I covered the areas the mind ignores in a companion volume to this series Let's Talk Flying Saucers: How Crackpot Ideas are Blinding Us to Reality and Leading Us to Extinction. We basically ignore the mechanical nature of the forces that cause objects to drop, planets to orbit and rotate on their axes, the structure of light, an explanation for light that consistently explains both light and the atom that produces it, and the nature of energy, the blank surrounding why light isn't considered to be made up of what gives it off. In general, we have ignored all questions of force and motion. What is it about the mind that produces the total ignorance of the most important aspects of reality that concern the accuracy of our technology and thus our survival?
The mind evolved to compare reality with recall. We can not safely do anything in reality until we have pictures of ourselves in our recall doing what we wish to do in reality. It's not hard to construct a mind once we realize that this is the purpose of the mind, to get us from point A to point B without falling off cliff AB.
We have to evolve a system that allows us to know about reality, and that system has to be mechanical. Its first feature is a way to reproduce on an objective basis the hard edges of reality. Its second feature is a way to store the pictures of those hard edges that result. Its third feature is a way to recall the stored pictures. Its fourth feature is a way to notify the body when the pictures of reality we have stored don't match the picture of reality in which we find ourselves.
The resulting system, electrical flows operating a structure in which the two pictures are compared, does the job with evolutionary efficiency. If reality and recall agree, the electrical flows continue to operate the structure of the mind. If the two don't agree, the electrical flows stop operating the structure, the structure stops operating the body, and the body stops, hopefully out of harm's way, until a way can be found to get it moving safely again.
"Stop" is the operative word.
The mind is designed to bring us to a halt when reality is disagreeing with the recall we expect to find in reality. The mechanism that brings us to a halt is designed to notify us. To notify us, it has to interfere with the normal operations of our subsystems. One way for our body to be stopped from walking in front of an onrushing automobile is for someone to tackle us full out. A physical block is painful. A mental block is also painful. Getting the attention of our complex system of subsystems in order to bring them to a halt is not a pleasant feeling. Our heart skips, our stomach cramps, sweat pours into our clothes, our teeth clench, our breathing is interrupted, we feel faint, dizzy, our bowels growl.
But this is the way our minds operate. It is the only way our minds can operate. If our minds did not operate in this fashion, we would be stuck in place, incapable of moving anywhere, and if we did attempt to move, we wouldn't long survive as reality intruded and eliminated us.
It's a great system as long as it's all the system does. The lion roams the plain, espies its food, takes its nourishment, sleeps, and awakens to roam the plains again looking for more food. The lion has a greater range of survival than a tree because it can roam for its food and it can flee the fire that will destroy the tree. But the lion can't make itself safe from fire by fireproofing the plain and it can't band into fire fighting units that would preserve the plain from fire.
Sentience alters the evolutionary process because it is an exploitation of the mind's ability to form pictures of reality. If the mind can form pictures of reality, it can form pictures of anything. Once we can hold pictures of reality in our minds when that reality doesn't exist, we can name things in reality and we will evolve the ability to speak. We will evolve the ability to describe things in reality when those things are not present in reality. We can create realities that don't exist in reality.
As soon as we evolve the ability to create realities that don't exist in reality, we will attempt to conform reality to the pictures of reality we create in our minds. Instead of using our minds to find out if reality is the same as we expect it to be, we will begin to use our minds to alter reality. In the first case, we are comparing reality to recall, in the second case, we are conforming reality to recall.
As we attempt to conform reality to recall, we find that there are things about reality for which we have no recall, and these are the things that are the most important to the way we conform reality to recall, the questions of force and motion. When we see an object fall, we can see it fall and put that in our recall, but we don't see what is making it fall and thus we don't have anything to put in our recall about what is making it fall.
When we exploit our minds to take advantage of their operation, when we use the recall process to alter reality, we are still dealing with a mind that evolved to notify us when reality does not agree with expected recall. Thus, when we see something in reality for which we have no recall, our minds can't compare and we feel the same set of complex responses we would if the mind was notifying us of a danger in reality.
We are driven to fill in the blanks reality presents with made-up recall in order to avoid the unpleasant responses that result when our mind notifies our body that reality and recall don't agree. The mind doesn't care which doesn't agree with which, it only can notify us of a disagreement.
Thus, we are driven to get rid of the pain by creating recall that agrees with our picture of incomplete reality. We make up the statement that objects drop because it is a property of them to drop, that matter produces gravity which attracts other matter and we get rid of the pain we would otherwise feel every time we saw something drop.
Without a mechanical description of what causes dropped objects to move, we work around the nonexplanation we have created, an explanation that tells us that gravity is a given in anything we do and there is nothing that we can do about it. As a result, when we go about creating our technology, when we produce pictures of reality that don't exist in reality in order to alter reality to our benefit, one of the parts of every picture of reality we produce is a static gravity that cannot be changed. We can use our recall to change everything else about reality, but we can't use our recall to change the most significant feature of reality, the source of the force that causes objects to drop, that gives objects weight, that is in every picture of reality we change.
We can change reality, but we can't change the one feature of our reality that is not a part of actual reality, the feature of actual reality we made up, our explanation for falling objects.
Why? Why does this absurdity exist? What is it about the mind that prevents it from altering the very things it needs to alter if it is to produce technology that accurately reflects reality? Why can't it change what it made up in the first place?
The answer is deceptively simple. We produced the explanation for gravity in order to put a stop to the pain not having an explanation for gravity created. When we are pushing against reality to innovate technology, we are dealing with pain, with the creation of pictures of reality that don't exist in reality and our focus is on overcoming the pain by creating workable technology.
Thus, when the Wright Brothers went about creating a lighter than air machine, they were focusing on overcoming a force that had already been cemented into reality by pain. When reality is just physical, a rock in our path, we don't have trouble moving the rock. We don't have trouble manipulating the physical features of reality.
However, when the feature isn't physical, when it is a made-up construct that eliminates our pain, we are not going to touch it.
Just as we wouldn't kick a rock out of our path with our bare foot because we know the result will be pain, we will not open up the question of what makes objects drop because of the pain that would result.
A more complex answer involves consensus beliefs. Once we come to the conclusion that the unseen force that is holding us to the Earth and making objects drop, the force that gives matter weight, is a property of the matter, it becomes a consensus belief. Because weight and falling objects are a universal experience, one we have to deal with before we can learn to walk, it is among one of the first explanations we get for anything in reality.
As a result, we all, everyone of us on the face of the planet, hold the same explanation for falling objects.
Because our minds operate by comparing reality with expected recall, the explanation for falling objects becomes a part of our expectations dealing with reality. In all of our interactions with one another, we all expect objects to behave in accordance with the rules of gravity, and we all have an unspoken agreement about what that gravity is.
Our consensus belief about falling objects becomes more real than reality itself because it involves a feature of reality that never changes, the way objects fall in reality. The fact that the explanation is made up disappears behind the commonality of falling objects and the need to have an explanation for those falling objects.
So along comes someone who makes the claim that objects don't fall because of what matter is, but fall because of what matter is doing, cooling, which is the only other explanation. Even though a claim that a dynamic force such as gravity needs a dynamic source, such as cooling, the mind's operation, it's connection to the body, prohibits consideration of an altered view of gravity.
Because of our consensus belief that gravity is a property of matter and not subject to rational analysis, gravity is more real that reality itself, and when someone opposes the explanation for gravity, they are opposing our picture of reality. When someone creates a picture of reality that opposes our expectation of reality, in this case, weight as a result of the matter itself, we feel the same pain we feel when reality is attempting to notify us that something in reality does not agree with our expectations.
All of our made-up explanations for reality, light as a wave resulting from fidgety electrons in atomic shells, an historical mass of gas providing momentum to orbiting and rotating planets, gravity as a property of the matter that is doing the falling, energy as vibrations, everything we create to fill in the blanks of reality, are cemented into place by the pain not having an explanation produces and kept firmly in place by the consensus belief, the belief that the made-up answers are actually a part of reality and thus to oppose them is to oppose reality.
We are not only blind to actual reality, we are stuck in a made-up reality. We limit our technology to a reality that doesn't exist in actual realty and thus we limit our survival in that reality.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com