people don’t think. And: Gut brain

This is bugging me.

The ‘Age of Reason’ is bullshit.

There’s no ‘reason’ involved.

It’s just a bunch of tall tales, yarn-spinning, whatnot.

It’s making up an explanation after the fact, to suit the needs of the moment. Expedience.

And people do it ALL THE TIME, and they NEVER SEEM TO HAVE ANY CLUE WHATSOEVER THAT THEY’RE DOING IT.

***
Something happens.
They make up a story to explain it.

The explanation may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with what really happened.

And PEOPLE BUY IT!

WHY? This is absolutely mystifying, baffling, to me.

It’s almost as if people care more about the STORY than the ‘TRUTH’.

So, what good IS the ‘truth’, anyway, if nobody ever pays it any attention, or USES it, in any way, shape or form?


"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."~George Santayana

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See, there's the cortex (or neo-cortex, or frontal cortex, or whatever the heck it's called); then there's the limbic (connective) brain; and the 'brain stem' or primitive, lizard brain.

That's my quick, layperson's, thumbnail sketch, pinning my assumptions up there so I can look at them while I try to figure this out.

As I understand it, people react FIRST from their 'gut'. Literally, the hind brain triggers a flood of chemicals which charges the body via the gut's interpretation of these chemical 'signals' (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine (?), adrenalin, etc.) based on audio/visual/tactile/whatever input, which is (nearly) instantaneously compared with stored 'data' in the amygdala (your basic 'trauma' filing cabinet, imagine flipping through an entire lifetime's stored experience in a nanosecond).

So the body sort of 'jerks' into this literal, visceral reaction where the 'gut brain' responds BEFORE the so-called 'thinking brain' has a chance to kick in. (And apparently this 'gut' brain is pretty amazing - the 'gut reaction' is a very real, literal thing, that is FAR more powerful than the relatively weak, much newer [evolutionarily speaking] 'rational' brain.)

Gut/brain links:
The Enteric Nervous System: The Brain in the Gut
A brain in the head, and one in the gut,
The Brain-Gut Connection

[After a very superficial scan of these links, it's clear that *my* 'thinking' and/or 'understanding' on this subject is fuzzy as best. Ach. Well, it's a place to start. I'll leave the following speculative stuff as is, maybe write/think more on it later. After all, it *does* say, 'thinking out loud' right up there in the blog's sub-title. :-) ]

***
The limbic brain, which is second-in-command, as I understand it, or possibly operates in parallel? but developed later in the history of humanity, reads relational cues, which are *connected* to the most basic, raw 'fight or flight' signals, but are slightly behind them in importance. That is, if you have to choose between running from the tiger or saving your partner, you'll most likely choose running, first. But if you're old enough and/or experienced enough to recognize your partner's value in your *continued* survival, the limbic brain will fire off some kind of signal *a split second behind* that received from the hind brain, and you'll be faced with the classic dilemma.

That's where, I'm speculating, the neo-cortex comes in: To sort out, and explain, the complicated thought processes associated with 'deciding' what matters most.

I'm guessing the cortex is where we store things like 'precepts', beliefs, etc. 'Moral codes,' basic 'emergency instructions' to live (literally) by so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel everytime we're faced with one of these rock-and-a-hard-place choices.

***
The problem is, what with the Age of Reason and all, people THINK they think more than they ACTUALLY do. What people BELIEVE is 'thinking' is actually a sort of - spin doctor. An after-the-fact manipulator that puts a 'good face' on the hind brain's 'decisions' so that the limbic brain can calm down and not worry about the damage our selfish, raw survival instincts have done to our relationships.

(Remember, I'm making this up as I go, cobbling it together out of a million random thoughts based on things I've read, heard and conjectured. A stew, a patchwork quilt. Hopefully *not* a Frankenstein's monster.)