“In speaking of the “savage” or “primitive mind”, we are, of course, using a very clumsy expression. We shall employ the term, nevertheless, to indicate the characteristics of the human mind when there was as yet no writing, no organized industry or mechanical arts, no money, no important specialization of function except between the sexes, no settled life in large communities.”
James Harvey Robinson
Mind in the Making
Chapter 7: Our Savage Mind
We’ve come a long way from what JHR calls Our Savage Mind. Gone are the days of having nothing but our impressions of this world to interpret through. Over time and with great struggle, we’ve developed ways of gaining awareness and sharing information along with tools and methods of experimentation that give us deeper, more detailed insight into ourselves, our world and one another.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that our species lived in isolated, splintered states, with information tightly controlled at the local levels to enforce and uphold all the self-preserving states of mind that maintained the ‘acceptable’ modes of thinking throughout society.
Despite all institutional attempts at maintaining a stranglehold on human thinking, our understandings about how nature works have advanced so much as to finally enable instant global communication and the sharing of information, opening up the entire world for the everyday person and granting them levels of awareness that transcend the limitations and restrictions of the past.
From local newspapers and books to digital media, from sailboats and horse-drawn carriages to modern transportation, and from low-resolution thinking to informed, highly aware contemplation, we are now finally able to reach across cultures and throughout centuries of human life.
These enlightening shifts from isolated belief and methodology to revolutions of shared understanding and cross-cultural insight would not have been possible if we hadn’t developed disciplined approaches for seeking knowledge and gauging its practical purposes – most notably, the scientific method.
In spite of the slowly dying cultural meme that “Science” is cold methodology that detaches people from their sense of humanity, turning them into academic robots of some sort, there is no other method nor ideology on the planet that has shed more light onto how human beings are so profoundly connected with each other, this world, and all of life.
“You don’t see the plug connected to the environment, so it looks like we’re free, wandering around… But take the oxygen away, we all die immediately. Take plant life away, we die, and without the sun, all the plants die, so we are connected.”
Jacque Fresco
So far, the scientific method is unmatched in terms of how much its use has enhanced our awareness and abilities, and in how it can direct even our most sheltered thinking towards taking a more critical, comprehensive, connected view of life. As a result, its insights have led to highly advanced scientific and technological developments which have the realistic ability to improve the lives of every person on the planet.
And it was this method in its earliest forms, coupled with complex thinking and human creativity, that enabled us to not only come together and form the basis of an organised, civilised world, but also to outgrow all kinds of oppressive superstitions about our world, behaviour, health, each other, and life itself.
The Scientific Method, simply put, is the process of observing, establishing theories, asking meaningful questions and seeking answers through investigation and testing, then applying the feedback without prejudice in favour of old assumptions and belief systems.
In the context of a philosophical discipline and framework of interpretation that claims to “Believe and Disbelieve Nothing,” it’s about discovering what we can with the tools and insights we have, and being honest with ourselves and aware enough to no longer fill in the gaps of our not-knowing with what we want or would prefer to be true.
It’s no longer about what sounds right to us, nor about what works to control others, but it’s about what nature tells us works and what doesn’t.
This might sound foreign to those who sometimes say “Science doesn’t know everything”; who don’t acknowledge the distinction between the scientific method of discovery and outright omniscience. This method is a structured way of investigating reality – not a claim to being all-knowing nor any doctrine of certainty. It is a mistake of human interpretation to think that “Science” claims to know everything, since it is humanity that brings belief to the method, not the method that brings belief to humanity.
And although many who follow this method might have theories or suspicions about the outcome of their experiments and educational exploration, the starting scientific approach remains one of “I don’t know — time to find out” rather than “this is what I believe — this is my truth, and this is my faith in that truth, and because of my faith, my belief is really a knowing” or something along those lines.
One of the defining functions of the Scientific Method is that it is the only method available to us now that, when uninhibited, actively works to disprove itself, and that function makes it obviously useful for any philosophical discipline that is sincerely concerned with the discovery of truth.
This function of the Scientific Method alone, when applied to how we think, becomes one of the most empowering defences people can have against ideological manipulation and the corrupting, divisive nature of belief systems as a whole.
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
Carl Sagan
After all, belief systems require affirmation and all kinds of self-preservation mechanisms to function, whereas the Scientific Method commands active self-scrutiny and a willingness to uproot and overcome any of the claims we hold in our minds in the face of new insight and information.
These are two intrinsically different ways of thinking, each producing incredibly different results in terms of worldview, state of mind, our range of behavioural responses, foundational attitudes towards awareness and education, our capacity for communication, etc.
This highlights some of the core differences between these languages of thinking; despite them sharing words and symbols, they operate in different directions and under a fundamentally different set of characteristics.
While the scientific approach considers how things function and interact, and is interested in gauging probabilities, chances and likelihoods, the belief-oriented approach most-often considers how to define things and gauges things in absolute judgments – typically based on how well they perpetuate accepted modes of thinking and further the vested interests of the belief.
The kind of thinking that is oriented by belief and ideology will almost always tend towards that which preserves itself, whereas a discipline that combines our thinking with the scientific method tends towards an openness to new information whenever the situation calls for it, and with the most constructive, rather than restrictive, views on awareness, education, problem-solving and communication.
“… this means we must be open to new information at all times, even if it threatens our current belief systems, and, hence, identities. Sadly, society today has failed to recognise this, and the established institutions continue to paralyse growth by preserving outdated social structures.”
Peter Joseph
If this awareness were better communicated and widespread, it would empower people and open humanity up to a new world of possibilities through all the states of mind and ways of life now available to us that our historical states of mind have kept out of our reach. On a social level, it would go a long way towards bringing people together in quests for insight and awareness rather than keeping us fragmented in constant battles of opinion, ideology and belief through the childish exercises of debate and psychological warfare.
This is one of the core tenets of the philosophical discipline being presented here – to apply the Scientific Method to the movements of our thinking, particularly when it comes to claims made about life, people, purpose, identity, and any other potentially belief-oriented claims that might go on to inform our abstractions, attitudes and behaviours.
“The scientific way of thinking is, at once, imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. It invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.”
Carl Sagan
The Scientific Method also illuminates how we are a symbiotically interconnected species, wholly dependent on the world around us, and how our states of mind, decisions and actions ripple out into our world and into life itself.
We don’t just take from our environment – we feed back into it, and what we do, as individuals and as a species, impacts our world regardless of our reasoning and rationale.
Just as clouds of pollution don’t respect national, ideological or identity-oriented barriers – neither do the four elements, nor the bloody chaos of war. And, as natural living organisms, not only do we share the same basic biological needs, but if those needs are not met, or if we distort these needs or try to think our way around them, the consequences will echo through future generations.
Whether it’s man-made deprivation, natural disasters, the brutal violence that comes as a consequence of some divisive clash, or one nation suffering a cataclysmic toxic catastrophe, we human beings lead ourselves astray when we assume “this doesn’t affect us.”
Just as someone’s personal problems are bound to affect others if they don’t get them under control, the consequences of not dealing with the root-causes of our interpersonal problems will go on to impact future generations who had no stake in our ideological clashes and psychological inadequacies to begin with.
Realisations like this make it clear that no amount of sweeping problems under the rug and relying only on surface-level policy solutions is going to help. Combine these realisations with awareness of the sheer power of modern technology – it becomes glaringly obvious that humanity, as a unified whole, has both a direct interest and a philosophical responsibility to see to it that we use our minds and our technology wisely, as it is not just ourselves that we put at risk; it’s a whole planet and a lot of life.
As a species, we are only as strong as we are in our weakest, most fragmented states, and so long as people continue going the extra mile to justify and to give rise to divisive, corrupting, self-serving ways of thinking, especially in the age of awareness and advanced technology, then even the most peaceful pockets of civilisation exist on thin ice at best.
Observations like these can be considered quite basic, yet they have profound unifying effects when applied to how we think as individuals and to how our societies function. These unifying effects align with the Scientific Method, not to the isolating, divisive languages of thinking oriented by belief.
The rise of the power of advanced forms of science and technology in the modern age is staggering, and while it is capable of benefiting humanity and potentially all of life on Earth, it quickly becomes a most pressing threat when utilised along the lines of a divisiveness, delusion and manipulation.
“… but reactors that produce, say, five million kilowatts of electricity are too large to be accepted by our present economic and political units. The scale of the new energy source determined by the logic of economics and of the inherent nature of the technology is larger than the scale determined by our traditionally fragmented political and economic structures. But it is not only nuclear energy in its peaceful aspects that makes our divided world obsolete… As John von Neumann pointed out some ten years ago, the H-bomb and the ICBM also make geographic boundaries obsolete.
“The imperative toward unification resulting from the intrinsic massiveness of modern technology is not confined to nuclear energy. Our communications systems, our transportation systems, the possibility of using superconducting cable for transmission of electricity, all these and many other new technologies point strongly to the mismatch between the size of our political or economic units and the size of our technologies. I think all of us who are involved in these new technologies can only hope that before they destroy us, our political instruments will accommodate to the logic of massiveness, and that the major fruit of the new technologies will be a unified and peaceful world.”
Alvin M. Weinberg
On the point of reaching a unified, peaceful world, and whether we use our technology to empower or to destroy ourselves, people would do well to remain in a constant state of awareness and vigilance regarding the rise of scientific and technocratic dictatorships.
This style of dictatorship is what will occur when the tools of science and technology are applied to current conditions and dynamics of social control, our divided species, disparities in power and economic influence, the prevalence of psychologically-paralysing languages of thinking, etc.
What will occur in these dictatorships, if at all, is a superimposed uniformity which masquerades as unity itself, and those who desire social control will leverage scientific information to dictate the lifestyles, thinking and behaviours of the majority to make them manageable and bring them in-line. Therein, that state of uniformity, where everyone thinks, speaks and behaves in roughly the same ways, will quickly redefine our abstraction of the word “unity”, and those who step out of the acceptable self-preserving points of view will face backlash and be accused of being divisive.
No freedom is possible under these conditions.
The BADN discipline is set towards influencing states of mind capable of handling the massiveness of the modern world while remaining fully grounded and oriented by the critical importance of preserving each individual’s natural freedom and the unity of the species as a whole, using our advanced methods to integrate past and present insight in order to see as far into cause and effect as we possibly can.
By definition and design, it is functionally incapable of supporting the ideological basis necessary to give rise to such dictatorships, along with the oppressive, divisive individual beliefs that take root in people and produce all kinds of tyrant. It also replaces those ideological foundations with something stronger and less prone to human manipulation and innocent delusion.
The move towards applying the Scientific Method and highly advanced technology to society for the purposes of social control will happen one way or another, so part of the focus here is to reduce the likelihood of a dystopian technocratic dictatorship and to produce and encourage the values and intellectual structure necessary to give rise to ways of thinking and social systems that benefit all people, rather than a select few at the expense of all the rest.
This calls for instant critical scrutiny of the roles that science and technology play, along with our dominant belief-oriented institutions themselves, as they take an active role in shaping standards of behaviour and personal values, and lack thereof.
These institutions all claim that everyone will benefit if we use our minds, our science and our technology to serve their purposes, and that this will require sacrifice – more often than not, the sacrifices made are one-sided and are a mere mask to run cover for the plunder of people’s resources and decision-making abilities. Therefore, as well as keeping a strong focus on awareness and wisdom, we must also enable all possible freedom for each person in determining the kind of life they want to live.
If the courses of our thinking and our behaviours remain locked into belief-oriented states, the likelihood is that the opposite will happen; that individuals will remain trapped in bottlenecked psychological states, while at the same time science and technology will be increasingly used against the majority for purposes of social control and the self-preservation of current dynamics.
Such corruption and misrepresentation of the scientific method can be seen throughout history, and in recent times during our experiences, for example, with Covid-19, where the establishment and the majority of people would proclaim something to the effect of “follow the science!” – not as a means of encouraging investigation and discovering truth, but as a means of discouraging people from straying from the socially-accepted narratives, and for censoring, mocking and punishing those who stepped out of that norm.
Quite often, when such abuses occur, many people default to losing confidence in so-called Science, as if the scientific method itself has been discredited due to humanity’s mishandling and misrepresenting of it. But, in reality, this should be recognised as being revealing of the truly fraudulent, corrupting, self-preserving nature of belief, along with all the institutions and hierarchies that are based on its foundation which sought to use “The Science” as an authoritative vehicle for the acquisition and exercising of totalitarian control.
As stated earlier, the scientific method, or “Science” itself, is not a claim to omniscience, nor does it dictate what people should think. Utilising it in this way, as establishments across the world did during Covid, is to remove the spirit of resistance from the method, and instead to present it as an authority which can not be challenged in order to control what people are allowed to think and say.
But, when uninhibited by belief and free of all misrepresentation by supposed authorities, the scientific method maintains the spirit of resistance due to its default imperative to try everything possible to disprove itself, and to question, to scrutinise and to criticise all claims rather than to accept them and perpetuate them simply because they were made by a perceived authority.
If this critical awareness can come built in to our perceptions from an early age, it will see to it that no establishment can get away with attempting to use the scientific method as a way of making themselves seem infallible, nor to use it subtly as a means of social control, ever again.
The simple claim here is this; if we were instead guided by a philosophical discipline that was no longer oriented by ideology or belief systems as a whole, and if our societies reflected that attitude shift, the likelihood of such corruption, social divisiveness, deprivation and dystopia would be reduced to such a minimal level as to no longer be such a constant pressing concern.
The ultimate claim is that this will never be achieved in a belief-oriented world, as division is an intrinsic part of these ways of thinking, and that creates the basis for far too much justification of social control, harming and enslaving each other, or, through an unfounded assumption of separation, just allowing these things happen to ‘other people’ and accepting it as a normal part of “Human Nature.”
Therefore, this is not something we need to demand of society – this is a new set of standards and practices we demand of ourselves, guided by recognition of the constant failures of our institutions and the shortcomings of our historical states of mind, and that our current institutional means of problem-solving always seem to feed back in to what causes our problems in the first place.
Almost everybody is lost, and even the most well-meaning of people feed in to what gets us lost, because, as expressed earlier, no matter how far we are pushed, no matter how much we try to wake up, to gain awareness, to liberate ourselves from our various states of psychological oppression, belief is still conditioned so deeply into us as to be considered our default state, and as such, people can see no alternative as to the way things should be.
Belief, and even informed guesses, were enough to navigate this world when we knew no different. Now, the conditions of our modern world call upon us to level up in terms of our thinking. If it falls to individuals to adapt, to change and to grow, then it follows that it falls to society itself to do the same. If it does not, we will be forever sentenced to repeat ancient cycles of culture lag, division, brutal conflict, psychological bottlenecking and, ultimately, volunteering ourselves as mouthpieces and servants of whatever belief systems and institutions are dominant around us.
We spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy developing clever and impressive ways of killing one another, and it is the intention of this discipline to refocus this energy into an entirely different value-set; one that is an attempt at seeing to it that the most oppressive mentalities aren’t the most dominant in the stories of our individual lives and of the future of the human species as a whole.
Previous: Chapter 3: Belief: Our Prehistoric Language of Thinking
Next: Chapter 5: Creativity, Influence and Problem-Solving