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bjbj Tyranny of the Prefrontal Cortex Presentation Notes Hi. I d like to ask you all to consider
the following facts about the current state of our world. Our civilization is changing
the climate of our planet. People kill themselves and others in the name of God Species are
going extinct at a rate not seen for 65 million years. A billion people go hungry every day.
We make astonishing advances in technology, and yet our world is careening ever faster
out of control. And meanwhile people everywhere are searching for spiritual meaning to their
lives. What connects these seemingly unrelated phenomena? I m proposing in this presentation
that there is an overriding dynamic driving all these global imbalances. s so fundamental
to our lives that we don t even realize it exists. s what I call the tyranny of the prefrontal
cortex over other aspects of our consciousness. And I ve come to believe that acknowledging
this tyranny is the first step towards re-harmonizing our individual and collective consciousness.
In this presentation you ll see what may be called a cognitive history of humanity, a
view of history interpreted from a cognitive perspective. It understands humanity s evolving
stages of cultural thought in terms of the prefrontal cortex or pfc ever-increasing power
over human consciousness. And it identifies certain human cognitive universals emerging
in prehistory, and then looks at some cultural-specific cognitive divergences happening in the past
twenty-five hundred years. This presentation is going to be in three parts. First we ll
look at what I mean by the tyranny of the pfc. Then, we ll examine how it came about.
And finally, we ll take a look at what it means, what are the implications for us and
our future? So let s just spend a moment on the pfc itself. It s at the very front of
the brain, in what s known as the cerebral cortex, it s far more developed in humans
than in other animals, and it mediates those parts of our cognition that are uniquely human,
such as symbolic thought, conceptualizing, planning, making rules and creating abstractions.
s also responsible for controlling our physiological drives, for imposing meaning on things, for
allowing us to conceive of a past and a future, and to see ourselves and others as independent
agents. Because of the pfc, humans are unique in having dual forms of consciousness conceptual
consciousness, all that stuff which is mediated by the pfc and then an animate consciousness,
those parts of our lived experience that we share with other mammals such as hunger, ***
urges, pain, fear, aggression, desire for warmth and caring for our offspring. But over
the past few thousand years, changes in human culture have shifted the balance between these
two forms of consciousness, so that it began to look more like this where conceptual consciousness
has been elevated over animate consciousness. We think of the pfc-mediated functions like
reason, abstraction, will power and transcendence as higher qualities, while animate functions
like primary emotions, instincts, and *** drive have been relegated to baser instincts.
This shift happened over a number of stages in history, and they were punctuated with
some key inflexion points, which I m going to show you in this chart. ll see that Time
on the horizontal axis is measured in a logarithmic scale, and on the vertical axis we ll be looking
at the increasing levels of pfc domination over the rest of human consciousness. The
first inflexion point occurred about 250,000 years ago, when modern *** sapiens first
evolved, with the beginning of a primitive form of language. Then, around 50,000 years
ago, we see some stirrings of the power of the pfc with the first cave paintings. It
was about 10,000 years ago that the pfc began its ascendancy to power with the rise of agriculture.
And then, roughly two thousand years ago, a dramatic split took place between the trajectory
of Western civilization, following the radically dualistic thought of the ancient Greeks, and
the rest of the world. This divergence became even more pronounced after the scientific
revolution which began in the early seventeenth century in Europe. Now I m going to describe
each of these stages in a little more detail. s begin with ground zero for the pfc s power,
as modern humans first evolved. Over the last few decades, anthropologists and archaeologists
have come up with a set of theories that show the central role of the pfc in human evolution.
They ve come to recognize that the pfc first developed its unique powers as the engine
of our social brain that we needed to get ahead in increasingly large and complex groups.
We developed what s known as theory of mind the ability to infer the mental states of
others, to recognize that they have agency just like we do. We also developed a narrative
self-awareness with the ability to see our past and even our future as a story. And then
the unique connectivity of the pfc allowed us to combine skills from separate domains
into an integrated, fluid cognition leading to the use of symbols, and ultimately through
weaving a net of symbols together, to language. Then, about fifty thousand years ago, a revolution
in symbolic thought occurred. Suddenly, our ancestors began using complex tools, music,
sewing and ceramic kilns and started to engage in long-distance trade. And they left behind
haunting examples of their art on cave walls throughout Europe. Their pfc s patterning
instinct was trying to make sense of the world around them, leading to the rise of mythic
consciousness. One key element in this was anthropomorphism which can be understood as
implicitly applying that theory of mind to non-humans, such as other animals and even
inanimate objects. Across the world, in hunter-gatherer cultures, shamanism developed, with a key
belief that a person s pfc is separate from their body, that it can leave the body as
a spirit, and then return again. Then, about ten thousand years ago, people began to realize
that, through the power of their pfc, they had some control over the plants and animals
around them, and agriculture first emerged. Along with it came the notions of property
and land ownership, hierarchies and inequalities. This led to specialized skills such as writing
and craftsmanship. That, by the way, is one of the earliest examples of writing from Mesopotamia.
And we begin to see massive organized projects occurring, such as irrigation and temples,
and large complex societies emerging, with cities and empires. Then, around 500 BC, in
ancient Greece, an idea appeared for the first time in human history. That there is an abstract
and eternal dimension of the universe which is the ultimate source of value and meaning.
And imprisoned within the human body, an immortal soul exists which, through the abstraction
and reason of the pfc, connects us with that eternal value and meaning. So, remembering
our dual human consciousness from before what the ancient Greeks did was to equate our conceptual
consciousness with the soul, and our animate consciousness with the body. And only our
soul is connected with the transcendent meaning of the universe, while our body becomes just
another part of the material world. This was the pfc s coup. To see itself as the source
of the immortal soul, as the connection with the eternal dimension of the universe. Then
this idea became conflated with the unique form of monotheism coming out of the Middle
East to create the ultimate coup with the rise of Christianity, the first systematic
dualistic cosmology. And then, in the 17th century, in Europe, a scientific revolution
erupted to create our modern world. With Descartes, the dualism of the Greeks was transformed
into our modern mind/body dualism. Reductionism became the basis for scientific enquiry. And
the natural world was now seen as a resource for human conquest and domination. In the
words of that great prophet of the scientific age, Francis Bacon, we could unite forces
against the nature of things to extend the bounds of human empire, establish and extend
the dominion of the human race itself over the universe, and render ourselves the masters
and possessors of nature. And we succeeded beyond Bacon s wildest dreams. Here is just
one out of countless examples of our dramatic success, a graph showing the accuracy of time
measurement over history. You ll see that around the time when Bacon lived, Western
European clocks could be off by as much as a minute in a day, and were less accurate
than Chinese clocks. Then, it all began improving exponentially, so that now we re off by no
more than one hundred millionth of a second per day. This transformative explosion of
technology led to another exponential curve the rise in world population of humans which
in turn leads to other more disturbing exponential curves, such as the unsustainable amount of
carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, causing global climate change. How did the
pfc s rise in power get so exponential? The answer lies in the ratcheting effect of culture.
If we go back in time to the evolution of early *** sapiens, we see that the pfc s
evolving patterning instinct led to early symbolic thought, which in turn encouraged
increased pfc usage in early humans. This led eventually to the emergence of language,
which caused each individual s pfc to become more networked both within the brain and with
other pfc s in the community. This led to the development of a fixed and powerful network
of symbols comprising a culture, something you can think of as an external pfc. With
the increasingly complex structure of the external pfc each individual's pfc becomes
more leveraged, learning from infancy how to dominate the animate consciousness within
and the natural world without. Finally, this leads to the ever more exponential impact
of technology causing our present dynamic. I see our pfc-powered human take-off as something
like a satellite that s been launched with wobbly controls which can ultimately lead
to one of only three scenarios. We could leave the Earth behind, which some people talk about
in terms of the so-called Singularity the moment when computers become even more intelligent
than humans essentially the pfc evolving itself completely away from its human origins what
many people see as more likely we could crash and burn as we relentlessly use the Earth
s dwindling resources to fuel our exponential growth. Or, we could somehow find a stable,
sustainable orbit. Now I suspect that most of you, just like me, would prefer this scenario.
But how do we get there? Sustainability requires a new inflexion point, to pfc5. But what would
that stage of human development look like in terms of the pfc s relationship to consciousness?
How do we get from a tyranny to a democracy of consciousness? A pfc5 worldview needs to
restore integration to the separations in our pfc4 worldview. Separations within the
self, in our cosmos and the separations between our selves and the universe. The spiritual
traditions of Asia offer techniques to reduce the pfc s tyranny. Zen koans bypass the reasoning
mechanism. Buddhism questions the pfc s fixed notion of self Meditation quiets the pfc s
patterning drive. Taoist wu-wei offers a mode of non-purposive, non-goal oriented action.
But it s in modern science that we can find hints of a true pfc5 worldview. Finding in
systems biology and complexity science invalidate the pfc4 reductionist cosmology. We learn
that all living entities are complex, self-organized, dynamical systems That interactions between
things are more important than the things themselves. That no system is autonomous,
but continually interacting with other systems There are no fixed equilibria only continually
shifting states of relative stability And occasional phase transitions lead to the emergence
of new forms of complexity. In the pfc5 worldview, the explanatory principle of life is not mechanical
reductionism, but self-organization and emergence. The relation between the material and spiritual
is defined not by dualism, but by integrated dynamics. And the source of spiritual value
and meaning is not transcendence, but the dynamic connectivity between all living things.
So the human relationship to the natural world goes from being one of domination to one of
guidance, sustainability, and mutual support. And what the natural world means to us is
no longer a resource to utilize, but a source of material and spiritual nourishment. And
the self is no longer seen as a separate, fixed, autonomous entity, but as something
connected, fluid, interactive. And the pfc goes from being a tyrant in consciousness
to becoming a conductor, an observer, a guide. It all begins with a recognition of the tyranny
of the pfc in our current worldview, and the intention to move towards a democracy of consciousness.
When we learn to use our pfc to harmonize ourselves from within then we can begin to
truly harmonize with the world around us. For anyone interested, I m writing a book
on this subject, called Liology: Towards an Integration of Science and Meaning, where
I go into more detail about the tyranny and the opportunities of that pfc5 worldview.
You can check my progress
on these blogs, or email me for more information. h$Xa h/~7 h/~7 h@Be h[gY hOQD =(K& =al-
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Palatino Linotype Tyranny of the Prefrontal Cortex Presentation Notes Palatino Linotype
Palatino Linotype Palatino Linotype Palatino Linotype Palatino Linotype Hi. I d like to
ask you all to consider the following facts about the current state of our world. Our
civilization is changing the climate of our planet. People kill themselves and others
in the name of God Species are going extinct at a rate not seen for 65 million years. A
billion people go hungry every day. We make astonishing advances in technology, and yet
our world is careening ever faster out of control. And meanwhile people everywhe re
are searching for spiritual meaning to their lives. What connects these seemingly unrelated
phenomena? e m proposing in this presentation that there is an overriding dynamic driving
all these global imbalances. Palatino Linotype Palatino Linotype Palatino Linotype so fundamental
to our lives that we don t even realize it exists. s what I call the tyranny of the prefrontal
cortex over other aspects of our consciousness. And I ve come to believe thatt acknowledging
this tyranny is the first step towards re harmonizing our individual and collect ive
consciousness. e In
this presentation you ll see
what may be called cognitive history of humanity, a view of history r interpreted from a cognitive
perspective. understands humanity evolving stages of cultural thought in terms of
the prefrontal cortex or ever increasing power over human consciousness. And identifies certain
human cognitive universals emerging in prehistory, and then look at somel cultural specific cognitive
divergences x happening in
the past twenty five hundred ye ars. r Title Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDoc
Word.Document.8