Open your eyes, ears, heart, mind

Posted by in Life on Jul 21st, 2010 | 0 comments

George Orwell mentioned all throughout his masterpiece book ‘Nineteen eighty four’ the thoughts and actions of the proletarians, which are described as ignorant people who can’t care less of anything that happens outside their direct daily lives in his book. Ignorance is bliss. Or as “Goldstein” would say, “Ignorance is Strength”.

But I choose not live my life like that. Not now, not ever. Can you? I honestly prefer to lead a life in search for information, further knowledge, and culture, while having the possibility of changing my mood, thoughts, and actions based on this data, instead of living a “normal” life in the safety and comfort of ignorance.

A friend of mine once spoke to me about three kinds of events that open your mind to new ideas, possibilities and information:

  • Meeting someone from another country.
  • Travelling to another country.
  • Learning another language.

In my own opinion, having passed through those three events, I concur with him. They really change your perspective and view of the world, society, and culture.

I would like to add another three mind-opening stages that help you form a sense of identity:

  • Adolescence & friendship
  • Literature & philosophical talks
  • Having a partner

Why do I consider these stages/events as meaningful components of identity, maturity and knowledge?

Adolescence, at least in many cultures, is considered a stage of rebellion, change, transition, problems, questions, and overall madness. But it is in this stage where many of the strong lifelong ideas are formed. It is also in this stage when true friends are found, friendships that may last a lifetime. These are vital components of identity. And even if many of the ideas you have while going through this stage may be wrong, it is a necessary step to have these wrong ideas in order to clearly define them and change them further on.

Literature opens your mind to understand how others think, and allows you to develop critical thinking. This paves the way to formulating opinions based on facts instead of biased assumptions. The more you learn, the more you know, the more you can speak about, the more you can teach about, and so on.

This also brings me to the point of philosophy, and philosophical talks. These types of talks seem like endless debates about this and that. However, the actual discussion may open your mind to search for more information about specific topics and formulate a better opinion. These talks can then lead to better structured debates, and finally to an idea which may spark a change. That is why I consider the basis of all this, these philosophical talks, such an important issue.

Finally, a partner, may keep you centred on reality. While adolescence many times includes biased opinions and self centeredness, literature and philosophy allow you to form an opinion, and having a partner many times concretes that opinion, removing the egoism from self-centred thoughts formed during adolescence. That is why people who are successful in relationships are often people who stop thinking solely about themselves but think in greater proportion of other people, specifically their partners.

One must be somewhat selfish to succeed in today’s world, but you must never put aside your partner or loved ones, the same way you must never put aside striving for a common good instead of personal satisfaction. There must be a sense of equilibrium, as this allows an easier flow of knowledge, clarity and understanding. Are you ready to open you eyes, ears, heart and mind?

How can you use 100% of your brain?

Posted by in A.I., Learning, Life, Science on Apr 3rd, 2010 | 8 comments

As a child I was told by a few people, several times, that we only use a fraction of our brain. They told me we generally use only 5-6%, and that if we managed to use at least 30-40% our minds would be so powerful that we could lift objects with our brain. I was also told that Einstein used about 20% of his brain, and by studying and stressing our minds to think more we could achieve a greater usage, and therefore, greater capacity to do things with it such as lifting objects and maybe telekinesis.

According to Wikipedia, Francis Galton was the first scientist to propose a theory of general intelligence; that intelligence is a true, biologically-based mental faculty that can be studied by measuring a person’s reaction times to cognitive tasks.

Alfred Binet, in contrast, believed intelligence was a median average of dissimilar abilities, not a unitary entity with specific, identifiable properties.

Over the course of my life I have heard different things about intelligence. I’ve heard a couple of times that we are all equally intelligent beings. Then again, we all have heard typical phrases such as “He is more intelligent than you”, or “she must be really intelligent”. These usually refer to the fact that an individual may have a higher or lower level of IQ, which after all is just a figure of determining capacity based on results.

What really got me going about looking for information on brain use was the memory of people telling me that we use different percentages of our brain. Then in school I was taught that the several sections of our brain process different functions. How then can we use only a fraction of it if studies have been performed that claim that we do use different parts at the same time?

PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) clearly show that the vast majority of the brain does not lie fallow. The nature of claims such as the one which describes that psychic powers may be obtained if we master the percentage of unused brain have been proven wrong, but it is the mass media, literature, and shows performed by different personalities which has ensured the endurance of the claims. More information about that may be obtained at this page at snopes.com, which details an investigation performed by Benjamin Radford.

I have a theory

It is not that we do not fully use our brain. I believe, instead, that it is the capacity of interpreting messages that varies. We may be able to interpret more signals as we train our brain to do so, therefore increasing our ability to integrate more thoughts together, reason them, and process more results, in a faster and more accurate manner.

Clearly we use different sections of our brain to process different signals. Your innate reaction to things such as getting burned is processed in one area. Memories are stored in another area. Likewise, vision is also computed by another section of your brain. However, some people manage to understand things faster than others, just as some people are better with creative issues than others. We have Math geeks, Computer wizards, Programming geniuses, Scientists, Artists, etc. All of them have a certain facility for some areas.

I believe the clue to this lies in the speed, the accuracy, and the depth of the processing of signals from each area of the brain.

The frontal lobe is in charge of recognizing future consequences resulting from current actions, choosing between good and bad actions, overriding and suppressing unacceptable social responses, and determining similarities and differences between things or events.

Now, for example, when you read a book and don’t understand a word, many times you skip it. Then you might hear it a few times in movies. There might come a time when you ask someone what it means, or you hear or read the definition for it somewhere. Then you start noticing it much more commonly, in places where it might have always been but you were unaware of its presence.

Likewise, my theory is that the brain’s sections can process so many things that you are not able to understand, or to grasp entirely, but as you become aware of how to understand that information, then you begin to actually use it more thoroughly and exploit that new ability.

An example of this would be painting. You may have seen many pieces of art, and your brain processes how the shadows and mixtures of colours look like. Then you see a painter actually perform the job. You might then try painting yourself and you are not successful at it the first few times. Your friend, Jack, has not been to many art galleries, nor has he seen a painter do his job, but the first time he grabs a brush he seems naturally talented.

I would explain this by his ability to process those signals in a better way. He may not know precisely how an artist mixes his colours, but he knows how the colours of a face should look like, and he tests mixing the colours until he achieves the one he is looking for. You may be trying too hard to find a scientific approach to it, a perfect balance, but he may be doing it by actually understanding these brainwaves, or what others would call “by heart”.

I do not fully understand how capable we will ever be in certain areas. It may be that some people are just “blocked” in certain area, psychologically, and therefore can’t achieve the understanding of those signals. However, I believe it more to be a matter of really wanting to do so. Someone may want to play guitar, but when he grabs it he thinks he is rubbish, then he claims that he has no ability to play and blocks his creative path. This, however, is a matter of psychologically blocking his ability to understand the patterns that are naturally forming in his brain.

I could say the same for myself. It could chose not to publish this post because I may not fully understand the patterns that form in my brain, I may choose to stay behind and keep my thoughts to myself, but the act of letting it out improves me a bit every day. I believe if anyone tries hard enough at something, the patterns will emerge, and sooner or later he/she will be able to understand those patterns and to exercise the knowledge to deliver a product, action or thought.

It’s all about using it. Don’t you think?

About Our Limits and Barriers

Posted by in Communication, Life on Aug 12th, 2009 | 0 comments

Escape the barriers. Why is it that us, as human beings, many times are constricted to the walls our mind creates?

You see it everywhere. People locked within their social barriers. I am not talking about total loss of social control, nonetheless, I am talking about freedom of speech, and freedom of action, within respectable values, moral, and behaviour.

Us humans set limits for everything. For our thoughts, for our actions, for our writing, our drinking, our eating, and all sorts of things. While some of these limits are clearly good for our bodies, some of them do not exactly create a benefit for us. They create limitations as to how far we are willing to go, how to deal with certain situations, how to run our lives.

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Films and their effect on Society.

Posted by in Entertainment, Life, Movies on Jul 30th, 2009 | 1 comment

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about movies lately. Specifically about their impact on our lives. I’ve had a few talks in the past with different people about their views on movies, and the views are quite contrasting. I am talking not only about the violence in films, or pornography, or offence, but about it’s effects on our own minds, and our society as a whole.

Obviously this is such an extensive topic, and I can not board it completely throughout this blog post, nonetheless, I will try to address some of the issues that I have been thinking about lately.

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