HUMAN MIND - some introductory comments
What is human mind? How mind works? Do animals have minds? Are there any souls or spirits? These are
some of the age-old questions which still elude definite or universally accepted answers. Different thinkers, philosophers and
psychologists (e.g., Aristotle, Confucious, Charles Darwin, S. Freud, N. Chomsky) spent years or perhaps decades pondering over
human mind. Many psychologists formulated different concepts and theories on mind and its working (e.g., S.Freud, Carl Jung, B. F.
Skinner, R. A. Baron). Poets and other writers wrote about the depth, beauty, passion, rage etc. of humans or their minds.
The last two decades(1990 - 2010) found many interesting articles and books on human mind and related
topics. (I decided to spend some of my research time to model human mind from 1990 onwards, in addition to my regular studies in
marine sciences. I scribbled regularly many notes in my diaries.) After noting down many fundamental ideas and after practising and
verifying some for years, I bought a few books on human mind, brain and related topics. Some of them are, (1) Mapping the mind by Rita
Carter,(2) The human brain by Susan Greenfield, (3) How the mind works by Steven Pinker,(4) Consciousness - an introduction by
Susan Blackmore, (5) Songs, roars and rituals by Rogers L . J. and Kaplan G., (6) The astonishing hypothesis by Francis Crick, (7) Life
at the limits by Wharton D. A., (8) Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio. After verifying the agreement of my thoughts with published
works, I took a long break of about 6 years after retirement to attend to personal and family related things. Now in 2011 I am trying to
write down my old thoughts and experiments (practising the thoughts) in restructuring/re-forming my mind or myself. After restructuring
my mind I found myself to be a fully new man in ideology, values and behaviour. I changed or restructured myself to be unidimensional
(one topic/subject at a time for reading, writing etc., one work/problem at a time in daily life etc.), from a multidimensional mind (in the
sense, mixed-up, or anything-antime-anywhere mode).
During my research and experiments, I compared mind with oceanic thermocline. (I had studied thermocline and
its wide variations in oceans, seasonwise and regionwise.) The mind of an ordinary person has to have a surficial, flexible layer of
day-to-day sigificance. (Ordinary person means, a normally interacting and transacting familial and societal person.) This part of the
mind or layer of mind reacts and responds to the varying day-to-day situations involving familiar or light issues and small problems. If
serious things of long term significance, hard problems etc. are involved, a person has to think long or consult experienced experts. The
deep, thick and slowly changing lower part of the thermocline is comparable to the deep or philosophical mind which changes slowly
and rarely and is separated from the flexible, surfacial layer by a discontinuity. The discontinuity layer( layer of high temperature gradient
in the sea) can be compared to a mental differentiation or separation between light things of day-to-day significance and serious/costly
things of long term significance. In the same way as oceanic matter diffuses up and down across the high gradient thermocline, mental
impulses or signals move up and down across the subconscious layer of mind. This was my own thermocline-model and is very crude
and vague. Comparisons between human behaviour and sea surface are numerous in literature. Read some examples; " he was calm
like a placid, windless sea", "he was agitated and furious like a windy sea surface", "she was silent and calm outwardly, but inside she
was like a stormy sea".
Next I compared mind with a fruit bearing tree. This comparison is more popular. An idea imprinted/understood
firmly in a mind grows roots in brain by regular practise. As more and more related or associated ideas go into this new 'corner' of mind
(brain formation or 'in-formation' ) they all get linked relatedly or associatedly or reasonably as decided by the person through his/her
values, morals, discipline and intelligence. Thus the 'idea-plant' grows deeper and wider with many roots and branches.Later this
person starts producing something using the brain-formations or intelligence. When the 'information-tree' in the brain bears fruits, the
'owner' of the tree would be known as a ' good cook', 'good teacher', 'good doctor' etc. depending on the profession. This comparison
holds well with a 'flotsam-person' also who does not have any permanent social roots and floats at surface of society. This person's
mind would be like a flotsam plant which drifts at surface of rivers or ponds. (In Bible there is a story comparing good and bad persons
to good plants and weeds in a farm.) School teachers might advise their students to be good and useful to others like fruit bearing
plants. " Sam you should grow up like a mango tree bearing thousands of sweet mangoes", "Janu should grow up like a rose with many
fragrant flowers", "Suri should try to do useful things to others like a coconut", and so on.
My next comparison of human mind was to a computer. Nothing new about this; hundreds of persons might be
doing this comparison for different teaching purposes. Here, the ROM is comparable to the permanent/long term storage or memories
in the brain. The RAM compares with short term, surficial memories of day-to-day significance. The key board and other input devices
can be compared to reading/watching/observing abilities of a person. The output from a printer is similar to a hand written document. A
coded scientific model or any application software installed in a computer works as 'intelligences' learned and used by a person. But
the comparisons are very weak when the human mind is considered with its self-generating, self-repairing and expressing capacities.
Comparisons with a computer is perhaps spontaneous since the technology of computers itself has been developing by comparisons
or imitations of the brain and its working.
Come to the colloquial worlds of ordinary persons. We all often hear casual or funny comments in our day-to-day
life as follows; "he is loose", "he is tight and well disciplined", "he is a crack", "she is a sex-pot, not a serious type ", "she is solid and
means what she says'', "he is a man of integrity and says what is right", "she is not a member of our institution, but the institution itself",
"he is a personification of love and kindness" and so on. What is in the background of these comments? "He is loose" practically
means 'his mind is not well ordered and is not dependable'. The second comment is self-explanatory. "He is a crack" means, 'his mind
is not well ordered or coherent, might be right or wrong'. Similarly are other comments also with colloquial meanings or spontaneous
understandings. These show that even at the level of spontaneous/casual talks, the mind or mental type of a person comes to the
forefront. Many deviations, aberrations, peculiarities etc. seen in day-to-day life are clubbed together and filtered by the norm, "there are
different types of persons, each and everybody is different". But it would be interesting to analyse and find out, 'why each and everybody is
somehow different' . This leads to different minds and different types of behaviours.
An ordinary person was defined earlier in the 3-rd paragraph as, 'a normally interacting and transacting familial
and societal person'. Living within the 'family walls' (in the sense, family values, morals, traditions, rituals etc.) is the primary criterion for
'ordinariness'. (Click here for quotations on 'family and children' ). After defining 'ordinariness', it is easy to find out the different types of
minds. A casual list is , (1) ordinary minds, (2) extraordinary minds, (3) super ordinary or great minds, (4) self-disciplined and integrative
minds,(5) intellectual minds, (6) devout minds, (7)abnormal minds, (8) diseased minds, (9) fanatical minds, (10) extremist minds and
(11) hedonist minds. This list is not mutually exclusive; self-discipline is a prerequisite for extraordinariness, devoutness and integrity;
fanaticism and extremism have common features. Many religious/ritualistic and communal minds fall in the category ordinary type. But
religious or ritualistic persons with hard or ardent beliefs and related pursuits or practices fall in the groups of devout and fanatical types.
Another category of importance in practical life is, dependant minds; e.g., children, some servants(slave like) and assistants etc. (A
noteworthy point is that, any type of extraordinariness or abnormality can be a result of deviations from familial and societal mode of life.)
These point to the fact that it might not be possible to explain the different types of minds and behaviours in a single model of human
mind. But it is possible to formulate a basic model of human mind, explaining the fundamental features of minds.
Let me state here some of my personal experiences. As stated earlier, in 1990 circumstances forced me to
restructure and re-form my mind or myself. I decided to do it objectively, scientifically and honestly with a high degree of self-discipline. At
that starting time, I thought that "mind is what is meant by a person". When a person meaningfully and honestly expresses about one's
values, morals, working ways, healthcare, self-control etc., that person reveals the mind or parts of mind. This initial definition went on
improving as my studies and experiences progressed. During my restructuring efforts, I found out many new things about human minds,
different types of families,communities, religions, cultures, nations/systems etc. As a summary of this article, I can state that, " your mind works the way you work and live, righteously or wrongfully, ordered or disordered (or mixed-up), integratively or disintegratively and so on. Your values, traditions, intelligence etc. are the rules and routes which your mind follows. Your self-organization and discipline show whether you control yourself or not ". Human mind is as simple as that. If there are mysteries, unknowns, and confusion around the subject 'human mind', they are all in the minds of researchers, thinkers and poets. Have an ordered and disciplined mental background when starting the studies of mind; otherwise the background confusion would clog and clutter the thinking process causing confusion and fantasies.
Site map Home