Civilized societies, which began perhaps around 10,000 years ago, make up less than one percent of humanity’s presence on the planet. Prior to the gradual emergence of herding and farming communities, over 95% of humanity’s existence was spent as small-band hunter-gatherers. As the neocortex grew, with its astonishing capacity to create inner images not present to the senses, abstracted images filled human consciousness, pushing aside nearly all ‘other’ ways of knowing and relating. As abstract knowledge grew, so did its power to enchant. We lost track of what the mind is doing and assumed the image is real. Reification created a false virtual reality, mistaken as real, in which past knowledge, culture, personal identity, and ego, with their implicit conflicts, dominate. Technology magnified the excluding nature of this virtual reality, amplifying and broadcasting it simultaneously around the world, capturing humanity in a homogenized Global Brain, that is dominated by an easily manipulated artificial reality.

The very means by which we try to solve our problems is the problem. David Bohm

Allowing David’s insight to sink in forces a complete reexamination of our approach and our priorities - to everything. With this in mind, below are a number of concepts that may be new; attention is different from thought or cognition, knowledge, memory, and imagination are not intelligence, attention has different qualities and capacities that can expand, personal identity is reality shaping and defining, conditioned thought and associative memory represent a tiny fraction of our neural activity, personal identity, the social-ego and culture are two sides of the same coin, both emanate from a common source, there is a reality behind the appearances our brain creates, true self-knowledge involves exposing and facing misconceptions about ourselves and more. Some care may be needed as we proceed. Shall we?

The root of our personal and global crisis is a Bio-Cultural Conflict or, a clash between our true nature and our imagined and abstracted thoughts, images, cultural beliefs, and conditioning, which together express as our social ego and culture.

Like water pouring over Niagara Falls neurons connect as capacities unfold at astonishing speed. This is simply what Carly Elizabeth, and every new human being, is, exploding growth and change. We tend to relate intelligence with what is known. People who know a lot are considered intelligent. Dr. Frankenstein, the true monster in Shelly’s tale, knew a lot but what he knew could hardly be called intelligent. How many Frankensteins do you know? You may be one yourself.

Carly, born Tuesday, July 29, 2014. Today is Friday, November 14, 2014, 108 days, almost three and a half months new depending on how we calculate the equinox. There is a distilling of awareness and attention, a distinct and growing capacity to balance, to see, to be startled by a sharp sound or emotion and reaching to grasp. Carly’s attention, how stimulation moves from her eyes into her brain creating intention, extending down her arm, past the elbow and wrist to the outreached hand, tiny fingers grasping is today’s lesson.