ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY HUMANIST FAMILY BRAIN STUDY DISCOVER YOUR ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ INTRODUCTION - SECTION 2 - DETAILS WHAT DOES THE ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ SYMBOL MEAN? November 25, 2021 The Alphabetical Brain™ Symbol represents the unique relationship between your brain and the 26 letters of the American English alphabet. Since English is currently the universal language of business and science around the world, it is the lingua franca of our modern era. The Alphabetical Brain™ Symbol stands for the importance of understanding the causal relationship between your brain's physical structures and your mind's mental functions. The 26 letters of the American English alphabet enable you to create complex thoughts to control your specific unique behavior in all kinds of social relationships and emotional situations. The fact that the same 26 letters of the alphabet became so universally adaptable that they can now symbolize the hundreds of "sound bits" necessary for the survival of our contemporary American democratic empire is truly astonishing! Your brain is the most complex matter in the universe and your alphabet activates the 3 1/2 pounds of organic brain tissue that is the source of your consciousness and self-identity (secular-self). And because of the brain's essential significance in human life, it has been protected by a very tough boney skull that has been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. Since scientists have been studying the human brain during the past 150 years, many new discoveries have been made about the brain's structures and the mind's functions. And during the past 30 years, hundreds of new brain-related words have been created by scientists to explain how the brain's most important interactive physical structures produce the mind's most important interactive biochemical mental functions. The scientific discoveries have been verified consistently by thousands of experiments done with the most powerful computerized microscopes ever invented by human beings. The new humanistic linguistic model presented on this Alphabetical Brain™ Vocabulary website can provide you with the essential cognitive tools you must use to manage your mind's full potential. There are no others! As you learn more about yourself at the most objective cognitive level, you will be able to construct a concrete foundation for your various levels of abstract reasoning when thinking about your brain and its mind. The ideas you will learn can empower you to be more influential with others because they are universal in their impact on human belief systems or values. You will learn your place among the plants and animals of the world. This is because humanistic values are associated with the new brain words. You will be learning how important it is to become a life-long learner and how much fun it can be as you "construct" new emotions to harmonize with the new brain facts and ideas. You can easily understand the names and meanings of the main parts of your brain. With the new factual brain knowledge, you will be able to understand what relationships and what interactions among your mental functions actually make possible your natural willpower and creative imagination. Then you will be able to make choices to conquer your doubts and confidently maintain your sanity. You will then be able to predict and create the future for yourself and increase your own curiosity about the meaning of life. In addition to benefitting you specifically, the new brain vocabulary can benefit everyone else whether they choose to adopt the new brain vocabulary or not. Since the new words can help you optimize your willpower and imagination, they can provide you with virtually unlimited opportunities in the future to add lasting value to your life. The following chart and its description are being repeated from Section 1, since it is vitally important to know at the beginning of your study of the brain and its phenomenal mind, why the emphasis of this website is on the connection between the function of your working memory and the function of your long-term memory. These two essential functions are shown on the following Circle of Consciousness Symbol© as Brain-Idea #1 and Brain-Idea #15 : CIRCLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SYMBOL© You may notice that Brain-Idea #1 and Brain-Idea #15 are next to each other on the circle. This can remind you that they are inseparably connected inside your brain. Since your "working memory" is located in your prefrontal cortex and your "long-term memory" is located in your hippocampus, they must be permanently connected by a lifeline of healthy neuronal pathways. Otherwise, you would not be able to be self-aware or to talk coherently! This fundamental fact explains what generates your "sense of self" ("secular self" or "self"). In short, this website explains what causes your adaptable self-identity. It is the scientific words themselves that have allowed us to discover the most relevant scientific meanings for what our brain structures are and what our mental functions do. They make it possible for you to flourish in the future. HISTORY OF LANGUAGE AND CONSCIOUS SELF-AWARENESS It is important to realize and remember that because of our stable American English language alphabet and ever-changing multi-cultural vocabulary, your ability to communicate with others is extremely versatile and very adaptive. This is a trait that you share with all other healthy human beings whether they have this modern sophisticated cultural knowledge or not. However, your brain is a fragile organ and the thinking process is very susceptible to the "fake news" and the political propaganda distributed in an exaggerated hyperbolic way by the mass media and social media. The specific fact that your brain's processes have to interact so intricately to produce your consciousness, should be evidence enough to indicate that you have to resist threats to your mind's functions by ruthless non-democratic political bullies. It is possible that the assumptions, dogmas, doctrines, and platforms of many social and political institutions --- including religions, cults, and authoritarian political organizations, such as white supremacists --- pose a grave threat to your mental (including emotional) stability. Therefore, since they have the potential to weaken or destroy the lifestyles of law abiding citizens in constitutional democracies, they should be understood to be a major danger to your survival as a pluralistic secular peace loving humanist. Specifically, you must create your own "personal essence" or "social identity" by learning the new brain knowledge. The scientific method of learning new knowledge has proven that the flexible functions or dynamic mental forces of your mind are the genuine sources of your natural ethical willpower and your creative imagination as you reason about your choices and remember the results of your decisions. To personalize this assumption, your brain is the main source of all the meaningful things in your life — whether you believe this brain fact or not or whether you consciously decide to optimize your mental functions or not! This optimistic expansive growth mindset of self-empowerment can help you increase satisfaction on a daily basis --- as you improve your life throughout your lifetime. It is worth repeating. The new brain vocabulary describes how your sense-of-self (secular self or self) emerges from your mind's mental functions and how you can use your adaptable willpower and creative imagination to flourish in the future. This positive humanistic attitude is in contrast to the traditional puritanical values and behavior defined by the restrictive "fixed mindset." The "fixed mindset" way of thinking and behaving makes many people vulnerable to being confused, alienated, anxious, or depressed, especially if they do not know how their brains are wired both physically and emotionally. That simplistic resistive attitude toward change can lead to "brain-lock," which is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or “OCD.” Treatment of this serious emotional disorder often requires rigorous cognitive psychotherapy and some form of self-reprogramming through intensive group counseling. In the past, people living in the ancient world — before 1500 CE ("CE" means Current Era) — did not have access to widely understood democratic political words and the kinds of scientific brain words that we have now. It was not until the Enlightenment that the human brain began to be studied scientifically. Only then was it possible to have secret discussions (after unlawful human dissections were done by medical researchers) to explain how human brains work. Finally, today it is now known how significant human brains are and how consequential brain-related words are for providing accurate ideas to explain human nature and behavior. Fortunately, we live in a far more inclusive democratic social system, where women and ethnic minorities and immigrants are becoming more "equal opportunity" partners with white men in the operation of our American government and society. The gradual change in the entrenched institutionalized political structure of social classes or "caste system" in the United States during the past 100 years was primarily possible because of the advances in science and technology and education. The invention of the moveable type printing press and all sorts of other machinery since the mid-1400s CE, have made possible the wider discussion of new ideas. This progress has made life much easier for educated people, especially in the United States and in other ruling social elites all around the world. Our alphabet-powered language now contains an incredible number of important life-sustaining ideas. Our American English alphabet, has been developing for almost three millennia, since its beginning about 800 BCE in Greece. Notably, it features four vowels that were added to the Phoenician language to create the Classic Greek Language. Many cultures have used that basic linguistic structure for thousands of years until now when our American English has been supplemented by the addition of thousands of new scientific words. The first 9 books of the following 13 books cited in the information box are linked to detailed outlines and descriptions. They contain glimpses into the profound impact that the alphabet has had on the quality of human life on earth. These references describe the great combined influence that the invention of the alphabet and written language have had on human behavior and the expansion of self-awareness: Book 1: ALPHA BETA: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World by John Man. Barnes & Noble Books, 2000 (312 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews ALPHA BETA Book 2: HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention by Daniel L. Everett. Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2017 (i-xviii, 330 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN Book 3: LANGUAGE: The Cultural Tool by Daniel Leonard Everett. Pantheon Books, 2012 (351 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews LANGUAGE Book 4: LETTER-PERFECT: the Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z by David Sacks. Broadway Books, 2004 (416 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews LETTER PERFECT Book 5: THE LETTER AND THE COSMOS: How the Alphabet has Shaped the Western View of the World by Laurence de Looze. University of Toronto Press, 2016 (218 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews THE LETTER & THE COSMOS Book 6: THE STORY OF ENGLISH IN 100 WORDS: by David Crystal. St. Martin's Press, 2012 (i-xxi, 260 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews THE STORY OF ENGLISH IN 100 WORDS /CENTER> Book 7: ADAM'S TONGUE: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans by Derek Bickerton. Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009 (237 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews ADAM'S TONGUE Book 8: LANGUAGE HOAX: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language by John H. McWhorter. Oxford University Press, 2014 (182 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews LANGUAGE HOAX Book 9: THE STORY OF WRITING: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms by Andrew Robinson. Thames & Hudson, 2007 2nd ed, 1995 (235 pages) Click or Tap to Outline and Reviews THE STORY OF WRITING Book 10 THE TALKING APE: How Language Evolved by Robbins Burling. Oxford, 2005 (i-ix, 286 pages) Book 11: THE TALKING BABY: Helping Your Child Discover Language by Margaret Maclagan and Anne Buckley. Finch, 2016 (i-viii, 183 pages) Book 12: THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruthlen. John Wiley & Sons, 1994 (i-xi, 239 pages) Book 13: THE STORY OF ENGLISH: Companion to the PBS TV Series. by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. Penguin, 1992, 2nd ed (394 pages) [also Viking/Penguin, 1986] (note =The four unlinked book outlines [#10-#13] and reviews will be online soon] As cities became larger trading centers, computation and communication systems became more sophisticated for thousands of years. Written languages were first formulated in the ancient world by the Mesopotamians and Egyptians when cuneiform symbols were used to denote numbers for measuring commodities for trade inside and outside their empires. The primary trading products were grain, beer, bread, wine, and pottery for everybody and luxury goods for the top social elites of the eight distinguishable empires around the Mediterranean Sea before 1200 BCE. That is when all hell broke loose among the leading trading powers due to famine, drought, volcanoes, and wars, which changed the power-sharing structure around the Mediterranean Sea forever. Nevertheless, in earlier more peaceful times, the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols were translated into hieratic script, which was the cursive form of hieroglyphic writing. It was used especially by the pharaonic priests of ancient Egypt for most of the 3,000 years of the empire. They wrote on papyrus leaves, which were beaten into a form of paper. That practical need to write down ceremonial proclamations and rules for everyday behavior made communication easier for the royal families and priestly class to manage the rest of the great majority of uneducated Egyptian people. However, only about 1% or fewer of the Egyptian population could read and write during most of the 3,000 year span of Ancient Egyptian history. Written alphabetical symbols were created about 3200 BCE (5200 years ago) for business and also for describing religious myths and political exaggerations for propaganda purposes. Mandatory rules of behavior and religious rituals glorified the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh-kings and perpetuated their dictatorial control over the masses of people. Their writings included spelling out the magical spells used on the walls of temple art and tombs. Their priests and artisans had to fulfill rigid codes designating proper burials in the futile hope and promise that rulers could transcend death and enable everybody else to become immortal in the process too. The hieroglyphs have recorded their belief in superstitions and magical thinking for more than 50 centuries. In addition, the demotic script was the ancient Egyptian script of and for the common people. It was used in handwritten texts from the early 7th century BCE until the 5th century CE. It was derived from northern Egypt's forms of the hieratic script. It was used primarily in the Nile Delta. [Source: partly from Wikipedia] Our own American English has evolved for almost 3,000 years since our alphabet, was originally created in 800 BC by the Greeks. This process of innovation and progress in the development of written language was accelerated by the invention and proliferation of written materials by the Gutenberg Press starting in the middle of the 15th century. After the moveable printing press was invented and perfected, new social and technical ideas were created by larger numbers of people faster than ever before in human history. That is why the mathematical term "exponential" is now used in the 21st century to describe the fast speed of the creation of new knowledge. It also describes the huge impact that scientific knowledge has had and is having on all aspects of the global growth of national economies and technologies. Historically, our language continued to evolve from the influences of Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and ultimately the Old English language during the past two thousand years. As written language grew in its intricacy and complexity, especially since the 15th and 16th centuries of the Renaissance; and the 17th and 18th centuries of the Enlightenment; and the 19th and 20th centuries of the Industrial Revolution our American English alphabet exploded in relevance during the modern Scientific Revolution with the addition of thousands of new scientific words. This trend has been spiking upward with the new secular basis for science, democracy, and economic growth. Now the profound influence that the earliest written alphabets have had on human culture, consciousness, and self-awareness is well-known by educated liberal thinkers. And in addition, we now have the scientific symbols of the new brain vocabulary to represent the literal truth about mental functions. Now you do not need to accept the traditional mistaken magical mythical fictional religious and spiritual metaphysical opinions of the primitive and violent past. They were perpetuated by kings and ruling elites to confuse citizens of their genuine birthright to be dignified citizens with growth potential! In fact scientific thinking (the scientific method) and religious thinking (the golden rule) were united social forces in the development of the modern world during the past 500 years and especially during the growth of the United States since the Revolution in 1776 and the creation of our Constitution. The most significant changes in world history have occurred during the past few hundred years because our founders, most notably Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Burr and the Adams brothers. They established many classic Greek and Roman democratic ideals (limited as they were known then) after they won the Revolutionary War against King George, III, and the huge naval fleet of Great Britain. Thereafter, our country has been in the forefront of developing the democratic ideal that all hard working educated (white males) should have equal dignity and opportunity. Since then, our country has absorbed hundreds of millions of immigrants and enlarged our American English language until today the words “Black Lives Matter” can motivate millions of Americans to unite and act politically! With that brief social context, it is now time for you to absorb the full impact of the influence of our alphabet on human thinking. Now in the context of the history of alphabets and the realization that language is essential for complex human consciousness, you will learn how your own "sense-of-self" depends upon how well you think and communicate with other people. In other words, the quality of your socializing with real people and the way you think about imaginary people can make big impacts on your perception of your adaptable self-identity. Whether you fully realize it or not, through the reading of books (literature) or the viewing of movies and seeing pictures or reading text on the screens of phones and tablets and computers from the internet or in theaters or listening to words from radios, your conscious self-awareness can be altered, word by word and picture by picture and sound by sound. These aspects of language can fill your memories with stories that you remember about your past and stories that you imagine about the future. For a well-rounded complete adult education in our digital global society, you need to integrate the new brain knowledge into your memories so you can take advantage of all the human achievements of the past — and also add to them! The best way to become emotionally grounded in reality and to stay there is to focus on the immediate moment. You can learn to live in the present — the hear and now! However, this strategy can be difficult when you are being constantly distracted by excessive amounts of information, misinformation, and disinformation. However, the new brain knowledge emphasized on this website includes ways to properly evaluate information for its value to you. The 15 brain- ideas model uses thousands of words in your personal active vocabulary that are already a significant strategic resource for you. In addition, you can use thousands of additional words from your passive vocabulary to make important inferences from the humanistic context of meaning in what you see and hear. So the flexible American English language has enormous value for your continuing lifelong learning. The good news is that the new brain words can influence your behavior as you become more aware of how important they are to you for adapting your behavior. Then it will be easier for you to motivate yourself to achieve your personal goals in a changing turbulent social situation that includes the current chaos and uncertainties of the covid pandemic. In addition, the reliable meanings of the new brain-related words emphasized on this website can dramatically improve both your IQ (Intellectual Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient). When you add these two kinds of cognitive knowledge, you end up with an essential third type of intelligence called SQ (Social Quotient). If you learn how the 1,000 trillion synaptic switches of the 100-200 billion neurons in your brain's connectome (nervous system) work, you will be able to control your adaptable willpower and creative imagination. The interactive connections among the billions of neurons are described in a logical pattern of facts on this website. The neuronal pathways connect the dozens of organs in your brain that cause your self-awareness of your own consciousness. For a few moments, you can do an important thought experiment by asking the question: "How do babies and children learn to express themselves?" The answer is that they use their brains to increase the size of their vocabularies to increase their intelligence and improve their personalities. This fantastic series of facts can be observed on a daily basis if you watch babies and children grow up. Their vocabularies naturally increase as they use the alphabet to figure out how to understand words and to create sentences with which to think. The fact is that newly born babies have no capacity for verbal language. They can only cry or use body language to gain attention. This fact provides objective evidence of the importance of the cultural basis of language. This means that adults must teach children how to speak and read language and get meaning from it. The developmental stages of the language acquisition of babies and the achievement of their grammatical milestones are phenomenal up to age five and even beyond. The total neurons in a young child's brain continue to be "pruned" or trimmed until puberty at about age 12 to 14. That means billions of neurons are lost as neuronal memory circuits become established by synaptic plasticity. Then routine daily behaviors can flourish during puberty when so many other bodily parts are changing so quickly. It is important to remember that older children enthusiastically seek to name things with words and to follow rules of behavior as they develop their vocabularies and intelligence and personalities. However, we usually take the changes in the language skills of children for granted. This is because the developing self-awareness of babies and children are such slow persistent processes of brain development over many years. Think of your personal vocabulary as your special super-power. Imagine that it can transform your conscious self-awareness and your adaptable self-identity. Any time you choose to use your natural willpower and creative imagination you can improve your ability to reason logically and make fulfilling ethical decisions. This aspect of developing and expanding your own self-awareness, and especially that of your children, should be obvious. However, language skills are often taken for granted and usually adults fail to develop them further after their formal academic education. That is why this website emphasizes using your critical thinking skills and critical reading strategies when you search this website to optimize your potential for developing a robust growth mindset. For example, the book, Cognitive Neuroscience of Language, whose bibliographic facts are in the following information box, provides ample evidence of the positive impact that language can have on the behavior of both young and old alike: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF LANGUAGE by David Kemmerer. Psychology Press/Taylor and French, 2015 (599 pages) Click or Tap Link to Outline and Reviews COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF LANGUAGE However, in order to integrate the new brain knowledge into your own long-term memory system and to use it with your working memory system to transform your self-identity, you will need to focus on the 15 brain-ideas presented on this website until they are completely learned. You can memorize them until they become part of your unconscious habitual behavior. Then the ideas will be ready whenever you need them to augment your willpower and creativity. Then you will be able to purposefully use your free will to optimize your natural willpower and creative imagination to solve problems and achieve your goals. The separate "sensory" and "motor" neuronal pathways and connections within the dozens of major organs of your brain and nervous system can be understood only when you have learned the accurate scientific words necessary to describe your brain's structures and your mind's functions. Mysterious spiritual metaphors sound good because of the grammatical "reification structure" of the English language. But those particular traditional religious and spiritual metaphors do not define reality accurately. All historical hunches and religious metaphors purported to relate to human behavior, which involve abstract ancient metaphors from past history, are wrong since the ancients knew nothing about the true functions of their brains. Those faith-based beliefs — with no objective evidence to support the belief in supernatural powers especially involving the claims about eternal life — must be questioned and reevaluated in the here and now. Human brains do not need the help of mysterious superhuman gods or goddesses to solve their problems. Ancient people had nothing but guesses and superstitions because they lacked our modern scientific method and widespread public education. They were dismally ignorant about their brain functions and most of their other bodily functions. On the other hand, the context of this new modern secular "evidence-based" brain knowledge can give you the ability to think and feel and predict the most probable outcomes of your present actions and your planning for the future. Within this context, you can use your own natural willpower and creative imagination to succeed. What your rational secular mind can conceive, you can achieve: if you know how your brain works! SUMMARY: The Alphabetical Brain™ Symbol represents the interactive connections among your brain's physical structures that cause your mind's mental functions. It symbolizes the importance of the 26 letters of the English language alphabet to human consciousness. The symbol shows the English language alphabet curved around the top of an image of the Left Hemisphere of a human brain, which is the location of the language module in most people. RECOMMENDATION: You may print this essay and read it and edit it by adding or deleting brain ideas. Then you can read your edited version by using an effective reinforcement schedule such as the flash-card technique or the spaced-repetition method of memorization --- or both --- to speed up your learning of the new brain ideas and their interactions. Such deep introspection can strengthen your willpower and increase your self-esteem and dramatically change your adaptable self-image or identity. REMEMBER ALWAYS: You Are Your Adaptable Memory! instantly go to: Introduction - Section 3 - Details WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO LEARN ABOUT YOUR MIND'S FUNCTIONS? or instantly return to: INTRODUCTION TO INDEX SECTION 2 - SUMMARY LINK ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas©