Think about how you are thinking!

ishkbooks.com/NWNM/NWNM-Ch05.pdf

This is a fascinating article from the book New World, New Mind, which shows how our brain has been trained to think and notice in particular ways, and how these ways are no longer always helpful. In fact, they may be causing us tremendous harm. This article will make you think about how you think!

"The human mental system has cleverly evolved a few major strategies to steer people thought the kinds of day to day conditions that challenged our forebears. But these strategies often underlie personal, social, and political problems (pg. 99) because we use default patterns (resulting from evolution through earlier states and ages of human development) to deal with new realities. Some such mental processes are obsession with:
• short-term thinking where sudden or new and unexpected events take centre- stage in our minds. Instead it is a struggle to commit ourselves to long-term preventive measures to deal with problems that that are causing much more harm, e.g. automobile crashes versus terrorist abductions.
• scarcity - valuing and searching for scarce items, e.g. hard-to-get people are more attractive.
• stereotyping to caricaturing - stereotypes are essential for thought, but we have to be careful of caricaturing, i.e. judging by appearances e.g. height, attractiveness, seeming intelligence, or race.
• proximity - more consideration to first hand than reported information.
• excitement prepares us for change, but gradual problems are not only often not noticed, they are deliberately ignored or suppressed. They creep up and start to feel natural.
In some ways our minds are too adaptable, we quickly get used to things, some of which are harmful. We seem to need shocks and tragedies to goad us into action. We get tired of being cautioned, especially about those threats that quick and personal action cannot prevent.

Ornstein, R. E. & Ehrlich, P. R. (2000). Where defaults harm. Daily Life Decisions. New world, new mind: moving toward conscious evolution. (pp. 94-118). Cambridge: ISHK.