Confronting the Confounding Cosmic Mind of Homo Sapiens

[Judi Lynn]

Guy P. Harrison
About Thinking

Personal Perspective: Pondering our paradoxical brain.
Posted December 16, 2022 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

These are strange times for the supremely bright and most nonsensical lifeform on Earth. Even as our knowledge swells exponentially and we think our way deeper into the universe’s most challenging mysteries, we somehow balance all of it with stellar stupidity. Medical quackery sells as if that thing called science never happened. Conspiratorial craziness surfs a perfect wave called the internet. Millions hail imbeciles as political saviors and venerate deranged celebrities.

Objectivity is difficult at ground zero, but the human mind does seem to be accelerating on two diverging tracks. It’s as if a race between human genius and the village idiot has gone supersonic. Perhaps there can never be a winner because nature doomed us to be as senseless as we are smart. Or maybe we are only a few societal tweaks away from intellectual elevation. Who can say? For basic self-awareness, however, it is important that we at least acknowledge the opposing extremes to which our thoughts now carry us. Confronting this problem might even inspire, or shame, more of us to want to do better.

First, we must reject the common belief that our cognitive crisis is about dim people vs. bright people or the educated vs. the uneducated. If only it were that simple. To varying degrees, the problem is everywhere because all minds are prone to daily bouts of perfect clarity and self-inflicted folly. Misperceptions and muddled assumptions are standard features of the human condition. Even the best of us are clever and gullible throughout life, often from one moment to the next. We all believe silly things, what matters is how many and how silly.

Humankind is unique, the impossible species simultaneously worthy of awe, applause, tears, and ridicule. So aware and so lost, we are the bipedal paradox, the big-brained airheads. How can one lifeform be this empowered by intelligence and so crippled by self-inflicted folly? In our defense, we are not the first wave of high-functioning clowns. But how far back must one go to land on a time in which the hordes of humanity were not stumbling over their fantasies? All the way, probably. Maybe one of the first humans was also the last rational human. I can imagine such a person, living a million years or so ago in the form of Homo erectus. Perhaps she or he was too focused on perfecting an Acheulean handaxe and feeding a fragile fire to entertain a long list of confusions and delusions of the sort that cloud our minds today.

More:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/about-thinking/202212/confronting-the-confounding-cosmic-mind-of-homo-sapiens