This is to be able to fully discern what "really" means "the real" and "the unreal", the "concrete" and the "imaginary", "the objective" and "the subjective".
All these concepts are at first glance obvious and clarifying, but when we analyse them with more determination, they begin to expose all their limitations, and possibly, their intrinsic falsehood.
As an antecedent of these ideas, I recommend having read the previous chapters, and , among them, especially the last one, number 14, "The Ethereal Nature of the Mind".
The human brain is a "representator" of the world and a "creator" of "concepts" and "realities".
Thus, it constitutes a "virtual reality machine" that allows us to coexist and interact, in a progressively influential process, for the better and the worse, with the world of which we are part.
These concepts and "virtual realities" give the people who own these brains a more or less reliable base on which to stabilise their existence and their ability to interact both with inanimate elements as with other living beings that exist.
This is essential, as it allows people to have margins of confidence regarding their present existence. The past, on the other hand, constitutes the comparison parameter, with what will come.
What has all of the above to do with "true reality"? Little, nothing, or a lot, depending on the perspective and quality of the analysis we are able to carry out, but probably never with "all".
The most ambitious definition and description we can imagine about reality, "exact, perfect and absolute", that we can try to accomplish, will always be not more than a utopia, given that we are biological beings subject to a permanent process of adaptation to the world where we exist.
This world contains an enormous number of variables that can affect us, up to a point that they are a lot more than those that our adaptive evolutionary process has allowed us to perceive, understand, and manage.
This, despite that indirectly, using scientific knowledge and technological tools, we have been able to discover, characterize, and partially handle and control material objects that are disproportionately bigger and smaller in relation to our body size.
We have also been able to understand, control and use forms of energy, that we did not know about until very recently, through the development of machines and instruments that have allowed us to manage variables that are beyond our direct grasp.
As an example of the above, we can cite the use of electricity, as a source of lighting, and even earlier, as the basis of the first telecommunication system, the telegraph. Later, with the use of the electromagnetic waves, came radio and television.
With the digital revolution, computers and the internet, which at this point constitute a resemblance, for planet earth, although still a very primitive one, of what the mind is for brained beings, all the way up to what is its most developed expresion, the human mind.
Thus, with the internet, planet Earth today has something that it did not have before, which is an electronic (energetic) process all over its surface and beyond, that, as if it wanted to imitate a neural network, provides to its human inhabitants (that in this comparison would be the equivalent of neurons), the capacity to have permanent communication and interaction.
In other words, it is as if our planet was developing its own brain, and a certain "mental capacity".
The capacities of the human brain of our days, make possible all the human accomplishments of this 21st century, and are the highest expresion of the evolutive process of mankind, and they imply processes that go beyond what is concrete and material.
That classic disquisition, which often reaches very emotional and even revengeful limits, of opposing what is "humanist" to what is "scientific", will end up losing all relevance.
This is because as human knowledge advances, it will show us the true value and relevance of the fact that what is mental is an energetic process, based on specialized organic matter, that has infinite potentialities in terms of generating a powerful conceptual interpretation of the world, which will continue to endow us with increasing capacities in our ambition to understand and manage "everything".
Included in this "everything" are not only the elements of the material world, but of the energetic, spiritual, social and cultural realms, in all their manifestations, present, and future.
Why is it that the idea of creating a human brain by means of a non biological machine produces such skepticism in many people, and in fact, is something that will most probably never be achieved?
This is because of the fact that in any machine there is a lack of the "will" that urgues and moves living beings, already present even in the most simple living individuals, and that in humans reaches a very powerful and complex spirituality.
As powerful and complex as the neural architecture, which we are at present days just beginning to be able to study in depth.
That motivation, that only exists in living beings, and is transmitted from antecesors to descendants, has never been able to be crated "de novo" by humans.
It is innate to the essence of life, emerging from the "divine breath of the creator", according to those who are religious, and inexplicable for agnostics and atheists.
It is in this spirituality, in this will, in the capacity to enjoy and suffer, to strive to get along "better than worse", that based in an ever growing consciousness , characteristic of humans (which imply self awareness and indirect awareness of the consciousness of others), that humans reach their highest expression.
Thus, this spirituality, unique to humans, is born from the essence of the biological being, constituting in its origin and potential scope a hitherto unfathomable mystery.
This spirituality, which contains all our self perception and emotionality, is finally, what gives true meaning to our existence, being the ability to "perceive reality" in permanent contrast to "the imaginary world of ideas and concepts", (but by no means less "real"), the instrument that allows it to reach its full meaning, despite its historically limited and imperfect performance, both at collective and personal levels.
So, we must understand and assume, even if its difficult, that we must abandon the old quarrels that perpetuate the antagonism and rivalry between the scientific and the humanistic, the material and the mental, the technological and the spiritual.
Some might wonder, then, given all the progress of human knowledge, why we continue to interpret the world and its "reality", each one in such a diverse and often opposite ways, which provoke discussions, conflicts, violence and wars?
This is also part of the human essence, of the necessary diversity of appreciation of the world, that originates in our primary brain. So each of us "feel and appreciate everything" in a unique way, as we have insistently pointed out in our Theory of Human Behavior.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the general balance is always positive, culture and civility of humans are in continuous expansion and strengthening, no matter how slow and torturous our path might be.
All the components of our world and our existence are necessary and complementary, they reinforce mutually, and allow us to advance in our quest for knowledge and wisdom, the most important for human beings
All this without forgetting, at the same time, that this crusade reaches all its relevance and significance only because it is at the service of our spirit, which, being immaterial, is however, the most "real" and important thing that we have.
Jorge Lizama León.
Originally published in june, 2012.
