Upgrading Legacy Systems: Purposeful Awareness of the Accidental Mind

The capacity for the human species to engage in such a broad spectrum of behaviors -- from acts of horrific destruction to breathtaking beauty, from the depths of depravity to the heights of inspiration – is almost incomprehensible. At times it is disturbing to contemplate how the content and functioning of someone else’s mind could be so different from our own. And when we see diametrically opposed behaviors simultaneously coming out of one-and-the-same brain we have no logic to make sense of it; we are reduced to calling it “mindboggling”, even “schizophrenic” or “possessed”.

Illustration:  www.pcbdesign.org
But while our brains are indeed the most complex and sophisticated entity in the known universe, they are at the same time the messy, perhaps accidental result of evolution. What this leaves us with is what David Linden calls “a cobbled-together mess, with a “quirky, inefficient and bizarre” design. (The Accidental Mind)

An analogy to help understand this might be the experience of many large corporations who years ago began to build their data management on what are now old legacy systems. It is not uncommon for there to be two or more information systems in the same company that cannot talk to each other – cannot pass data between them. As many know, the financial cost and disruption to business operations to undertake whole-scale redesign and replacement of those old systems is often prohibitive. Instead of replacing, many companies have deployed a newer evolution of software, aptly called “mid-ware”, and layered it on top of the old systems. A compromise, if you will, but the function of mid-ware is to extract bits of data up into a higher level system where the data can be shared, leaving the legacy systems in tact. The old systems never do talk to each other directly.

Might surprise you to know the visual system(s) your brain is (are) using to read this page share similar limitations. It appears that at one point in evolution our brains took on a systems upgrade that resulted in a more sophisticated visual cortex that makes possible the more complex processing of visual perception whereby we can mentally “represent” or “recognize” the things we see. However, we never fully replaced the old system, one that is, at the same time, engaged in more primitive actions, the simple physical movements that enable us to act -- to grab the things we see. How do we know this? Well, bizarrely enough, if the higher level visual cortex is damaged, patients can still reach out and grab physical objects when asked, even though they claim they cannot see anything. Apparently these two systems inside our head do not talk to each other. (The Accidental Mind, David Linden) (The Visual Brain in Action, David Milner, Melvin Goodale)

This poses a fascinating question: Is it really possible that one part of our brain could be unaware of what another part of our brain is doing? I mean, not because one of us is crazy, or has a split personality, but rather because of the basic neurological wiring we all have in common? Really? (We’re in big trouble if that line of defense shows up in a future episode of Law and Order.) Like business information technology, is it possible that when everything is working well we are in full communication and know what is going on everywhere, but when we have a systems glitch, we are then potentially unaware of what is happening in another part of our brain’s organization?

Oprah Winfrey says the most important book she has ever chosen for her book club is The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, by Eckhart Tolle. It was at the verge of suicide that Eckhart Tolle experienced a curious insight as he observed himself saying: "I cannot live with myself any longer.” “Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with. Maybe...only one of them is real." (http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Eckhart-Tolle)

In this singular moment of directly observing the peculiar nature of how his mind’s system was actually operating, Eckhart Tolle shifted the direction of his life from one end of the spectrum of human behavior to the other: from meaningless annihilation to personal inspiration. In every moment of our existence, our brains are pulling together an immense volume of information to make sense of our worlds. By doing so, we participate in creating an understanding of reality. Research in neuroscience is demonstrating just how bizarre, distorted, incomplete or misguided our creation of reality can be. At the higher end of human achievement, Eckhart Tolle is personal evidence of the power of using the human mind itself as an instrument through which to upgrade the system: to observe through awareness, to learn and dramatically change the accidental nature of our imperfect mental activity -- from the inside out.