Listening to the silent majority

[89]

When people think, what do they think about? How does the brain perform when the mind thinks? How, for instance, can we add an extra ingredient of fact or truth to our thinking processes? What impedes our doing this? ‘When we are thinking about ourselves, what exactly are we thinking about?’ asked Douglas Hofstadter, a well-known American Mind researcher.^69. In essence, we all are creatures that distort truth and reality. Once the ball of falsification starts rolling, it seems to do so for-

69. Exploring the Labyrinth of the Mind, by James Gleick, The New York Times, Sunday magazine, section 6, p 21, August 21, 1983

[p. 116]

ever. That's why I described people earlier as mentally operating, not a Kodak or Canon camera, but rather a camera obscura. So what is really important is what happens in the mysterous obscurity behind the images and impressions that our minds register through their information processors, the neurons. Let me just touch upon one other aspect of recent American mind-research in an effort to illustrate that science is standing on the threshold of discovering data on brain functioning that will greatly benefit South Africa.

Benjamin Libet, neuro-scientist in the Department of Physiology at the University of California, for instance, looked into the question of whether the brain has a mind of its own.^70. Libet established beyond a shadow of doubt that it does. The brain prepares for action long before the mind has decided on anything. Libet, his colleagues, and other neurophysiologists further discovered that neurons actually operate independently of the mind. Neurons, our super-information processors, make autonomous decisions, which raises the practical question: where do will and active participation in decision-making end and when precisely do thought-processes in our lovely think-tanks take over? The mind thinks and even takes action apparently outside our consciousness and ego. As one American scientist once asked, ‘How does our conscious control-filter-system work to prevent the mind from being inundated with a surplus of data?’

Actually, no-one knows exactly what rules and regulations determine in the end our ideas, opinions and convictions. Or for that matter, how our brains cough up our often unintended lies and misconceptions. When psychological depth-mechanisms are indeed controlled by the mind, and when the ‘I’ at times is not involved in brain-processes, thinking is being reduced to another form of Russian roulette. Or, as Libet reported in 1986, it is quite possible for the mind to veto a decision that has been already taken by the brain. Libet demonstrated that there was a timespan of 2/10 of a second between the mind carrying out a decision already taken by the brain. A decision can still be reversed in between hardly distinguishable flashes.

A colleague of Libet, Emanuel Dochin of the University of Illinois, has calculated that the mind recognizes a word being sent up from the brain within 150 milliseconds. Another 100 milliseconds are needed in

70. The New York Times, Science section, April 24, 1986

[p. 117]

addition for the particular word to reach consciousness, our state of ‘knowing’. That is to say, according to professor Dochin, ‘if it ever gets that far’. He described the number of mental candidates that crowd around to be observed and recognized by the ‘I’ as simply immense.^71. Only a minimal amount of information or data is being admitted to our thought-processes. And this is where intelligence comes in. Intelligence is directly linked to the way mind-processes handle data and information. Intelligence has been described as the capacity to produce appropriate and clever guesswork. Intelligence could be also likened to the capacity to detect new, non-chance, associations. Through newly-detected associations the quality of thinking-processes and decision-making can be largely enhanced. An intelligent man is not neccessarily the person who has collected vast knowledge concerning past discoveries and who operates on the basis of that collected data. A bright mind will have basic knowledge to work with, but instead of relying on collected past facts, memory, hearsay or the information contained in books, he discovers new associations and new ideas from direct personal experience. In other words, intelligent minds refuse to remain stagnant, stationary and immobilized. Intelligent people continue the ‘trek’ towards new information, new facts, familiarizing themselves with new scientific discoveries and research, looking constantly for associations in order to upgrade and enrich their processes. If blacks and whites were to begin practising more scientific approaches to present psychological, social and economic problems within their beautiful land, South Africa would not for long continue to find itself in the precarious position it is in now.

71. ‘Insights into Self-Deception’ by Daniel Goleman, The New York Times, May 12, 1985, pp 36-44