Бесплатный фрагмент - The Power of Narrative Intelligence

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Introduction

The book focuses on the role of human intelligence in the modern world; in particular, on the role of one of the most important, narrative, intelligence. The book allows the readers to take a fresh look at their previous experience and background, their present, and build up the desired future.

The work is compiled from the author’s most popular lectures and programmes on the development of intelligence, the role of intelligence in human behaviour and its use in business.

Recent discoveries in neurophysiology and anthropology, an unbiased view of the history and civilisation, have contributed to the emergence of new, more technological solutions in the development of and influence on personal behaviour.

Presenting the material in a vibrant and down-to-earth style, the author shares ways and methods to cultivate narrative intelligence, opening a world of opportunities for anyone. An original outlook on the phenomena of emerging crises and the anthropogenic factors shows the true causes of human decisions, actions, and behaviour. The described technique affects all levels of processes in human communities — from family and corporate to national.

The book is intended for entrepreneurs, business people, managers, CEOs, all those who want to be part of the equation a conscious person = a free person. For all those who want to understand, influence, act, and empower their minds.

About the Author by the Author

I am, by my first profession, a doctor. You can think about it as a mission, but to a greater extent, it is a way of life, an algorithm of thinking, true spirituality and practical cynicism at the same time.

Doctors mainly concentrate on the human being as a biological species, as an organisation of tissues, cells, and biochemical reactions. But when you watch a person think, dream, make decisions, and act, you come to the conclusion that he or she soberly combines a creator and a destroyer in one person. Exploring this contradiction is always incredibly interesting. And the profession is not important here.

As an entrepreneur, coach, management and human resources specialist, I have authored a dozen books and pioneered several innovative techniques. Throughout my two decades of career in senior positions, I have successfully applied these practices in actual business settings.

Acknowledgements

I often find myself thinking how lucky I am that the Lord has sent me on such an interesting journey. To say that I am grateful is equal to unconvincing silence. An amazing road with loyal companions: family, friends and sympathisers. They are so original and inimitably predictable that I feel as if I have met them in another life. Each of them has contributed to this book.

I am grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to fulfil my mission. An exceptional combination of genetic material in a special ratio and shape. Heaven knows best.

Many thanks to the patience and love of my spouse, who allowed me to deal consistently with both what I already have and what I can still create. Her love and care have been endlessly inspiring me to more and more creative deeds and achievements.

I appreciate the demanding efforts of my children, who have served as the best example for my ongoing development.

Special thanks to my editor and translator, who happens to be my old friend, for his witty comments and all-round skills.

Thanks to all my friends for their dedication, eternal values, emotions, sincerity, passion, optimism and musicality, which allow us to create in unison. They motivated me, inspired me, and opened up new horizons.

I also want to thank my homeland and all the countries I am connected with. The country where I was born and raised, the country where I got my first profession, met my love and where my children were born, the country where I found a new job, established myself as a specialist and person, the country where I live now. Thank you for your multitude and differences, as sources of historical responsibility and independence from your history.

I thank Him for not leaving us at all times.

Preface

No more secrets.

If you try, you have two options: it will work or it will not.

If you don’t try, there’s only one option.

We live in a difficult time of permanent revolutions. From colour to informational, when the colour ones themselves become the result of informational ones. We live in a world of marketing, a world of advertising, a world of small hopes and big disappointments. We are constantly talking about a revolution in our consciousness, which, frankly, turns out to be a revolution in the way we consume.

In 2006, Australian producer Rhonda Byrne published her book The Secret, which sold over 30 million copies and was made into a film. The author gives step-by-step instructions on how to use the secret. Knowing the secret helps those who possess it to create the happiest, most joyful and prosperous life. Collecting the statements of famous thinkers, scientists, inventors and philosophers, on topics from quantum physics to religion, the author sought everywhere confirmation of her ideas about the knowledge and power of the secret.

But is there a secret? Maybe we do not want to admit to ourselves that there is no secret? Throughout history, people have tried to shift their responsibility to their ignorance. It is enough just to study and accept ourselves as we are. Alive, with our own instincts and desires, carried away by fairy tales and stories, and then convincing ourselves and our surroundings of our own high mission. Perhaps, everything that we fill our lives with, the meanings we put in them, is only because we cannot admit either to ourselves or to others that we have come with a very simple mission — to live.

All our lives, we choose different models of our mission that best suit our abilities, circumstances, and what we have already thought up and believed in. There are big doubts about the latter because all this could have been thought up for us and presented to us in such a way that we took it for our own. And since we do not really know what we are made up of, how and why we believe, act, think and want, it is quite easy to deal with us and easy to use us too. For example, to invent secrets and then to share them.

However, today humanity has accumulated enough knowledge about everything and everyone. There are no more secrets. All that remains is to talk about what really shapes our thinking, desires, and behaviour. Our talents and abilities are just tools for survival. Everything else that has been invented is beautiful packaging and presentation.

We have long been mistaken about everything. What we are here for, what we want, and what we do. We have not realised that all those who influence us are skilfully created programmes made up of words, emotions, and ideas that, if they contain a part of the real world, then in no less proportion they contain the interests and goals of those around us.

How our consciousness works, how our behaviour is formed, how we learn and choose a job, how can we be convinced of anything, and how are we programmed? And, most importantly, how can all this be changed? How can we make the secrets of our intelligence become an everyday tool for us, a familiar technology, a proven recipe for a unique process called life? Because life is worth it. With this knowledge, we can finally fill most of our lives with the happiness and prosperity we deserve.

Allow yourself to take the first step on an inspiring journey in which we will discover the immense power of our minds and learn how to use it to build meaningful and fulfilling lives. Join us on our quest to explore the secrets of consciousness, understand how our thoughts and behaviour are shaped, and discover practical tools and techniques for achieving your goals, aspirations, and building a life worth living.

Multiple Intelligences and One Life

How we survived and how much              intelligence a person has.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing

what he read made him mad. ― George Bernard Shaw

Thanks to what abilities have humans survived on the Earth? Not only have we survived, but our population has reached more than 8 billion individuals and continues to grow. How, lacking claws, fangs, and thick skin, unable to fly or climb trees, have humans taken over the entire world of living beings that inhabit the planet? However, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that the most numerous vertebrates on the planet are chickens, with more than 30 billion of them, solely with the permission and thanks to humans.

The only organ that has helped humans compete for survival is the brain. It turned out to be sharper than fangs and claws, more resourceful, and humans have something to counteract the brute and superior strength and agility of the surrounding mammals — their intelligence. People still wonder: How and why did the transformation of nervous tissue into grey thinking matter happen at the end of evolution? And so far, there is no consensus, just hypotheses.

Perhaps when the most curious of the apes climbed down from the trees and began to walk on two limbs, this freed up their upper limbs. The proponents of the theory of evolution argue that the autonomy of the upper limbs contributed to the ability to engage in active work. Labour, allegedly, made a man out of an ape, as the founders of Marxism also claimed. But today, having free hands does not necessarily contribute to active work, or they are not used in the way intended at the beginning of the journey. All this is a little alarming about the prospects for further human evolution.

There is another hypothesis that walking on two limbs contributed to the increase in blood flow to the brain. Since moving on four legs requires more energy and increased blood flow to them, moving on two legs made it possible to redistribute blood flow more effectively and significantly increase the ability to supply the brain with energy for thinking.

The brain uses an amazing amount of energy for its work, and a constant and sufficient blood flow not only has led to the supply of energy to the brain, but also, accordingly, has delivered more biological building matter, which also contributed to its anatomical development. Ultimately, humans possess the highest brain-to-body weight ratio among mammals. To be fair, it should be noted that the ratio is almost the same in mice, thus the surface area of the cerebral cortex is crucial.

Due to the need for constant energy replenishment, the life of primitive man consisted of endless movements, aimed at finding and supplying the body with calories for both physical activities and mental processes. The surrounding world was full of ill-wishers and competitors. But man did not become an intermediate link in the food chain for the surrounding species. The brain allowed him to create weapons for defence and attack, to subordinate his movement to strategy, to consider circumstances and plan changes, to form up in battle order or to retreat in an organised manner. And not only that.

The term intelligence comes from the Latin language and means understanding. This term refers not only to the general abilities of a person to know and understand, but also to the ability to solve problems, achieve goals, and everything that is currently associated with the effectiveness and success of an individual.

In the process of intelligence research, numerous tests have been developed to assess human intelligence. The most well-known among them is the IQ (intelligence quotient). It includes such abilities as goal setting, planning, developing strategies, learning, and applying abstract concepts. Today, it is obvious that this indicator does not fully describe the capabilities of an individual, let alone their implementation in life. Success in life, just like the scores you receive on the test itself, depends on many other factors. Even on nutrition: in developing countries, the introduction of dietary supplements with iodine helped raise IQ. What can be said for sure is that IQ tests demonstrate the ability to pass these very tests.

Continuing their research, scientists and theorists came to the conclusion that describing just one type of intelligence is not enough to understand the whole picture of the brain’s capabilities. A theory of multiple intelligences, with almost a dozen different kinds of intelligences, has been suggested. Depending on which functional quality is more developed in a person, that type of intelligence dominates the personality. Consequently, the use and development of this particular type of intelligence simplifies the realisation of the individual in the appropriate professional environment.

The founder of this theory is Howard Gardner, who proposed a line of six types of intelligence. Later, this line was expanded. Among the intelligences are: linguistic — an expressed ability to write or speak a language, logical-mathematical — the ability to remember and operate with numbers, musical — the ability to understand, feel and handle rhythms and timbres, visual-spatial — showing the ability to navigate in space, and also naturalistic, kinaesthetic, social, personal. Probably, with the expansion of forms of employment and areas of human activity, we can expect an increase in the number of these types. But, regardless of what domain a person is engaged in, there are some abilities that are necessary every day and on which one’s life and fate really depend.

The first is intelligence itself, scored in IQ: to perceive, understand, remember, reflect, plan, and solve problems.

The second is emotional intelligence (EI), a.k.a. emotional quotient (EQ): the ability to understand and manage your own and other people’s emotions while solving problems.

The third is narrative intelligence (NI): a set of abilities to determine and understand your own and other people’s behaviour, to influence it while solving problems.

Most of the knowledge, research, and literature exists on intelligence and IQ, to a lesser extent — on EQ, and scattered and non-systematic information — on NI. The latter, possibly, because most people benefit from the formula: ‘He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.’

EQ: Who Controls Emotions, Controls the World

Why is emotional intelligence so                      important for business?

Just as the mode of the rational mind is words, the mode

of the emotions is nonverbal. ― Daniel Goleman

A famous businessman once joked that we use emotional intelligence when, if it is impossible to sell, there is at least an opportunity to seduce. But seriously, the peculiarity of this intelligence lies in the very definition of emotion.

Emotion is a mental process that shows our subjective evaluation of the present or possible situation. The key word in this definition is 'subjective’. Many of us sometimes confuse the concepts of feeling and emotion. Feeling is a combination of thought and emotion, and even something more than their wordless compound.

The use of emotions to actively influence the environment, in its essence, is an irrational influence. But, on the other hand, it is efficient, clear, and does not require developing complex algorithms, in-depth analysis, or calculations. Often a single glance conveys more information than a few hundred words or a string of numbers.

The fact is that working with the rational part of consciousness, conclusions, along with clarity and logic, has, accordingly, a downside. Such processes, due to their linearity and consistency, are extremely slow. The quality of results of such intellectual work depends on many factors, both innate and acquired, including vocabulary, education, and upbringing. Therefore, thought can be compared to the strategy of a certain general staff, and emotion can be compared to tactics directly on the front line.

We are convinced: in order to manage something, it is necessary to control something. Control is understanding of what is happening and what needs to be done to make something different happen. We strive to control everything we can imagine and measure. But the fact is that such a rational approach to controlling the irrational, in this case emotions, has its own peculiarities.

The task of emotional intelligence is not to indulge in control, in the usual sense of this process, but to focus on understanding the experience. In order to be aware of emotions, they must initially be felt, experienced, but this does not imply following them. We need to follow our goals and needs, which often diverge from the direction that our emotions show us. Either we control our emotions, or they control us.

Using emotional intelligence allows you to purposefully influence and draw attention to what it is necessary for. The amount of information that enters the brain through all channels in one second is approximately 11 million bits. Mental activity processes only about 50 bits. Because there is so much incoming information, we focus on the main things, and many reactions or decisions are executed in the background of the brain. In turn, the brain itself, in order to create a representative image for us, gets rid of more incoming data and uses data that is already available and exists in it. And in this competition of priorities, only emotions indicate to us what is really worth paying attention to, which contributes to the consolidation of incoming information in memory.

We believe that emotions focus our attention on things or events that are our priority. But emotions are just as likely to focus attention on the priorities that are presented to us by our surroundings. Through emotions, bypassing rational consciousness, we have access to more ancient brain structures. This allows us to control our behaviour by paying attention to how desires emerge. And this gives an opportunity to influence the behaviour of a person as a consumer. Who owns the attention, owns the market. Who owns the market, owns the world. Through attention, we can control the world. Attention is capitalised.

The use of emotional impact in economics explains the well-known mantra: ‘If you take enough of nothing, you will get something in the end.’ Emotions are the tangible ‘nothing’ that can be turned into a real ‘something’.

Narrative Intelligence, Your Personal Secret Advisor

How narrative intelligence affects behaviour          and why life is a constantly changing          narrative.

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories. ― Alan Kay

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the system of concepts that exists in a person’s mind, and therefore in his or her thoughts, is determined by their language. Our behaviour, in the end, is a sequence of our actions in relation to the world around us. It is a kind of programme that we follow under certain circumstances.

These programmes are executed through their internal interpretation. We remember such interpretations and accept them as necessary responses and sequences of actions for certain circumstances or tasks. Every time we retell this algorithm of actions to ourselves, we reinforce it so much that we do not notice or pay attention to it. We can equally follow the algorithms that our surroundings have interpreted for us. These programmes are our internal executive narratives.

Let us explain this using a simple illustration. Answering the question ‘How do you cook scrambled eggs?’ respondents tell us what they need, in what quantity, what they do and in which particular order. They give comments — why exactly this or that ingredient, in this or that sequence — and, finally, describe the result, in which they explain the significance of each action. Some respondents may note the differences between their own cooking preferences and the generally accepted ones.

All this sequence of actions and the purpose of each stage, as well as the ingredients of the dish, are not improvisation. People tell exactly what they had done many times before. And if you wake them up at night and ask them to cook scrambled eggs — they will do them just that way.

But what we are interested in lies elsewhere. There are always those who have never cooked scrambled eggs, but they, although in a simpler way, will tell you how to prepare the dish. Without lengthy gastronomic comments and interpretations of culinary secrets, but they will tell you.

There are hundreds of thousands of such sequences of actions that lead to the desired result stored in our memory. And they are not about scrambled eggs at all. ‘What to do when…’ or ‘What to think about when…’ and so on. When some circumstances change and lead to others, the brain determines this, associates it with similar ones, and selects the most appropriate programme of actions from the existing ones.

If you are hungry, you make scrambled eggs, if it is raining, you take an umbrella, if the boss shouts at you, you duck your head. The brain uses ready-made programmes and does not create new ones. Why is that? Because it saves energy, and this will be discussed further.

The sequence in presenting facts, events, and actions, as in the case of scrambled eggs, which has its cause and result, or its meaning — is a narrative.

The term ‘narrative’ (from the Latin narrare — to tell a story) in a general sense refers to the description of interrelated events in the form of a sequence of words or images, or both. The term was first introduced in historiography and, in particular, in the concept of the so-called ‘narrative history’. It considers historical events not as a result of the conformity to natural laws, but in the context of their description and in conjunction with their interpretation.

Contexts and interpretations are very important since they express the fundamental idea of this approach — they can be used to bring subjective meaning to the statement, to insert in the narrative something that, without distorting the facts and actions, can radically change their perception.

You should distinguish between narrative and story. A story is a sequence of events based on the actions of characters. There is always a plot in it. Narrative is a way of telling this story and includes the story itself.

Recently, the term ‘narrative’ has acquired an additional meaning — ‘a statement that contains a world view or prescription’. To paraphrase, this is a programmed action that is determined by some strategic meaning.

Narrative bias, literally meaning 'distortion of the story’, is a human tendency to link together information from different sources and establish cause-and-effect relationships. An innate human need is to give everything consistency, regardless of whether the resulting story corresponds to reality or not.

With the help of such stories, a person can organise their own experience, which is a description of their activity, and fill all this activity with meaning. The way a person builds and organises their narratives gives an idea of what behaviour they prefer and how they see this world and their life.

It is easier for us to perceive our own life according to the laws of the plot. Because life ‘by itself’ does not exist. Since childhood, we form ideas of the world based on the stories told by people who are important to us. Step by step, we imitate, learn, and build our world view, our library of narratives. And this is a very important ability — by retelling narratives, to determine the goals and meanings behind events, as well as another one — to change them and create new ones.

Our children readily forget their parents’ moralising, but without hesitation they quote fictional characters from numerous Disney and Marvel stories. A person is brought up and trained on narratives. It is more convenient and familiar for our brain to perceive knowledge processed in stories than to memorise regulations, forms, and lists that lack the qualities of a narrative.

Adults have their own forms of narratives. The methods of relaying narratives may differ depending on the occupation. They are different for consultants, politicians, directors, journalists, and coaches… You can continue this list yourself.

Narratives, meanings, and goals are all tied in one powerful, tight knot. The more often we examine them, the more accurately and correctly we define our goals as well as those of our surroundings. Narratives ultimately determine the reality we want to have. And people prefer the reality in which their narratives take place. It does not matter how real this reality is. We believe that there are points of no return in life. There is always a choice, there are no situations without a choice. Even when there is no choice, there really is one: just NOT to choose. But we choose all the time. Fortunately, our choice is not determined solely by our instincts. It is defined by our narratives. The choice of narrative is the choice of behaviour, and therefore the choice of one’s present and future.

Graduates of an American university, who were on average no more than 25 years old, were asked the question: ‘How do you imagine yourself at 40?’ The vast majority told what they wanted to have when they were 40. A few told who they wanted to be at this age. Which of them do you think will do better?

Intelligence is a rational assessment of the world, a judgement, a concept. Emotional intelligence (EI) is an irrational and subjective assessment of the world. Separately, they are the cause and formal grounds for a person’s actions. Narrative intelligence is the place where rational intelligence and irrational emotional intelligence combine to form a dualistic matter, i.e. human behaviour. It, like many compilations, fits into scenarios that are understandable for the person involved, but sometimes inexplicable in general.

Overall, our effectiveness does not lie in taking tests, doing mental calculations, and staying cool. It is about what we do and how we do it — our behaviour. This is the end product of our brain activity.

Narrative intelligence is a set of such abilities to determine behaviour, create new narratives and use them to solve problems and exercise influence. Narrative intelligence is the ‘assemblage point’ of our behaviour. By and large, a person is a moving collection of all their narratives in space and time. Although this movement itself is also a narrative.

Monopoly on Narratives

How societies create a monopoly on meanings and narratives and how people voluntarily choose them.

People believe what they believe and see what they believe.

In the last century, when films featuring cowboys and Indians were shown in cinemas, there was an increase in injuries caused by arrows shot from DIY bows. A well-made film is an example of a spectacular passive narrative.

A narrative can serve two purposes. Passive — when narratives act as role models to follow. And active — when they influence behaviour through their semantic realisation.

A correctly structured conversation with a parent or spiritual shepherd, after which a person changes his or her life, is an example of an active narrative. We accept any stories in which we find something useful for ourselves, something that we can gain from or avoid. We learn from those who tell us such stories and, in fact, shape our behaviour. But the lesson that can be learned from human history in a broad sense is that humanity does not learn from history. Every hundred years or less it repeats some dramatic episodes of its history. Maybe these are not the right stories… Or maybe not the right lessons…

The vast majority of stories are told to us by amateurs. But professionals have a greater and more targeted influence on us.

For centuries, directly or indirectly, governments have created and disseminated narratives facilitating continuous monitoring of citizens’ behaviour. The system of narratives is a powerful tool through which institutions are able to predict and guide people’s thinking, decisions, and actions. The process maintains consistency and continuity by featuring different groups of narratives for each age. Step by step, starting with the family, parents, kindergarten, with the established order at school and the curriculum at college or university. Then everything is much easier.

People are taught behavioural patterns that carry various meanings and concepts within themselves: about guilt, about punishment for the slightest deviation from the existing system, about rewards, and even about social behaviour scoring systems.

If following the parents’ narrative gives the child an appropriate reward, then he or she will readily accept it. The adult world has its own universal system for controlling and regulating behaviour — money. Its essence lies in the initially created shortage and limited purchasing power. This imbalance becomes the primary mechanism for the functioning of any survival model that a person chooses.

The system should have a tool to measure a person’s position in relation to the imbalance between their needs and capabilities. This form of measurement, which we can call a social convention, is money.

Money allows you to exchange your work, time, and even life for the satisfaction of your most diverse fantasies. To consolidate this dependence, hundreds of different instruments have been invented — loans, obligations, mortgages. Therefore, people cling to work and endure humiliation and pressure. Money is a universal and unique narrative. It is not a natural resource essential for life, like air, sun, flora and fauna. However, it is considered by people as an indispensable means of survival, for which they can sacrifice air, flora, fauna, and the planet itself.

The narratives that dominate a society do not come from the society, although they may convincingly appear to do so. They always, to one extent or another, represent the views of those in power, whether political parties, banks, corporations, the ruling elite or the armed forces. One can observe any combination of the above-mentioned organisations that, by creating temporary alliances, control the public narratives and shape the societal agenda.

Content meanings in narratives regularly create illusory social beliefs. For example, 'War stimulates scientific and creative potential.' There is no real reason for this, other than the fact that increased funding for the defence industry leads to more inventions and technical breakthroughs. Invest in another industry to that extent, and you will see what you get. What you water and care for grows.

Most people tend to exaggerate the fact that free enterprise and competition create motivation. This is only partially true. If the world is based on competition, then what is the competition based on? Is it really based on the desire to become better? After all, it is obvious that at the same time such a system generates what is characteristic of competition — corruption, crime, conflicts. The price of this motivation is so high that it casts doubt on the very meaning of human existence, especially when this meaning is replaced by corporate and national narratives.

And at the everyday level, several governing narratives may exist in parallel, sometimes directly opposite. We strongly believe that money is such a healthy motivation that we rarely trust people whose only goal is financial gain. Moreover, mistrust of these individuals is not the only negative emotion we experience towards them.

People tend to bring narratives of the past into the present and project them into the future. But what kind of past are we referring to when even today the use of computers and the internet challenges the very nature of employment, and when the internet provides the basis for the development of unprecedented social changes in our interaction with the world? The internet accumulates vast amounts of information, shapes public opinion, and as it happens, narratives no longer have customs barriers, borders, or international agreements.

Some countries are trying, and not without success, to introduce restrictions, but they also understand that a person who is forced to perform monotonous repetitive and meaningless actions degrades. The narratives of the countries that the world focuses on will become unsuitable for the majority in the future due to the technical capabilities they create for the accelerated intervention of alternative narratives.

Narratives are part of our physiology, nature, and culture. Even those who think they make their own decisions if they turn off the TV and shield themselves from cultural indoctrination are still influenced by the narratives of people who watch TV and read blogs.

Maybe tomorrow supercomputers will not start a war, as in The Terminator, but will simply create and spread narratives that will help humanity itself bring civilisation to ruin. Can you imagine what people who are convinced of something are ready to do? It is about them that it is said: 'One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.' And if there are millions of them? Humanity was safer when people sat around a campfire and looked at the stars, telling each other legends and making up myths.

We do not know much about ourselves. People know less about their own behaviour than they do about what is sold in the nearby supermarket. But those who form the system of narratives know us better. Big data technologies make this knowledge incredibly effective. It is clear that a system can be discreetly changed by adjusting the culture and education. People should learn more about themselves and the world, understand how their system of narratives makes the world the way it is, and how it can be changed.

What exactly forces us to make certain 'conscious’ decisions or guides us? Only narratives: what we believe, what we are made up of, and what we choose from. Our behaviour is a choice of the possibilities presented to our brain, what is already recorded in it. It cannot be chosen if something does not already exist. But it can be created.

And even if the state has a monopoly on narratives, and if it shapes the agenda, we still are engaged in an odd relationship with our narratives. We own a small monopoly on narratives.

A Parable Is a Form of Narrative

Special learning space.

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they

are ideally set up to understand stories. ― Roger Shank

A person always needs a specific space where they can reflect, learn, understand and accept their place in this world and the place that they have yet to find. This is not a home, work, or social media, which has become a part of today’s world. This is where it all started, intelligence and its narratives.

One of the forms of narratives that help us understand the world and our place in it is a parable. A parable is a brief, didactic story presented in an allegorical form. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines a parable as an 'example… that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.' Parables allow us to give knowledge a live and dynamic image, to imprint it deeply in memory and present it as a complete idea that has meaning. Any parable captivates the listener not only with its plot. The parables are imaginative and concise, they are full of metaphors, they are emotional.

In real life, we often encounter parables that relate to our daily problems. Such parables are widely known and often quoted, for instance, King Solomon’s proverbs. And even today, thousands of years later, they are able to make a strong impression on listeners. The works of art based on them are among those known to many. Other well-known parables are no less meaningful.

For example, the Parable of the Sower:

'Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them. But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold'.

What is this parable about? It is about many things, including the process of becoming a person and the role of conditions and environment in this process. Much of our life really depends on how deep the seeds of knowledge fall into us. And how much we are affected by external factors — birds pecking at grain, weeds that grow near us. If we do not focus, if the knowledge and experience we gain are not taken into account in such a way that they are transformed into competencies, if they are not connected with our values and life principles, they will eventually wither and become worthless. The eighty-nine words of the Parable of the Sower provide a clear and concise SWOT analysis of the possible forms of this process.

There are many similar parables or stories, but they are probably not as scalable, profound and artistically flawless as the classics. We wonder how they manage to very delicately connect so many simple events, captivate us and focus on the essence of the presentation. An entire science, narratology, is devoted to this phenomenon.

Managing the Paradoxical and Unpredictable

Management is the formation of purposeful behaviour and, as classical experiments show, how much this is possible.

There are two great days in a person’s life: the day you

are born and the day you find out why. ― Anonymous

What does a person really want besides traditional happiness, health and prosperity? Most of all, they want certainty in life and destiny. But this is impossible without control over yourself and your surroundings. Self-control in the view of a person means understanding how they think, what they decide and how they act. The ultimate goal of controlling the surroundings is to make sure that the latter contributes to the achievement of a person’s life goals.

There are various components to managing your surroundings. In addition to constant and active communication and a thoughtful strategy for building relationships, these are specific targeted actions that lead to the fact that an individual’s personal needs become the personal desires of the surroundings.

Ultimately, the essence of any self-management and management of the surroundings lies in the formation of stable, purposeful behaviour. In this simple formula, both of its components — purposes and especially behaviour — can be broadly defined, which makes this formula not as unambiguous as it looks at first glance.

As for human behaviour itself, sometimes it seems completely unpredictable and incredibly paradoxical. Let us look at some of the most famous experiments, the discourses around which do not subside even today. One way or another, they show the extent of this unpredictability and paradox.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo and three colleagues from Stanford University investigated the nature of violence and cruelty that arises in a person under the conditions of a social role imposed on them. Final year college students were recruited to play the roles of guards and convicts in a simulated prison environment.

The experimenters were surprised to find that after a short time, the relationship between the 'guards’ and the 'prisoners’ quickly developed features typical to this scenario. At the same time, the 'guards’ noticed the rapid growth of sadistic manifestations in themselves and just a few days later, the 'prisoners’ staged an actual uprising in the 'prison’.

The study demonstrated how compliant and submissive people become when an ideology that justifies their actions is endorsed by the state or society. Simply put, when we are designated specific roles, and if those around us behave similarly, we follow suit.

The next experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram of Yale University. The 'teachers’, whose reaction was tested, were told to increase the voltage in the electrodes attached to the 'learner’, who was actually a professional actor. The 'teachers’ did not know that, and the 'learner’ imitated the suffering caused by the electric shock in a highly believable manner. If the 'learner’ answered the questions incorrectly, the 'teacher’ was ordered to increase the voltage. At the same time, the 'teachers’ knew that a voltage of more than 300 volts was life-threatening. The experimenters, when asked about it, insisted that the experiment was not really as violent as it looked and that the 'teachers’ should continue.

Before the experiment, it was assumed that 2—3 per cent of 'teachers’ would administer 450 volts, which is lethal for humans. This corresponds to the statistics of people in the population with sadistic tendencies. But in the course of the experiment, this turned out to be 65 per cent! Only 12.5 per cent stopped on 300 volts, and the rest of the participants — in the range from 300 to 330 volts.

The experiment showed that people are inclined to do many things when provided with valid reasons or when they obey the instructions of an authority.

In 1977, another well-known experiment, called the Good Samaritan experiment, was conducted at Princeton University. But first, it is significant to understand the concept of human values. Values represent a person’s beliefs about what is important to them, what they adhere to, and what they are guided by in life. These beliefs shape who a person is and influence their actions.

About the experiment. The biblical story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30—37) tells how a certain Samaritan stopped to help a wounded man, while two clergymen, a priest and a Levite, had just passed by. A simple story with a lot of meaning. Psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson decided to test whether religion has any significant influence on empathy and providing help to others. The participants of the experiment were students at the University’s Theological Seminary. They were divided into two groups: one was asked to deliver a speech on the Good Samaritan, and the other — a speech on the possibility of employment in the seminary. The speech was to be delivered in another building, and to get there, participants had to go through an alley. An elderly actor was lying on the side of the alley, faking a heart attack. Different participants were given different times to reach the audience. Therefore, some were in a hurry when passing through the alley, while others were not.

The results showed that students who had prepared a speech on the Good Samaritan stopped to help no more often than those who had prepared a speech on job opportunities. The only factor that influenced the decision of the students to help the man was the time they had at their disposal. Those who were in less of a hurry stopped more readily. And, regardless of the topic of their speech, only 10 per cent of those who had little time tried to help the 'sufferer’. It turned out that morality is time-dependent, which can significantly distort a person’s system of values.

The more time people have at their disposal, the kinder they are and the more inclined to empathise and help. And, therefore, the other way round: if people are in a hurry, they become unkind and indifferent. So, in a megalopolis, the probability of getting help in the street is much less than in the country. In other words, it sounds like, ‘We are kind, but we don’t have time for this’, or ‘We are ill-natured because there are traffic jams everywhere.’

And yet another experiment, although not as well-known as the previous ones. Scientists from the Institute of Zoology, which is part of the Zoological Society of London, together with the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, led by Dr Andrew King, showed how leaders can emerge in human society.

Imagine 200 people who are asked to move in a circle. The only rule that applies is that they should not approach each other closer than one metre. One metre in this case could be interpreted as some kind of safe personal space. Suddenly a group of five people appears in the crowd who begin to move not in a circle, but in a certain direction, towards some goal known only to them. After a while, the others do the same. Two hundred people start marching in one direction, without asking where or why.

If one gets the impression that in all these experiments we are talking about a kind of game, then it is worth noting that the boundary between any game and real life is very relative. They transform into each other interchangeably. The case study and phenomenology show that life sometimes acts as a game and a game — as life.

A celebrated English bard once famously said: 'All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' And if that is the case, the actors do not just play their roles — there is a script, there are prepared monologues and actions.

Everyone has always been interested in the question: who writes this script and how? And, as we will see later, we are the authors of only a small and insignificant part of it.

The Hierarchy of Goals

The hierarchy of goals and communities. How the upper levels seek to subdue the lower ones, and how they manage to do so.

If your working day isn’t perfect, then you work

for someone else, not yourself. ― Anonymous

A person’s life can be viewed as a process of constantly setting goals and achieving them. A person’s daily activity, their thinking, decisions and, accordingly, actions that shape their behaviour, all this is directed and subordinated to the goals that they have. Or the goals that were set before them or that seduced them.

The levels of goals correspond to the forms of people’s associations. The level of goals in this hierarchy determines the category of self-identification of a person in which a person is aware of himself and which contributes to the achievement of his personal goals. The hierarchy is as follows: humanity, state, nation, corporation, group, family, and finally the individual itself. The goals of the upper levels tend to take over the goals of the lower levels. But they do not always succeed.

The highest level of goals is mega goals on a planetary scale, the goals of all mankind and civilisation. The most popular of them are environmental issues. Humanity does not stop trying to somehow solve them, but with varying degrees of success. One well-known example is the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Or such a hypothetical goal that would become real when aliens with clearly unfriendly intentions appeared. If there really is a threat of intervention on Earth, then there is no doubt that countries and governments will unite, and all current conflicts, wars and disagreements will immediately lose their relevance. The unification in this case will happen within the category of human identity as a species.

The next sublevel of goals in the hierarchy are initially tribal goals, which later became national and state goals. The categories of a person’s identity are language, passport, lifestyle, and borders of residence. Combining goals at this level allows you sometimes to neglect mega goals. For example, this enables actively cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest and justifying why signing the Kyoto Protocol is not worthwhile.

Below the national level are corporate goals. These are the goals of companies and entire industries grouped into categories of employment and workplaces. The implementation of goals of this level becomes a dominant feature, which occasionally allows industries to dump toxic waste into the environment, neglect business norms, and ignore state nature conservation programmes.

The goals of families, groups, clans, and gangs are even lower. Conflicts, wars and confrontations between generations may occur at this level despite corporate culture, traditions and unspoken laws.

And finally, the level of personal goals. These are the most sensitive and most important goals for a person, goals that shape most of a person’s daily behaviour, goals that people are not ready to give up, which they are not ready to neglect, sometimes even in the most extreme circumstances.

The challenge of managing people has always been how to subordinate the goals of the lower levels to the upper ones, whether they are family, corporate or state. The complexity of this task increases with the elevation of the goals. One of the reasons is that at lower levels, a person’s behaviour is formed on deep and stable narratives, and at higher levels the meanings of narratives often become less clear or appear unconvincing.

It is believed that the quality of a person’s life depends on the effectiveness and satisfaction from the process of achieving goals. In pursuit of this desired quality, people are ready to unite and adjust. They are ready to change their place of residence, family, profession, place of work, and sometimes even country and nationality. People are willing to redefine their identity to attain the lowest-level goals. This, as it will be discussed in the next chapter, is a natural function of the human brain and is integral to its operation.

Other cases of interest are rare but popular, when individuals prioritise higher-level goals over more immediate ones. And here, striving to achieve these 'elevated’ (in all senses) goals, a person encounters illusions.

The first of these illusions arises when people think that they are pursuing their own goals. But in reality, the goal may have been subtly replaced with tasks imposed by their surroundings. Why is that? At least because for a long time it was believed that people with goals of their own are dangerous, especially if their goals do not align with those of their leaders. Wouldn’t it be better to give these individuals assignments? Substantial, ambitious, life-long assignments.

For example, some nations have introduced a continuous task — a social credit system for evaluating citizens’ behaviour. Score is calculated based on their compliance with the society’s requirements and rules. Quite a goal, isn’t it? History shows that the desire 'to be right’ within the state or nation is gradually and necessarily transformed into an even more ambiguous one — 'to be always right’.

Smaller-scale goals are reserved for environments such as supermarkets, vanity fairs, multi-currency accounting systems, and similar areas to materialise self-identification. To maintain a comfortable existence within these consumer spaces, people are ready to engage in strenuous work, the effectiveness of which is judged by the authorities and society in goals achieved per unit of time, ultimately leading to a dubious system of evaluating these accomplishments.

However, what motivates a person to willingly prioritise the goals of a company, nation, or country over their own? It is the pursuit of meaning that can peacefully lead the mind to compromise with its goal to survive. This is likely the primary factor distinguishing people from the rest of the living world.

In the long run, at every hierarchical level, individuals employ a similar strategy to subdue those beneath them, which involves selling various concepts of happiness. These concepts are replicated, appealing, and straightforward to the same extent as they are unreachable. Perhaps because they aim to blur the distinction between 'I want’ and 'I need’, rendering it negligible and obscure.

How many unnecessary worries from 'I want’ arise due to the fact that what you really need is not always what you want! Therefore, if you imagine that you want exactly what you need, then this already acquires some commercial and political interest. The only task is to convince yourself of this construction. To show that in addition to goals, actions and plans, your 'desires’ also contain the essence of your life.

By the way, if an individual is not persuaded by this semantic framework, then an undesirable situation for the upper levels may occur — when a person wants what he or she already possesses. And it can be regarded as happiness — to want what you have. Yet, this is a different story and a different concept.

Some Cherished Stories from the Bible

How many stories — so many interpretations.

If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way.

If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. ― Jim Rohn

Reading the news, it is sometimes difficult to even imagine a place where such cynical and hypocritical stories can still occur. Although everyone suspects that the place is not so far from them. And there are many, many such stories.

How many stories has humanity managed to tell itself? Do you know how many stories there are in the Old Testament? There are much more than may be seen at first glance. After all, each story can be interpreted in different ways: as a historical description of the people in search of their place in the world, as instructions for each day’s behaviour, or as a manual for managing people and processes. Each story reveals several layers of meaning, depending on the angle from which it is viewed.

What is the meaning of the life story of Joshua, a military commander and leader, or the story of such a controversial figure as King David? How many temptations fell to the lot of King David? The king, who regularly violated the laws, at least moral laws, after all the turmoil, again and again returned to his faith and his mission. Maybe the point is that none of us knows our purpose in life until we take responsibility for events and our own lives.

Or the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob, who later became Pharaoh’s first minister. After his brothers had nearly killed him and then sold him as a slave to the caravan drivers, he forgave them. A story of mercy? Or is it a story about how the path to success always lies through suffering, betrayal, and knowledge? Or in the ability to interpret dreams and that you need to listen to the voice of God or your inner voice? In any case, try to understand what He or it wants to tell you. How many different interpretations! It is like in medicine: how many doctors there are, so many diagnoses they make.

We sometimes trust TV series characters more than politicians because the former present us with a more understandable semantic narrative. And, as history shows, what matters most about politicians is how close their promises are to our desires than to our values. And our desires are not always in full accordance with our model of morality. The world has become so cynical that to achieve their goals, politicians and those around them do not disdain to appeal to the different beings that live in each of us. But more to those beings who neglect their intelligence.

The Meanings of Survival

Life is the choice and refinement of the model in which meanings are tried to be introduced.

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads

and empty hearts can do that. ― Norman Vincent Peale

Humankind, in fact, has always faced only one question — its survival. Throughout their existence on the planet, people have refined the forms and models of survival, accumulated knowledge, and developed skills. And all this in order to live to an age when they could contribute their unique genetic material to a global planetary experiment they are involved in.

And over time, practising their survival, people have achieved significant success. They tirelessly improved hunting techniques, settled in new homes, cultivated crops, and developed ways to protect themselves from wild animals and neighbouring tribes. Along with these changes, new demands have emerged — to live as long as possible and as better and easier as possible. In other words, the requirements have changed not only for the time a person has lived on the Earth but also for the quality of this time. People’s ideas and the very texture of their behaviour have changed. They transformed the innate biological mechanisms of survival — defensive aggression, stress, competition — into categories and concepts of envy, vanity, greed, adultery, and the list goes on.

People began to devote more and more time to the realisation of their most sophisticated desires, called ideas, the connection of which with survival is still very doubtful. Choosing a suitable survival model and implementing it is what a person does all his or her life.

The survival model includes decisions such as choosing a profession and place of work, graduating from prestigious universities, developing skills, accumulating knowledge, and interacting with the surroundings. The amplitude of relationships with the surroundings often disappoints a person when they feel hypocrisy, servility and grovelling, but they adapt, because it becomes acceptable for them; it is also a survival model.

There is no good or bad model, there is one that suits an individual specifically. Irreconcilable contradiction in any model is just a term. The desire to survive reconciles everything and everyone. Assembling their model piece by piece, with their job, education, skills, language skills, citizenship, and everything else possible, people try to make it work at all levels of their goals and associations.

People allow the goal to determine the means to achieve it. The world is a market. A giant market as big as humankind. The model that people choose, what they do and what they strive for, shape their environment. They choose the environment, and the environment chooses them.

On the one hand, life is a race where the model is endlessly improved to adapt to changing circumstances. This benefits those at higher levels, who are precisely the ones engaged in constantly changing the rules and circumstances. On the other hand, life is a person’s accumulated experience.

People are disappointed. People are afraid that any new ideas, goals and meanings of changes in the social system or their way of life will no longer serve their interests. They are afraid because they are sure that any new social contract between levels carries with it only the possibility of creating a new level of ‘elites’.

At the same time, the exact 'elites’ or groups of influence that have a monopoly on creating and distributing the leading narratives and meanings of such a community system are well aware and take advantage of the fact that when creating any new narrative, there is only one mandatory condition. This narrative must be at least somehow connected with the meaning of an individual’s personal goals. And it does not matter how — with promises or real steps. Everything else can be ignored, and the narrative can continue to be interpreted and supplemented as desired, depending on the need for the current historical moment.

Therefore, not all narratives are accepted by people as long as their personal goals are threatened by issues like hunger, unemployment, hardships, and poverty. Try to deprive any person of a source of income — they will do exactly what they need to provide for their immediate needs and do whatever it takes for this. It is enough to recall the experiments on behaviour mentioned earlier. As long as there is a monetary system and maintained shortages of resources, the defining narratives will be the ones that are most in line with the model of human physical survival.

There is still something that can influence people’s behaviour after they have resolved problems with basic survival. Nowadays, this is a tremendous space for influencing and controlling human behaviour through meanings.

When the term 'meaning’ is mentioned, the last link in the chain of its descriptions is reasoning about the meaning of life. People managed to come up with a lot of definitions and designs for this, in their opinion, important concept. It might be, for example: 'This is who you want to be and what you want to create.' Or: 'To be, rather than to seem.' Thus, by the way, people constantly repeat and calmly continue to seem throughout all their lives, and not to be.

Some people present their true purpose as the mission with which they were sent to this world. And the contents of their last report, which has been taking their breath away all their life, will be presented with awe at the heavenly throne. But many, and most of them, perceive their destiny as a series of important, in their opinion, goals, the end result of which is seen as material benefits, position in society, scientific discoveries or mental balance and self-improvement.

But, thank God, everything is simpler. From the point of view of nature, the meaning of life is in life itself. A person’s goal and purpose is to continue to live. From the formula: 'Plant a tree, build a house, have a son,' for nature, the goal is only the latter. All the rest people have made up for themselves, and not because they are bored or narcissistic impostors. This is because the goals of a person’s brain and life goals are different.

The meanings people find in poems, novels, business, painting, politics, or all of them together exist as part of a chosen survival model to realise their primary purpose — to continue living.

Today’s world is a world made up of opportunities and limitations, but a world where ultimately the choice is always up to the individual. The choice is up to his or her models. Previously, people went through rituals, initiations, mentors, teachers, and universities to make this choice. Now, websites, blogs, groups, and subscriptions are used. The impact on humans has increased by an order of magnitude.

In order to understand all this, people turn to their consciousness. Turn to something that they do not know much about, and much less what it is actually intended for. At the same time, people confuse the concepts of brain and consciousness, and these are not exactly the same things.

The task of the brain, as we said, is survival. One of the functions of the brain is consciousness, which allows a person to adapt meaningfully and accurately to changing circumstances, adjust forms of behaviour and create new ones. This conscious adaptation is the highest ability that exists in the living world.

How did people get this unique tool? What is it and how is it designed?

Paradise: The Story of Abdication

When you point your index finger at someone else,

the other three fingers point at you. ― Anonymous

The unique ability to justify oneself and transfer responsibility to the surroundings has been around since the beginning of time, since the origin of man. The most famous story about this tells how the fruit of the tree of knowledge was secretly eaten in the well-known garden in Mesopotamia. Already in this story, humanity tries not to notice important details that affect the essence and immediately focuses on the ending and characters.

But the details speak a lot. First, Adam had certain duties to perform in the garden. Not picking or eating the fruit of the Tree of knowledge was just a condition of stay.

The second important detail is that after the incident, he tried to hide.

And the third — when asked why he disobeyed God, he answered literally the following: ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’

The classic method of transferring responsibility first to the surroundings — Eve, and then higher — to God himself. Eve has the same method as her husband: ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.’

That was all the Creator heard. No, not confession or remorse. But a justification of their actions, an attempt to explain…

Every day we hear hundreds of such responses — at work, at home, on TV, everywhere.

This is the only thing we were allowed to take away from Paradise — our ability to be seduced and then make our excuses and shift responsibility.

The story of the Garden of Eden is a story of abdication of responsibility.

The Basic Design of the Brain

How the 'triune’ brain came into being and what actually happens in it.

…unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall

have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be

taken away even that which he hath. ― Matthew 25:29

The brain is a complex structure that supports human life. Its configuration reflects the entire evolution of living beings, as it contains structures that share life support functions closely related to each other.

The conditional division of the human brain into functional levels has long been proposed. For example, according to ancient Jewish sources, the brain contains 1) Rauch, the hypothalamus, which is responsible for the needs of survival; 2) Nefesh, what is called the limbic system, which shapes feelings, emotions and desires; 3) Neshamah, the cerebral cortex, i.e. intelligence, strategy, philosophy and control over the other two levels.

The ancient Jewish description generally coincides with the modern view of the structure of the brain. Today, it is also schematically and functionally divided into the 'reptilian brain’, 'mammalian’, or emotional brain, and the cerebral cortex. All these conditional levels functionally correspond to the purposes mentioned by the ancient Jewish researchers.

The first and most ancient level is the 'reptilian brain’. It appeared 150 million years ago and is responsible for three main functions related to individual survival. The first function is security. Instant solutions that determine the degree of danger using the 'fight-or-flight’ algorithm. This widely used formula for responding to danger does not mention another possible option — to freeze.

The second duty of the 'reptilian brain’ is actions related to the search for food.

And finally, its third function is activities aimed at the continuation of the species, which includes finding and identifying objects suitable for reproduction.

The 'reptilian brain’ is constantly in operation, but a person is not aware of its activity, because the main indicator of the effectiveness of this brain, its KPI (key performance indicator), is speed and reliability, and not awareness. Awareness is as energy-intensive as it is slow and ambiguous. You can get eaten before you even think about it.

Above the 'reptilian brain’ is a structure called the 'mammalian brain’, or emotional brain. These structures appeared about 50 million years ago and help individuals survive in the group.

The emotional brain is the brain of social relations that helps structure a herd, tribe, pride, group, or society. Power and submission are behaviours that are shaped by this particular level. This brain is also involved in procreation activities, but in a specific form: to make an impression — to get an impression.

The 'mammalian brain’ is the centre of striving for superiority, seen as a resource for the exclusivity of the distribution of genetic material. Its structures allow a person to 'understand’ pets and be fascinated by 'communicating’ with them, and this 'understanding’ is, in a certain sense, true. It is this level that is responsible for a person’s experience and attention.

And finally, about two million years ago, the topmost level appeared: the structures responsible for the function called consciousness. If everything is more or less clear with the previous levels, then there are various misconceptions about the work and purpose of this level.

Most people imagine that the functions of consciousness include such important abilities as planning, developing military doctrines and scientific theories, writing novels and poems, writing theses and painting, creating movies and gambling. But all of the above and much more are just related elements, a by-product that arises in the process of its main activity and its main purpose — conscious adaptation to changes in the environment.

Explain and Justify

A reluctant lawyer — why a person is never guilty.

Anyone can be put in prison for ten years without

explaining anything to him, and somewhere in the back

of his mind he will know why. ― Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The most significant and primary function of our consciousness is to adapt our abilities to the model that contributes to survival, or to create a new survival model according to our abilities.

The ability to adapt in today’s world of concrete jungle is significantly different from the features of human adaptation in the wild, where they had only to adapt to food chains, pulling out of them the favourite links that satisfy their growing appetite and already suitable for the developing culinary mastery and needs.

Today, adaptation is no longer a situational mimicry or an evolutionary improvement of organs and physiological processes. Today, adaptation cannot be a passive expectation which follows environmental changes. Today, no matter how strange it may sound, modern requirements for adaptation are already a person’s anticipation of non-existent changes and practical interaction in models of the expected future.

Human consciousness is capable of creating a certain image of reality, modelling this image and admitting into it something that does not actually exist in the real environment. The world around us is represented by hundreds of thousands of interconnected processes. A person can adjust and rearrange these processes in their mind, change their essence and detail, simultaneously build a completely different reality in their perception, and create their own virtual mental maps.

Later on, based on these visual maps, it is safe to build your strategies, calculate plans and only then act. All this is the first and foremost ability of consciousness. But not the only one. There is another, and also an important one.

Nature has rewarded humans with a unique ability to visualise and imagine anything. Thanks to this ability, people can plan the actions of an upcoming hunt or the tactics of a football match, describe to themselves the interior of a house or the structure of a business they want to open. People can also recreate in their minds pictures of what happened to them and relive these moments in their imagination. Can imagine and admire or, on the contrary, become frustrated and upset. Can become so upset that they fall into a deep depression and, even worse, bring themselves to the point of wanting or trying to take their own life.

Thanks to imagination, a person can experience emotions and thoughts not only from events that have already happened to them but also from those that have not yet occurred.

A person can feel guilty both for the past and for the future. Guilty of anything, and that makes his condition unbearable. Experience something that does not exist or has not happened, and feel guilty about something that has not happened yet. This ability of consciousness comes bundled with imagination and the ability to visualise.

Nature is not at all interested in the question of who is to blame. Nature does not have the concepts of 'guilt’, 'judgement’, 'moral responsibility’ and similar terms invented by people. Nature has one purpose and meaning, which it puts into the appearance of any living thing on the planet. This is the continuation of life. Suicidal behaviour and depression of a person, according to nature, do not contribute in any way to their reproduction and the fulfilment of this single and most important goal.

Hence, another important function of consciousness is the ability to find excuses and explanations for yourself in any situation. Even after confessing to the most serious crime, a person always finds indirect culprits for his or her terrible action. It can be a dysfunctional family, bad company, government policies, weather, circumstances, and so on and so forth. The unique ability to explain and justify oneself surpasses all other human abilities. A person does not even notice how this happens because it works as perfectly and reliably as it does independently.

A simple question: 'Will you help a stranger who has felt ill in the street?' will be answered in the affirmative by the overwhelming majority of people. But if the respondents are walking down a street and see a passer-by who has become ill, then before realising the necessity to help, they will ask themselves a lot of different questions. All of them will be about one thing: how to find excuses for why this time they are not going to help.

For example, they may assume that this person is a tramp or a drug addict. This will immediately reduce the degree of their responsibility for the fate of the sufferer. Or they will start looking around and, seeing other eyewitnesses, will say to themselves that surely someone has already called the ambulance. And even if they are doctors themselves, they will think about criminal liability for malpractice. And only after all this, the sufferer has a chance to get help.

Despite the fact that a lot of things happen quickly and imperceptibly in us, it is directly dependent on the questions that we ask ourselves at these moments.

For example, very often motivational messages and publications use the expression 'If not you, then who?' But in the human brain, this question, based on the specifics of its work, actually sounds very different: 'If not me, then who?' That is, we need to find that someone else.

People try to explain everything to themselves. Explanations are a certain component of the system of the world around them. This sense of consistency gives them a greater sense of certainty about the present and future. This gives people confidence and, consequently, they are less stressed and less prone to depression. Surveys have shown that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was uncertainty that most people were concerned about.

To sum up, the cerebral cortex, where our consciousness is for all practical purposes located, has many abilities and two main functions — to purposefully adapt to changes in the environment and justify the decisions and actions chosen for this adaptation.

Energy Strategies of the Brain

'Economic or economical?' — a question that has never lost its relevance.

What really matters is what happens in us, not with us.

An average person’s primitive reaction — the time it takes from seeing the light in front of their eyes to pressing a button in response — is 250 milliseconds. An average computer responds 750,000,000 times faster. But this indicator does not mean anything if you think about the overall capabilities of our brain and what a talented economist and an unsurpassed designer nature is.

Imagine a piece of thin fabric 2–3 millimetres thick with sides slightly longer than 40 cm. And in this piece of conditional matter, there are about 18 billion nerve cells. This is the cerebral cortex. Is it too many or too few? For comparison, the brain itself contains about 90 billion cells. At first glance, the figure of 18 billion looks solid. But if we take into account that there are almost 4 times more cells in the cerebellum, we can conclude that it is more important for a person to walk smoothly and not to fall than to write poems or compose formulas.

But not everything is perfect in the work of these 18 billion cells. Mental activity, too, has certain limitations — a person can simultaneously focus on only one problem and operate with three aspects of this problem. But this is not the most important thing. What matters, as always, is the energy involved. In the living world, to solve the problem of energy replenishment, its own 'food chains’ are built. People have optimised this process and began to literally grow energy in the fields and breed it on farms.

To meet their other 'requirements’ and 'concepts’, people needed different forms of energy, which they began to extract from the bowels of the Earth, generate at power stations, using the force of moving water or split atoms, and build new 'food chains’ now at the level of interests of entire states and consortia.

The average brain weight is about 2 per cent of the body weight, while it consumes a disproportionate amount of energy — 20 per cent and more. If we present the data in a more familiar absolute form, then the power consumption of our brain processor is slightly more than 12 watts. It is difficult to imagine how much power a computer would need if it had the same functionality as our brain.

The brain never rests, even when a person is asleep. It takes about 350–400 calories a day to maintain brain function, mostly in the form of glucose. The peak of energy consumption by the brain occurs at the age of 5–6 years, when the brain is able to utilise up to 60 per cent of all the energy received by the body.

In the evening, energy consumption is significantly higher than in the morning. This is because as the day’s experiences accumulate, cells and especially intercellular junctions have to expend more energy and conduct signals more actively. Impressions are stored, categorised, catalogued, and transformed into a person’s experience. Ultimately, all this changes the architecture of connections between nerve cells.

During its work, the brain is able to redirect blood to its certain areas, and spikes in energy consumption occur in these areas. This happens when the areas are involved in solving complex cognitive tasks — tasks for which there are no previously learned patterns in the memory, for example, learning a new skill, playing an instrument, or learning a language of a completely different language group. Such spikes can also occur when conditions are constantly changing, for example, in planning a strategy in a game of chess.

With the mastery of the skill and the accumulated experience of its application, a person no longer needs a high level of diligence and concentration. And, consequently, much less energy is consumed. How significant are these seemingly minor spikes in consumption for the brain? And, most importantly, why is the body willing to pay such a high price for brain function — such a substantial amount of energy?

It all started a long time ago. It is at present that people, with certain reservations, have practically solved the problem of hunger. But for millions of years, our human ancestors have constantly faced the threat of starvation. Nevertheless, the body allocates a fifth of its energy consumed to the needs of the brain.

The issue of energy conservation is a matter of strategy for its consumption. The brain is constantly involved in optimising all the processes related to the use of this energy. It is not just the processes of the brain itself, but also those that consume the remaining four-fifths of the energy. The energy of a person’s activity, reactions, actions, and behaviour. Optimisation follows a simple and reliable strategy — why reinvent the wheel every time? — it is more economical to use ready-made solutions or patterns. The main thing is that such patterns already exist or, if necessary, are created and memorised.

People never think about the many activities they perform every day. Even the simplest ones. They brush their teeth, make coffee, and drive a car. But how much time and energy do they spend learning these skills? A person has a giant library of such templates, and it is difficult to say how much energy has been spent to optimise and organise these seemingly simple but necessary actions in his or her head.

There are also actions and processes that we are merely not aware of. The founder of the so-called default mode of brain function, Markus Raichle, explains that the brain is constantly busy building an internal model of the world around it. The model created by the brain acts as a forecast and helps predict and prepare for events. While the predictions come true, the brain does not attract the person’s attention, which would be much more energy-consuming.

But if something happens that does not correspond to the forecast, the person will certainly pay attention to it. For example, if you step on the steps of an escalator that is not working, you suddenly feel something like a jolt. According to the brain’s prediction, which has been confirmed a hundred times, the escalator should work, and the brain compensates in advance for the acceleration that the body experiences when it gets on the escalator.

Any changes are an incredible expenditure of energy. The simplicity of transformations, which people are assured of in childhood, which they dream of in their youth, and which they meet when they are mature, this simplicity becomes unbearable for people. It repels them when they learn the value of this so-called simplicity.

After all, in the end, for the sake of change, you always need to get rid of something, sacrifice something and rebuild something. Or, even more critically, build from scratch. And in fact, only the brain can conceive how much energy will have to be spent on this. One form of earning energy is saving energy. Changing yourself is expensive.

People claim to be lazy and content with their status, providing various explanations and citing potential difficulties or clearly unsolvable problems. The imagined difficulties per se serve as a convenient excuse for their lack of action.

People are not willing to pay for changes, but they cannot admit it to themselves. It is not necessarily people themselves who are against change, but rather their brain’s resistance to it. The visual cortex, the area of the brain responsible for imagination and mental visualisation, consumes so much energy that a person is not even capable of imagining it. This is also one of the reasons why people are not inclined to think about or consider something unless they absolutely have to.

Depending on the willingness to spend energy on thoughts about what is happening around them and in decreasing order of this readiness, people can be divided into three groups: those who manage what is happening, those who observe what is happening, and those who are surprised by what is happening.

Hence, if you encounter someone who is constantly surprised, then they are not ready to change anything that surprises them. Patient observation demands more energy, and creation and management are the height of waste. However, it is precisely this energy waste that drives human development.

Do We Really Think?

Where the illusion begins or where it does not end. Our maps of a world that does not exist.

Watch your words, they become your actions. ― Lao Tzu

The extent to which a person is surprised by events correlates with the activity of their thought processes. The term 'thought processes’ itself appeared as an attempt to describe the activity of the human brain. Nowadays, much is known about the origins and locations of these processes compared to the last millennia, but we still do not have a complete understanding of how people think.

The act of thinking is linked to human cognitive activity. Thinking includes components such as attention and perception, forming concepts, making judgements and reaching conclusions. Individuals carry out this process using words and images. Essentially, the thinking process is akin to having a conversation with oneself. If people continue to react to the world around them without asking questions or seeking answers, there will be no end to their surprise. Their instincts, rather than their ideas, will shape their behaviour.

But we already do know something important about thinking. For example, the fact that thinking is strongly influenced by associative memory. Associative memory is a kind of personal library of what a person has seen, heard, felt, and done. Most of this library is compiled and classified without conscious human control, so we can only guess what is presented in it and in what form.

Opinions, judgements, preferences, tastes and decision-making systems are built based on this library. When a person forms an opinion about what is good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or not, all this is determined not so much by what they see, smell, or hear, but by what is already present in the memory, how similar experiences have been labelled and rated, what images and words have been used.

Therefore, to some extent, language and its well-established encodings and patterns are to blame for the simplistic perception of the world around us and the very quality of human thinking. At the current rate of development, a person actually needs more words to formulate problems. No one expected that with the advancement of technology, thinking would not be deployed at the same rate, but on the contrary, would be limited. While people today possess significantly more knowledge compared to previous centuries, the language used to convey and elaborate on this knowledge is much poorer.

The 'mental library’ also comes with its own set of issues and peculiarities. People can explain their daily decisions and actions to themselves based on their past experiences, present conditions, and the overall context. But the problem is that they may have initially incorrectly identified these circumstances and situations stored in their 'library’. This can lead them to access the wrong shelf and end up in the wrong place, which can have serious consequences at times.

A person’s thinking can be influenced by numerous factors. One of the factors, the influence of societal goals and corresponding behaviours, was mentioned above. Adaptation to the chosen community and the fear of being excluded from it is an important aspect of a person’s sense of security. The desire to be recognised within a particular environment, whether chosen independently or by chance, shifts much of the personal responsibility to what is commonly called the circumstances, such as nationality, company, group, or family.

This negates the person’s idea that the reason why they found themselves in a certain society and in certain circumstances is in themselves. But, in the end, a person chooses where and with whom to live and unconsciously fears losing it. And they are not so much afraid of losing, as they do not want to change anything familiar.

Even though deep in their minds people are always ready to be happier in a new place, they are often held back by those 'superhuman efforts’ required to make this change. People sometimes do not even dare to think about the unknown future.

Overall, people try not to think that all possible consequences of their choices and ideas will eventually be marked with a single stone with two dates — when they enter the process of the constant need to choose and adjust, and when they exit from it.

But there is another important detail, an issue that a person does not notice or tries not to delve into, again due to saving energy when thinking. The question is as follows: ‘Has the person determined his or her own choice, or have others done it for him or her? Not the circumstances, not the weather, but certain people with certain interests.’

People know that there are many methods of influencing their behaviour. They believe that within a family or small group, they also can influence, mistaking for influence their ability to give orders or the forced submission of others as a result of dependence on them.

Yet, along with this, people do not know much about how illusions, which they willingly believe, are professionally created. Similarly, they are unaware of how and in what situations they become highly suggestible. People do not understand why they tend to follow leaders and why they seek relief from stress in group cohesion or collective faith. They do not know the whole system, but they have heard about the existence of some methods used by corporations to influence employees and by the state to influence everyone. However, they do not fully comprehend the details of this system and are inevitably influenced by it.

Influence techniques are a powerful weapon in the hands of people who pursue their goals and interests. This is also a dangerous weapon if the interests of these people differ from the interests of society. Using the society itself, 'public opinion’ can be formed. Like a collective neurological imprint, the 'public opinion’ can be permanently fixed just as a photographic fixer was used in the processing of film or paper in the analogue age. Anyone who was an amateur photographer at that time remembers that the image is short-lived without fixing. Extremely short-lived.

If for a moment we imagine that every person is a kind of neurological robot, the carrier of an infinite number of constantly fixed photos, then everyone around you is an eternal prisoner of these ideas, value systems, certain scientific paradigms and mass illusions.

William Blake once said: 'I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s’. Nowadays, to create your own system of vision of the world or even preserve it is very, very difficult.

A person’s perception of reality is shaped by the information transmitted to the brain. For centuries, people communicated through gestures, shouts, drums, smoke signals, and clay plates, which can be seen as forms of technology. The emergence of a primitive printing press was revolutionary for its time.

Even in today’s digital age, people continue to create their analogue worlds through paintings, symphonies, sculptures, songs, novels, and poems. These artistic expressions not only serve as art but also as materialised information about the world. Information that all this time, as they think, has created a reality for them and has kept them safe from themselves. Everything from Renaissance paintings to Andy Warhol, from myths of the ancient Greeks and classic novels to contemporary bestsellers, contributes to a system of artefacts, concepts and judgements, which has helped people to protect themselves from the surrounding chaos and is called culture.

The words 'culture’ and 'cult’, having the same roots, are completely opposite in their meaning and impact on individuals. People are always more inclined to create a cult rather than putting in the laborious effort to maintain a higher level of culture, and the lower the level of culture, the more likely a cult is to be created. A cult can be formed around anything, even something as mundane as a mobile phone, and attract a large following of fans. It is surprising to think that more people might know about iPhones than about the Mona Lisa.

People, as depicted in films like The Matrix or Inception, use their brains to create their own models of the universe and a map of the world. This virtual map is not specific to any particular area, and it is uncertain who created it — whether it was themselves or someone else. The information age has significantly enhanced the speed and quality of replicating such maps. The widespread availability of personal impact has multiplied the range of interpretations for any phenomena or events, some of which may stem from others’ perspectives.

People have stopped deeply analysing facts and evaluating them using logic and common sense. It is easier and more economical to simply believe in the presented interpretations, consequently making it even easier to convey these interpretations to them, provided you know how.

Two out of Six

How we can be convinced of anything. What you see depends on how you see.

There are no facts, only interpretations. ― Friedrich Nietzsche

The average person looks without seeing, listens without

hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves

without physical sensation — and speaks without thinking.

In the last half-century, a significant amount of research has been conducted and numerous discoveries have been made. These findings have allowed humans to reconsider their understanding of themselves and their current experiences, even while reading these lines. Some of these studies aim to offer insights into what defines a person and shapes their self-perception. The key objective is to comprehend the factors influencing human behaviour and how it can be done.

The following study explains how people perceive, store, and use information. Canadian psychologist Allan Paivio had long been studying memory psychology, particularly how humans remember what they see, hear, and feel, and how their memory and the above-mentioned associative library are formed. Based on his observations, Paivio proposed the idea of a dual-encoding system.

Humans have two main perception systems — visual and verbal. These systems work simultaneously to create independent ideas about what they see and hear, generating specific codes for each system. The visual code created by the system handles problem-solving in the space here and now, while the verbal code works with abstract symbols, aiding in representing something in perspective, space, and the current time. Additionally, each of these systems is hierarchically self-organised in the perception of information, interacting at four levels.

Firstly, at the initial level, the information is received and sensory processing takes place. This stage is known as perception.

Secondly, at the next level, the processed information connects with the existing long-term memory system to find associations related to the incoming information.

Thirdly, at another level, elements similar to the received information are activated in memory, and therefore this level is called the associative level.

Finally, at the fourth level, the verbal and visual systems interact with each other to represent the conclusive reference of the received information, storing it in long-term memory as an image that is assigned a designation, or vice versa, as the name that the image corresponds to.

To summarise what has been said, each word in any statement has its particular referent — a notion. When something is mentioned, the symbol of the designated object is correlated with the objects of extra-linguistic reality.

The reality created and stored in a person’s mind can equally likely belong to the real or imaginary world. For memory to function, a person needs to be able to imagine and name the reality. The entire process of perceiving, categorising, memorising, and presenting information depends on a person’s experiences, subjective assessments, images, and judgements about the environment. This is also known as a person’s world view.

The simplest confirmation of Paivio’s theory is that using both visual and verbal channels can improve the accuracy of recalling studied material. In other words, people learn better when information is not only told to them but also shown. The films should have both sound and subtitles. This concept has been recognised since school, as visual stories are often easier to remember than just reading the material. How people perceive the world is influenced by their life positions, beliefs, ideals, and rules. Their world view created by them shapes their actions and makes them meaningful and purposeful.

Historically, individuals adopt several types of world views. The world view, used in daily life, is the so-called everyday world view. The formation of this type of world view dates back to primitive society, when thinking was based on imaginative perceptions of the world. From this came the mythological world view, exemplified by the mythology of the ancient Greeks, familiar to everyone. Creating myths, people spiritualised and likened material objects and various phenomena to humans. Such a world view is sacred, secret, and magical. This world view has survived to the present day.

The next stage of forming a person’s world view is based on the belief in supernatural forces. One example is the religious world view. This is a much more rigid version of judgements and ideas combined with a system of moral commandments. Such a world view helps support a person’s models of ethical behaviour.

And finally, the next stage of forming a world view is the philosophical world view. This is a complex systemic way of viewing the world, where the human mind is assigned the highest role. If myth is based on emotions and feelings, philosophy is based on logic and evidence.

As time passes, the information that a person possesses undergoes changes. It becomes distorted, and as perspectives shift, it can evolve into something else. It is natural for us to understand that a person’s perspective is constantly being shaped and improved as life progresses. This may seem familiar and understandable at first. However, there is a subtle but significant detail in all of this, which becomes apparent when you provide precise definitions of the concepts and processes mentioned above.

The first concept is a person’s attitude to the surrounding reality. It is expressed in moods, feelings and actions, that is, it has an emotional and psychological basis.

The second is a set of views on the world, i.e. cognitive-intellectual concept, our doctrine of the surrounding world.

When people visualise their idea of the world, their attitude (emotional and psychological) goes up to the level where it becomes their set of views, their cognitive and intellectual doctrine.

This is a crucial point for understanding the mechanism that underlies the influence and creation of an objective or distorted picture of the external world in the mind.

Information about the world is received through the six sensory channels: vision (eyes), hearing (ears), taste (tongue), smell (nose), touch (skin), balance, position in space, weight, etc. (vestibular apparatus). Through these channels, we receive and conduct a preliminary analysis of information about the world around us.

Some things can be done from a distance, for example, through seeing and hearing. Other senses like touch, taste, and smell require direct contact or proximity. If one sense is impaired, other senses can compensate for it. For example, individuals with poor eyesight might have highly developed hearing and smell. This happens because the brain constantly seeks information and utilises all available sensory channels to do so. The information gathered creates a sense of security.

Until recently, all senses played relatively equal roles in shaping this sensory picture. People not only relied on sight and hearing but also on touch, smell, and taste. Not too long ago, they would literally taste gold coins and touch, smell, and try on objects when making purchases. The more sensory channels used, the more objective our perception of the world around us becomes.

How many of the six senses do people use to perceive the world in the last quarter of a century, compared to how many have been used over the past millennia? It turns out that with an increase in the amount of information received, the multichannel nature and, consequently, the objectivity of its perception decreased.

Now, a lottery which lures you to guess five numbers out of 36 is a game of chance and luck. The odds of winning are lower than the margin of error. People mostly rely on only two out of the six possible senses for their perception. The likelihood of accurately perceiving reality is probably still higher than winning the lottery. But to what extent?

Reflection, Imitation, Learning

Mirror areas, or how we learn.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be

stupid, you must also be well-mannered. ― Voltaire

The world has changed dramatically. The main, and more often the only, channels of information today are sight and hearing. Speculative images are built on the directive basis of available sources of information. Sitting at the screen, a person is not able to assess the perspective of vision, the depth of sounds, the shades of tastes, the softness and warmth of touch, and the variety of smells, to feel the whole dynamics of the world.

People do not have the ability to provide reliable feedback, to ask a question face-to-face, to hear a comment, to touch, feel, smell fear or excitement. Only pictures digitised and smoothed by channel editors are built up in the brain.

A huge amount of information in agendas presented in the mass media creates a discrete focus and multi-switching of attention, perceiving the world as a sequence of film frames. The confusion of imaginary and real threats and the impossibility of adequate feedback causes mental disorientation in oneself and the environment, followed by permanent and endless feelings of uncertainty.

There is no complete sensory picture of the world when one channel finds confirmation in others and builds a full picture. And if you add changes in the way we communicate, reduced natural contact, modifications in nutrition and lifestyle, and decreased physical activity, what can be expected from the quality and objectivity of our perception of the world around us?

The quality of survival depends on the experience gained and learned. Experience involves modelling, using images and symbols that interact with reality. As the recreated reality exists only in the mind, all internal work is actually carried out only with models of this reality. Working with these models not only improves human experience but also forms the basis of people’s training. The following two studies were conducted to explore the mechanisms underlying human learning.

Italian neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues discovered specific areas in the brain that were later called mirror neuron areas. Research has shown that such neurons respond not only when a person performs certain actions, but also when a person observes the performance of these actions by other people.

It was then suggested by scientists that the mechanism of mirror neurons evolved to make completely helpless infants adapt to the world around them as soon as possible. There is likely no better way to learn than to observe the authoritative actions of older individuals in a tribe or pack and imitate them. Of course, the first individuals that babies observe and learn from are their parents.

The significance of mirror neurons lies in their responsibility for the process of imitation, which is a key mechanism in learning. It was found that mirror neurons also contribute to the development of thinking, which in the early stages of life is not as independent as the one an individual acquires after separating from a group. Upon separation, the individual transitions to a more rational form of thinking and, therefore, requires less authority in the same measure and form.

Additionally, mirror neurons are involved in the process of empathy, enabling individuals to understand the actions and emotions of other people. It is also noted that the more emotions are involved in this process of interaction, the more active the stimulation of the areas.

The introduction of functional MRI has revolutionised brain activity research. Neuroscientist Uri Hasson from Princeton University used fMRI to measure the brain activity of a woman as she was telling a personal story. Her auditory cortex activated as she spoke, and her frontal and parietal lobes, responsible for emotions, became active as she comprehended her story.

At the same time, the brain activity of five other people was measured as they listened to the woman’s story. The results showed that in addition to the active auditory cortex, the areas of the brain responsible for emotions were also activated in these subjects. Importantly, these areas reacted in the same way and at the same moments as those of the woman telling the story.