Ever since the humans came past the primitive stages of development and formed agrarian communities, they have endeavoured to get some understanding of how their own minds work. Their new lifestyle accorded them the spare time necessary to concentrate on these matters with introspection and observation of others. The trend probably culminated in efforts of philosophers like the Buddha in India, Confucius in China and Socrates and Plato in Greece, all of whom lived in the 6th and 5th Centuries BCE.
The next great flowering of thought in that realm probably occurred in 18th-Century Europe during the time of the Enlightenment. The emergence of various branches of modern philosophy and psychology were natural offshoots of this movement that liberated Europe, the then centre of gravity of the world, from hide-bound tradition and straitlaced authority.
However, modern cognitive and social psychologists have come to realize that the workings of the human mind still remain quite elusive and irrational as ancient philosophers like the Buddha correctly pointed out. However much we would like to pride ourselves on the apparently high mental state the human race has attained, it seems that we ordinary humans are not much better today at controlling, or even understanding, our thought processes and aligning our behaviours with them than our ancestors were. We still don’t know for sure how we get new ideas or creative solutions to problems, why we react to certain things in certain ways, why we adopt particular attitudes- and why we then change them sometimes- or even why we are attracted to specific people. When we do attempt to figure these matters out, the results, according to findings of psychological research, are rather hit-or-miss. And that is to say nothing of the perhaps even greater failure of ours when trying to predict such processes in others. An interesting post in PsyBlog on what everyone should know about their own minds illustrates this point beautifully together with links to further clarifications.
As it is, we are not clean slates beginning from scratch but, if I am excused for using an analogy from IT, rather like pre-programmed and used computers carrying a lot of data and cookies in cache memory, stored there by millennia of evolution. (I sure hope the reader of this is not a creationist!) As valuable as this database sometimes can be, often its influence is maladjusted to the current setting due to the fact that our circumstances have changed so fast in the part few centuries- a mere speck in the vast stretch of evolution- that our genes just haven’t had the time to adapt or upgrade.
Another post in PsyBlog elucidates, with further links to detailed descriptions of well-known social psychological studies, the dumb and irrational things we humans do that no self-respecting man or woman would willingly admit to but have been proven through meticulous scientific research. It looks like we often subconsciously tend to misinterpret outside information and cues, develop biases and prejudices, form ingroups and outgroups, and simply bend our thinking and behaviour to suit the situation at hand, which is hardly flattering for a species that thinks very highly of its sophistication.
All this should give us a lot of food for thought. We had better realize we are nowhere near accuracy in our general- or for that matter even specific- thinking and take due care whenever we approach crucial issues. That way we shall be able to avoid much unnecessary trouble and suffering for ourselves and our loved ones as well as other fellow human beings.
Tags: evolution, human, irrational, mind, psychology, thinking, understand
