theaspirationalmind.com
Evolution and Survival
My attempt to understand and make practicable sense of the historical descriptions of what the human mind is like left me with as many unanswered questions as solutions. I needed a new approach, or a new way to combine the various ideas that I had come across.
I started to think not so much about what we experience but how to describe our mind in a more functional sense. The basis for the Aspiration Mind simplifies down to two primary considerations:
Firstly, we are a product of our genetic survival over millions of years. We have survived by evolving more and more sophisticated behaviours in response to situations that our predecessors encountered. Evolution tends to keep existing characteristics and add new characteristics as additions to or developments of the older ones. Thus complexity increases but many of the oldest characteristics can still remain in operation.
Secondly, our brain/mind basically directs our behaviour in such a way that it promotes survival. Improved behaviour gives us better survival.
This approach places the mind (brain, nervous system, body physiology) central to our behaviour and designed to refine our behaviour. This in turn gives an improved approach to describe our experience of our own mind in a pragmatic way which includes the types of behaviour developed over the ages and how these can be considered to support or even overlay one another. Older behaviours become more sophisticated over time whilst new behaviours are added. The older behaviours are not replaced by new behaviours but overlayed by newer capabilities that add to our overall sophistication and adaptability of behaviour.
This approach led me to think in terms of centres of focus, or parts, of mind that influence or determine our behaviour. This identification of a number of basic focuses of behaviour gave me a better understanding of how nature could develop more and more sophisticated motivational behaviour. Each 'Focus' provided a step forward in terms of the abilities of our ancestors to survive in new ways.
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