The One Thing
Collection: Brain Owner-User Manual (CVR)
The Collection’s Posts
This book is all about the truth. Therefore, this is how one knows the truth.
- Thinking
- Mental Health
- History
- Rationality Proofs
- Tools For The Rational
- Tools For The Dysrational
All Owner Manual Posts
- One person’s truth is another’s misinformation or malinformation; the result, humanity drowns in a sea of useless and dangerous ideas.
Truth Confusion? It is easy to understand why. A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. Segal’s Law Consequently, some claim to possess the absolute truth, yet they cannot. The objectively true process of reason prohibits it (see the… - Conceptual thinking (and the perception of monotheism) shows up in the brain’s neurology.
Abstract Conservatives are more sensitive to threatening/anxious situations in perceptual and cognitive levels, experiencing emotional responses and stress, while liberals are more responsive to but tolerant of ambiguous and uncertain information. Interestingly, conservatives have greater psychological well-being and are more satisfied with their lives than… - There is only one source for truth, or civilization cannot exist.
The importance of objective truth. Civilization exists because of objective truth. Until fairly recently, Western Civilization shared truth because of Christianity. Yet, the first time it was challenged, it ended the Holy Roman Empire, which gave rise to Western Civilization. The religious wars then began… - The Cause of the Enlightenment
Now, consider the linked image. It potentially demonstrates the cause of the Enlightenment. You see, before the Reformation, the Holy Roman Empire controlled truth, and Western Civilization began to take shape. Unfortunately, absolute authoritarianism corrupts. Martin Luther thus led a successful rebellion against it (circa… - The Bible’s First Commandment Demands That You Think For Yourself — How Great And Generous is That?
On X (Twitter), an atheist complained that the Bible told people what to think. Atheist: Me … The atheist’s claim is not true. The Bible demands that you think for yourself. In fact, this Commandment is the first and most important Commandment (says Jesus). “And… - The Neurological Point of Faith
An X (Twitter) user declared – If Jesus isn’t the focus of worship in your church, it isn’t a Christian church. I say that’s unfortunate. Consider this: The cortex (see image) is directly connected to the senses. You cannot use the cortex without activating elements… - Different Destructive Movements Emerge From The Same Cognitive Disability
Dysrational Movements Are The Adult Face Of Emotional Immaturity The anti-rational (i.e., dysrational) movements Marxism, Nazism, and “wokeism” are dysrationalAn irrational person is not thinking rationally, but they can. A dysrational person is pathologically unable to think rationally. movements. Each shares a common and fundamental… - ChatGPT glitches out: Rogue AI responding in nonsensical Spanglish, gibberish — In other words, “hoarder” thinkers can lose control of what they think they know. Mental illness surely follows.
Individuals who do not practice free will (SELF-control) may become thought hoarders. If these thoughts/ideas are not reconciled with one another, mental illness likely results. This concept may be difficult to understand, yet it happens. AI can offer a real-world demonstration of the problem. The… - Or … cogito, ergo sum, (Latin: “I think, therefore I am) dictum coined by the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637)
If you hear a voice in your head while not speaking, is it YOU, God, the devil, or something else? From what place do you think it originates? What neurological purpose can you imagine it serves? Do you perceive it to be rational or emotional?… - The antichrist is all too real. It is Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” — War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. — The rejection of objective truth.
Twenty-first-century individuals wonder, is the antichrist religious superstition or reality? It is an important question. I declare now, regrettably, that the antichrist is all too real. However, I also state that the antichrist is deeply misunderstood. It is, foundationally, not a person. It is a… - Are we living in a simulation?
RE: Is reality a simulation? The answer can be one of three possibilities. As an initial step, for us to be able to consider the above question together, we must have an objectively true (SHARED) process to discover truth. That is, we must agree to… - Intelligence Spectrum
This post is an image only. It sums up my understanding of human thinking. Share on Facebook Post on X Follow us Save - The Only Two Ways To Save Civilization
The Solutions Why is civilization failing? Short answer: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) over merit. The relevant question is instead: What is happening to Western Civilization’s capitalistic commitment to merit? Individuals are increasingly trapped in a prison of their minds, chained immutably to what they… - Why God at all?
On Twitter, the debate about the existence of God, at least amongst those atheists and theists that I regularly interact with, has achieved detente. Now, most individuals comfortably accept that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. The question now often is: Why… - Self-control is the doorway to discovery.
The key skill parents and education must accomplish is the development of self-control (free will). AND … Develop SELF-Control! Do this, and the individual becomes a lifelong learner. Do it not, and the individual becomes a lifelong victim. Share on Facebook Post on X Follow… - Atheism, The “Father” Of Human Dysrationality
For a person to maintain their capacity to reason, it is not possible to claim to know, absolutely, the truth about any question. I can make this above claim, absolutely, because it arises in this (my) definition for reason. See: Key to the above definition… - The Source Of Societal Disharmony.
People … A short list: Visit Site Share on Facebook Post on X Follow us Save - The Atheist View/Objections, Application Of Reason
I evangelize reason. My second company, LearningFramework, was formed many years ago with that objective. At that time, we didn’t know enough about the process of reason. Maybe we still don’t. Yet, civilization depends upon human-facilitated growth in reason for its longevity. Until now, reason… - A Thoughtful Dialogue With An Atheist RE Absolute Truth, The Creator, AND Reason
FIRST, I embrace monotheism for my capacity to reason (God bless Abraham). I also selectively accept religion. All of them. The post’s picture is that of St. Thomas Aquinas. He’s a smart one. From Twitter (The TOC Is A List Of Questions) What do you… - SELF-control is Free Will
Free will is, in truth, FREE WON’T (See learningframework.com post on Benjamin Libet). FREE WON’T is also known as SELF-control. Critically, SELF-control is key to emotional maturity and good mental health. Without FREE WON’T (otherwise known as SELF-control), humans cannot be “smart.” These individuals will not… - Interesting Questions Do Not Usually Present A Convincingly Verifiable Solitary Answer
A Contemplative Cognitive Posture Is Practically A Must For example, the “woke” are principally postmodernist thinkers. The woke, generally, also include the political left, Marxists, progressives, and neo-liberals. These particular groups comprise people that believe they KNOW the truth. In addition, when the Christian right… - How do I find the truth?
On QUORA: How do I know the truth? Truth is established when a hypothesis meets both the necessary and sufficient conditions. Note especially that the proposed hypotheses must be disprovable. In other words, one and only one hypothesis is permitted as an explanation for the observed. This requirement is essential… - What are the pros and cons of public shaming?
What are the pros and cons of public shaming? Shame and praise are the tools a parent uses to steer a child. Adults, however, accept that other adults have freedom of thought and are therefore entitled to maintain their own beliefs without this controlling emotional…
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This site comprises a detailed and complete explanation for reason; how it is achieved, and how it is undone. It is arranged, principally in subject matter collections.
Collection: Brain Owner/User Manual
- Learn How The Brain Works
- Learn How to Think For Yourself
- Create Superior Mental Health
- One person’s truth is another’s misinformation or malinformation; the result, humanity drowns in a sea of useless and dangerous ideas.
- Conceptual thinking (and the perception of monotheism) shows up in the brain’s neurology.
- There is only one source for truth, or civilization cannot exist.
- The Cause of the Enlightenment
- The Bible’s First Commandment Demands That You Think For Yourself — How Great And Generous is That?
Collection: Artificial Intelligence
- The Artificial Intelligence Model
- When Is AI Dangerous?
- How Is AI Like Human Thinking?
- How is AI Unlike Human Thinking?
- ChatGPT glitches out: Rogue AI responding in nonsensical Spanglish, gibberish — In other words, “hoarder” thinkers can lose control of what they think they know. Mental illness surely follows.
- It is not appropriate (thus fair) to contrast the process of science with the Book of Genesis.
- AI Would Fail the Marshmallow Test
- AI May Be A Step Backward–Or, And This Is The More Likely Truth, AI Is A Fraud
- Irrationality is dangerous: humans often are, but AI (artificial intelligence) always is.
Collection: Divine Influence on Reason
- Discover The True Relationship Between Faith And Reason
- Strengthen Your Commitment To Faith
- Achieve Divine Grace
- Discover The True And Potentially Righteous Nature Of Humans
- There is only one source for truth, or civilization cannot exist.
- Is it Possible that Sin is Only One Thing?
- I think, instead, Nietzsche meant to suggest that the Holy Spirit is “dead.”
- The Source of Error – A Fundamental Conflict Between Truth And “the Pursuit of Truth”
- The Cause of the Enlightenment
Collection: Societal Realization Of Reason
- Learn How Critical Reason Is For Civilization
- Learn Tools For Reason When Individual Citizens Lack Reason
- Understand Social Media And Its Ideal Structure
- Why Do The Dysrational/Irrational Hate “Disinformation” While The Rational Hate Censorship
- Key Requirements To Produce Reason In Education
Collection: Political Essentials for Reason
- Why freedom requires Self-reliance and Self-governance
- The Perfection of A Constitutional Republic
- The Threat of Atheism/Marxism/Socialism
Collection: The Shadows of Reason
- Understand How Three Centuries Of Philosophers Percieved The Human Mind And Reason
Collection: Why Civilizations Fail
Why Do Civilizations Fail? – A Collapse of Reason, Of Course
- Homo Sapien History & Rationality
- What Prompts The Recurring Rationality Collapse
- Is This Always The Reason Civilization Fails/Falls – Hint (yes)
- What Can Be Done To Stop It?
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How do you promote freedom and reason within a society that seems to be highly polarized?
See Jack Palance himself on “the one thing.”
In the linked video, Jack Palance states that the “one thing” is the thing you must figure out. I differ slightly in that, I say, it is crucial that people learn how to figure things out, and to keep figuring things out. A vibrant, adaptive, and free mind is built this way. Therefore, I propose a much more accessible and concrete “one thing” which can enable this insatiable discovery mindset. It is called “free won’t.” By habitualizing ‘free won’t’, a person can intentionally produce lifelong learning through a human-made detour to one’s personal search for understanding. It is important to do this. Human civilization may depend upon it.
SHORT ANSWER: help individuals understand and embrace free won’t.
INTRODUCTION
The lack of reason is why society is highly polarized. The lack of reason is why, increasingly, horrible things happen.
“My thoughts on school shootings, in general, is that people don’t commit these acts when they feel like they belong, so creating environments in which everyone feels that will likely result in less shootings”
James. E. Fury, a Wisconsin public school teacher, suggested the key to generating peace is fixing the environment.
A lack of reason has already led to great suffering. It will doubtless grow. In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. I agree. In my post “The Rationality/Irrationality Cycle”, I state:
- Hardship produces reason;
- Reason produces wealth (through self-reliance and self-governance);
- Wealth produces entitlement (enabling desire and ignorance);
- Entitlement fails the development of reason;
- An absence of reason produces hardship (suffering, isolation, and societal disharmony).
See also: Fear and Virtue (Chapter 3) – Machiavelli in Tumult — Machiavelli outlines this cycle using slightly different words. It is the same principle, however.
Problems do not kill civilizations, the inability to solve them does.
Hardship and suffering (by his own words) produced Buddha. And Buddha became the embodiment of reason and enlightenment from his generation. Throughout history, humanity has passed through these growth-collapse phases before. Many times. In every cycle, some, like Buddha, ask why? I see that this cycle is the primary reason great civilizations rise and fall. Maybe it is the only reason.
THE QUESTION’s ANSWER
The easiest part first.
FREEDOM (with a reasonable people, freedom is free—i.e., requires no work)
Promoting reason is how society increases personal freedom. That is, a self-reliant and self-governing (i.e., rational) people will be a maximally free people. Whereas, dependent and ignorant individuals require governance. The more dependent and ignorant the people are, the more supervision they require.
Also, ignorant people are unable to bring value to others and thus they will not perceive a meritocracy—i.e. Marxists. These individuals see a logic to dependence, or, I am sad to say, their personal domination over others through dependence producing political movements (like communism and socialism).
Authoritarianism comes about this way.
REASON (Reason produces wealth (& self-reliance and self-governance))
Overview
I do not think that the process of reason is what people think it is. Specifically, reason is for discovering entirely new things (an explanation for problems), or, for correcting ideas developed outside of reason (often the cause of humanity’s problems (suffering)). Civilization depends upon it.
When people perceive that they are reasoning, they most likely aren’t. Instead, they are processing using information they already possess for the purpose of decision-making in the service of their SELF. Reason, by contrast, is about discovering what is not yet known. As a result, much of humanity might not recognize when personal or societal reason is at cognitive risk. Most citizens of humanity do not have awareness or mastery of reason. Therefore they cannot see it. Consequently, a collapse of reason could happen simply because it sits within an intellectual blind spot for them. It is hard for these individuals to preserve, protect, or develop what they explicitly do not understand.
Additionally, reason cannot be taught. It is developed. And, critically, the individual must, themselves, accomplish that important and difficult task. This is why it is hard, and, especially in times of plenty when new ideas are not necessarily needed, it is very rare. Predictably, we lose the skills that we do not use. Yet, when reason must be proactively developed, the reservoir of societal reason is in much greater jeopardy. This is because rational ignorance threatens civilization when a precipitating event, like famine, causes societal problems to accumulate too quickly. A small number of rational (problem-solving) people are just too few to stem the tide of cascading societal problems and despair. This is not some abstract problem either. Societal collapse has happened before. I believe a loss of societal reason caused the Late Bronze Age Collapse in 1177 BCE. The entire civilization (all of the eastern Mediterranean bronze-era palace-states, and very nearly Egypt) was razed in just a few short years and never rebuilt. All because the people, writ large, could not think new thoughts—or, problem solve. The area was experiencing drought and famine. Without rational people, the growing problems, and the fear it produced, overwhelmed them.
Reason cannot be taught
Think of your brain as two thinking systems. One holds what you already know (habits if you will), and the other is used to discover the things you do not yet know (reason).
For performance reasons, the two cannot operate concurrently. The process of reason, by definition, is indeterminate. Habit, by contrast, is near immediate (drawing only on what one knows). So the two are as different as night and day. Habit makes decisions in the service of the SELF. Reason pursues only the TRUTH. In time, and while in the pursuit of truth, reason produces understanding—i.e., models of reality. Helpfully, understanding enables prediction. Prediction, later, consciously aids decision-making. This is how reason benefits habits. Yet, without prediction, or without the external advice of others, habits remain significantly unchanged by individuals. Still, the habit-brain can and does make incremental changes to its thinking and behaviors using a process called operant conditioning. Without reason (and truth), however, operant conditioning could take the brain into conceptual insanity. Deranged gunmen are just one extreme example. Some other harmful political movements are without reason too.
Critically, the habit-brain (our day-to-day execution brain) does not know reason. Reason (in the prefrontal cortex) does not warehouse subjective truths and behaviors as the habit brain does. Therefore. it cannot be taught to others as people so often understand teaching (this is why it does not happen routinely now). Thus, when a reasoning person talks to a non-reasoning person, they cannot use information and ideas retained by the non-reasoning person’s habit brain to help them understand reason. This might seem strange, but when a reasoning person jumps to reason, they momentarily set all the “knowledge” retained by their habit-brain aside. To reason, this information, from a decision-making point of view, is extraneous. The reason-brain is not engaged in decision-making and processing. The reason-brain instead manipulates models for understanding, not, as the habit-brain does, its subjective truths for immediate execution. Therefore, without models, a person’s emergent capacity to reason lays idle. In the presence of a model, however, reason draws upon information and experiences warehoused by the habit brain to test the veracity of its models. This is how Habit and sensory experience aids reason.
NOTE: All this text here, above and below, is my model for reason. Don’t memorize it. Try to develop a picture in your head. Try to see it work. Understand it.
Consequently, speech, as a tool for communicating the concepts of reason, is problematic. Without a pre-existing capacity to reason, models cannot be communicated between a reasoning and a non-reasoning person. The non-reasoning listener will receive conceptual (models) information from the other person and endeavor to store what they hear from them in their habit brain as facts or truths (this is their habit). New concepts are thus not developed and stored as models in the pre-frontal cortex by reason. The habit brain has thus inadvertently circumvented the development of its own capacity to reason. This is humanity’s intellectual development barrier. The habit brain simply had no way to aid reason because it does not, and cannot, function that way.
Thus, entire religions (Buddhism, Jainism, others) have been constructed for the development of reason. Yet, their success has nevertheless been spotty. I believe instead, that, when reason does happen, the struggles (suffering) of life produced it.
Bottom line: life must find a way to get past the habit-brain in order to create reason. It’s difficult.
Consider now, THE ONE THING
Your consciousness must first deny habits. This is free won’t. That is, you must consciously decide not to use what you already know. Halt the habit brain.
In other words, and as often as possible, DO NOT use your habit brain. DO NOT decide. DO NOT rashly act. Instead, attempt to understand (reason) questions or subjects as if you have no prior knowledge of them. In time, as you develop a better understanding of the issue at hand, your decisions and behaviors will improve.
That’s it. Free won’t. The one thing for understanding.
Be forwarned. It’s hard. Your EGO (the SELF) wants to apply what it already knows. After all, why have the SELF if you’re not going to rely upon it? Also, without a model, reason has nothing to do.
DEVELOPING REASON
Reasoning behaviors are developed only under the right conditions. Hardships, and our response to them, foster it. The good news/bad news is that we are entering that particular cycle of life (see “A lack of reason produces hardship” above):
- Personal suffering, division, and societal disharmony.
Moreover, the suffering of humanity is inescapable so long as they unduly rely on their habit-brain thinking. This is what Buddha discovered.
Specifically, humanity suffers because its participants JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, and yet, their conclusions do not comport with reality. Humanity is polarized because the people … JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, and sadly, their conclusions are different than those around them. And, unfortunately, humanity’s habit brains are increasingly different from one another. Therefore, prepare to have your reason developed.
It is that simple.
CONCLUSION
I do not have to develop humanity’s reason. Increasing personal hardship and suffering will, inescapably, force that evolution upon them. It simply cannot be avoided. I could help their awakening, however, through encouragement to focus on the “one thing”—using their free won’t and a momentary suspension of habits.
This is all I can do.
I might further help the people by providing them with their first reason model—one of the brain and potentially their SELF-awareness (see the image above).
So, stop. Put down the phone. Make no decisions. (FREE WON’T) Think about the above model. Test it. Add meaning to it by using it to explain or predict your behaviors or those of others around you. (REASON)
DO NOT decide that it is either right or wrong. If you do, you’re just saving or rejecting the model to the habit brain as either truth or error—using what you think you already know. Whereas, in fact, it is neither. It is a mere model. A hypothesis. Try to disprove it with observations. If you find errors, fix them. Look for more errors. Never stop. Refine the model (truth).
This is how reason works. Once you get the hang of it, develop other models on subjects interesting to you.