Intelligence is always at odds with instincts, which are there since ages. Often, most people rely on instinctive prudence, calling it their ‘soul voice’ or ‘inner voice’ and doubt the new and not yet popular and still not mass-backed intelligence. This needs to change. Instinctive action and behavior are sort of wired deep in the worldviews and perspective and that is why they are so dear to average persons.
But, as humanity lives in new millennium, modern knowledge must replace archaic and obsolete perspectives. This needs conscious cognitive changes to install new neural wirings in brain states by introducing the new algorithm of objective scientific knowledge. Science is a strange facility – even a scientist may not have ‘scientific temper’ completely. It comes in pieces. An IITian fearing a ghost or a surgeon going to Baba and astrologers for solutions is entirely possible. New millennium needs scientific temper, even when science is everywhere and ruling our lives…
It is apparent that there are other issues at stake, issues of great importance that must be considered. For all of the time in man's history, his behavior has depended to a large extent on his culture and his culture has been based largely on religious concepts. Human behavior was determined by these religious concepts. People were judged using religious concepts as a basis. If those religious concepts were not true, then the entire culture could collapse. People feared the consequences when something was discovered, or thought to be discovered, that appeared to be contrary to religious thinking and dogma.
The integrity of a number of religions could become suspect, once the new wisdom of objective facts of human evolution is allowed acceptance. And the cultures based on these religions could be shaken to the core. The contemporary world has become a theatre of conflict between new thought(still confused) and old perspectives, based largely on religious contexts. Still, as humans, creatures that are intellectual and disciplined, not ones that react through instinct alone, we must know the truth and face its consequences by basing our actions on truth.
The first and foremost requirement is huge courage, determination and resilience. What we are today, physically as well as mentally, is largely a product of years of brain and body evolution. Similar is culture and our mind-training. Our mind training is not what we desired or what real knowledge wished. To accept this, our mind is not trained genetically and culturally. We are actually trained to thrive in the chaos of plurality. Religious worldviews and perspectives are millions of years old and that is why very much wired deep in our consciousness and cognition. To unlearn this, we need loads of courage…
Our first reaction; instinctively reactive as we humans are; is to reject it all in complete and categorical disbelief. Our mindsets have concretized over a huge period of thousands of years. This mindset is used to of accepting what is and has been icons and benchmarks in our popular culture. Lateral, plural and unfounded behavior patterns and mindsets created by religion, philosophies, psychologies and the popular culture, which is based on their subjective notions, have made us what we are today. Accepting something new and contrary to our mind and cultural training would be not only tough but also very painful for us. Religion and philosophy(so is technology) designed for the convenience of masses, science is however intrinsically objective, often inconvenient to populism.
That’s why, the first requirement is this huge courage, determination and resilience in our part to come out of this mould and accept an entirely new mindset which shall look like as completely contrary to what we so far hold as not only true but ‘sacred’. We need to be accommodative to this new knowledge and modern scientific facts, parallel to our traditional cultural ideas and benchmarks. There is actually no contradiction in what we have been told since ages by subjective religion and philosophies on one side and objective science on the other. This may help in acceptance…
The second requirement is to accept and understand how our mind has been designed and how it can be used with objective intelligence for our individual and collective excellence. Coming out of the dualism of ‘body and soul’ and ‘instinct and intellect’ shall help us do that. But, it is not necessary. We just have to be equally open, sincere and receptive to ‘other’ answers as we are to religion and philosophy. Even while accepting science, we need to be open to ‘scientific dualism’. It helps.
We have to accept that mind is just like a computer, may be a bit more than that. It can provide only those answers and perform only those tasks, which it would be programmed for. Like a computer, it is restricted to process only those data, which has been fed into it. Brain is just a referral mechanism for processing facts; what one may call a value summation(deciding right and wrong for motor action). All its decisions, based on instinctive value summation, are therefore subjective and never entirely objective. There can be objective values of goodness and righteousness now for our culture as it now has a scientific basis added for better judgment. But, a human mind decides on an individual’s goodness and righteousness not on the basis of this objectivity but on the basis of the values that it has been programmed(neural circuitry) with. This programming is his or her instincts in almost 95% of his or her value summation and decisions as well as the culture he or she has received. As our current education system is also part of our flawed and subjective culture, it does not help him or her in reaching at any objective decision.
So, what we need to do is to change or at least divert this programming of our conditioned mind. We need to consciously and continuously tell our mind that look, we are in the midst of a huge change and we are introducing some new programming and that is going to be the new and additional matrix, equally important, if not superior than the traditional one, for a new and objective value summation and decision-making.
Reiterate that resolve to your mind repeatedly as it is only through conscious repetition that mind accepts external inputs and then forms it as part of its instinctive value summation programming, or what people popularly refer as ‘soul’ or ‘higher conscious’…
