Who Me?

About the Book

We arrive in this world with a BMW mind in a VW Beetle body, struggling to be a BMW in a culture of Volkswagen Beetles. As complex living systems, we adapt to our environment. Alas, most of us become VW Beetles. We expend our optimum learning years by age 10 under pressure to conform to a socially acceptable level. Through this experience we develop our unique identity. Buried somewhere under all this VW experience is our real, BMW self. The evolutionary history of complex living systems is survival based. This is our primary directive, adapt or die. This instinctive process is essentially automatic, requiring no conscious thought. A minute or two ago in evolutionary time, we began evolution of a logical, compassionate cap over our primitive brain that expresses empathy and compassion. We now find ourselves in a chaotic state of conflict between anger and compassion, both essential, but requiring balance for our survival. Our technology has developed to a level for potential mass destruction and perhaps even extinction events. It would seem that survival behavior that was our savior in the past is likely to be our destruction in the future. Evolution to this point has provided us with anger as a dominant emotion to energize our body for battle. Our compassionate nature is still an infant. We need to seek a new balance between anger and compassion. To give us time to do this we must fall back on the historical theme of moderation in all things. As complex living systems, we find ourselves with a Mind having infinite capacity, but with the lack of experience to match an epic change in information flow. While information is increasing at an exponential rate, adaptation time is decreasing at a similar rate. We cannot help but recognize that it is religion that teaches moderation and compassion. We cannot help but recognize that governments respond by increasing control through laws and police action that take away freedom and choice. Genetics and experience shape our unique identity. Ultimately, it is our survival instinct and negative experience that create illogical, self-defeating behavior. That is, behavior that limits or eliminates positive life experience. As Christians we are told to love our neighbor, to build loving relationships. We are told to be humble and vulnerable to others. This clearly has the potential to create positive experience. We have learned that positive experience can create an environment that requires people with life-defeating behaviors to adapt. This is the way systems, and the Mind work. From a practical stand point and by definition, radical and fanatical beings are unable to comprehend moderation and are immune to compassionate relationship. A practical process of change must evolve over time. This brings us to the issue of religion. Jesus teaches loving relationships with God and Man. Islam teaches love of God. Man is to be controlled. This is not surprising. When Christianity was at the historical age of Islam, it was behaving as Islam is now. Islam is still responding to its seventh century culture. Christianity as now expressed is more comfortable in third world cultures. Christianity is still trying to adapt to its modern culture. Islam is trying to force its third world culture into the first world. Through immigration and financial power it may succeed. It may change the environment, but it will also be subject to change in the process. All systems follow system rules. This book is presenting a view of how our world works by seeing through the eyes of current scientific and social experience. It is not intended be technical, but rather to use some technical information to add color to its message. It offers the hope of practical change by understanding and limiting self-defeating behavior. It suggests that this is essential as a replacement primary directive, and one that has been vocalized for the past 2000 year

About the Author

Mr. Smith’s formal education is in science and engineering. He has spent 40 years in technology development, mostly in medical diagnostics and instrument design. He has held positions in technology management and business development. Mr. Smith has always had an interest in writing and has had his work published in Management Review Magazine. His corporate management experience has created a lasting interest in behavioral psychology. He says that his challenges have generally been about behavior rather than technology. His writing is a mix of both. He suggests that science, psychology and religion represent another Bermuda Triangle where storm fronts of truth and myth collide to sink beliefs. Mr. Smith has been a good and bad Episcopalian for 60 years.