I love aphorisms. Below are aphorisms I have written to help express the values of the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness. Aphorisms that originally appeared in blog posts are hyperlinked to their respective post. I have also used aphorisms with the “30 Habits of the Human Mind” to describe characteristics of human consciousness in the “What Is It Like to be a Human Being?” post. See the Value Statements on pages 10 and 11 of the Study Guide for notable people’s aphorisms that I believe relate to the quadrune mind. And now, some pithy statements of relatively few words:
Afflicters always believe that the suffering they cause other people is justified.
Americans live in a NASCAR® universe where everything in our competitive world must be sponsored, as we speed around in circles as fast as we can in the race course of life—to whose finish line?
Any relationship becomes more humanizing when we use a healthy adult voice.
Dehumanization should never be the price of a paycheck.
Desperate times call for courageous acts. And what could be more courageous than to be nonviolent in a violent world, loving in a hateful world, and decent in a corrupted world?
Don’t have an animal mind; have a Human consciousness.
Expanding spiritual consciousness on earth is humanity’s responsibility.
Fear makes me feel vulnerable, or even worse, helpless. Anger feels like strength, or even better, power.
God is the force that brought the human brain into existence.
The great tragedies of humanity are almost always driven, directly or indirectly, by the most petty people of us all; that is, people whose sole purpose in life is self-perpetuation.
How conscious is “artificial” intelligence? The answer, if we ever think we know it, may have some significance on how conscious we believe “natural” intelligence to be.1
The Human mind is the only mind that has the capacity to have a sense of responsibility to, and communion with, people never met, all living beings, and the earth.2
The idea of a “soul” represents our mental solution to the body’s instinctual need for an eternal homeostasis.3
If a young liberal becomes an old conservative, it is not because of the growth of wisdom. Rather, it is the growth of wealth and privilege. Having more becomes the fear of losing more.
If mercy is to be part of this world, it must happen through us.
If we are stuck in an animal-like mind, then we will live life with an animal-like purpose.
Immature minds worship immature Gods.
Indifference is devastatingly cruel. It is always at the root of our dehumanization of people. The destructive effects of indifference may even subtly exceed those of demonizing others. After all, it requires much less mental energy to ignore people than to demonize them and comes with very little accountability of our own inhumanity.
The insatiable greed of the power elites is funded by the insatiable addictions of the masses.
It is difficult to understand what other people need if we don’t need it. It is worse if we think we know what other people need, but are wrong.
It’s a small world if you live a large life.
Life isn’t fair or unfair; it just happens. However, people can be fair or unfair intentionally.
Life without change is automaticity; change without life is decomposition.4
Many species are going extinct because they are not evolutionarily prepared for the world we have created—and neither are we. The difference is, we know it. And, we can do something about it. It’s our responsibility.
Marketers are driving us to distraction with their incessant, ever more aggressive, demands on our attention. They demand that we be more responsive to their brand than to our God, country, or family, although they often sell us their brand as representing our God, country, or family.
Marketing sells us on the idea that we “deserve” better products and services without telling us why.
Mindlessness prevents humanity from being humane.
Moralists tend to expect the universe to conform to their moral code. For example, if worthy people do not get what is due them, or unworthy people get more than they deserve, then the righteous moralizer feels responsible to correct the universe’s error.
An opinion should be expressed only if you are willing to change it.
Our leaders tell us, sometimes for centuries, that we must remember certain events of our history, but for what purpose—to make amends or take revenge? The answer would seem important for our sense of “identity.”
Our religious, nationalist, political, and sports fanatics are of the same mind (level of consciousness) as their religious, nationalist, political, and sports fanatics.
Over the years, our habits of acting, feeling, and thinking can become so deeply entrenched and powerful to us that our “rational” mind must reasonably conclude that our lives are directed by an external power much greater than ourselves.5
People have been criticized for underestimating the level of consciousness of animals, but the related, more common, and much more serious error is the vast overvaluation of our own everyday consciousness.6
People who lived in ancient times did not know they were living in ancient times—and neither do we.
The person who does not have a moment to regret may not have had a moment to reflect.
The pre-Human-minded person has been socialized to see people as predators, competitors, prey, or one’s own. Only “one’s own” are seen as “human.”7
Propaganda is enjoyed as entertainment by many people because it makes them feel good.
Propaganda, like pornography and professional wrestling, is designed to destroy a person’s aesthetic distance. Consequently, there is not enough mental space to separate internal visceral reactions from external reality.8
Quadrune mind is a secular model of spiritual consciousness for a post-rational world.9
The quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness is for thoughtful people, who reject both moral relativism and the certainty of self-righteous tyranny, but still want a spiritually meaningful purpose in this lifetime.10
Religion has been used to comfort the suffering masses. But it is the power elites who must awaken spiritually if the current world is to be healed.
Religion is our evolutionarily new psychological need to attribute to nature a designed intentionality.
Religiosity keeps score; spirituality does not.
Sharing the love to be alive is the point of everything Human.
Spiritual consciousness does not reject religion, but it does reject any spiritual merit for a militarized religion or a religious military.
Spiritually conscious adult Human beings are bad for Big Business. Apparently, marketers know this as demonstrated by their advertising campaigns.
Technology is the attempt to make our lives better without being better people.11
Unconstrained stampede greed always has been, and always will be, associated with chronic, wide-spread desperate need.12
We can live like other animals, but that is not who we are.
We must have each other’s help and encouragement to be more able, willing, and effective healers in the world. There is no such thing as a self-sufficient Human being.
We would rather kill a thousand enemies than make one our friend.
What we believe is insignificant compared to how we live because of what we believe.
Wisdom is the awareness of humanity’s purpose in life.
You can live to rule the earth, or you can live to serve the earth. You just can’t do both.
You never know what you slept through until you wake up!
Last amended December 22, 2024
- For related thoughts on this issue, see QM and the Future of Spiritual Consciousness.
- Also see page 6 of the Study Guide.
- See Absolute Certainty: Doing, Knowing, and Thinking; QM, Phylogenetic Regression, and Extreme Aggression; and the “Reptilian” column on page 9 of the Study Guide.
- Compare Oscar Wilde’s comment, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” See page 11 of the Study Guide.
- Compare Jaynes, J. (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. “Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of…. And so, consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not” (page 23). [This is the book that first sparked my interest in the relationship between brain structures and mind functions. Nearly 50 years later, Julian Jaynes’ very personal work continues to offer rich insights into humanity’s paradoxically long struggle to understand human nature. The quadrune mind model distinguishes four qualitatively different kinds of human consciousness with varying degrees of self-awareness. The model specifies why only the spiritually conscious mind represents true Human nature].
- Compare Fleury, B. E. (2018). The scientific wonder of birds. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company. From the course overview: “The Remarkable Brainpower of Birds—Contrast avian brain structure with our own and track the intelligence of birds in numerous surprising and revelatory examples. Note how diverse species can distinguish shapes, colors, and numbers; remember 2,000 seed cache locations; start fires to flush out prey; make hooks to catch food; tie slip knots; and, believe it or not, differentiate between artistic styles such as Cubism and Impressionism.”
[My comment refers especially to Lecture 5, “Bird Brains: Tool Wielders and Snack Stealers.”: Bruce E. Fleury is an immensely pleasurable, witty, and humane advocate of respect for avian intelligence. He describes how their intellectual feats are comparable to those of primates and young human children. Although Fleury recognizes the instinctual basis underlying some very complex behaviors, there are also avian innovations that make it difficult to decide whether we underestimate their intelligence, or overvalue our own. And his love of birds, often told with charming personal stories, is irresistibly contagious. Nevertheless, he does not romanticize the harsh realities of a bird’s life. I have also cited this course in the Dinosaurs, Billionaires, and Mass Extinctions blog post. For additional context for this significant issue, see the post, QM and the Vital Difference between Consciousness and Intelligence].
- See page 6 of the Study Guide.
- See How Entertainment and Art become Propaganda through the Loss of Aesthetic Distance.
- But, instead of mentally regressing to irrationality, which many people seem to believe is the only alternative to a loss of faith in reason, we can go forward with a spirituality beyond the rational. Some possible examples of a spiritual level of consciousness beyond rationality include Carl Jung (synchronicity beyond causality), the human Jesus of Nazareth (compassion beyond law), panpsychism (the universe of consciousness beyond a universe of mindless objects), and the Potowatami “braiding of sweetgrass” (reciprocal relatedness with the earth beyond scientific understanding of the earth). Incidentally, I believe Gautama Buddha to have been the greatest rationally-based spiritual teacher. However, some branches of Buddhism, such as Zen with its koans (paradox beyond logic), have gone beyond rationality.
- See the Study Guide for details of the quadrune mind model.
- Compare Helmore, E. (2023, May 28). “They’re afraid their AIs will come for them”: Doug Rushkoff on why tech billionaires are in escape mode. The Guardian. “The only way to rebel is to be human and aware, Rushkoff says. ‘Be social, get your feet on the ground, make eye contact, have sex, meet people, breathe the air. The more real-life ballast you have, the less this brittle, ideological, abstracted, social media-mediated universe bears upon your daily existence.’” [If we stay technologically isolated from one another we may all end up as solipsists; i.e., more specifically, we can become stuck in the “extreme egocentrism” of infancy—a major characteristic of the reptilian mind].
- See Stampede Greed and Desperate Need for related material.