Those who have children know that from the moment of conception, the future for parents often is an outlook of sleepless nights. The first year or so, this outlook is often true. Mother has to feed the baby and dad has to get out of bed to provide the milk, or the baby. But even when dad doesn’t get out of bed, he is still woken by the cry (paternal instinct) and will have way less sleep as usual. From the moment parents get a baby into a fixed sleeping rhythm (sometimes a child automagically finds it, sometimes it takes over a week to ‘force’ such rhythm. Be sure, that a child benefits from a structured sleeping rhythm. Much more than the parent does. Of course, it depends on the daily walk of a parent, whether the sleep deprevation has much influence, but over all, a child is still on its way of becoming the next generation of humanity.
Sleeping on it
Why is it so important for a child to have a good structure in sleep?
For one, we know that humans need sleep for several reasons: The body needs repair and sleep causes stress to dissipate and other organic functions have effect on the way the body processes physical effects of the day. Next to this, the emotional state (which is the base from which the mind springs) requires ‘unwinding’. Adults have processed most emotions during their lifetime. Children will need to do this at every turn of events. It starts with the very first emotion, like fear, hunger (which is basically a physical stimulance). At first a child doesn’t really hold fear, because they have no idea that they are an individual. Their awareness is of such level, that the neurological pathways are finding their ways to make sure that the brain can access all senses and then the ability of influencing the body’s systems kick in. This could be seen as an equivalent bootsequence of several months (man, are humans slow). However, during the period of learning of what sight, sound, touch and emotions (the instinctive responses of the neurons to patterns), there is something to keep in mind. The simple way to look at it, is: A string of a bow can’t be tense all the time. Likewise, the neurological system of a body can’t be under stress all the time.
Stressing the need of sleep
Are children under stress?? YES, every organism everywhere and always (as long as it is alive) processes differentiation of stresslevels. If you understand ‘transistors’, the analogy is: As long as there is current on a conductor, there is friction in resistance within the conductor/transistor, which is called ‘stress’. Neurons work in the same way. When an impuls is received by the system (body, mind), it will cause a current in the brain. If you shoot enough current into something, it won’t automatically dissipate in one go. The brain has a habit of pulsing currents of input from and too, until the brain has a correct response to it. Children start with emotions, because they aren’t cognitive on a level of processing yet, until they are finished with understanding their physical, emotional and initial cognition/awareness. From that moment, the development moves to the awareness level and cognitive abilities grow. Of course, this is not a switch over, but a transcending phase. The fact that development connects the dots, it is important that the dots are consistent. If the brain is neurologically developed in an environment without structure, the brain and from that the emotions and from that the mind will have several issues (be aware this is a ‘simplified’ depiction, there are many factors that influence this, both hormonal, enivronmental, prenatal state, natural differences). These issues can be observed early in life, but just as easily only come to attention after later development phase shifts (puberty/adolescence/parenthood or other). For the reason to sleep and from that dream, I point to the Dreams part in this research. To put short here: The brain needs to process the most important energy/current that it receives: Emotions. These are the connection between the physical instincts and the awareness of the mind. Also said: emotions are the friction between senses and awareness.
REMark
If a child is not getting sleep, it means that the brain will adapt to two states (not one of both, but both):
1. The brain is constantly active and as the human as organism is prone for adaptation (learning), the brain will adapt to this state and expect constant input.
2. The brain is unable to dissipate residual current/stress and will prevent new input, sensory or cognitive, to be processed.
Be like water
Consider the following as an example: We have a stream of water, which runs on a flat surface. The water will flow freely, until the stream causes indents on the surface and more and the water will start to flow through the indent more and more. The pressure generated will cause the indent to gain length, as the form of the indent will cause water to ‘fall’ into it and move faster for a second in the direction that the water has most space. After some time, the water will start to fully flow in the ‘trenches’ and when water is finding a space that gives no way, the trench is full. No new water can come in. However, as with water, the brain, when the water stream is stopped, will dissipate the tension on neurons and the ‘trenches’ will dry in. They will become instinctive responses to input. This is necessary, because the brain can’t be active on all levels all the time. To be consciously choosing you need to ‘rely’ on the brain to make ‘basic’ decisions without you having to think of them: breath, tilt hand and arm to catch something, evaluation on to the fly whether something is a threat when caught.
How to detect:
children above deviate cognitive level, with lack of sleep can have their cause in high IQ/EQ
children on deviate cognitive level, with lack of sleep can have their cause in attention span deficiency.
children with below deviate congitive level, with lack of sleep can have their cause in irregular sleep patterns from nurture.
This one isn’t as difficult to answer as you might ‘think’ (snort), so which was first? Brain or mind?
The definite thought
Definition of the brain gives us: a : the portion of the vertebrate central nervous system enclosed in the skull and continuous with the spinal cord through the foramen magnum that is composed of neurons and supporting and nutritive structures (such as glia) and that integrates sensory information from inside and outside the body in controlling autonomic function (such as heartbeat and respiration), in coordinating and directing correlated motor responses, and in the process of learning — compare forebrain, hindbrain, midbrain
b : a nervous center in invertebrates comparable in position and function to the vertebrate brain
Mind the gap
Well…that wasn’t hard. Now about the mind: 1. The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
1.1 A person’s mental processes contrasted with physical action.
2. A person’s ability to think and reason; the intellect.
Though I don’t agree with the first one entirely, because the mind is not causing us to feel, it only is the aggregated functioning that makes us aware of what we feel as individual, this is the definition that pops up.
Emerging winner
Now, which of those two come first have actually little to do with the definition of both. Rather:
The mind is the aggregated functioning of processes in the brain that cause it to be selfaware and able to experience and act. While the brain has multiple functions for parts of the body and actions of the organism, the mind is dependent on the speed of these processes. Now you might want to argue about speed in neurons and all, but the fact remains that the mind is an emerging property of the brain’s functions. Thus the brain has to exist for the mind to arise.
So, as all mammals have a brain, but not a mind, it should be both logically (from the above) and biologically clear that the brain was and is present before a mind can form.
Infancy History is over. We have seen it, we can make our review on it. Human awareness has grown since its ‘conception’ (or emerging from the grey goo called our brain). We have stumbled and have fallen. Have risen and fought for our sanity. We have (well, not you and I mind you) dragged ourselves through an initial hardship of infancy, where we had to learn how to operate our conscious with only nature as our parent. It went so-so. We made some invisible friends, and with no adult guidance, we kept to those ideas, like children do when not corrected.
Adolescence But like everything that evolves, even the automated effects in the mind caused the social and psychological constructs of it to recognize that keeping to non-existing things would kill the species faster. Well, that and the fact that curiosity causes humanity to thrive for answers. So, even through figuring that someone believed in a deity, they wanted to ‘prove’ its existence and in that process actually came to conclusion it doesn’t (that is what good science can do). Basically the scientific method emerged from the need to either figure out how this (arbitrary) deity worked, or how the rest of the world worked, so humanity could ‘tool’ it.
Flick of the two sided blade Humanity is at a threshold, like it is every day of its existence. Because of its diversity, there are still two things on its evolution agenda. 1. The ever receding superstition (fear of the unknown. Thus when known, less fear, less gods). 2. The issue that science was a step, but when conducted by humans, it is still influenced by emotions and instinctive behavior that caused superstition. See, while much of the non-scientific world fights a war on the sanity of the mind, the scientific world finds itself on the brink of ‘escaping’ its own superstition level. Like Alchemy was a half brew between religious rituals and methodology, the standard model seems to be a construct that has led to quantum physics, but now a problem arises. The standard model is all the observed. Science can only measure the observed. Math can make models of concepts, based on a piece of information from the observed, but eventually the brick wall of progress will be hit (or the pit of infinity depth). See, there isn’t so much a limit to what we can calculate, because frankly there isn’t. But there is a limit to usefulness, without the proper tools.
Blunt force trauma In my opinion, humanity hit a wall. It has to first finalize the understanding of self and how its ‘self’ resides in this reality. If you have read my previous #AoS post, you will understand what I am aiming at. In the non-scientific community, we are in a predicament, where individuality of humanity is both the strength and the weakness. The fact that each individual can be influence (and always is) by other individuals and group dynamics, and the psychology of indoctrination at young age causes individuals that are simply unable to remove all instinctive behavior from their system without severe emotional and cognitive trauma. This results in a worldwide shift of paradigm where those that are religiously ‘bound’ out of fear lash out at those that have evolved beyond that superstition (and to protect their ‘own group’, will lash out at anything a thread, so other groups with different superstitious ideas just the same). But what about the science world? Is the science world free from such conflicts? NO. Simply because in science, again, we are talking about individuals with their own indoctrination (or lack of it), dogmas, preferences, emotions and character traits. But also about groups that have ventured into specific fields of investigation, hoping (emotion) to find that one thing nobody else did yet. But also trying to prove their own findings, often forgetting that (like Stephen Hawking) you should also try to disprove your own findings. Now they arrived at a point, where they have to take a next step. Remove the emotion, not only from the method, but from the interpretation too.
But the problem is, how to go about that. Can they go beyond the fear and hopes? Can they remove the human element from science? The pure scientific method, or the something new?
The decision tree model takes the following theoretical bases.
The three layers
The neural response system of humans exist of the following three layers. (You might recognize something of the Triune brain in this, though I can honestly say, I didn’t know about that until I was searching for an image for this article: ‘Three layers of brain’)
Instinctive behavior Either by genetic blueprint or attained through learning, any organism will adapt to recurring patterns to prevent it from danger. The genetic part is of course hard to change, but the ‘tree’ of choices (I call it the decision tree), the response mechanism of most mammals is automated. Meaning, if something gives an impulse, especially repeatedly, that causes a positive or negative reaction to the nervous system, it will become an instinctive behavior to move to or from such stimulus.
Emotional behavior Mammals and especially primates (being very recognizable to us), being differentiated in group sizes and survival mechanisms because of that, have empathic abilities to survive in social groups. But we also see emotional behavior in strong generational cohesion. Where offspring is heavily dependent on parents, we see the equivalent of our own emotions within such ‘family’. These emotional behaviors have different reasons. 1. they cause automatic bonding, dependency. 2. they cause mimicking of behavior (we have seen this behavior between species even, remember the stories of Tarzan, or Romulus and Remus?). 3. they set a path for pattern recognition within the nervous system. Certain key values which change with each generation to ensure possible survival. The emotional layer, can be seen as a ‘neural’ filter level.
Cognitive behavior With awareness comes the growth to conceptualization in communication. Because we are instinctive, emotional beings, but also self aware and sometimes differ in meaning of emotion, we need a way to explain when an emotional behavior is not meant as a threat, etc. You could call it a protocol equivocation behavior. These concepts are starting with leveling of emotional responses between the self and others (independent of species), but evolve through a process of emotional impulses to stimuli and responses within relations and our interactions with the world around us into cognitive structures of words, representations and a general worldview.
Intrinsic accumulation
The layers work accumulative, where instinctive is built up from two different influences: Genetic inheritance and developmental alteration (learning). The emotional layer is a constructed layer depending on the complexity of the organism and the amount of instinct branches. The cognitive layer depends on both underlying layers but (as we can see in different human individuals) can work independent of them.
Current, tide and flow
All processes within the organism (whether human or otherwise) are based on simple building blocks that exist in
nature. The physical economy depends on the existing concentrations of minerals within the available solution (water). This does not ends with the intestines, blood-vessels and muscle tensions of an organism, but also in more intrinsic parts and effects within the body. Even the most sophisticated patterns like our nervous system are build on these same principles.
Micro, Meso and Macro nature and culture
As well as the building blocks, the development and processes of both nature, species and culture (social extension of groups of species), are based on such equal principles. This means that taking the basic evolution of a natural process, this can be translated into a process within a species, as well as into the working of a social construction.
Fear first, eat later
All and every behavior that is correctly addressed, can be retraced to the most basic stimuli and responses of nature. All and every organism is in base principle primed to prevent harm to self. Instinct is based on the equivalent of fear, all the way to the first ancestral organism. In this progression, all instincts based on survival have the initial response to the digestion of food.
Be neutral not shallow
All processes in nature, as well as within organisms (if you have read the above correctly this is a no brainer for you), seek a neutral shift. This means that concentrations are diffused, levels are equalized.
Accepting what can be observed is something very different from accepting what can be seen. Ask a blind person..heck, even a color blind person. A deaf person, a mute person or a tactile inpaired person.
The identity is a complex combination of continuous impulses from our senses and the feedback system of our overcapacity in our brain (prefrontal cortex, temporal lobes, etc). We observe and build a reliance on the combined input from the world outside. Depending on the level of logic in cause and effect we have been taught, we are able to decide what is real and what is not. The same way a fly will move towards food with deliberation, simply because its instincts (inherited) tell it that that will give it chance on survival. Humans are little different from instinctive ancestors, we still are 80% or more instinctive. However, we do have the selfawareness that gives us the ability to question the world around us. Because at first we do not understand causality, at young age we infer our internal working on the working of the world around us. ‘Stupid chair’, ‘Yes that vase fell by itself! I didn’t push it!’. But as we learn how cause and effect works and we understand that we can logically deduct the outcome of an action, we start to recognize the ‘laws of nature’. This is how we deduct that when all senses agree with each other and what we observe doesn’t differ from the expected outcome, there is no reason to use cognitive effort to infuse different magical values. Like…wow…that door opened when I pushed it, perhaps there is a leprichaun behind it that opened it for me at exactly the same moment, even though I don’t see it and have no reason to think anyone would actually open a door without reason or corporal ability.
We accept that the world is what we see, as we know (humanity developed science to investigate beyond the physical abilities of observation) that there is more, but that which we don’t see, doesn’t differ from the working that we do see.
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