The human mind is a bastion of bias and rejection, stimulated and fed by experience and the five senses. It reaches conclusions by association and cross-referencing of ideas. Our earliest childhood teachings, accepted unconditionally from the adult, form the foundation for all subsequent thinking, for—whether the message is spoken, written or given by example—it is the message we get that powers the mind and determines our future. We’ve read much about the power of suggestion, and yet we do not examine and purge our own programming of damaging nonsense. For instance, the prevailing doomsday perception of cancer is probably the insurmountable obstacle to a cure. Death becomes a self-activating prophesy. And a child taught the concept of a compassionate and all-seeing god, attributes future fortuitous happenings as the work of that god.
The mind develops as a network of ideas relying on the concepts of early instilled suggestions—that can be no more than extremely damaging opinions—upon which we build the foundation of our mind-set. An opinion inculcated as a truth becomes an integral part of our built-up psyche that henceforth rejects new and conflicting ideas as being unacceptable.
Religion is a part of the social fabric of most countries around the world, but the argument that religions do more good than harm is no longer valid in an open arena of invasive communication, competition and violence. In a world of evolutionary change, the concept of an all powerful protective God has gone from a therapeutic idea within the confines of a tribe, through a period of tyrannical authority that burned disbelievers at the stake, to the present continual warring, and annihilating of whole societies.
We are all, without exception, behaviorally programmed. We are all, to a greater or lesser degree, behaviorally manipulated. And we are all, to some extent, mind-poisoned and controlled by early suggestion and example. But perhaps more revealing is the fact that we all, whether consciously or unconsciously, try to manipulate others to our way of thinking. Because behavioral programming can effectively imprint in a single moment or sentence, even a sibling cannot have comprehensive knowledge of the turning points in his brother’s programming, though he himself may have played a major role in that programming. And yet, without such knowledge, society expects to understand the rationale behind a man’s misanthropic behavior, and attributes incomprehensible behavior to insanity or criminality, rather than programming.
No two people consistently experience the same programming. The human brain has more than one hundred billion neurons, and with more than a thousand synapses per neuron, activity adds up to about one hundred trillion electro-chemical discharges within the brain. Even when we discount the fact that much of our sensory stimulation and response is identically duplicated, the possible permutation of ideas and experience that make up the range of programmed behavioral differences in people is truly astronomical.
In the following writing, the villains are mental viruses, ideas that make victims out of the unsuspecting. There is no blame, but only the tragedy of generations of programmed aberrant behavior. We’ll reflect on human life as it has evolved, and aspire to objectivity in a realistic assessment of what we are, and where we are. We’ll attempt to provide answers and explanations for those who seek purpose, hope and direction in their lives as they live it, rather than seeking salvation after death.