Usual and Customary

There is a phrase in insurance lingo, ‘usual and customary’, that describes the rate at which an insurance carrier is willing to reimburse a doctor for a particular procedure. In my field, behavioral health, UCR’s (usual & customary rates) that companies follow, shadow the rates set by CMS for Medicare. There is a sense of synchrony and safety in these procedures.

Usual and customary could be the battle cry of the human race. As a species, we love things that are pegged against other widely understood practices as it creates a wonderful sense of predictability and safety. It is that much better when “usual and customary” indirectly benefits you without you having to lift a finger.

That is the timbre of race relations in this country. The fact that there is white privilege is an abject truth that only the people with their heads firmly secured in the sand could deny. While many of the deniers may point to regions of a particular city where a white person may not feel safe, this is a drop in the pan against the entire cities or regions where a black person could be arrested, beaten, or gunned down.

The issue here isn’t violence: all cultures commit deplorable acts; the issue here is that when a black man or black woman is gunned down or arrested, mainstream society is quick to dismiss the culprit as mentally unfit or some misunderstood loner. However, let a black suspect FLEE from a police officer, posing no imminent threat, and the last 10 months have shown that that suspect will be executed on the spot.

This has become usual and customary.

I, in no way, shape, or form, intend this post to be an indictment against all white people, but I do hope that by the end of this post you can begin to understand the indignation that nonwhites feel in the light of the usual and customary practices employed in this country.

Let us not mix words: this is a white-centric nation built upon white supremacist principles. While overt white supremacy is no longer en vogue, there is still a powerful undercurrent of centricity that tilts towards those of the fairer skin.

Here is where I will diverge from most of my colleagues: as a scientist, it is my duty to rationally observe all variables and offer statements that paint an objective picture, rather than letting my indignation guide me. White-centricity in this nation is a complex phenomenon that has less to do with active supremacy and everything to do with chronology, occurrence, and status quo. Lets take a quick look at this.

From a standpoint of human relations, it is more likely that we feel interrelatedness with someone who is similar to us in all forms, thus, it is consistent that cultures will tend to band together. However, this sober, objective approach leaves out far too nuance.

Slavery has been a staple of human society for millennia; however, the enslavement of blacks in this country occurred at an interesting time in our evolution. I’m sure there were many brilliant Jewish minds during the Egyptian and Babylonian captivities; however, our enslavement and subsequent release coincided with the industrial revolution and an increase connectivity across the globe. That is, we as a species gained greater access to information in toto and this has had profound consequences on cultural evolution in kind. It is much easier to track the roiling changes as a result.

White-centricity in this country is most widely expressed in the misunderstanding of the effects of historical acts.

Let me make a quick analogy using something I’m intensely interested in: it is hypothesized by some physicists that we may exist in a simulated universe, or more appropriately, a series of nested simulations created by hyper intelligent beings. The only issue with probing this mystery is that even if we are existing in such a milieu, it would be virtually impossible to “step outside” the simulation as that would be all there is for a being whose entire existence in built within it. If we are mere simulations, it would be logically impossible to experience anything outside the simulation.

The simulation would be all that there is.

White-centricity, or white status quo, can be seen in this same fashion. When you have been inside of a particular construct for the entirety of your existence, reaping the fruits of usual and customary and fed the knowledge of pragmatic socialization, then everything seems hunky-dory to you. To succeed, one need only to work hard and obey the rules.

But what if the rules weren’t universal?

This is the cry of every nonwhite trying to succeed in this country. The logic of white-centricity isn’t unconditional. If you are a nonwhite attempting to integrate into mainstream cultures or economies, you feel the asymmetry on a daily basis. You have to work a little harder. You are constantly inundated by snide remarks or asked to change something that is “usual and customary” to whatever culture you come from.

We must constantly assimilate to you.

So while many whites know nothing about reality outside of mainstream simulation, nonwhites are forced into making choices on the daily.

Lets add some further complexity to the mix. Using words like “white” and “nonwhite” is an egregious misrepresentation of the diversity that accompanies human existence. What does it mean to be “white”? Or “black”? We can argue this ad infinitum but allow me to truncate this argument swiftly: you are generally being judged as you walk up to an person, group, or establishment. Before you’ve uttered a word, you’ve been sized up. I get it; Its a human thing to do. Where the centricity rears its ugly head is how much harder someone who is in a quickly concluded “out group” must work to gain entrance “in”.

Without taking you through an exhausting, abject history lesson on relations in our country, but still offering a reminder of the struggles of nonwhites in this country, let us turn our attention to slavery and its sequelae. It took an all out war for blacks to be released. War. Even after, we were beaten, raped, and hung from trees. We couldn’t vote. We couldn’t use the same facilities. We couldn’t even look at whites in the eye.

If your response to this is, “get over it, it isn’t like that anymore,” you are the biggest problem. It isn’t the few and far flung bigots, its the passive beneficiaries of usual and customary. Violent bigots are the minority, but statistically speaking, those who are apathetic, while reaping benefits are much more populous. They miss the point because they either don’t understand how society works or they just don’t care.

If you are the great grandchildren of people who were broken by the country they call home, you are still familiar with the sting of humiliation. That sort of pain doesn’t dissipate over night. Then you wake up in the morning and you see a black child with a white police officer’s knee in her back? This same officer pulls a gun on the surrounding group for talking back? This all is a result of too many nonwhites at a community pool? Then the following week a white man kills 9 people at a black church? In a state that still flies the Confederate Flag? All of this in the wake of several high profile murders of black men across the nation at the hands of the police — which does nothing else but uphold usual and customary white centricity?

Do you see the tension created here? The most important part of argumentation is making sure you and your opponent are discussing the same thing. As a nation we have never, ever, ever been discussing the same thing. It isn’t a matter of differing viewpoints, but a matter of differing “simulations”.

If you can’t understand why nonwhites feel such abject hatred towards a system that requires them to play by additional rules, then you need to do your homework.

This isn’t an indictment against whites; it is an indictment against white centricity and the fetishization of nonwhite cultures. As long as nonwhites are hooting and hollering on music stages or catching balls on Sunday afternoons, everything is great. But when our people are being slain in the streets and the status quo starts calling their murderers “misunderstood” or “lone wolves” then its time for you to get a fucking clue. When kids with toy guns or men with their backs to police start getting gunned down without consequences, its time for us to wake the fuck up.

I will proclaim the sanctity of science until my last breath, but to know that my last breath could be at the hands of someone proclaimed to be a hero or mentally ill and the nation would do little more than tweet and spin stories sickens me.

That is what is usual and customary in this country. Inequality that goes ignored by those that profit from it. It is a safe, predictable pegging that most people in this nation have no vested interest in altering. Those in out groups are terrorists, thugs, and niggers, while those in group members are mentally unfit, lonely, and confused.

Be proud of whoever the fuck you are, but remember that you are a human before any other modifier gets applied. You share an overwhelming amount of your genome with every other member of the human race. An atrocity against one of us is an atrocity against all of us. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Japanese, Black, German, Saudi, Aborigine, Ghanaian, liberal, conservative, Labor, democrat — whatever. To even be able to identify as one of these makes you a human FIRST.

I work my ass off and give back to anyone that needs motivation, but in dark hours like these, it is incredibly difficult to maintain hope in our species. While I believe that ration, reason, and empirical veracity can light even the dark of crevasses, I fear that people of my ilk may never get the chance.

Best,
Bryce

Why I Chose Neuropsychology

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. – Einstein

On a daily basis I am confronted by all manner of paradox, especially those that underlie the form and function of the universe. The best that most of us can do is make a priori assumptions that work well with our current conceptions of being and build up from there. The problem with this methodology is as old as humanity: once one runs up against another human with an equally presumptuous, yet equally valid conception, tension arises.

In an effort to circumvent this intractable issue, I began studying brain function to see what mysteries the neurosciences could unravel. My reason for doing this was easy to follow: a human can posit a great number of things based on subjective experience, if I could find a pursuit that could inject some semblance of objectivity into this experience then I would bypass the personal construction of said experience.

When one peruses the florid machinations of history’s most advanced and influential philosophers, one cannot help but notice the internal consistency between even the most wildly divergent constructions. All schools of thought follow very basic, very human laws of reasoning. Moreover, philosophies always have a taint of the eras where they came into being. If these brilliant minds were illustrating the universe in toto and coming up with accurate conceptions of it, then why were they tinted by the cultures and current events of the times?

What I kept seeing were humans — very brilliant humans — being human. Each conception was an exercise in the ingenuity of a biological machine, not the precision of an unbiased mechanical one. Human beings were not cameras idly capturing the essence of concrete reality, but a node, an information processor, processing the elements of a stream of data that would emerge as one’s reality.

The differences are deceptively subtle and rather trivial in everyday conceptions of “reality”. There are a great many crafty minds that can and will disagree with this presentation of things “as they are” but therein lies the beauty of the human at work.

I wanted to understand the human at work then see how that commented on what could be considered reality. Instead of casting my lot on processes that theoretically exist outside of humanity, I have placed my bets on studying the functional units that must process all information, since any bit of data that can be known must be integrated and translated into something a human can know.

A quick illustration is this: lets say Computer A has inputs that can process all Information A units in a system comprised of Information A, Information B, and Information C units. To Computer A, Information A and Information B units do not exist; it has no means of detecting their existence!

Even if that information could infer that other types of Information are out there, say through some mathematical formulation, it must develop the inputs before it can deal with that information.

The reason I am bringing all of this up is to make a point about positing about “reality”. It is quite accepted that the universe possesses a great deal of information that we have no inputs for and thus all we are ever doing is describing those elements we do have access to. It is for this reason, that I prefer to say that we all deal in representations of reality, rather than saying that we are privy to reality proper.

A problem we face as a society is that many of us incorrectly figure that we are arbiters of a true reality and thus the conceptions that are the form and function of our mental lives possess an air of righteousness. We mistake our emotions, percepts, and cognitions as exemplars of truth and fashion ideology based on the “correctness” of it all.

However, there is nothing intrinsically correct (or incorrect) about anything. We don’t have access to enough information and the information we do have access to is allowed to pivot along many degrees of freedom. If there were rigid ways of looking at things, there would be no room for interpretation.

What I am saying is that instead of seeing philosophical constructions as right or true, I see them as exemplars of human ingenuity. So, how then can I study human conceptions of reality? By studying the structures which permit this seemingly infinite capacity.

Brain function.

Research suggests that brain function is mediated by genetics and experience. Brain function mediates thought content and the results of those thoughts become behavior. Thus, the state of the brain, the interaction between its great number of networks and modules, gives rise to the thoughts that we all cherish so dearly. There is nothing intrinsically true about something so personal to each organism. We have no special access to realms sacrosanct. We are the products of miraculous biological processes.

Now, I am not relegating humans to soulless automata, I am saying that while you may revel in the content of your thoughts, your thoughts are only partially controlled by you. You may feel a strong pull towards libertarianism or Buddhism, but the feelings that arise in those schools of thought have more to do with your biological and social construction than with any direct access to rightness. If you had a troubled childhood, those frameworks which stress inclusion (or exclusion depending on the additional content of your mental life) will appeal to you strongly.

The sum total of your genetic proclivities and your experiential knowledge commixed in extraordinarily complex ways will give rise to your conception of reality. While there are those that lend credence (or believe vehemently in) other means of informational attainment (extrasensory experience, OBE, past lives, communication with God), they too, can be said to call on certain brain functions which permit belief. Belief, after all, is all some require in order to actually experience something. Magicians, confidence artists, and sociopaths know and exploit these biases with considerable adroitness.

So, from the position of neuropsychology (and other neurosciences), studying brain function rather than studying thought content is more efficacious in understanding humans. While we may generate complex frameworks about the universe at large, we cannot know things we cannot know. Hopefully I am not inadvertently creating a conceptual Charybdis, but the internal structure of this argument remains ostensibly true.

The purview that brain function permits is not one of “how things are” or even “how things should be” because these two concepts are only casually linked to the status of being human. We don’t know “how things are” except for the universe’s radical indifference and we don’t know “how things should be” because each of our ideas about such are subjectively constructed by our brains. Thus, what brain function allows for is understanding how each of us constructs our views of life so that we can teach and be more tolerant of one another.

Consciousness and unconsciousness are another minefield when talking in public. I have commingled these liberally in this post on purpose. To see the unconscious as the “machine behind the scenes” is not really a viable illustration. To talk about willful or consciously willed behaviors differing from unconscious drives, is also deeply flawed. We are organisms comprised of a great many structures; these are two of them.

The goal is survival, not righteousness. Consciousness conferred on us a heightened ability to recognize novel stimuli (if one chooses to follow the wealth of scientific research on the topic).

I do not share Einstein’s cognitive abilities, but I share his deep fascination with everything. I, too, am passionately curious.

In conclusion, I cannot make great sweeping remarks about the nature of ontology, what is, but I can make cursory statements about what can be known and how we can trade that knowledge. By taking us as information processors with unique variations on our processing styles, we can hopefully generate more robust dialogue. This enriched dialogue sets a different milieu for our children and children’s children.

Our brain functions are our information processing, our mental life is the “screen”, and our behavior is the resultant of what the screen suggests.

Within the field of neuropsychology, I get to study these idiosyncrasies in great detail and I am very grateful. The confluence of subjective experiences points to an overarching organization within which interpretation can abound. The paradoxes generated are due to our inability to reason outside of what we can know first and what we know second.

Thus, neuropsychology has deepened my proclivity for nihilism, haha. Meaning only means what one perceives something to mean. It is in and of itself an illusion mediated by — you guessed it — brain function.

Misunderstood: Quantum Confusion

To experience something is fundamentally different that merely processing information about it. This is the crux of the so called “hard problem of consciousness” posited by David Chalmers almost two decades ago. Strict computations and even their subsequent integration and storage are easily tackled by brain physiology. Its the subjective, experiential component that seems to elude all understanding.

From where does such a phenomena arise and for what possible purpose?

Although our brain is not a quantum computer as many pop mystics love leading folks to believe, it does seem to possess the important qualities which harness all the weirdness of the quantum realm. For those unaware of the mind boggling things occurring at the smallest levels, allow me to briefly introduce the ultramicroscopic world.

If you can recall your high school science classes, you can retrieve a vivid picture of an electron as this yellow ball which occupies various orbits around a nucleus, comprised of protons and neutrons, red or blue and white balls, respectively. It behooves you to immediately let go of this delusion. The electron is not a “particle” per se; more accurately, the electron is both a wave and a particle, it possesses a hybrid of characteristics in which it acts like both in different situations. Furthermore, prior to measurements — that is prior to “observation” — the electron is not “anywhere” per se, it is represented probabilistically as being somewhere, but until certain events occur it is in a superposition, or all available states at once. That means it is on any number of paths, from here to the Sombrero galaxy, represented by a probability function. The mathematics surrounding this are gnarly, but rest assured that the scientific community, after rejecting the implications, tested these findings with relentless ferocity, only to find that these conclusions are unassailable.

It gets weirder…

Quantum behavior is beyond perplexing and some of the fundamental mechanisms have no known cause. Now, for those, again, that haven’t spent much time in the scientific community, the prevailing wisdom in the hard sciences is that the universe is purely mechanistic, that is, it can be wholly described in terms of cause and effect. To that point, ‘man is a machine’ in that he can be fully understood as the sum of his parts and as such he is a completely determined entity. Let a traditional scientist tell you, you are a little more than a highly complex, organic robot. Nothing is that mysterious, everything is predetermined. Well, the eery world of the quantum has done a number to render those theories spurious. Quantum particles seem to “choose” based on purely indeterministic standards and can therefore be understood as agents of absolute random chance. Electrons disappear and reappear; they tunnel through barriers; they ‘exist’ everywhere in the universe all at once. Moreover, nothing in this universe seems to govern or “cause” these behaviors.

Spooky stuff.

But what does any of this have to do with human beings?

Conventional scientific theory, again, has posited that quantum effects, these strange capabilities in the microscopic realm, are averaged out as a system gets bigger. By the time you get to the order of magnitude of everyday reality, brains, humans, social groups, etc, quantum effects are “smeared” into classical mechanics, the realms of Einstein and Newton’s elegant equations, relativity and classical laws of motion, respectively. But, this may not be the whole truth. When talking about living creatures, those encoded with the mysterious animated program we call life, quantum effects may still rear their uniquely maddening heads.

A few months ago, I became obsessed with fractal dimensions and self similarity because it seemed to represent a sort of continuum in a topologically spherical sense. That is, one could see similar systems [universe, galactic neighborhood, galaxy, solar system, planet, continent, region, area, location] or [universe (macrocosm) —> man (microcosm)] being replicated in virtually every direction one could observe. This held some value for me since it linked the largest of orders to the smallest.

Societies are compromised of community. Communities are comprised of groups. Groups are comprised of individual humans. Humans compute via the brain. The brain is comprised of neural networks which process information in parallel; neural networks are comprised of individual neurons which compute in parallel; neurons are comprised of a proteins which compute… and so forth down to quantum particles. The unique thing about proteins processing information is that they are on the order which possesses quantum characteristics. Proteins as quantum computing machines are exorbitantly capable at solving some of the the most complex orientation problems in the blink of an eye by using quantum annealing, tunneling, and all sorts of crazy computational methods. But, as these types of systems are iterative, that is that compute back upon themselves as well as other systems nearby (hence parallel), their final state serves as the initial state for the next higher order of processing (orders here are descending from societies to proteins). In other words, the final configuration of the proteins serves as the starting point for the processing of a neuron. The final state of the neurons, the initial state for the network and so forth.

Humans are then, possible, quantum amplifers, in that we may not be purely quantum computing machines, but we are surely a vehicle for some of their effects. It is from this position that free will may be mathematically proven to be a possibility, that we are not just automata acting out predisposed, although highly complex, instructions embedded in our DNA.

From this standpoint, we return to the troubles with consciousness. I may ascribe a great deal of importance to the physical structures of the brain, but I in no way could consider myself a reductionistic materialist. I do not believe the matter in the brain is all there is. I do believe that matter that is encoded with life, that is matter that is affected by quantum effects, could somehow be quantitatively capable of self-organization to the point of self-awareness, this strange phenomena we call experience. It is for this reason I have ventured into the world of neuropsychology and psychotherapy; that perhaps, this unique experience we call experience, with some scientific rigor and fanciful math to boot, will relinquish its secrets to one so enamored by its ontological status.

One of the main calling cards of experience, of consciousness, is the will — no the veritable obsession — to codify another unique phenomena, meaning. I have found it more novelly amusing that so many people believe that things happen for a reason, only to continually complicate that reason as more and more things fall outside of its expected bounds. Moreover, most people believe that things happen for a reason almost exclusively for their own benefit! They believe that life is stacked in their favor, that any hardships experienced are valuable lessons.

Of the lessons, I have no doubts; it is this grand scheme of beneficial blueprints from which I maintain a dubious distance.

Just as I believe that many different religions possess many different shards of the “truth,” I believe that many different philosophies have tapped, or abstracted if I may, some pervasive truths. As a result, I am a whole lot less concerned with things having some global, beneficial reasons that affect the trivialities of my existence and I look more so to edify the whole of the existential stock of mankind. I prefer to keep grandiose plans at bay out of respect of the billions that die or suffer in infamy, neglect, abuse, or otherwise. It is a great disservice to one’s own sanity to dismiss these as negligible to a universal schematic and it is an even greater disservice to merely count them as sins of man.

Notwithstanding, that consciousness defines one’s delusion of meaning is doubtless. It makes perfect intuitive sense, however, it is the very intuition of man I am calling into question. My foray into quantum amplification wasn’t merely a bedraggled amateur display of intellectual ability, its purpose was to reveal the hidden mechanisms behind the things we hold so dear. Too many of us have lived lives without the gainful insight of information dragged through the skeptical processing centers of empirical studies. Instead, we have reveled in the fields of what “feels” and this is among the deepest problems of what it means to be human.

The “feels,” the experiential qualities, are, as aforementioned, the least understood aspects of the human condition, but are traded as if they are somehow the rightful unquestionables. Through the possibility of quantum effects at meso- and macro levels, we have possibly opened the doors back to testable studies of free will and constrained chance, but the idea that purely subjective experiences govern the bulk of our behaviors is a scary thought.

Every maniacal dictator, every prejudiced bigot — every “closed-minded fundamentalist” has “what they feel” or “what they’ve personally experienced” to go off of in decision making. More corruption has come about through purely intended actions than skeptical reasoning, even though they are both human endeavors.

Meaning and purpose are the motors we utilize the most throughout our cognition and subsequent actions; we organize our data through our highly evolved processing faculties and upon deriving a hierarchy we embody ideology. These are the realities to us, but they are far from the reality in toto. Meaning and purpose are vital operators in this emergent conscious experience, but all three of these are being tweaked and tuned throughout the human experience. It is unlikely that we will find a way to objective poke and prod them in our lifetimes, therefore, we must be individually diligent about the contents of our cognitive processes.

Be more inclined to question your own preferences and deepest beliefs as many are founded on shoddy, but comfortable grounds. Take the time to audit a variety of different modes of thinking and try even more to resist the notion that you are a socially and genetically programmed automated device, as, unbeknownst to many, they carry on like. It is the highest order of human elegance to enjoy the conscious experience, but make it a duty to question this experience and its concomitant impulses with rapt veracity. It is the only way we will make a better world for those who come to occupy this place long after we are gone.

bryce

Creating A Better World

The mind is the master of this realm.

It possesses the uncanny ability to affect and alter anything. Humans, however, are woefully unprepared to understand the importance of our glorious minds.

“Mind over matter”. “You are what you think”. These are two adages that have been pimped out for the better half of a century as shortcuts into understanding how the metaphysical can affect the physical, but I want to attack this from a slightly different angle.

What is reality?

If you follow this blog, you know I postulate that reality is best described a collection of best guesses and normality is best described as the average of those best guesses as agreed to by a specific population. I am not so much concerned with super strength or the ability to fly using the incredible powers of the mind, I am focused on creating a better people.

Take a moment to think about where we are in the universe, please. I know that this is an exercise that is unfathomable for most people, but it is the single greatest tool for breaking down an ignorant, self absorbed person. The Milky Way Galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies that make up our known universe. Our beautiful galactic home is comprised of hundreds of billions of stars and may contain just as many planets. Whether habitable or not is beyond the point…

Our universe is massive. No, I don’t think you understand, it is really, really, REALLY fucking big.

So, when you realize that our gorgeous, yet diminutive blue planet resides on a distal (ridiculously far) arm of an obscure galaxy just like billions of others, you start to see our place in this universe. Thus race, religion, politics, and whatever other manmade (translation: flawed) system of linearity are all small potatoes in the eyes of a knower.

Yet, they must exist for the sake of social organization…

Reality dictates our lives and reality is based on social guesses, trial and errors usually perpetuated by those in power. In countries like our own, which are relatively free and possess protocols which give the people some power over their government (be in political, religious, educational or whatever) “those in power” generally have to answer to their constituents. Thus, by the laws of deduction, we contain indescribable power over our little blue floating rock.

We need only to get our perception together, after all, perception is reality.

But what does that really mean? We live in a world that seems to be irreversibly divided, separated by the most illusory of factors. We see the color of our skin, the supremacy of our beliefs, the divinity of our holy books as so potent that we we alienate then persecute our brothers and sisters because of them. We have spent all of our recorded history clobbering each other on micro and macro levels and for what? Justice? Honor? Peace? Progress?

Bullshit.

For ego.

To this day we are still champions of our ego, yet most of us are so disturbingly entangled in it that we fail to realize our existential pompousness. I call this discrepancy inadvertence because the present moment, with all of its terabytes of information, tends to lead us into doomed places spiritually, mentally, and physically thus causing these irremediable differences. I know very few people that are purposely, knowingly wrong, but everyone on this earth is susceptible to these moments of inadvertent error.

Most of these errors come from subjectivity or interpretations of life’s information. As beings that are acted on by perceptible and imperceptible factors which tally into the millions, we each approach life a slightly different way. In small doses these divisions, these phase shifts, are actually beneficial. They promote diversity and the free flowing of knowledge towards the Great Destination that is enlightenment. However, when multiplied across a society, with its unwitting profane occupying the same influential levels as its cognoscenti, these differences become disastrous.

The method I propose for bridging the gap between peoples is called objective conscious modeling or the creation of decisional matrices. This model is very, very simple: it calls for a person to think outside of their normal tendencies. It simply says: how would ______ react to this? How would my ally react? My enemy? A stranger? An alien? A mind that can seamlessly transition from one opinion to another is the most powerful force known to humankind, that person possess cognitive dexterity.

Why is cognitive dexterity so potent?

Because this tool gives the thinker the power to influence through organic processes. Sure, it is facile to think that manipulation or other ill reputed methods of charlatanry are the most effective means of coercion, but those methods do not solve anything. Tricking a person only leads to anger, bitterness, and usually a latent call for revenge by succeeding generations. For millennia man has been trying to wrest control of this realm from his brother via subversive tactics, an assassination here, a coup there. The cycle never seems to stop.

Why is it that we cannot end racism, here and now? Why can’t we solve global hunger? Some people may give you some circuitous answer which translates into impotence, but I can give you a very pointed answer right here: we do not trust one another, nor do we trust ourselves in moments of uncertainty or duress. We do not strive for cognitive dexterity because we are too busy stoking the flames of our ego. We don’t believe in the viability of alternatives, we are actively fighting against belief systems which detract from our own. The most insidious is again most of us are not even aware that other ways of doing things are possible, ignorance becomes the vehicle of decision.

To make matters worse, human beings are not really honest creatures although we are not incorrigibly dishonest either. As Dan Arielly in his brilliant book, Predictably Irrational, points out, we are dishonest up unto some socially acceptable threshold. That dishonesty multiplied by a particular population makes communication, progress, and harmony impossible to achieve. We lie out of what we believe to be self preservation or for some “greater good”. These lies, ranging from white lies on down to straight manipulations, become infused into the minds of a people, driving more wedges between brother and sister.

You never know when one is being dishonest.

This translates into a world of superciliousness, divisiveness, and all manners of errant behavior. We will forge endless adversarial relationships without ever taken the time to understand that person or people. We will forge mutual relationships with people that had no business being around us.

We create the world we live in now.

All because of our minds. Our brilliant, but misunderstood mind. Under these circumstances the mind becomes clouded, we forget our place in the universe, effectively shackling our potential to create a better world.

bryce

A Good Man’s Heart

A man’s heart is nothing to play with,
Something to slay with seems to be the perception
Most women play with,
Broken hearts and broken dreams,
Reams streaked with streams,
Of dried tears shed from these queens,
Their kings abandoned their thrones,
At a moment’s notice so it seems.
He flirted with the sovereigns of other nations,
Such blatant disrespect pushed her patience,
Now her stations broadcast words cynical,
The cyclical, typical, physical emanation of critical
Postures towards love.
The bad man fucks over the good woman,
Now she’s a “bitch” at the flip of a switch
Confronting the good man….
But a man’s heart is nothing to play with.
A virtuous man’s heart is something you stay with,
Something you pray with, gray with,
Embark on a journey of faith with.
Just face it, if you traced it,
Back to the origins and spaces,
His graces & charms & arms are genuine reflections,
So don’t judge his collections on past connections,
Flawed predilections,
Truth is in his words, sincerity in his actions,
Destiny is in his eyes and with that satisfaction.

bryce

Success vs Failure: Your Mind

The world is finally catching on to the fact that the mind is the new frontier for virtually all commerce. As ephemeral things such as brand loyalty, employee-employer dynamics, gender roles, and race constructs morph and bend, more and more managers & strategists have had to apply traditonally unconventional knowledge to solve new problems in the 21st century. VB ICON likes to believe that it is on the forefront of one of these new paradigms, but the fact remains that a new zeitgeist has descended upon us…

The mind is the new mine.

As some of you who follow my blog, you may remember that I break up the human existential condition into 5 parts: Mind, Body, Heart, Soul, and Spirit. This is an offshoot from the conventional Christian breakdown which has only the Flesh (body), Soul, and Spirit. I add in the Heart and Mind because they have qualities which I believe can be observed and dealt with separate from the other components and this expanded construct has also led to several of the cathartic realizations I’ve had over the last year and a half. Although each component complements and affects the others, they maintain what I believe to be very distinct differences which, once understood, can lead a person to greater enlightenment and a bump down the path of self actualization.

What is the mind? I am not going to venture into an ontological debate about where the mind exists because quite frankly my answer involves multiple dimensions and a whole slew of esoteric, theoretical components that aren’t my main focus tonight. So I will simply say this about the mind: it is the conscious. It is the place where all neutral information goes to be considered and meditated on. The brain, the physical component of the mind, is simply a computer which receives and sends out signals, whereas the mind interprets those signals for the purpose of creating perspectives and opinions. Using inductive reasoning, one can see how the mind is affected by the other components of existence… The spirit, which some may call the conscience, offers positive uplifting information. The body simply seeks maximum, short term pleasure. The heart offers undifferentiated emotion, skewing the interpretation off things this way and that. The soul though, for me, is rather neutral; its manifestation will be comprised of how the individual mixes the other components.

The mind is then an extremely interesting component. As the wellspring of conscious thought, the mind is the seat of practical intelligence. The mind is exceptionally malleable, prone to changes as one ages or gains more information. The mind is where we create our biases and our subjectivities, it is literally the site of our views on life. In our conscious we look at ourselves and assess such things as self worth or self efficacy. Our mind is generally the vehicle through we engage in introspection or an evaluation of the effectiveness of all our components working together. Therefore the mind is an extremely instrumental place. I mean it is the faculty through which we express our conditional free will; I say conditional because all of us are bound by something. Nevertheless, the mind is the progenitor of action and therefore something that we should all vigorously strive to understand.

As aforementioned, our mind is defined by an intricate latticework of predispositions and biases. These arise from experience, childhood development, parental relations, and natural personality propensities. However, most of us are unaware and will vehemently deny that we have success crippling biases. Why? Because many of these biases lurk deep within our subconscious and are very comfortable places where we tend to hide our insecurities or general ignorance. Thus the mind becomes bogged down by useless information that only serves to hinder us and never actually bring anyone forward. This is why so many women will make the conscious decision to stay with an abusive man or why a person who hates their job will be paralyzed with fear to pursue alternative careers. These same deeply embedded neuroses lead people to constantly blame others for their shortcomings or only accept limited responsibility. Under these hindered mental conditions you find those who complain, those who judge, those who lash out in insecurity, and a myriad of other observable symptoms.

Sound like anyone you know? Perhaps maybe yourself?

Those who are not currently doing what they’d like to be doing or passionately pursuing some goal are living in failure. This does not mean that they are failure, but instead are living in a state of failure. These people have allowed their circumstances to define them and have acquiesced to the torrential current of life and simply quit. They had kids, got married, got fired, had too many bills and just began surviving. They really stopped believing in the dream. I know you’ve heard shit like this before, but really its true. Those who achieve, those who truly accomplish in life are those who refuse to bow down to the relentless pressure of life; they instead fight back with a pressure that overpowers life’s obstacles. They are objective about their struggles, not blaming others or blaming the economy, but instead shouldering the blame then coming up with a practical solution. They sacrifice every goddamn drop of energy they have. Why? Why are these people so resilient? Because they believe in whatever it is they are trying to achieve.

Here’s how it all works. The mind is a remote control and the game is being alive. We are all nothing more than self fulfilling prophecies with chance, luck, some Providence and occasional misfortune peppered in. When the mind believes in a goal, obstacles become minor inconveniences, its simply shifts gears and maneuvers around them. Thus those who achieve seem to have some upper edge, some superior intellect or unfair assistance helping them, when in fact they are simply those that align with a goal. Now here’s the kicker, we are all believing in something, even those not achieving their aspirations. Most of us have programmed our minds to accept life as subpar, we think God is punishing us, or Jesus wants us to learn a lesson. We think that maybe it wasn’t our “destiny” or God’s will for us to be the lawyer, doctor, or CEO we once envisioned. That is all nonsense. Utter nonsense.

Your mind will act on the physical because your mind controls your actions. Your actions control your opportunities because the harder you work the more fertility for opportunity you generate. Mate that with wisdom, prayer, meditation, and an acute eye for analysis and you suddenly have people who are “successful”. They aren’t special or more talented; by thinking and acting they allowed their prophecies to be self fulfilled.

This is the most important lesson as we look towards a shaky future. Geopolitics are uneasy and the world is poised to go through a very uncomfortable transition, it is imperative that those who are ripe begin to get their minds right for success. This is not New Age thought, most of these principles can be found in virtually every culture, Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Asiatic, and Sub-Asiatic all have versions of this simple core principle. YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK.

If you think you are shit, you will commit actions which prove you are shit. If you think you are a 24 year old CEO, you will act in ways that prove and eventually realize you are a 24 year old CEO. The physical realm is an eventuality of all the intangible realms and right now the mental is one primed for investment.

bryce

Part IV: Lies, The Evolutionary Marvel

The inner machinations of man are both complex and simple, elegant and crude, evolved and primitive. We are at the most banal levels, instinctive creatures, what with our guttural instincts and our “fight or flight” sympathetic systems. However, given that we do have our big, beautiful cerebrum, we possess abilities that allow us to go beyond the limits of instinct and into realms of “form creation”.

What do I mean by “form creation”? To create “form” one merely needs to line up their cognitive tendencies with an idea they are interested in. For example, if you want a job in a top notch law firm, the creation of form means that you will adopt that attorney culture in order to succeed. Out of a concept: “I want to work at _____ Law Firm”, you create a physical, mental, and social form by which you interact with the world. The fact of the matter is, you may not actually want to work in that environment, but the office provides something that you need like a particular client or type of law. That’s where our neocortex or “deceiving brain” comes in. We can override one’s instinctual dislike and tendency to avoid that discomfort. Our brain’s possess the rare quality that allows us to compartmentalize our emotions, preferences, or what have you, all in the name of some desire. Its rather elegant really… Try to get a dog to do something it doesn’t like or want and it will more than likely rebel. Notoriously dumb species are virtually impossible to train, therefore it is almost impossible for them to lie.

Lying is an evolutionary masterpiece, creating “false form” for someone to exist in for a particular desire. The ability to lie is nothing short of a marvel, a true testament to higher brain function.

But in a world where lies exist alongside the “truth”, who is actually able to discern between the two? What is a lie? What is a truth? Of course with one dimensional “events” the lines are rather stark, however, let’s take something incorporeal like ‘love’ and try to extract truth from it. We all blather on about what true love is, swear we’ve been in love, but who is truly to say what love is? I for instance am obsessed with love and the idea that there is one woman out there for me. It keeps me up at night. It forces me to work, to dress, and to talk the way I do. However, given that our minds are prone and quite frankly susceptible to self generated lies, who’s to say that I can’t trick myself into love?

Which I have in the past. Bryce Brown has never been in love, although my most recent tryst brought me to the nexus… I literally felt the tendrils of passion tugging my heartstrings. Irrespective, I still was not actually in love. I had told young women before that I was, that I adored them, didn’t want to live without them, but upon their climactic exit from my life, I all but forgot the so called feelings I once harbored for them. I through my ignorance had lied to myself, not knowing that I was lying in the worst place.

Keeping in line with love and using my “never been in love” as an example, one can see how lies can percolate and become extant entities in our lives. For as advanced as the human mind may be, most of us cannot discern when we are telling an untruth let alone someone else, especially someone we don’t know is lying. The women I thought I was falling in love with when I was 18-21 believed me and I believed myself. The lie was not malicious nor was it manipulative, but I genuinely was infatuated with their personage. That infatuation in tandem with inexperience and standard ignorance caused me to falsify reality. A reality that was in fact doomed.

Let’s zoom out a bit. In America, where our government lies to us nonstop, most people are completely oblivious that what the see, feel, and touch isn’t real. They think their government cares (because it partially does), they think their employers do (because they partially do), and they think everyone else like them cares (you should already know what I’m going to say). This world is not 100% amoral like some would lead you to believe, but its the synchronized mistruth adjacent to the truth that makes the whole world a sham. Since NO one on this earth (outside of the shadowmaster dictators and even they aren’t impervious to each other’s deception) can really ascertain fact from fiction in terms of sociopolitics, it begs the question of what it means to be alive.

This evolutionary wonder, the lie, has created a balance — albeit a precarious one — between the “all good” and the “all evil”. The result is then, of course, a hybridized world in which good and evil are merely shadows and the actual bodies casting the shadows are barely aware of the position. Many human beings have been unwittingly used in scams, Ponzi schemes, and genocide. They acted very “evilly” but would have sworn to Heaven they were acting in good.

Deceit is actually unnatural. But in a universe where balance must prevail, it was a necessary vehicle. Whether you believe in Lucifer & Jehovah, an imperfect Demiurgus, or any of the other ancient explanations of the first lie, they all point to balance. Well humans ARE balance. If a Satanic archetype is all evil and a YHWH archetype is all good, then the human represents the neutral battle field. We are the personification of balance. Those who achieve it understand inherently the difference between deceit and uprightness.

Deception is unnatural, uprightness is natural. Why? Because trees, fish, rocks, air, vacuum space, and hydrogen ions don’t lie. They serve their purpose with preprogrammed rightness. However, the cunning, conniving, and scheming MIND has proliferated all across this globe.

So what do you stand for? The truth? Or unknowing lies? How do you intend on outwitting the brain’s secret traps? How do you plan on living genuinely?

By the way, impersonating someone else, not following your passions, or living in another’s shadow is LYING. Its lying to yourself to accept mediocrity. Living an average life is nothing short of a lie. In a realm where we were challenged to live abundantly and to full fruition, anything short of that is deception.

Life fulfilled.

Bryce

Part II: The Mind + Existence

In the last post I briefly described how I look at the world. The position would loosely be described as Monistic or Idealist (all idealists are monist but all monists are not idealists), in that I do not believe anything in this world truly exists outside of the mind. In other words, my stance on this subject is that the world we see is merely a projection of one’s own consciousness. I have a plethora of reasons as to why I believe this, so I’m going to try and explain them to the best of my ability as to why.

I have used the adage “that which is truly real does not change, that which changes is not real”. As far as I’m concerned there is only one constant, unchanging force in the entire universe: God. Regardless of what your religious inclination is, all people of a spiritual faith can agree that their idea of the Divine possesses this quality. That He (or She for some other religions) has been the same since the beginning of time. However, the world that we exist in, although inculcated with His very essence, is not a Divine realm. We do not exist in a world that is forever or static, but instead we live in a constant state of flux; rife with instantaneous change. Most of the change occurs on a psychological level, because it is only on this level that humans. That level is often referred to as perception.

*Let me be as clear as I can. I believe that conceptually an apple is a thing, a legitimate body, however what I’m pointing to is the human understanding of that apple as unreal. An apple can be called a pear, a tire, or a falhsnf for all we care… Our perception of the apple is what I’m saying is “unreal”.

However, perception is in fact reality. Stepping out from this very simplistic idea of ontology, one can see why (not necessarily agree), I feel that nothing exists per the vehicle of perception. Because our perception can and does change frequently, our basic understandings of this world are nothing more than speculation. When classifying tangible bodies this concept seems obscure, even foolish but let’s look at some intangibles and perhaps you can see my point a little better.

Race doesn’t exist. Yes there are differences in anatomy between a sub-Saharan African and a Norweigan, primarily because of changes in climate. Therefore, the only differences between the two groups are not inherent, but merely accrued differences in culture (a perceptual experience) and not genuine distinctive practices.

Another example, value does not exist. Who is to say that a car is worth $20,000? Or a pair of shoes is worth $65? Who is to say that a dollar, a piece of cloth, is worth whatever the exchange currency says? Sure The Fed can create complex algorithms to compute some value, but those values are based upon preconceived notions drafted a century ago. Who is to say gold is valuable? Salt is valuable? Who is to say that life itself is valuable?

Value or worth is not real because it comes at the behest of a collective agreement, which is subject to change.

Many philosophers have tried to define “realness” in terms of the substance an object or concept is comprised of. With the advent of quantum theory, many of those new infinitesimal worlds have helped us describe matter; however, my rumination rarely takes me to the “what”. I sit around and ask why.

The why’s are what systematically destroy my belief that this world is real. Although it is semi-concrete, I.e. There are laws which have serious repercussions, like the principles of physics, a human can choose to ignore those principles and devise another world altogether which appears “real” to him. The ancients did not understand natural disasters, so every terrestrial phenomenon was associated with an upset god.

Basically my point is, the world is what you make of it. Information is there to be understood; however, we have a long way as a species to go before we can actually understand this world. We have created to many illusions which obfuscate us actually getting the keys to wisdom. We create credit systems, legislative systems, education systems, then pander them off as if they were real, concrete, unyielding, and unchanging.

Lastly, those who can take control of their mind possess an uncanny ability to manipulate the physical. A strong mental or spiritual fortitude directly translates into altering this world. If you believe yourself to be awesome, you can generate an environment around you which supports.

Everything is up for grabs.

Bryce

Part 1: The Mind

Lately I’ve obviously been writing from a place of extremely volatile emotional content. Breakups tend to do that to you. Today I want to take a step in another direction.

What is peace? What is serenity? Each of us can answer this in a different way, however, the motif that you spam across all of our mental creations would be easily traceable. Peace, serenity, tranquility, and harmony have been buzz words in certain societies for millenia; however, no matter how much we can construct the images in our mind, man seems incapable of making that a reality.

Given our more advanced consciouses, we have access to many cognitive gifts that other species are not known to be privy to. Furthermore, while some may see higher cognition as some specious, evolutionary byproduct, the fact of the matter is: everything in the visible universe is a result of the mind.

As I go through some of the philosophical schools, I’ve found myself becoming obsessed with the philosophy of the mind. The ontological study of it and the mid-problem paradox has been ample cud for my inquisitive mind to chew on, but its really how this all applies to the world that fascinates me. I’ve found myself aligning more with the monistic view Idealism lately, the believe that all things experienced are merely projections of the mind. The reason being that although the body, mind, spirit, and heart are all distinct entities, its the mind that interacts the most with this tangible realm. The body itself is merely a medium by which the mind creates existence. Studies over the years have shown how collective thought can affect the outcomes of physical events etc. But the single most important factor to me in my personal philosophy is that nothing is right.

Many people when physically interfacing with the world choose to construct false dichotomies of right vs wrong, black vs white, a vs b, or x vs y. The problem with that is a developed mind can argue anything from any perspective and theoretically derive a “right” answer. The idea of right, especially in ethics, has been hotly contested. I’m more familiar with Western (European) ethics; however, I’m loosely familiar with some African, Hindu, and Buddhist ethicists as well. When I listen to people pander on about their representation of “right”, it is without fail a projection of what their mind has personally experienced and deduced.

The idea that a universal right, although tantalizing, is implausible given our complex social structures. We try and argue multilaterally when in fact our opinions are overwhelmingly unilateral.

So when someone begins describing their ideas of peace, the end results may hearken to some multilateral utopia, but their opinion on how to create that peace is the issue. With so many human rights groups across the world, plus the advent of the internet, in tandem with improved overall access to information, that fact that this world is so fucked is a testament to the unilateral mind creating a flawed attempt at a multilateral world. Someone will always be marginalized. The tyrants of the world, although selfish, ego-absorbed, narcissists, often times have a completely skewed view of the world that causes them to believe they are acting “right”. Whether its a sense of duty to heritage (Hitler’s third reich) or a sense of community (oppressive forms of communism), the idea is the minds behind the legislation generate the realities forced upon others.

This is a tightly wound, incredibly complex ball of yarn to unravel and I’m having a hard time trying to capture it all. But hopefully I’ve wet a few of your appetites. I’m going to continue with this mind stuff for the next few posts.

Bryce