Have you ever thought about how complex our brains are? Or about how little we seem to really know about the way we think?
Like, how can we simultaneously love our family but also they annoy us to no end?
I think this dissonance, this capacity to hold to two seemingly oppositional thoughts at the same time is just something we are able to do. What’s weird it that we try to not do this. When we have two opposing thoughts we say we’re ‘confused’, or ‘demented’, or ‘senile’. We have all sorts of negative terminology to describe what I think is a perfectly normal condition.
I think this all stems from our sadistic love of conformity.
If you’ve seen any of my work you know I’m not a fan of conformity. Rather, I believe in diversity and variation. Maybe it’s my background in Evolutionary Biology. Maybe it’s that I’ve always felt different, maybe it just makes sense.
I present both The Evolution Paradox and The Uniqueness Imperative to explain how our genetic makeup, via Natural Selection, creates diversity. Change is the way of the world, not conformity. By definition, conformity goes against the very literal basis of our being.
For more background, I discuss in ‘Let’s Talk About Sex Part 1’ why sexual reproduction is so important and how this facilitates diversity.
Our biological nature creates diversity and has led to our splendid minds. But what is a mind, exactly? A mind comes from our neurology and our brain but is something different. You can’t measure a mind. It us ‘us’, our individual Self, our Soul. It makes each one of us unique.
And this is where it gets tricky.
Inasmuch as we are a unique member of Homo sapiens, we are also a PART of the collective human ract. We are one with the Earth. There is not actual, individual Self. And there is.
This is another thing humans aren’t very good at: holding two seemingly opposing ideas simultaneously.
But not only is that possible, it is just a feature of life.
The difference, nay, the problem in all this is that has led us, humans, to feel separate, and to promote conformity while shunning diversity.
Think about it. That’s what we do. And it’s wrong.
This episode is chock full of other ditties about evolution, conformity, and neurodivergence. I am on a new path and much of the meat of future discussions are introduced and rehashed here. Please feel free to drop ideas, thoughts, comments, and corrections.
Your mind is a splendid thing. I hope you use it to promote the very diversity that makes you unique.
Podcast stream:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/14003716
YouTube: