Happiness Is A Scam by Santosh Jha - HTML preview

A Look Back Into Time Dimension

Realities are not built overnight. Every reality, we live out today and accept as real and true, has a long and complex historicity. I, my life, my experiences and feel of realities surrounding me, are all millions and billions of years old. I am 54; but the realities I live with, in presentness and contemporaneousness, have their origins and evolution in a timeline, which my brain simply cannot actualize in entirety. There probably is a continuum, embedded in my genome, spanning these billions of years till date, which I cannot sense out and actualize; until, I understand and accept the mechanism and processes of my body-brain system. But this continuum affects me; shapes my subconscious, which I am oblivious of. It is such a huge satisfaction that brilliant scientists have invested their precious lives in unraveling and deciphering so much about the billions of years of nature’s evolution, which makes me juxtapose my ‘Self’ and Consciousness in marvelous symmetry of realities. This is some ‘contentment’; beyond the horizon of whatever may define as Happiness.

As I align my consciousness and my awareness with the objective-scientific knowledge of history and its continuous evolution to this date; I subconsciously acquire a hugely satisfying cognition of the magnificent ‘cosmos of perceptions’, which my meager 54 years have processed. This enables me to see, visualize and internalize multiplicity of realities around me and in the universe in so many novel and alternative ways. The novel and alternative Cognition, which this ‘knowledge’ has extended me, is probably the ‘Happiest’ attainment of my life-living. This cannot be expressed and explained with the help of humanly designed language.

It is such shamefulness yet, a matter of utmost contentment that I have done nothing; still, I have received all. This endowment of unimaginably blissful proportions has happened to me just because I am a stupid; I accept it with unashamed willfulness and that is why learning becomes galvanized and smooth for me. This is the magic of acceptance. You imbibe, ingrain, install, internalize and catalyze novel and alternative information and knowledge and become truly rich and wealthy; without doing anything!

This wealth of objective and unadulterated information about the probabilities of nature’s evolution over billions of years, as part of the modern scientific knowledge of evolutionary biology and molecular biology, et al, stands us in unraveling such perceptions about self and the world of realities that truly creates wellness. This primarily helps in deciphering the scams that surrounds us and shows the pathways to come out of them.

We need to talk about some aspects of this emerging knowledge and information about history of nature and evolution. This may impart crucial vantage points in unraveling some dimensions of current life-living realities in novel and alternative ways. Essentially, as we said earlier, the most critical information, modern science has unraveled, pertains to the evolution of brain; from the very start; hundreds of millions of years back to modern times. As emergence of brain and its evolution has been the most crucial progression, emerging out of prolonged and calibrated interaction between nature and organisms; it is truly sparkling information for all of us. It paves the journey of our understanding of how evolution works its intelligence around organisms, including humans and what is the mechanism and processes of these interactions between nature and organisms. All of us now living in presentness are also doing the same – constantly and intricately interacting with our external milieus and adapting (evolving) our behavior-actions to optimize survival wellness. We need to talk about them as it is a general acceptance that Happiness (and all other feelings) is an emergent perception, engendered out of our interactions with external milieus of society-culture-polity and people therein.

It is now believed by evolutionary scientists that even in a single cell oceanic organism, there was this ‘sophisticated’ capability of the cell to sense out and respond to its external ambient environment, which was necessary for its survival. Till date, even after billions of years, the evolved human brain does this same basic and primary task. This primary competence of cell to sense out and respond to environment remained the cornerstone of inter-cellular communication, when organisms evolved into multi-cellular living entities. It needs to be understood that all cellular communication happens with the help of chemicals. Till date, even in nerve cells of evolved human brain, communication happens through chemical signaling and electrical pulse, which also is a chemical process. We don’t go into details of it. However, it is a beautifully marvelous domain of modern knowledge everyone should have in details.

In progression of time, these capabilities evolved and diversified as organisms became complex and required better sensory signaling. The next crucial stage came later when organisms became more complex and they required much more than sensory signaling abilities to communicate information, for better survival optimization. The central nervous system happened with group of neurons not only relaying signals but also ‘processing’ them. The common ancestor of all animals; a worm like organism, had a basic and raw brain around its eye-like feature, hundreds of millions years back. Scientists say; script of modern human brain was clearly embedded in the brains of simple organisms, as early as 500 million years back.

This evolution of brain having abilities to process sensory information from external as well as internal milieu is a critical development in evolution. It is believed that modern human brain happened around two hundred thousand years back and this brain is the genius of information processing. It is not yet fully known how the brain ‘processes’ loads of complex information and how it decides on final actionable behavior patterns of humans. Though, there is a dominant hypothesis about human brain’s ‘information processing’ being analogous to humanly designed computers; it cannot be considered the finality, as there are opposing views too. Moreover, as we talked earlier; use of metaphors, analogies and symbols to understand a reality can be troublesome as it scams the perception of reality.

Modern scientists caution that undue adherence with current analogies and metaphors, for easy understanding of realities, may restrict the true and real deciphering of reality. They believe, as science progresses, the language of symbols and metaphors science uses, should also progress. That is why there is this valuable need to have novel and alternative perspectives and ideas about everything, including the language we use for describing realities. This restrictiveness is also applicable to the idea and reality of the term Happiness.

What we are concerned here about evolution of brain is, why human brain evolved the way it did. This may help us understand where and how human brain differs from other brains, especially when it comes to perceiving reality. It is now accepted that modern human brain evolved to its modern form and functionality because of three crucial factors –

1. Cultural Requirements – Complexities of new norms, rules and laws.
2. Technological Advancements – Complexities of new motor skills.
3. Social Relationships – Complexities of interaction with people.

It needs to be emphasized here that complexity of human brain stems from emerging diversities and intricacies in human life-living, as early humanity settled for organized living. There is crucial information coming out of our knowledge of evolution of human brain, which must be understood and internalized in consciousness. This is big facilitation in visualizing, what nature proposed, what goodness and utility this innate proposition had and what we humans must change and accept as contemporaneously relevant benchmark for current disposition.

History of brain’s evolution clearly points out to two very critical stage of brain’s evolution in thousands of millions of years. For clarity of understanding and easy internalization, we must detail them –

1. Centrality of Visuals in Brain Evolution – It is now accepted that when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, early mammals had to survive primarily in hiding; forced to nocturnal living, when it was safe to move around for food. These mammals relied more on olfactory perceptions to search food and find safety. Later, when dinosaurs were wiped out and mammals had a free run of the landscape, they developed better visual faculties. Much of mammalian brain evolution pertains to development of visual cortex and commensurate evolving of eye as dominant sensory information source. This facility is most evolved in humans. The superior olfactory genes are still there in humans but remain suppressed or switched off. We can easily visualize; around 85 percent of our perceptions, learning and cognitive decision making come from visual sensory inputs from our eyes. It is a hypothesis that our brain templates all sensory information and memory also works exclusively as visual information, coded in synaptic plexus, as chemical imprint. Even when we hear a sound, smell an odor or sense out a touch, our brain automatically recognizes the associated visualizations of the sensory information. We hear a sound from a far off place and immediately the image of the guitar, from which the sound is coming, is formed in our mind. Huge part of brain’s cortex evolution is dedicated to visual channels and processing. This in turn means; our brain is innately wired to learn by aping; as in most mammals; especially primates. Most of our sensory successes and reward insinuations come from seeing and aping, what most others do. This ‘sense of other’ is a very critical element in human consciousness, which we shall talk later. Science says that human brain is far more competent in ‘Recognizing’ than ‘Recalling’. We may deduce a hypothesis, from this fact that largely, majority of so-called memory functionality pertains to ‘matching’ new sensory information with existing templates of visuals, already encoded in brain plexus. We may hypothesize that what we see most others do, we recognize well and are subconsciously prompted to ape. The supposition is – we imagine and extend our ‘self’ into the consciousness of others to visualize what others feel doing something. We tend to recognize whatever is benchmarked by ‘collective other’ action-behavior as ‘successful’ and then ape it. This seems wired in the newly evolved cortical layers of brain. As this cyclicality gets internalized in brain states as ‘memory’, we feel rewarded when we successfully ape the established benchmarks of mass majority behavior-action patterns; especially that of those people, whom society-culture labels as ‘successful’ and powerful. This is altogether different matter that when people ape, they mostly ape the ‘ritual’ of success, not the essence of it. This predominance of visual brain makes it easy to see the rituals but it is difficult to precisely visualize and imagine the essence of an action-behavior. People see a successful man always wearing white clothes and they all start wearing white clothes. Nobody cares why this successful man wears white and what this color preference signifies for his success. It happens because white clothe is visible and easy to be aped, whereas the essence or deep causalities of success is intangible, not visible and therefore cannot be easily aped. That is probably why human world has 99 percent rituals, only one percent essence of reality. This ritualism is innately embedded in perceptions as well as attitudes and mannerisms. So, we just need to keep this hypothesis as probability, as it may help us in understanding the ‘context’ of perceptional realities we accept. This shall help us in deciphering, what part of the Happiness Perception is ritualistic and what is true essence of the reality of Happiness. Just keep in mind that it is a favorite psychological standpoint that people feel happier among people, doing things in togetherness and turn sad and depressed when lonely. Psychologically speaking, humans have been labeled as social beings and their innate sense of wellness is entrenched in gregarious living. Gregariousness; sense of collective wellness and aping are huge contexts or filters for perception of Reality for average men and women.
2. Criticality of Sociability in Brain Evolution – As listed above, modern human brain evolution was triggered and energized by three factors, which we can sum up as ‘survival need’ to ‘match up’ with what mass majority of other humans do in the large collective grouping of family and society. Science tells us that ethnicity and racialism are wired behavioral traits in humans. This is simply an expression of the human brain, which feels safe and rewarded in ‘similarity’ and homogeneity. People with same skin color, appearances and habits in a localized milieu were trusted and enhanced survival potential. Anyone looking different was suspected and dispelled from local milieus. This instinct is still intact and this ethnicity-preference is expressed, often brutally, in racial feelings. We can hypothesize from these facts that our brain evolved to its contemporary form, primarily oriented towards creating neural suitability and adaptability to attain optimum survival and mating successes in collective milieus of family, society, tribe and ethnic homogeneity. Human brain is wired ‘disproportionately’ towards ‘societal needs’ and optimizing survival-mating prospects of individual within collective domains of society and cultures. This is over-encompassing, instinctive and engrained propensity in all mammalian brain. However, as human societal-cultural-political milieus are far more massive and complex, humans seem to have deeper and more intense ‘Social Needs’ than other animals. It can be safely hypothesized that in long journey of evolution of human brain in the last hundred thousand years of settled living, the innate and primeval ‘Survival Needs’ have got merged and assimilated in more current and relevant ‘Social Needs’. In other words, we can say, innate and core survival needs of individual, now get expressed in terms of social needs. In fact, as we shall detail later; the fulcrum of societal-cultural-political propriety and jurisprudence is this ‘authoritative alignment’ of individuality with collective sanity and system. We shall talk about more specific aspects of all these later. What we intend to do here is, install a probability of a hypothesis that modern human brain has evolved to hardwired aping, adaptability, assimilation and co-option with collective benchmarking of normal-appropriate-righteousness, to optimize survival-mating potentials in the external milieus. The simple, straight and uncomplicated statement of fact is – Our brain and its cosmos of perceptions is almost fixated to accept all aims-purposes-successes of ‘self’ or individuality, in terms of the ‘singular suitability’ of what is best and ideal for life-living in societal-cultural domain. In other words; brain accepts utility-worth-goodness primarily on the basis of singular ‘Context’ and this context is – Societal-Cultural. This hypothesis we need to keep in mind when we step further into more details of related aspects of how our brain works, how our consciousness is shaped and how we perceive and actualize reality.

Here, we need to sum up the progression of human brain evolution, listing out critical elements, which were primary causalities. As humans stepped down from trees, they needed to roam and gather-hunt food from a larger areas, which required better suitability of brain in creating ‘familiarity’ with territory, wider physical milieu, predators and prey. Probably, human brain required more neural connections and activities to enhance the capability of ‘recognizing’ as the essential tool of survival and success. This recognizable ‘memory’ was essentially visual memory as hunter-gatherer early humans required great ‘mapping’ memory of the landscape, full of uncertainties. It probably remains till date like that. Even in contemporary human world, a person whose memory is better than most, is considered a genius. Science now tells us that such people with strong and unflinching memory have troubles in some aspects of cognitive abilities and relationship domains. Still, most people feel ‘Happy’ to be genius of memory than genius of societal skills. We don’t go into it here.

Moreover, as later, settled and organized life-living emerged and it created family, society, cultures and tribal ethnicities, regional identities, etc.; human brain probably required more ‘information processing’ function, as compared to earlier suitability of primarily having a ‘recognizing’ skill. This information process had to be there as social and cultural living required complex behavioral adaptabilities in collective living. The hierarchical societal system, power-authority inequalities, appropriateness of behavior-action in collective spaces, as against individual liberty, et al required far more brain processing neural plexuses. The society and collective living evolved in its complexities and naturally twin challenges were faced by human brain – first to process available and incoming information from growingly complex collective living spaces to optimize an individual’s successes in survival and mating. Second; complex life-living also created new technologies and tools, which required new and complex skills to handle and excel in. These skills required human brain to process information better to create a synchronous action-behavior by manipulating and managing better motor skills and neural symmetry.

The cortical region of new brain states emerged and got consolidated to adapt to these new challenges and that is why we can hypothesize that human brain’s perception of reality and survival intelligence evolved largely ‘contextual’ to normality and righteousness in collective space and less in exclusively individual domain. This created a cyclicality in the long years to follow when human societies and cultures, life-living and human system became hugely complex. The individual perception catered to collective normality and collective benchmarking of reality growingly got embedded in human brain plexuses.

Many scientists believe that the seed of emergence of human subjective consciousness, what we know as definitive sense of ‘I’ or self; happened as a person required to install a deep sense of ‘Others’, as extension of his or her ‘Individuality’. Animals do not have consciousness like humans as their sense of ‘Other’ is not as marked as that in humans as humans have society, cultures, polity and religion. How this ‘other’ milieu shapes up an individual’s perception and disposition; is a deep domain, which must be understood in details. We do not have the space to elaborate it here but every aware person must invest efforts to acquire knowledge about this aspect of his or her consciousness. This aspect is a key hypothesis, which shall lend us leads to our further investigation into human mind and perception of realities.

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Nature’s Intelligence and Perception

We all are so used to accepting ourselves as a definitive protagonist; someone, who is in control of his or her life and executor of all decisions of behavior and action in every moment of living. When we know in detail about how our brains evolved and how nature and evolution engrained and embedded its innate intelligence of ‘suitable’ action-behavior, we can see and realize how this view is scammed. Science is more or less unanimous in declaring that we humans have no Free Will and what we all do and act as, are shaped up by chemical mechanisms and processes in brain and body. We, our sense of ‘I’, only ‘owns’ what brain states decide for us. Average person does not understand and accept this ‘dualism’ of self – the subconscious Self, which is ‘owned’ by the conscious Self but very rarely in ‘control’ of it. This chemical mechanisms and processes are the script of nature and evolution, installed in brain states as Innate Intelligence, which largely shape up and functionalize what we do and how we behave.

The same hypothesis also explains how and why what we feel and how we perceive reality is not an independent and free willed option but an expression of wired intelligence of nature; embedded in our body-brain system, through a complex plexus of chemicals. As ‘we’ and our body-mind are not the same reality; similarly we and our feelings-perceptions are not same realities. We detail the functionality of brain to understand it better. This shall unravel the ‘scam’ which we all live out and seldom realize, we are in.

Human brain is a bizarre marvel of nature and evolution. If early humanity could understand how life-living and almost every reality in the living world is so conflicted and dualistic; they unfortunately could not know that it had its roots and genesis in the way human mind evolved and came to be what it is today and how it works. Contemporary humanity understands it as modern science has deciphered many aspects of brain, its structural marvel and functional complexities. We can clearly see and understand, why life-living is innately conflicted and why this leads to we humans getting into a scammed perception of most realities; especially life-living and personal realities. We are talking about this in detail here to get to the bottom of this conflict as well as the scam trajectory, in the long history of evolution of human brain.

There has been loads of researches in brain functioning and also many path-breaking headways have been made in understanding how human brain works out realities for us, how brain arrives at a specific decision and above all; how consciousness – the subjective sense and feel of ‘I’ or Self ‘owns’ what the brain states decide. However, there is no finality as so much of brain mechanisms and processes are still to be known and what is available for understanding may also be very partial. We have also discussed how human dependence on analogies and symbols, especially of languages we know and speak, restrict the holism of our understanding of complicated ideas like consciousness, cognition and causalities of realities. That is why; it is my humble and sincere request that we must never accept any aspect of information; we are talking here, as more than hypothesis. What we are talking about and what we arrive at; may at best be accepted as probability. It is up to you to inquire more and deeper into what we have talked here and internalize yourself, what you arrive at after personal assessment.

We are essentially trying to work around a hypothesis to understand the realities of perceptions and feelings, we own and live out, which may help us to better understand how and what part of our populist and dominant perceptions are ‘scammed’. We are dealing with Happiness but it also involves our inquiries about the reality of feelings and perceptions in its holism. This is my humble assertion.

Modern scientific advancements have facilitated so many things and humanity is indebted to those brilliant scientists, who created so many utilities for us, to make our lives better and safe. However, one single important breakthrough of modern science is this vision and wherewithal to unravel and decipher, ‘Who We Are and Why We Are What We Are’. This has become possible primarily because modern science has begun to understand the intricacies, complexities and brilliance of human brain in creating a cosmos of perception for us, which forms the basis of all our cultures, societal normality, aims and purposes of life-living, et al. This newly emerging knowledge has busted the scam humanity has been living out and sustaining since millenniums. This knowledge has paved ways for a completely novel and alternative ‘Normality’ for larger humanity. Our purpose of hypothesizing, ‘Happiness Is A Scam’, is primarily aimed at understanding this scam and actualizing the novel and alternative realities of the ‘cosmos of perceptions’. This shall help us in coming out of the scammed life-living and lead us to true wellness. Together, we journey this probability. This however can be unraveled only in layers. We need to understand different aspects of modern scientific knowledge of realities of consciousness, cognition and causalities to gradually and surely arrive at our ultimate destination. Do kindly remain with me, assimilate and internalize the progression in poised perseverance and enjoy the journey ahead.

Currently, we are talking about the conflict of nature’s own innate intelligence and that of the evolved and man-made intelligence. It is revolting and appalling to accept ourselves as a plexus of chemicals, organizing in hugely complex ways to shape us and regulate almost everything we consider very naturally ‘our doing’. When we click an icon on the smart phone and a whole world of application starts to work in front of us; we seldom think of the complex processes that go on within its hardware to make it happen for us. It does not come to awareness that everything happening on the screen of the smart phone is essentially the mechanism of bits and bytes. The intelligence of smart phone is wired in the hardware through the plexuses of bits and bytes; even though, we feel, we are doing things on the smart phone. Similarly, everything we do, essentially boils down to chemically coded intelligence, wired in over 30 trillion cells, which shape us and make us stand and work. The feel of this idea is revolting.

The intelligence of nature is coded in chemical imprint in the cellular environment. This chemical intelligence is overriding in nature’s scheme of reality and it also is the very basis of how our brain and body works. As modern science now understands the mechanisms and processes at cellular level, humanity now understands how ‘reality’, at seed level, is essentially shaped up very much at cellular levels and the intelligence, which creates realities and its perception, is chemical in content and intent. We have talked earlier how even a single cell organism, which emerged billions of years ago, had sophisticated ways to sense out and respond to its ambient environment. Essentially, reality is an entity, emerging out of this interaction between cellular life and external milieu. This happened as chemical processes have the ability to encode and communicate information. This very idea of Information, in scientific parlance is beyond perception of average mind as we only accept a reality on the restrictive basis of popular and known analogies and symbols. We do not have the space to detail the holism of the idea of Information but it is just a humble request that we must consider Information not in restrictive sense. Evolution and nature’s intelligence has proceeded by evolving this simple and core mechanism and process of chemical intelligence into a mega-complex plexus of information processing; resulting in creation and diversification of life forms on Earth. This hypothesis is at the core of what we shall discuss later, when we talk about scams of perceptions of reality.

We need to keep in mind this hypothesis that reality is emergent and ever-evolving; engendered out of interaction between life form and external milieu, where the organism moves for food and procreation. This hypothesis leads us to accept that brain happened as central navigation space for ‘Reality-Manifestation’ to facilitate the survival goals. The brain is therefore the repository of and culmination of innate intelligence. The brain not only processes information from external and even internal milieus but also navigates the organism moving in the external environment; through appropriate motor actions. What we need to understand out of this discussion is the hypothesis that the brain is a media of two crucial functions. First, brain represents the intelligence of nature; embedded in body physiology of the organism. Second, brain is the navigation room, creating a simulated and metaphored imagery of the reality in external environment. This makes brain as a chemical warehouse, where all realities are engendered and all realities are responded to for behavior and action of the organism. This in turn makes brain the laboratory of testing out and assimilating new and emerging intelligence, in course of continued interaction of organism with ever evolving external milieus.

The human brain has evolved in a very unique way, because of the exceptionality of evolution of humans in an external environment, which is unmatched among all the millions of species living on Earth. As we have talked earlier, human brain also is the repository of nature’s innate intelligence, which is almost common for all living organisms. However, human brain evolved in the last two hundred thousand years in an unprecedented ways. The three factors of cultural complexities, technological complications and relationships intricacies challenged the brain to evolve in a different way, compared to other mammals and primates. Human brain had to be a hugely complex navigation room for survival successes in a novel and different external environment. Humans settled and created complex societal and cultural rules and norms. They created new tools and made technological advancements in changing their ambient environment to their suitability. This needed different processing capabilities in human brain.

Science tells us that this created a new brain plexus, on top of the mammalian brain states, which fashioned more space for new challenges. This in turn created and installed a new intelligence in brain’s existing inventory of nature’s intelligence. Science tells us, much of the cortical region of human brain, which evolved late, deal with this new intelligence, which humans created. Interestingly, many of these new intelligences, which were installed as hallmark of new cultural and civilized life-living, stood in conflict with nature’s intelligence, ingrained already in mammalian brain states. Science confirms that the prefrontal cortex; the latest addition in the human brain, happening probably around one hundred thousand years back, essentially handles such tasks, which is referred to as ‘Executive’ decisions. These decisions happen as the prefrontal cortex layer of brain mediates and processes conflicts between nature’s wired intelligence in limbic system and human intelligence, encoded in benchmarks of normality and appropriateness of societal and cultural life-living in cortex region.

We already know that social scientists accept the ‘Social Contract Theory’ of organized human life-living and civilization-culture, as the