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i don't even want to cut down that branch..that other thing unless we can move it somewhere
but we're going to cut that branch down. Jacque and Roxanne appear to be resting up
and recovering from lecturing about 7 months abroad. Sorry to the people in Canada for
the last few lectures that had to be canceled. Also anyone out there that is able to do transcribing
for some of the talks if you could contact me we'd be very grateful for that if you could
send me an email. This talk Jacque gave August 12, 2010 and I'll be uploading over the next
few days in parts.
Jacque - We're talking about investigating the nature of human behavior. I think that
what might help, is if you go back in time and take some primitive people, when I say
primitive I mean like outlined districts, headhunters of the Amazon. If you open a watch
and show them the back mechanism, they can't say how complex how beautifully machined.
They can't do that, you understand why? anyone got a problem with that?
hold on, this video's not on. It's on camera.
Yeah, press record.
Roxanne - Yeah I thought you had done that, sorry, yeah ok go ahead Jacque
Jacque - You gotta listen to every word because they can't do it. Now, if a psychologist wants
to know how the brain works. (Say or neurologist, what it does have you move your fingers?)
and pick up what area of the brain is active. You understand? Then thinking, solving problems
so they can map out what area becomes active. That's all they can do. But they can't tell
you if it's right wrong good or bad. They can map out areas of the brain by hitting
your knee and getting - picking up electronic signals, from different parts of the brain,
you can map out the brain. But that doesn't tell you how the brain works. Do you understand
that up to now. Ok. There are many people who try to study the mind, you can't study
the mind. It's like taking primitive technology, way back a hundred years ago, giving them
a transistor, saying 'what is it?' - they can't say what it is. They don't know what
a transistor is. They don't know what a capacitor is. They don't know what a vacuum tube is.
So alls they can do is cut it. Now if you bring a chemist in, he can tell you what comprises
a transistor - certain amount of magnesium, silicone - you know what i mean? But he can't
tell you what it is. Is that real clear? Studying the brain does not tell you anything about
it. You have to study the brain's reaction in relation to the environment. The brain
is a responding mechanism. When you shine a bright light in the eye it responds. So
you can say, this is how much of a response, how little a response, But you can't tell
what it is. Studying the brain gives you nothing, unless you study it in relationship to the
environment. A bird with wings can't fly where there's no air, and it'll stop flying if you
can put an oxygen mask on the bird and he'll flap his wings and he won't get off the ground,
he wont even try to fly after a while. Only with air there will he move. You understand?
Now if you beat down one wing with more pressure, you turn the wing into the wind, and beat
down, he'll bank. A bird does not know how to fly instinctively. He beats his wings different
ways and if it gets him to where he wants to go (by turning down?) he moves forward.
If he turns it this way he stops in midair, if he's a humming bird. So the bird responds
- studying the bird you have to study the environment the bird lives in. Do you understand
that? There's no way you can dissect the brain and say this is what a mans like, except in
context of the environment. Is that real clear? So, if I wanna study human behavior, what
i'm really studying is the reactions of human beings in a given environment. I can't study
human behavior, I can study their reactions. When somethings hot they move away from it.
When it's cold they might move toward it, it all depends. If a man goes down to the
river and he reaches for it, he usually can't get it. If he hits it with a club its faster
than his hand reaction, he might catch fish that way, clubbing them. So what you can do
- The primitive brain doesn't look any different. If you have a billion associations with boo
boo, a bunch of metaphysical stuff, billions of associations, they are (calming?) because
you believe somebody who gave you those associations to know what they're talking about. You don't
even have to know what they're talking about, if the chief says something it's so. If the
king says something it's so. If a politician says something its so. Right now they're concerned
with foreclosures on banks. They're concerned with giving banks money, and the banks didn't
use that money for the purpose intended. So they have words like fraud. You can't do anything
that way, you have to take in the whole picture and ask, what is it that you want? So I have
drawings of different cities, those cities have an end goal they're not just cities.
The goals of those cities are to make things relevant to people that they respond to. There's
no other way. Now people that live in the city, have many different reactions to the
city - 'it's my home, my grandfather was born there - my favorite city' but they really
don't understand what a city is, what it serves. Now they use words like shelter, home is a
shelter, but when you wear a diving suit and you go underwater, thats a closed environment,
shelter for underwater living. If a man goes out into space he brings with him the air
in his suit and in that suit he has all kinds of equipment he may need on that mission.
If you give him a book, a novel to take out into space, it's dead weight, it doesn't serve
anything. If you give him an emergency book of what to do, when oxygen stops or something
goes wrong, that's something. But a book about how seminal indians treat fish, would have
no use in space. Our society is loaded with 'how seminal Indians treat fish'. there's
lots of superfluous information superfluous to the needs of people. Must everything be
scientific? If it is not it's less valid. Is there a place for none scientific? By none
scientific do you mean, speculative notions? or scientific is 'I don't know, let's try
to find out' does it mean you'll find out? Not necessarily. You'll find out if you have
the appropriate needs, so you can't ask 'what is the brain?' Or 'how does it work?' except
for context of the situation. I think there's some animals that respond to largeness. A
bear when he stands up, he doesn't try to impress you with his size when he stands up,
he stands up and if you react he just stands up again. But it's not 'I'm going stand up
so i'll look bigger, so I'll scare the guy' a bear doesn't think that way. The neurologist
that wants to study human behavior is brought up to believe in free will to start with so
he's already jammed. He's already hurt, 'cause he can't look at anything objectively there's
no such thing. He can only write down when a man see's lava if he sticks his finger
in it burns he stays away from it. He can only do that. Now the chemist wants to know
what lava is. He says 'there's so much magnesium, so much melted rock' but he still puts a label
on it he calls it ‘lava’. That means a word used assigned to something. If a person misbehaves
or behaves very badly, or behavior unrelated to the situation, like I've seen a kid get
run over by a car and the mother says 'he can't be dead he must be alive. He can't be
dead' - meaning the situation is unacceptable. She's responding more on a feeling tone rather
than relevant. Sometimes of you like somebody and die immediately you say 'he can't be dead
he was just (old?) having a bowl of oatmeal' you know? so, you can't do that. You can only
say that 'I didn't expect that' or 'highly improbable, I thought it was anyway.' You
can only talk about your relationship so, if you meet with a person and say, I'm going
to exaggerate here, they have a thousand neural associations y'know? In the brain, and then
you meet a person with forty thousand associations, when you talk there's more response. Less
response with less associations do you understand that? If a person's very simple he says 'god
wanted it that way that's why it's that way' - well that doesn't tell you a damn thing
except that persons reaction. Using reason does not work unless you equip them with the
tools of reason. Now there are no tools of reason except specific tools of reason - how
to fly a kite, how to build a wheel - that's specific reason. But general reasoning, can
not be imparted to people particularly like things the way they are, meaning if their
reactions are very simple. Now the reason most people behave badly or poorly is because
they understand simple things. A person once said to me 'when I ask you a question I never
get an answer, I get a lecture' because there are no answers. If a guy says 'why does my
brother get angry all the time?' - 'because he gets angry that's why!' well that doesn't
tell you anything. So you've got to remember if a persons that simple you don't have the
time to fill in all that detail unless they say 'I'd like to know step by step, what made
my brother get angry' that's good 'cause it shows some kind of inquiry, even if they learn
the words and don't know what it means. Now you have to prove to them that most language
is based upon primitive reactions like if lightning occurs a primitive might think that
nature is angry, or god is angry, or the god of lightning is angry whatever they do, if
they're at that level you don't want it. But if you take native children away from their
parents you can bring them up to the modern world. No matter how primitive a person is,
you take their babies, you can make them scientific, chemists anything, but taking an adult is
jamming the whole associative system. If you bring a primitive person to an airport he
does not look at the airplane in terms of the wings and the struts and the landing gear
and wonder at all those components, he can't do that, he can look and grin just like you
look at a tree when you're not into plant anatomy. You can't see the tree. An anatomist
see's more of the tree, a plant physiologist than you do, or you may see clearer than he
does, but he knows what to look for. Like whether it's the rings of the tree that tell
him how old the tree is, or the width of the rings whether there was a drought or flood
at that time, he has learned to read, or she has learned to read nature. When I say there's
no such thing as human nature, there's human reactions to the environment. Some are relevant
some are completely irrelevant, knowing the difference, the guy says 'why did you beat
the hell out of your kid?' he's way off the subject, the guy might say 'my kid didn't
listen to me' that isn't the answer, it's the whole story, you know what i mean? so
when normal people - normal meaning having simpler reactions, you can't discuss human
nature with them 'cause they have a fixed notion already of what human nature is - some
inborn propensities or characteristics that are passed on generation after generation.
And if behavior were fixed we'd still be living in caves.