Ming the Mechanic:
Consensus and Consent -- Making Synergic Decisions
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 Consensus and Consent -- Making Synergic Decisions2002-12-23 03:17
8 comments
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Timothy Wilken writes:
"Today, mind and brain scientists have made enormous progress in understanding how the human brain works. There has been many surprises in these recent advances. But the biggest shocker is that the brain doesn't decide what to do. Decision making is not controlled centrally in the brain. The mind-brain appears to act as a coordination and consensus system for all the cells, tissues, and organs in the body. The brain doesn't decide to eat. The cells of the body decide to eat, the brain coordinates their activity and carries out the consensus will. Our human brain stores the gathered information from the body's sensing of its environment, the brain presents opportunities for action reflective of both the sensing of environment and the needs and goals of the 40,000,000,000,000 cells it serves. The brain is not the leader of the body, it is the follower of the body. It is a system that matches needs in the body with its sensing of opportunities to meet these needs by action within the environment. The brain is a 'government' that truly serves its constituents– the cells, tissues, and organs that make up the human body. The apparent " I " is not real. It is really a " We ". ... If the human body can using unanimous rule democracy and synergic consensus can organize and coordinate the actions of 40 trillion cells so totally that we identify the whole organism as a single individual, then we humans should be able to use these same mechanisms to organize our species and solve our human problems..."



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8 comments

24 Dec 2002 @ 01:04 by shawa : Aha!!!
"The brain is not the leader of the body, it is the follower of the body." - very interesting re/"new" leadership, isn´t it ? The "new" leaders FACILITATE (versus "create" or "dominate" or "control") group consciousness? (That´s what I like so much about NCN, the possibility to experiment with exactly that.)  

24 Dec 2002 @ 03:38 by ming : Servant Leadership
I find that particularly interesting too. Facilitating, nurturing, trying to help those things to happen that are trying to happen, or that are already happening. As opposed to commanding and directing and ignoring the good stuff that is already cooking.  

24 Dec 2002 @ 11:40 by strydg : neurophysiology
neuro scientists discovered about 40 years ago that electrical changes occur in the brain and body prior to the so-called conscious decision-making process in the brain. Robert Becker, M.D. talks about this phenomenon in his books and other research. these electrical changes, I think, induce neuron depolarization/function - they make a way for the nerve cell to go. this current is essential to function - it is the condition necessary for nerve function. it's the conditioning factor. in the macro sense it is where we are conditioned for our various functions. therefore, our decisions and subsequent actions are determined by pre-conditioning. we are pre-conditioned by family, education, society, and by other environments created by our "tools." religion is a very potent conditioner. the operating system for these programs is the survival mechanism which is an aspect of the autonomic nervous system. It's automatic. in the West we say we have no control over it. in the East they say meditate and you can learn control. when survival is threatened we go into the automatic conditioning mode. this is a very stressful state if maintained too long or if chronically induced. Hans Selye wrote about it after doing classic research. maybe if we all sent GWB and his administration a copy of our favorite meditation tape/cd...  

24 Dec 2002 @ 13:20 by cho : The mistaken belief in "I"
I found this salient: "The apparent " I " is not real. It is really a " We ". ... " Just last week my Buddhist study group had a refresher on this subject, refuting the imputed "I", and it was good to revisit the mechanics of this fundamental delusion ... the "I" is not in any of the many parts of my body, nor is it in the whole assembly ... nor is it in the sensations that arise ... nor is it in the judgements I come up with according to those sensations!

A thought that often comes to mind is how, having come up with an explanation for why I did this or that, the explanation seems to displace the actual history. This, for me, demonstrates how I'm comulsively clinging to convenient or "useful" representations ... as though some comforting excuse is as valuable or even more valuable than a wholesome situation. Apparently I'm more interested in building a shrine to my sovereign ego than in having a healthy and productive life! Now, how perverse is /that/?

I recommend the set of sites clustered around {link:http://Solutions.synEarth.net/|Community of Minds} . (I found that the Fuller-think gets a bit pompous at times, but it really is an intriguing set of concepts.)  

26 Dec 2002 @ 14:38 by newdawn : consensus
so how do "we" change the direction of our thought and therefore conscious action to a more positive and beneficial outcome? Is meditation then the answer or the releasing the need for control?  

26 Dec 2002 @ 15:30 by ming : Changing direction
Well, if it is a we, the right thing to do would be to not try to impose hastily formed decisions on everybody, without checking whether they fit. Consensus would be that we pay attention to all the needs and wishes, and a scenario emerges where they're satisfied. So, I suppose it means we need to listen better to ourselves, which meditation is good for, of course. And, probably, if we listen well, and we notice what we're really feeling and experiencing, there is so much more intelligence there than we really expected.  

27 Dec 2002 @ 00:16 by strydg : meditation
is the best way - the only way? - to release the need for control. over time meditation practice de-programs us. deep, muscular relaxation, a method for inducing the meditative "state," immediately tells the autonomic nervous system that attention and not reflex action is all that is needed in the moment. this kind of attention/awareness/consciousness grows with practice. from here we can envision all of our needs and wishes and allow a way for them to come into our lives. until now we have created our reality without wit - why not do it with eyes open, believing that the best for all is possible -- necessary. then, when we go into our day and do our work we will be attentive to the opportunities to realize/actualize the best for all, and we can work to achieve it. imagine more and more people doing this. isn't that what we're doing now in some way?  

27 Feb 2006 @ 14:09 by Ron Rasch @66.158.158.140 : consensus system
my name is ron rasch and I am not a professional programmer, but I am trying to suggest a better way to create consensus system. Here is my idea.

http://home.graffiti.net/consensussystem:graffiti.net/  

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2014-09-26 15:15: Brevity
2011-11-06 21:33: Counting what counts
2011-01-23 13:46: Authenticity
2010-08-23 01:31: Semantic Pauses
2010-06-27 02:28: Doubt
2009-10-25 17:04: Opinions, perceptions and intuition
2009-10-15 08:32: Abstraction
2008-06-29 16:47: Complicated and Complex
2008-02-20 16:39: The universe as a virtual reality


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