Millions of years ago, as Tomasello argued, when animals roamed the earth smarter animals such as apes were pretty good at coming up with innovative solutions to common problems. What these animals are not good at is passing down their discoveries to future generations.  Nonhuman animals don’t seem to have the impulse to teach. Although one can teach a chimpanzee sign language, the chimp won’t teach sign language to his fellows so that they might talk to one another.

Humans are different. Humans begin their life far behind other animals. Humans have a diffuse set of genetic instructions, so when they are born, and for years afterward, they can’t survive on their own. As the great anthropologist Geertz put it, “Man is an unfinished animal. What sets him off most graphically from nonmen is less his sheer ability to learn (great as that is) than how much and what particular sorts of things he has to learn before he is able to function at all.” 

Humans succeed because they have the ability to develop advanced cultures. Culture is a collection of habits, practices, beliefs, arguments and tensions that regulates and guides human life.  Culture transmits certain practical solutions to everyday problems- how to avoid poisonous plants, how to form successful family structures.  Culture also, educates the emotions. It consists of narratives, holidays, symbols and works of art that contain implicit and often unnoticed messages about how to feel, how to respond and how to divine meaning.

An individual human mind couldn’t handle the vast variety of fleeting stimuli that are thrust before it. We can function in the world because we are embedded in the scaffold of culture. We absorb ethic, institutional and regional cultures which do most of our thinking for us. A cultural construct is like a language can change the way people see the world. In this way, culture imprints some patterns in our brains and dissolves others. A culture is not a recipe book that creates uniformity. Each culture has its own internal debates and tensions. Alasdair MacIntyre points out that each vital culture contains a continuity of conflict, which allows divergent behavior. 

The human race is not impressive because some geniuses produce individual masterpieces. The human race is impressive because groups of people create mental scaffolds that guide future thought. No individual could build a modern airplane, but modern companies contain the institutional knowledge that allows groups to design and build them.

The philosopher Andy Clark writes “We build designer environments in which human reason is able to far outstrip the computational ambit of the unaugmented biological brain.” Clark continues that “Unlike other animals, humans have the ability to dissipate reasoning- to build social arrangements that contain the bodies of knowledge.”

Human brains, Clark believes, “are not so different from the fragmented, special-purpose, action-oriented organs of other animals and autonomous robots. Yet we excel in one crucial respect: We are masters at structuring our physical and social worlds as to press complex coherent behaviors from these unruly resources. We use intelligence to structure our environment so that we can succeed with less intelligence. Our brains make the world smart or to look at it another way, it is the human brain plus these chunks of external scaffolding that finally constitutes the smart, rational inference engine we call mind. Looked at that way, we are smart after all- but our boundaries extend further out into the world than we might have initially supposed.”

Apart from taking into account the impact of culture on our extended mind while structuring our physical and social worlds we should also try to think in networks. Society is not necessarily defined by classes. It is not defined by racial identity. Society is a layering of networks. In these networks, trust is habitual reciprocity that becomes coated by emotion. It grows when two people begin volleys of communication and cooperation and slowly learn they can rely upon each other. Soon members of a trusting relationship become willing to not only cooperate with each other but sacrifice for each other. By becoming an idea-space integrator in these networks- standing at the junction between two mental spaces-, we can find our destiny and role in a world of discordant networks and cultures. In any society, there are clumps of people doing certain tasks. Yet between these clumps there are holes, places in between where there are no people and there is no structure. These are the places where the flow of ideas stops. By occupying space in these holes we could span the distance from one group of people to another- reach out to discordant clumps and bring ideas together.

IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is often being equated with mental ability. The reality is that intelligence is a piece of mental ability, but it is not the most important piece. People who score well on IQ tests are good at logical, linear and computational tasks; yet to excel in the real world, intelligence has to be nestled in certain character traits and dispositions. To draw a parallel, a soldier may be phenomenally strong. But unless he possesses courage, discipline, technique, imagination and sensitivity, he probably won’t survive amidst the chaos of the battlefield. In the same way, a thinker may be very smart, but unless he/she possesses moral virtues such as honesty, rigor and fair-mindedness, she probably won’t succeed in real life.

In his book ‘What Intelligence tests Miss’, Stanovich lists some of the mental dispositions that contribute to real world performance: “The tendency to collect information before making up one’s mind, the tendency to seek various points of view before coming to a conclusion, the disposition to think extensively about a problem before responding, the tendency to calibrate the degree of strength of one’s opinions to the degree of evidence available, the tendency to think about future consequences before taking action, the tendency to explicitly weight pluses and minuses of a situation before making  decision and the tendency to seek nuance and avoid absolutism.”

In other words, there is a big difference between mental force and mental character. Mental character is akin to moral character. It is forged by experience and effort, carved into the hinterland of the mind.

The difference between mental force and mental character can also be described in terms of clocks and clouds. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be defined and evaluated using reductive methodologies. You can take apart a clock, measure the pieces and see how they fit together. Clouds are irregular, dynamic and idiosyncratic. It is hard to study a cloud as they change from second to second; they can best be described through narrative rather than numbers.

One of the great temptations of modern research is that it tries to pretend that every phenomenon is a clock that can be evaluated using mechanical tools and regular techniques. This is surely true of the study of intelligence. Yet, mental character is cloudlike as it is not so stable and easily quantifiable.

Raw intelligence is useful for helping one solve well-defined problems. Mental character helps one figure out what kind of problem one has in front of oneself and what sort of rues need to be used to address it. So, giving people the rues they need to follow to solve  problem is not the same think as coming up with the rules to solve that problem.

Mental force and mental character are only light correlated. As Stanovich puts it, “Many different studies involving thousands of subjects indicated that measures of intelligence display only moderate to weak correlations with some thinking dispositions (actively ope-minded thinking, need for cognition) and near zero correlation with others (such as conscientiousness, curiosity, diligence).

The great thinkers seem to possess mental abilities that go beyond rational thinking narrowly defined. Their abilities are fluid and thoroughly cloudlike. Einstein, for example, would seem to be an exemplar of scientific or mathematical intelligence. He addressed problems by playing with imaginative, visual and physical sensations. “The words of the language as they are written or spoken don’t seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.” He told. Instead, his intuitions proceed through certain signs and clear images; in his case the elements are of visual and muscular type.

Wisdom doesn’t consist of knowing specific fats or possessing knowledge of a field. It consists of knowing how to treat knowledge: being confident but not too confident; adventurous but grounded. It is a willingness to confront counterevidence and to have a feel for the vast spaces beyond what’s known.

The temptation and reflex for cynicism is usually more common than a natural responsive optimism. Cynicism is indeed the enemy of optimism.

According to this HBR blog post, the capacity to be a natural recipient of ideas and other peoples' optimism is what makes for the ultimate optimist: to try and see everything good in an idea before seeing anything bad.

Here's a practical tool for the skeptic or cynic in all of us: the 24x3 rule:

-       To wait for 24 seconds the next time you hear an idea for the first time, or meet someone new, before saying or thinking something negative. This reinforces a foundational skill of good optimists and good leadership. That basic skill is listening.

-       Next, to wait then for 24 minutes to give more considered thought to the idea and think more carefully of the many reasons why it might actually work, why it might be better than what is out there

-       Finally, to work towards the ability to wait 24 hours — one single day — before pondering or verbalizing the cons against something.

Although this sounds not so easy, the 24x3 rule is a is just a good reminder that a prerequisite of optimism is to have a willing suspension of disbelief.

Mastering the 24x3 rule can also make you a more inspirational leader to be around. In increasing your generosity to receive optimism, you will be rewarded with new possibilities that others have prematurely dismissed.

Brook argues in his book The Social Animal that the vast majority of us have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we're influenced instead by the following factors most of the time without becoming aware of it:

·         peer pressure;

·         impulsive and reactive emotions;

·         a deep and bottomless need for admiration and status;

·         overconfidence in the present;

·         excessive worry about the future;

·         the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and

·         precious little capacity to delay gratification.

According to Brook, people overestimate their ability to understand why they are making certain decisions. They make up stories to explain their own actions even when they have no clue about what is happening inside."

"The unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind," Brooks writes. Tragically, this interior domain remains largely a vast unexplored territory full of resources and potentials we haven't begun to tame or to tap.

Instead of drawing on our rational faculties to more deeply understand our interior impulses and motivations, we too often try to rationalize, justify, minimize and explain away the unconsciously driven actions we've already taken.

In short, we have an infinite capacity for self-deception. Opinions, in turn, become polarized and rigid.

What Brooks argues for, is something he calls "epistemological modesty" — substituting humility for hubris. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Modesty is warranted, Brooks argues, because there is so much of ourselves we don't and can't know. "People with this disposition believe that wisdom begins with an awareness of our own ignorance," he explains.

What Brooks lays out in The Social Animal is a path to a more meaningful life — one that balances action with introspection, confidence with restraint.

Describing the person who aspires to such a life, Brooks is transparently autobiographical when he writes, "He (tries) to remind himself of how little we know and can know, how much our own desire for power and to do good blinds us to our own limitations. He pays attention to the sensations that come up from below. He makes tentative generalizes and analyses ... He continues to wander and absorb, letting the information marinate deep inside."

Our actual identity of who we are is vastly bigger than we thought- we are moving from a strictly personal consciousness to a conscious appreciation of ourselves as integral to the cosmos. Technically, we humans are more than homo sapiens or ‘wise’- we have the capacity to know what we know. We are each completely unique yet completely connected with the entire universe. There will never be another person identical to any of us in all eternity- we are absolutely original beings. At the same time, sine our existence arises from and is woven into the deep ecology of the universe, we are completely integrated with all that exists. Awakening to the miraculous nature of our identity as simultaneously unique and interconnected with a living universe can help us overcome the species-arrogance and sense of separation that threaten our universe.

We are shifting from seeing our journey as a secular adventure in a fragmented and lifeless cosmos without apparent meaning or purpose, to seeing it as a sacred journey through a living and unified cosmos whose purpose is to serve as a learning system. Our primary purpose is to embrace and learn from both the pleasure and pain of the world. If there were no freedom for authentic discovery, there would be no ecstasy. In freedom, we can discover our deeper identity and purpose within a living universe. 

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

These are more than poetic and metaphorical descriptions. Because we find the notion of a living universe emerging across cultures and millennia as well as from modern science, there is compelling evidence that it forms the basis of a powerful perceptual paradigm- one that will open up enormous opportunities for the human family as we are pressed to create a sustainable future for ourselves.

One of the most exciting theories in physics is the hypothesis of the mysterious all-containing 11^th dimension described as the M-theory which may hold with it any number of parallel universes. We have no awareness of the existence of this dimension although it may be only a millimeter away from us.

The web of being as a matrix of invisible relationships is an inconceivably complex, multi-levelled network of dimensions nested within dimensions, with information continually being exchanged between these dimensions at the molecular level, at the level of our communication with each other, at the level of planetary life and at the level of galaxies.

 According to Baring*, these dimensions carry the memories of the entire experience of life on this planet: our individual memories and experience are encoded in a deeper field holding the memory of all orders of life over billions of years.

Whatever name may be given to this ground, all aspects of life (visible and invisible) are connected to each other and interdependent: all life is one.  In light of this new understanding, the physical brain is not the source of consciousness but the exquisitely fine-tuned vehicle of, an invisible reality in which we all exist , this means through which it can come to awareness of itself in this material dimension. It could be said that the universe can be recognized as a unified organism of extraordinary design reflecting a massive Creative Intelligence. Maybe, we can come to discover that we are not exploring a universe out there, but a universe that ‘we’ essentially already were. Somehow these experiences of cosmic order might lead us into a deeper embrace of our own reality. As Paolo Coelho wrote in his famous book ‘The Alchemist’, we have the power to change the collective dream. Could this new vision of reality that is emerging into our awareness enable us to change the collective dream as he suggests?

* Baring, A. (2007) ‘A Metaphysical revolution? Reflections on the Idea of the Primacy of Consciousness’ .In Dossey L. (Ed.) ‘Mind before Matter’ NY, USA: O Books.