NOTE: Acting Like Adults1 is in an awkward place for readers. General readers are not usually drawn to a book with endnotes, not to mention ones as extensive as in this book. On the other hand, professional and scholarly readers are not usually drawn to books with endnotes that are not written by other professionals and scholars. I try to address this problem on page 5 of the Preface: “I am not attempting to make an authoritative argument to convince you that the quadrune mind is the greatest approach to understanding consciousness and human nature ever devised. My daughter, Kerri, and I have made our best arguments for the model on our website,2 including our blog posts. (See Appendix A for a complete list of our blog posts.) As a non-scholar in neuroscience, philosophy, and theology, I appropriately do not feel qualified to make an authoritative argument for the quadrune mind based on professional specialization. I just happen to be the person “chosen” by these ideas to be their host.3 With a Ph.D. in applied behavioral studies and experience as a licensed psychologist, I might describe myself as a “human behavior generalist.”4 Or, even though my undergraduate degree is in psychology, it was my philosophy minor courses that I really loved and are part of my life-long interest in philosophy,5 so I might identify myself as a “citizen philosopher.”6
PROLOGUE7
In the 1950s I was a young boy who loved astronomy, especially in October. By then, autumn was well-established, and nighttime came hours before bedtime. I lived in a relatively undeveloped part of Oklahoma City that was literally left in the dark by the more ambitious parts of town. I still remember stepping outside, looking up, and seeing the Milky Way galaxy, my galaxy, dominate the starry night.
My little telescope was strong enough to show me the crescent Venus, Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons, and Saturn’s spectacular rings, artistically tilted for dramatic effect. And that the moon really did have craters. But I imagined what might exist beyond my telescope’s power to reveal.
I picked a star at random and concentrated my gaze on it across the hundreds of lightyears, and I wondered if there were eyes looking back at me on Earth. What would that creature look like? What kind of nature would it have?
It was a thought I had recently during another October night, 65 years later, when I realized that Acting Like Adults is a direct descendent of my 12-year-old questions about life in outer space. I realized that human beings often seemed to be alien life forms whose nature has also been difficult to imagine. Finally, for me at least, this book brings human nature down to earth.
But if that is all the book did, it would probably have a readership of about one. There is a darker and broader need for this book than to resolve a young boy’s confusion about humanity. The quadrune mind model of human nature shows how it’s possible for some people to look at another human being and see vermin. For example, how it is humanly possible for some adults to drive a car into peaceful demonstrators, cheat people out of their homes and land after a natural disaster, pull babies and children from the arms of desperate people seeking help without knowing or caring what would happen to the babies and children, prevent food from reaching starving families, or commit savagely violent genocide. It is not because it’s the evil side of our human nature.
PREFACE
Paul D. MacLean’s triune brain model was introduced to me in 1984. It was part of an in-service training for the staff of an alcohol treatment agency where I was working as an outpatient alcohol counselor. MacLean was a neuroscientist and chief of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health. He developed a new evolutionary approach to understanding the human brain. He believed that our brain contained elements of our evolutionary past from reptiles, older herd mammals, and newer primate mammals. Those three “layers” of neural development become one brain in human beings: a triune brain. Consequently, with our inheritance of ancestral brain types, we also inherited ancestral behaviors. In this book I will describe my adaptation of MacLean’s idea of the triune brain into a new “quadrune mind” model of human nature.
MacLean understood that the brains of extant species have been significantly modified from their evolutionary ancestors. But it was the similarities that remained that were helpful to understand human behaviors within an evolutionary context. The quadrune mind asks, “How is it neurologically possible for human beings to cold-heartedly condemn fellow human beings to a lifetime of suffering—to generations of suffering—for the petty purpose of money, power, and privilege for themselves. The quadrune mind perspective is that there is enough similarity among the brains of ourselves, primates, mammals, and reptiles to account for the complete range of “human” behaviors (minds), from the callous disregard of all life to one’s self-sacrifice for strangers.
When American neuroscientists threw out MacLean’s triune brain bathwater,8 they also threw out a genius neurophilosophy-of-mind baby. This book is about introducing you to that baby. I hope that you will come to believe this new way of thinking about human nature has a promising future, and you will wish to help it grow strong.
Humanity’s Long Struggle to Understand Human Nature
What would you say if I asked you, “How would you describe human nature?” Do you have a quick, perhaps snarky answer, or would you have to write a book? Before reading on, take time to record your answer on your favorite device. Is your favorite device your mobile phone, laptop, social media? Perhaps your favorite device is paper and pencil. Does your choice of technology, what “feels” most “natural,” have anything to do with your human nature? When you finish the book, record your answer again. Do you have the same answer, an answer suggested by the book, or your own completely novel answer, unavailable from AI?
What if you asked some of the people you know, “How would you describe human nature?” What kind of answers would you get? If you would like to have a real-life taste of humanity’s struggle to understand human nature, try asking a variety of people, such as family, friends, teachers, police officers, preachers, priests, rabbis, monks, philosophy professors, lawyers, combat veterans, physicians—anyone you would feel reasonably safe to ask for their opinion of human nature. Keep an anonymous record. See if you can find some patterns in the answers. (See Appendix B for my survey sample results.)
If you really want to be daring, you could then ask them, “Why do you think that?” or “What makes you think that?” (I did not.) But ask respectfully and accept the first answer with appreciation. People do not like to be asked, “Why?” repeatedly, as parents of young children know. And, as even children know, the answer often ends up being an exasperated, “Because I said so!” Remember, Socrates was executed for asking powerful people, “Why?” too many times, which is especially risky during socially unstable times such as ours.9
Perhaps what sets humans most apart from the other living beings on earth is that we are surely the only creatures who must ask ourselves sometime during our life, “What is my nature?”10 Unfortunately, we have been coming up with wrong answers as long as we have been conscious enough to ask the question. Neuroscience and philosophy,11 along with religion, sociology, and psychology, have constructed ever more complex descriptions of human nature with ever more sophisticated confusion.
POSTSCRIPT: A NEW APPRECIATION OF HUMAN NATURE BEGINS
You know how far into the future we can predict? 0 seconds.12 Consider anything unexpected that has happened to you: Meeting an old friend in a distant city or a car wreck. How far into the future were you aware that this would happen? (Recalling a “premonition” after the fact that something would happen does not count. They are usually retroactively “felt” memories.) If most of our days are undramatically repetitive, it does not mean that we predicted it, we just expected it. And we were lucky.
The Homo sapiens species has been around for about 300,000 years. During that time, we have been mostly ignorant and confused about what our nature is. According to the quadrune mind model our true nature naturally emerges from the healthy, well-integrated, mature human brain. We have seen it in notable examples across the centuries; such as, Gautama Buddha. But these “perfected” people have often been counted as exceptions to human nature, other worldly “spiritual” in a way that someone who is “only human” could never be.
But, heavenly “saints” are not the exceptions to Human nature, we are! The healthy adult Human brain shows us that the real down-to-earthiness nature of our species is inherently spiritual, wise, healing stewards of all life and the earth.
The future of humanity is uncertain. Whether you believe you know the future or not, what you believe is insignificant compared with how you live because of what you believe. Belief in a certain kind of God, Gods, or belief in no God; belief in evolution or divine creation does not really matter spiritually. What matters is how you live your life today, and how you plan for the life you want to live tomorrow, if you have the chance.
APPENDIX B: “How Would You Describe Human Nature?”
I asked a few people in a nonscientific survey to describe human nature, their age, gender, and a brief self-description. Some responses may have been edited for privacy. In a few cases I was unable to transcribe a word or short phrase. Survey was conducted in the Oklahoma City area from September, 2023 to November, 2023. Surveys are presented in the order they were conducted. Age is in bold for text orientation within longer responses.
People are born in ignorance and grow into stupidity. —90; Male; American, Homo sapiens sapiens. I refuse to include Oklahoman.13
A real mish-mash of convoluted thinking and emotions. —80; Male; A retired librarian but not a retired skeptic.
Nature is leaves, human is me. —29; Female; I’m resilient, good natured, which makes me chuckle, not knowing what human nature is. I’m funny, willing to do what is good no matter the cost, maybe the word is integrity.
Chaotic. Animalistic. “Some humans ain’t human” is from a John Prine song. —77; Male; Misunderstood.
Animalistic, like survival. —37; Female; Nature person, maker, sensitive, giving, animal lover.
Generally, most of the time everybody just wants to live life, enjoy their family, the majority. Then there are ones who just want to cause trouble, maybe because they were troubled, so they trouble others. But most people just want a normal life. —61; Male, only gender I can be; Generally happy, hate it when people are mad at me, try to please people. Hard working. Always try to look out for other people. Good father.
Heavy question for the end of a long day. I don’t know. Some of it is conditioned to think about. I don’t know. A lot of different things, different rituals. If people are in an emergency, then help each other out. Then there are other things like mob mentality. Similarities in human nature, just humans, how just exist in the world. Different things in different cultures. Humans in tandem with nature. Europeans force their will on nature, create dams where there shouldn’t be dams. —53; Female; What you see is what you get. I’m the kind of person who allows other people to be who they need to be. Allow people to be different, life is more interesting. Laid back but perfectionist, not as much as in the past. Still a lot to work on. Definitely a collaborator.
Oh my God. OK. It’s difficult because of wars, the types of government. Hate behavior done to groups of people in the name of religion. Pretty dark about human nature because of atrocities. Vacillate between giving up on human nature, don’t because of a lot of good people. How do you help the people on the good side of human nature against the people who are more on the negative side of human nature? Human nature has not done well. Good and bad. Bad people do damage to the people on the good side of human nature. Huge concern that we are going backward in treatment of blacks. Never treated Indians well. Progress going backward makes me sad. Concerned a lot about people who get into power. Bent toward criminality, find ways to legally take money and lives of people. Passionate, not really optimistic. Increase in neo-Nazis. I live in a country that had dictator Franco. Near Germany. My heart is broken by the treatment of people. People who do horrible things in the name of Christianity. Jesus would not be happy about the atrocities done in his name. —73; Female; Concerned about the welfare of others. I spent my life trying to help others become the best persons they can become. I’m certainly humanistic. Goal is to take better care of myself. Still care a great deal about others. Always see potential. Always better. I believe in God, always have. See God as a positive energy that connects us all. Sort of Buddhist. Not practicing. Am Episcopalian, not so judgmental. Intellectual, Buddhist kind of philosophy.
Many self-centered and evil. Can be motivated for religious reasons, true altruism. Left to their own devices, use means, violent, to achieve goals, get most of the resources, keep others from getting what they want. Seems universal. Just heard about Catholic priests abused 200,000 children. Makes me sick. Part of me wants to say human nature is inherently good, but too many examples of doing evil. —57; Female; 57-year-old white woman. Daughter. Loves to learn. Does the best to help others. Caring, super involved in church.
Uh, let me think. A combination of behaviors and characteristics and traits that we possess due to nature and nurture. Elements of negative behaviors. Grow up with or see one day, leading to care for others. —36; Female; I am independent. Professional career as an independent arts maker but also identified with lots of other things as well not related with art. Jewish. Family. Faith. Doing good deeds. Mitzvot, in Hebrew means “commandment.” Like the “10 commandments” everyone knows, but many more than that.
They’re stupid. Human nature seems, some destroy everything, like nature. Most people like oil, minerals, they destroy the planet just to get to it. Money, all about the money. Not care about the planet, animals. Human nature goes back to money, how much money can I make. Not even about family anymore. Not care about my children, my neighbor. Instead of destroying things, help preserve things. Human nature did to the buffalo, almost wiped out. Animal species destroyed by human nature. Look what they did to Indians, Palestinians. Germany did to the Jews. Human nature kills things. Sad. —59; Male; Myself? Oh, would say down to earth. Care a lot about things. Care a lot about people, just get frustrated with them. Care about the environment, not destroy things. Treat people nice until they treat me bad. I don’t care about race, gender, religion. I’ll treat everyone the same. Think I’m a good person because of that. A lot of people hate rich people. I don’t hate them. Glad their making money. Just where they destroy or ruin people to advance their money and destroy the person. Stupid. Having money, owners and executives, millions of dollars. They lay person off because downsizing. Why have all that money? Just to say all the money I have. Destroy lives.
That’s a hard question. I don’t know. I think human nature is partially from, what do you call, nature and environment. Have a lot of genetic stuff, but more environment. More about parenting. How raised, and support. You think, if happy environment and interact with nice people, then you’re kind. Sometimes one bad experience can scar for life. It’s bad today. Lucky grew up when we did. —61; Female; Describe myself? I like my career. Late bloomer. Not find out what to do until 50s. Struggled a lot to get where I am. Happy where I got. Not feel like an overcomer. I should have figured it out sooner.
GLOSSARY
Adolescent intellectual (cognitive) mind: A developmental stage of the brain that becomes neurologically available at about 2 years of age. In the healthy brain this mind becomes dominant during adolescence. In the afflicted brain it may not become the dominant mind. Also referred to as the “new (primate) mammalian mind.”
Adult: A person who has legal adult status but is not spiritually mature.
Antihumanization: An action taken against someone that obstructs the person’s opportunity to become more humane.
Childish emotional mind: A developmental stage of the brain that becomes neurologically available between 15 to 18 months of age. In the healthy brain this mind becomes dominant during childhood. In the afflicted brain it may not become the dominant mind. Also referred to as the “old mammalian (herd) mind.”
Fetal/newborn somatic (reflexive) “mind”: A developmental stage of the central nervous system, but is not included in the four human minds model because it does not support intentional, goal-directed behavior. The “mind” becomes neurologically available at about 8 weeks gestational age/6 weeks conceptional age. This “mind” becomes dominant pre-birth. Also referred to as the “pre-reptilian (somatic) mind.”
God: That which brought the human brain into existence. In the quadrune mind model, God is always capitalized and never put in quotation marks.
Grownup: A person who is spiritually mature, a Human. In earlier quadrune mind writing, “angel” had been used to designate the fully human spiritual level of consciousness.
Grownup spiritual mind: A developmental stage of the brain that becomes neurologically available at about 3 years of age. In the healthy brain this mind becomes dominant during adulthood. In the afflicted brain it may not become the dominant mind. Also referred to as the “human mind.”
Human nature: Behaviors, emotions, and cognitions that appear exclusively, or to a much greater degree, in human beings than in any evolutionary ancestor.
Humane: A person who is not fully spiritually conscious but is moving toward authentic Human nature in behavior, emotion, and thought. Also, refers to compassionate behaviors, emotions, and thoughts that are morally good, but may not reflect the fully spiritual consciousness of a Grownup.
Infantile behavioral mind: A developmental stage of the brain that becomes neurologically available between 2 to 4 months of age. In the healthy brain this mind becomes dominant during infancy. Also referred to as the “reptilian” mind.
Neurospirituality: The earlier name for the quadrune mind model, originally used in 1997.
Parenter: A person who uses healing skills to help an afflicted adult move toward spiritual maturity.
Pre-Human Mind: Any of the three minds in an adult that normally develop before the Grownup spiritual mind: fetal/newborn somatic (reflexive) “mind,” infantile behavioral mind, childish emotional mind, and the adolescent intellectual (cognitive) mind. The term “pre-human mind” is used specifically from an evolutionary perspective.
Quadrune: “Four-in-one,” as in the four dissociated minds of the human brain integrated as one mind with a dominant prefrontal cortex.
Subhuman: The parts of the central nervous system that are evolutionarily older than the prefrontal cortex: the neocortex, the limbic system, brainstem, cerebellum, and spinal cord. These evolutionarily inherited structures of the brain support the pre-human minds, which are dominant during our normal developmental growth, and can support the Grown-up mind throughout adulthood.
Triune: “Three-in-one” referring to Paul MacLean’s three brain types-in-one model of the human brain.
- To read the entire book, visit https://quadrunemind.com/acting-like-adults/.
- Quadrune Mind: A Neurospiritual Guide to a Purposeful Life. quadrunemind.com. https://quadrunemind.com/.
- Gilbert, E. (2015). Big magic: Creative living beyond fear. New York: Riverhead Books. Elizabeth Gilbert describes ideas as sentient entities that choose promising human hosts to instantiate them. Gilbert writes as though this is not a metaphorical argument. In fact, thinkers and other creatives have expressed similar notions. For example, “People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people,” usually attributed to Carl Jung, but probably more in line with the philosophy of psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion. My reading of Bion is limited to Bion, W. (1983). Attention and interpretation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. For example, Bion states that the “thought” and the “thinker” exist independently of each other: “In symbiosis the thought and the thinker correspond, and modify each other through the correspondence. The thought proliferates and the thinker develops. In a parasitic relationship between thought and thinker there is a correspondence….” [Pages 117-118. In general, I believe that Bion’s psychoanalytic ideas, wherever they may come from, are quite consistent with the QM model of spiritual consciousness. And, his book has much insight to offer for our contemporary world, especially his discussion of “thinkers,” “lies” and “truth.” Even so, I understand Gilbert much better than I understand Bion].
- For a business example, but one that seems relevant here, see Genberg, P. (Council post: 2021, June 3). The value of being a generalist. Forbes Business Council. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/06/03/the-value-of-being-a-generalist/?sh=5697bd322fc8. “A generalist is a dabbler, an explorer, a learner — someone with broad knowledge across many topics and expertise in a few….
“Broad experience has its benefits. Generalists have a more diverse collection of knowledge to draw from, so they can see connections and correlations that specialists might miss….
[A similar effect has been shown by novice chess players who have made moves—because they didn’t know any better—that have caught masters off guard. The quickly efficient minds of the masters can be “blind” to some innovative moves. The masters have too much experience with little room for the unexpected].
“Generalists also tend to have a higher level of situational awareness and can see the bigger picture. Where specialists tend to have a high degree of awareness in their own area, they may not be great at understanding areas outside their fields. They need a generalist, a big-picture thinker, to bring it all together.” [Or, as Mark Twain said, “We’re all ignorant, just about different things].”
- I give a brief description of my deep appreciation of philosophy in the blog post QM, Wisdom, and the PhD Degree. https://quadrunemind.com/2020/04/07/qm-wisdom-and-the-phd-degree/. After I resigned my psychology license in 2014, I told Kerri that I was going to look at university courses offered in philosophy that I might take. She said I would be disappointed because the classes now were not like the courses that I took in the 1960s. She was right. The titles of the courses were almost unintelligible to me. I could not see how they related to understanding the human condition.
- Brogaard, B. (Posted 2019, November 21). World philosophy day takes philosophy out of the academy:
Continuing the tradition of public philosophy. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201911/world-philosophy-day-takes-philosophy-out-the-academy. “[L]ike most academic disciplines, academic philosophy has become increasingly specialized and inaccessible to the general public over the years….
“That wasn’t always the case. In Ancient Greece public philosophical debate played a crucial role in educating the youth and bringing social problems to the attention of the critical public, politicians and policy-makers….
“The tradition of public philosophy has been resurrected in various forms throughout the centuries but has recurrently been brought to a halt because of its potential threat to traditional values and policies….
“Regrettably, philosophy today is a far cry from what it once was. Its isolation from the rest of the world makes it look like an excuse for introverted narcissists to perform intellectual mind games in oversized armchairs and earn a living by doing it. This could not be further from the truth. Philosophy is meant to have an impact on society by poking holes in existing ideologies and policies….
“Philosophers can learn a thing or two from scientists who have already taken a big step in this direction. Most scientists have long ago realized that citizen involvement may help make real scientific progress. Amateurs eager to contribute to scientific research are commonly referred to as ‘citizen scientists.’”
[The American Philosophical Society awards several medals and prizes for outstanding achievements in areas of specialized interest. Personally, I think it would be a good idea for the American Philosophical Society to establish a “Citizen Philosopher Award” to be presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution to philosophy, the “love of wisdom,” as it relates to the lives of the general public. The person should be unaffiliated with any academic philosophy department or professional organization of philosophers. It could be awarded as merited. Such an award would be good for the public and good for the Society. I believe it would be the most important award the Society could grant].
- I realize that it is unusual to have a prologue in a work of nonfiction. As my childhood memory became more connected to the book, I tried to include it in the Preface but it just didn’t fit in the Preface or the Introduction. Structurally, it needed its own section. As Merriam-Webster notes from the saying “The past is prologue,” the memory clearly was a prologue to Acting Like Adults: “The saying ‘The past is prologue’ tells us that, in real life, almost everything can be a prologue to what follows it.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prologue.
- See Farley, P. (2008, Autumn). A theory abandoned but still compelling: In Paul MacLean’s triune brain, primitive emotions overruled conscious thoughts. Yale Medicine, 43(1), 16-17. “’Paul never traveled with the herd,’ said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health, who worked alongside MacLean for 10 years at the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior in Poolesville, Md. Insel remembers his colleague as irreverent and uninhibited…
“The theory saw its fullest expression in MacLean’s 1990 magnum opus, The Triune Brain in Evolution, which was based on wide-ranging anatomical studies of brains in animals as diverse as alligators and monkeys…. The theory’s conceptual beauty and intuitive appeal lent it enormous staying power….
“[Terry] Deacon, Ph.D., an expert on the evolution of human cognition at the University of California, Berkeley, subsequent research has revealed that MacLean’s basic premise… that brain systems were added by accretion over the course of evolution—was mistaken….
“Nonetheless, Deacon said, the force of MacLean’s personality gave his ideas a special resonance. ‘His death represents the passing of an era, because he was really the model of the move towards understanding the brain in evolutionary terms,’ said Deacon. ‘A lot of our contemporary advances ride on top of his work…. [W]e don’t often give credit to the false starts that really push us along the way.’”
- See Bowles, D. (n.d.). Wrongfully Accused: The Political Motivations behind Socrates’ Execution. McGill University. https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2006-7-03.pdf. [The social-political contexts of Socrates’ execution parallel those of the crucifixion of Jesus. And seem similar to our own times].
- What Is It Like to Have a Mind? https://quadrunemind.com/2022/06/23/what-is-it-like-to-have-a-mind/. In this blog post we give examples of how each of the four levels of consciousness of the quadrune mind might be lived in the world. The answer to the question, “What is my nature?” depends on which of these four minds is currently dominant in my life. Compare Socrates’ statement: “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” I believe that if we live an “unexamined life,” it means that we are existing at a pre-Human level of consciousness without self-reflection. We are squandering our potential to live in the true nature of a Human. However, self-reflection can feel fatally threatening to people aversive to self-reflection, especially people with material power and privilege.
- For an example of a scholarly philosophical argument on human nature, see Ramsey, G. (Pub. online 2023, July 12). Human nature. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/human-nature/B0D036F3D65695EB842BCF6FB2EEC896. Cambridge University Press.
“Human nature is the pattern of trait clusters within the totality of extant human possible life histories.
“Let’s unpack this a bit. One thing you may find puzzling is that it concerns possible life histories for extant humans. From the discussion above, it is clear why individual and human nature is based on possible life histories. But why actual and not possible humans? Why allow variation in environmental circumstances but not genes? There are two reasons. The first is that this is a concept of human nature in the here and now. This is not about the nature of our ancestors or our possible descendants. While it might be interesting to consider the nature of our ancestors one hundred thousand years ago, or our descendants a hundred thousand years hence, their nature is distinct from our nature. Human nature concerns humans at a particular time, not the whole species from its origins until some unknown future.
“The second reason is that if we don’t tie ‘human’ to actual humans, then it is difficult to know where to draw the boundary. Which genetic combinations are permissible in constructing possible humans? Do we include any possibility, despite vanishingly low probabilities? If so, and if we are projecting into the future, then the result might be something not recognizably human. Including these strange creatures under the rubric of human nature would reduce, not increase, our understanding of the nature of our species. Just as our species will evolve in the future, it has evolved in the past. Thus, while it was argued above that an individual is a human if and only if it belongs to Homo sapiens, the ‘human’ in ‘human nature’ is better considered to be a time slice of our species. If we want patterns of trait expression to be able to characterize – and perhaps even explain and predict – human behavior, then we should restrict human nature to humans that exist now….
“Want to know our nature? Then observe humans, their behavior, their artifacts. Read science, read fiction, listen to music. Stroll through museums and cast your eyes on sculptures and paintings and photographs. Go to sporting events, dinner parties, business meetings, classes, restaurants, bars. Sit on benches and walk through neighborhoods and go shopping and ride your bike. Eat a meal and have a conversation and get in a fight and have sex. Listen to human nature pulsing and reverberating within and around us, drink it in and ponder our place in the world.” [Emphases in the original].
- And yet we are awash with hopeful and dire predictions of the future. Predictions can try to warn people to make changes to avert catastrophe, or to exploit people’s fears for economic and political power. In any event, predicting the future is not the future. Predictions are almost always less certain than the prediction of the future sounds like to us now. The future is always unknown and often surprisingly better and worse than predicted.
For an older, but still relevant discussion of “futurology,” see Dublin, M. (1991). Futurehype: The tyranny of prophecy. New York: Dutton. “[E]ach development does, in fact, partially or wholly negate the possibility of others occurring—not because it reveals the true nature of things… but because each event in history exclusively occupies the moment in which it occurs…. [Page 239].
“It is often said that we are living in the age of information, but insofar as this is true, it follows that we must also be living in the midst of a great deal of bad information, that is, misinformation, propaganda, nonsense and hype. [I]t misleads us by distorting our regard for both the present and the future. It thereby brings out the worst in us, encouraging us to behave in narrow, selfish and self-defeating ways…. [Page 247].
“[To paraphrase, Tolstoy did not ask], What does the future hold in store for us? but, What shall we do and how shall we live?” [Page 275].
- My 90-year-old former professor, Donald, recently expressed this spontaneous, earnest opinion of human nature. He has given me permission to cite him. The purpose of the quadrune mind model is for us to help each other replace our “ignorance” with constructive awareness and “stupidity” with compassionate wisdom. In any event, his comment inspired me to conduct my informal, in-person survey of people’s descriptions of “human nature,” for which I am grateful to him. I thought it might be interesting to compare the answers with the respondent’s age, gender identity, and self-description.