The world is created in your mind, today

In a world that seems to be spinning out of control, where our thoughts and the thoughts of advanced artificial intelligence are becoming indistinguishable, we are at risk of delusion.

I believe the only people that can do something about this are the ones alive at the moment. You and me.

We need to think, and do. Thoughts without actions are nothing, and actions without thoughts can be dangerous.

Here is my thought of the day, my do is to post it. Your do might be to read, or not. To share or not to share, that is the question.

"The world is created in your mind, today

- And in case you haven't noticed, every human is a part and has to learn how"

Language has given us the ability to formulate thoughts about ourselves, each other and time, among other things.

Dogs do not seem to think about yesterday, or tomorrow.

They are practising mindfulness, being in the moment, probably not because they are descendants of Buddha, rather because they cannot do otherwise. Blessed creatures with ADHD: sleep, play, eat, beg, play, cuddle, pee, love, sleep, scratch, crap, bored, sex, eat, but with 100% focus and never seeming anxious about how that may play out tomorrow.

You may claim that the squirrel collecting nuts is doing so thinking about the winter, and it seems to prove they have planning and memory of location, but it is argued to be an evolutionary programming, they will do so also if transferred to a tropical location.

Aha, you say, if they can be programmed by evolution, then why are not we, why do we need to be taught the concepts of "nuts" and "storing things for the future" before we can prepare as well as a squirrel.

It seems, we have not, primarily, evolved to cache food

It seems, we have evolved into slow learning conceptual organisms that seek to build tribes and societies that explore, invent, teach and refine caching strategies for food, safety, time, memory and distracting, pleasuring or fulfilling our "lives".

And, we do so by simulating a future in our minds, and in that future we simulate a "we" that we imagine in multiple scenarios, and believe we “choose” to act on, or believe we "stop ourselves" from acting on.

The very fact that all our actions are based on simulations of future scenarios in our minds, that these simulations may or may not hold up to "reality" at all, and that we need to "learn" how to "act" sets us aside from every other organism in a million ways.

Most of them not in synergy with the rest of the planet, rather the opposite. If one squirrel collects all the nuts in the forest, just to have them, and then forces the other squirrels to trade them for back rubs and hot tub games, we would regard it as deranged, since mother nature and father evolution seems to provide a wonderful village of learning that every organism finds its part in the puzzle through.

But not us. Alas.

We need to learn how to clean ourselves (and many don't) how to cook, how to plan for the future, how to interact socially, how to mate, how to travel. Our incredible super power is handing down earlier generations accumulated knowledge and tools, and continue using them in the next generation as if we have respawned and levelled in a computer game.

"Ha, in this level we don't need to catch and tame and ride horses, we can fill "cars" with "fossil fuels" or "electricity" and go "anywhere", if we can afford to, which we have to learn and hope that we are not born into the part of the forest where greed-squirrel has all the nuts. That would never happen. That would be against mother nature.

We seem to be the slowest learning offspring on the planet. Even empathy, is a learned skill to some degree. As is "society" and "social skills" and being "educated" and "civilised".

Yet we all look similar on the outside beyond variations in colour, and other minor features.

But, we cannot tell a sadistic brute from an enlightened spirit by its physical appearance. To some degree we may be able to intuit it, but we can only know for sure by observing its actions.

In the same way we cannot know the difference between the simulation of the "world" and what is "desirable" or "should be avoided" what is "worth striving for" and "worth delaying gratification for" and "fighting for" until after. The same goes for our simulation of "self". Both as in what we are "capable" of, "deserve" or "have a right to".

This is why the self-exploration industry, ranging from philosophy to spirituality and religion and self-actualisation books dominate the knowledge sharing industry, along with fantasy simulations of possible and impossible worlds as in entertainment through stories told, filmed and shared in social media. Many of us seem to prefer to be entertained rather than enlightened.

Our need for connection and comparing ourselves to correct our self image as to what is possible is reflected in the infrastructures of cities, tourism and social media.

Our greed-squirrel genes are reflected in the ownership and manipulations of these resources, which will create an impossible forest when the "have" squirrels own too much and the "have not" squirrels too little. Then there will be mass starvation or some kind of revolution to reset the system.

Here is where we get into politics, again

We have to learn how to live together, and there are many greed-squirrels among us with little or no care for the rest of the forest, or future generations.

We applaud this, because we believe "success" at the cost of the forest and the future is "fine" because maybe we can be one of the successful.

So we create "politics".

The process of making decisions about how power, resources and responsibilities are distributed in a family, tribe, clan, group or society.

It includes three main parts:

- Who gets what

- Who decides

- How these decisions are made and enforced

Simple, right?

It depends on which squirrels define them and enforce them.

This is a Think & Do Lab

Most human actions seem to start with a thought, or an instinctual reaction, sometimes in combination with lack of impulse control. This is happening right now, in your head. Or somewhere.

If you leave it to the other squirrels to think about who gets what, who decides and how this is enforced, you are abstaining from your given part of this cake, this planet, this world. You are shying away from your possibility and responsibility and part in creating its future.

You may rightly say

"I didn't ask to be born, and all of this is too much, I get anxious and stressed if I have to take the red pill and enlighten myself. Maybe even do something about it. I prefer blissful ignorance, because in my part of the world, I can."

True.

Until you can't

And on that merry note, dear fellow human cohabitating my timeline, should you care to reflect on this I am eager to hear your thoughts. Maybe do something about them because there is no future, there is only "now" and it starts with what you think, followed by what you do. That, is the next now, and it follows the first.

If you came this far, and you think anyone you know may enjoy this, please share it.

The Lab: https://ulfsandstrom.substack.com