, performing astounding feats of mind and body is not a privilege of any class, race or gender. It is certainly not down to genes, implicated so much on intelligence or other mental capacities.

The reason why such notions surface is upon the way societies are built, tightly snared in the monetisation gauntlet, leave no room for the individual mind to thrive. Even from an early age, the individual trapped in education systems the world over whose only purpose are to furnish a hungry and voracious monetising system, with pawns to replenish their numbers.

Everything counted in money and whatever can not, it does not produce monetary value, is neglected, ridiculed, stepped on ruthlessly. Human values are distorted, warped all in the service of the monetising society, and the worst of all, young individuals, their budding young minds crashed to a pulp.

Indoctrinated to the hilt, separated into trash and jewels according to standards monetisation prescribes, their mind withers and dies, their mental potential never given the chance to glow, as this does not serve the aspirations of a wealth amassing society.

To end up buried minds forever lost, easy prey to monetising-induced lurking perils to finish them off.

I should stop this, I get carried away and I forget what it really matters to me. The thoughts triggered in my mind when I read an article in the Guardian newspaper on Steven Pinker, with the title Basic instincts, especially the mention of blank slate or tabula rasa, the idea that nurture is more important than nature. Somehow, out of the blue, as I think is called, brought forward the notion of discrete units and concepts. That what we are, it is up to the things we learned and built on, in some sort of schemata mode. Procedures stored in memory or whatever, which we bring forth on demand. When a situation arises.

It is upon the amount and accuracy of these amassed procedures that define individuals as smart clever or stupid. The less an individual has, the least the ready-made, 'off-the-self' solutions (or may be alternatives) can offer at given problem-solving situations, and unfortunately we need a lot of them, each for every little detail in the problem-solving situation at hand. If there is no relevant 'of-the-self' solution, we stall, as we have to make up one. That is where the associative side of our brain kicks in. Associative in the sense, that the brain has to perform new associations, re-arrange the already existing procedures in new ways so the solution sought, may come forth. In search for a viable solution-alternative to deal with a problem. Something that might take place by a neuron synapse bout in the brain.

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