ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY ENLIGHTENMENT ENLIGHTENED SELF-AWARENESS SUMMARY November 2, 2022 Note = This brief essay summarizes the neuroscience facts, which are presented with more detailed evidence in other files on this website. At the fundamental biological level, your brain is the real cause of your mind and your mind is the real cause of your natural willpower, creative imagination,and adaptable self-identity. This new fundamental brain knowledge can give you a better realization of how awesome it is to be alive today. For most people at most times in history during the past 10,000 years of known human history --- since the last ice age --- living conditions were much worse than they are now. This is a true fact even with the shutdowns caused by the international covid crisis during the past three years. Fortunately, our medical knowledge and health services are infinitely better now than they were at any other time in history. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of Americans are still dismally unaware of the fact that their brain and their mind can be understood to cause a powerful set of mental functions. They consist of your natural willpower skills, your creative imagination skills, and your memory consolidation skills. These same skills can give you a new commonsense reasoning expertise. And by using the new relational logic, you can improve your mindful self-identity and your secular self-control. Regrettably, "brain ignorance" has been one of the primary causes of thousands of years of male-dominated autocratic political and social power structures. The great empires (or series of kingdoms with a common language) were created by the combative tyrannical mostly male leaders of royal kingdoms, and nation-states during the past 10 thousand years of human history. Since the rules of the historic empires were created by =authoritarian rulers to guide group behavior, there was a harshness built into them from the beginning, going back to Hammurabi's brutal "eye for an eye" code of conduct in Babylonia long before the common era started 2300 years ago and the modern world started about 500 years ago. The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes first proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 BCE to 1750 BCE ("BCE" = Before the Common Era). Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code of laws was a collection of 282 rules that were established primarily to be a standard for commercial interactions. It included fines and punishments to meet the harsh ancient requirements of ancient empire justice. WHAT IS ENLIGHTENED SELF-AWARENESS NOW? There is now conclusive evidence that your enlightened self-awareness is really your mind's "self-constructed" perceptions about reality. In other words, your natural willpower is based upon a combination of internal instinctual biological causes and external learned cultural causes collectively remembered --- fused or integrated --- in your brain's long-term memory consolidation system in your hippocampus. Fortunately, with the invention of the newest and most powerful computerized microscopes of the 21st century, educated human beings can now "see" into the physical structures and "watch" the mental functions activated inside living human brains. This look at the nano-microscopic molecular level is possible because of the incredible technological innovations of humanity during the past one hundred, and especially 30 years of well-financed brain research. It has finally provided solid scientific evidence about how human brains process information and create emergent human minds due to education and the use of modern languages! During the past few years, scientists have learned how human mental functions operate in the 3 1/2 pounds of soft brain tissue located deep inside our boney skulls in the most protected area of our heads. This new brain knowledge can help you learn how to optimize your own mind's mental functions for surviving and thriving in an ethical context of cooperation and mutual happiness. NUMBER ONE: Therefore, the first basic presupposition of this website is that your natural willpower and creative imagination and adaptable self-identity are all true facts --- not illusions. That last declarative statement means that your perceptions are just as "objective" as the earth and sky even though you experience them as being "subjective" because of the way that you define your core self-identity with the words you use from your American English language. As you mature and desire to understand more about the accuracy of your learned language for describing reality, you can choose to be enlightened by questioning your previous childhood and youthful assumptions and opinions about the nature of reality. As a child and as a teenager, you initially absorbed ideas (words) from your family and community cultural influences without any capacity to understand their truth or untruth. At that time your language was reinforced by your family and others closest to you in your extended family as you grew up and became an adult. Unfortunately, part of your original thinking process was probably locked into the earliest words that you were forced to absorb from your family and the social influencers in your birth community. Usually, your earliest perceptions as a child remain all scrambled up in your adult memories. However, if you were taught critical thinking skills and critical reading strategies as you grew up, you may have learned to differentiate true declarative statements about reality from false statements! But today with the social media algorithms controlled by big corporations out to make fortunes from your ignorance and apathy, you may need to learn a whole new set of skills to protect yourself and family. Now it is very easy for ruthless unethical business enterprises and politicians with extreme political views to have their views amplified by the simple click of a few buttons. Nevertheless, your brain and body are made up of the same kinds of chemical compounds as everything else on Earth. However, they are in different combinations of the molecules of the basic organic and inorganic elements on Earth. Humans are made up of special organ systems that evolved over three and one-half million years and especially during the past 300,000 years of proto-human evolution to produce us Homo Sapiens with our complex human intelligence 60,000-40,000 years ago. During the past 5,000 years, human languages become more complex as city populations increased in size and trade with other cities and then empires around the Mediterranean Sea grew. Then, more significant ideas had to be expressed with new words based on new technology and devices for communicating human knowledge. It is important to understand this basic humanistic assumption in the most positive emotional way. This is necessary because there have been so many "false ideas" about the genuine characteristics of your brain and your mind that were built into the structure of the American English language in the past few hundred years from many world-wide sources. For about 500 years, since the end of the Middle Ages and the Ancient World about 1450 CE, the traditional obsolete words that described the body and its parts continued to be used. They are still used today, more than 100 years after scientists discovered what the human brain is really made of and what it is made for in evolutionary terms which is simply to keep the body alive! The ancient practice of keeping obsolete ideas inside one's long-term memory consolidation system, as though they are still relevant, makes communication about brain structures and mental functions difficult to explain. Because of the class and caste-oriented cultural taboo issues today, millions of Americans are still "brain-ignorant" meaning that they are unable to discuss the true functions of their own brains and minds in public using a scientific secular humanistic vocabulary. Therefore, it is imperative that the new scientific insights about the description of the brain's physical structures and the mind's mental functions need to replace ancient obsolete ideas about the so-called "spiritual" or "mythical" descriptions of the brain's structures and the mind's mental functions. For example, modern science has proven that the ancient assumption that you have an "immortal soul" is untrue. Unfortunately, that ancient faith-based belief was and still is based upon ignorance and a misunderstanding of how human brains are influenced by both thoughts and feelings. The idea of a "disembodied soul" is simply not a logically true fact for educated people in the 21st century. However, it is a true fact about your creative imagination, since you can imagine that you are a "spiritual being" in whatever size, shape, or color you desire and that god is a male or female or has no gender at all! This has been proven by the hundreds of billions of human beings for hundreds of thousands of years who have made "false inferences" about the true relationship of their own human nature and the Earth and the Universe. In the historical record, there are countless examples of all kinds of gods and goddesses with all kinds of special alleged superpowers. During the Bronze Age, the miners and metal workers had gods that represented Thunder and Lightening since they lived in active volcano and earthquake southeast of the Mediterranean Sea. Also, there are all kinds of definitions of heaven and the afterlife. This is a fact about the ability of the human imagination to fantasize (imagine unreal things) about serious topics such as the meaning of life and death and even about the traditional alleged afterlives. But none of these mythical religious fantasies are assumed to be "real" from the perspective of modern scientific values. Science requires presuppositions, observations, and the logic-based scientific method for thinking and searching for evidence explained by transparent reasons. ASSUMPTION NUMBER TWO: The second basic presupposition of this website is that, humanistically speaking, the source of your natural willpower is your brain-centered, emotion-driven secular self. Your physical brain produces your mind's mental functions, which you can manipulate with your language skills, memory functions, and creative imagination. However, implicit gender biases and implicit racial prejudices can interfere with trusting relationships and self-confidence in your life. Simply stated, if you have unfounded opinions about brain functions instead of genuine brain knowledge --- based upon scientific evidence, then your overall opportunities for having healthy relationships and thriving as a human being might be limited. If you feel severe limitations about your potential and self-confidence, you can change your attitude by applying your natural ability to reason. Further, you can use your knowledge-based scientific logic instead of false common-sense attitudes you may have learned as a child or youth or even an adult! Then your attitudes, decisions, and behavior are probably controlled more by ignorance and magical thinking than by educated humanistic enlightened self-awareness! WHAT IS BRAIN PLASTICITY AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? This is because systematic disciplined focus on any subject is made possible because human brains have the quality of neuroplasticity (synonym = "plasticity"). This spectacular mental ability means that human brains can change through rational thinking and heal emotional damage by examining their childhood memories with special care. However, to change your attitudes and behavior, you must understand how to use your mind's mental functions to do systematic "hard" thinking in order to create the kind of new habits and behavior you want to develop. The word "plasticity" is commonly used to describe this natural capacity of the human mind to adapt to complex factors and complicated issues. But your brainpower potential is useless if you will not use the physical properties of your brain to influence your mind's further ability to take control of your adaptable secular self. Surviving and mating are just two of the most important purposes of being alive. The third most significant purpose is to learn how to cooperate and collaborate in order to keep the human species alive on the only known habitable planet in the Universe! ASSUMPTION NUMBER THREE: Therefore, the third basic presupposition of this website is that it is important to acknowledge at the beginning of your serious brain study that human brains have been poorly understood and brutally treated throughout most of human history. There are many horrible examples of inhumane slaughter and stupidity in history that should never be forgotten, such as the big religious examples of the Inquisition and the burning at the stake of scientists. Moreover, the longest empire in history, which flourished from 3,300 BCE to 32 BCE, the Ancient Egyptians, drained the brains (through the royal noses of their dead pharaohs and their social elites who could afford royal burials) before their bodies were mummified! Other major human organs were preserved in canopic jars placed next to the entombed sarcophagus (fancy casket) filled with a dead body wrapped in salted and tarred cloth (mummy). This ingenious way of burying dead leaders and their associates was believed to give them all greater chances of surviving their own personal deaths and even altering the country's governmental structure for eternity! Also, the Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (c.384 BCE to 322 BCE) famously assumed that the functions of the human brain originated in the stomach. This incorrect assumption stalled the development of medicine in the Western world for most of the 11 centuries of the Middle Ages along with the iron grip of the Catholic religion in the form of the Holy Roman Empire during that time. During that whole medieval time period, ignorance caused immense amounts of misinformation (the perpetuation of false ideas) about human potential was wrongly considered to be common sense for the masses. For example, words were created to name human organs such as "heart," which is now known to be a pump that pushes blood and hormones around the body and into the brain. However, at that time it was falsely thought to be the cause of human feelings, especially the source of romantic feelings! It is now known that idea was a flagrant historic mislabeling of a major human experience. That tragic mistake of misconstruing the function of such an important major human body part as the heart-pump as being the source of romantic feelings has been a significant cause of the ignorance about other brain structures and body functions. This mistake has been made ever since the beginning of written human languages (over 5,000 years ago) until the past 100 years for most people who have ever lived on planet Earth! Even today in 2020, there is vast ignorance about brain functions and brain chemistry. The dismal ignorance of simple brain chemical facts is universally pervasive in spite of the fact that the most important brain-facts (physical structures) and mind-facts (intellectual and emotional functions) can be understood easily by any person with an "open mind" who has a "growth-mindset" and who has had the awesome opportunity to have enjoyed a secular humanistic education during the past --- either at home or at school. Fortunately, all healthy human beings can learn to manage their own mental functions more intelligently for better results. They can learn how to cope with the gaps or blind spots in their basic knowledge. In addition, all healthy people can learn to think their way out of being controlled by "fixed mindsets." For example, children are usually forced to learn such fixed mindsets. as they grow up in our traditional religiously oriented Puritanical American society. Any effort to change from a "fixed mindset" to an "open mindset" about one's own creative mental functions (mental force) takes lots of cognitive effort. ASSUMPTION NUMBER FOUR: The fourth basic presupposition of this website is that your brain and your mind can now be understood to be two different living things. By nature they are biologically interconnected in order for you to be alive and self-aware with the personal free will to choose among alternative ways of behaving. In other words, they are inseparably connected together throughout your lifetime! This new scientific distinction can now be described accurately without being obfuscated by foolish ancient ideological or religious false ideas such as the traditional western assumption that your "mortal brain" is somehow separate from an imaginary "immortal soul." Such ignorant assumptions have been held by the vast majority of people throughout the ancient world, from the end of the last Ice Age (Typically defined as the Pleistocene Epoch that began about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 BCE). This is the time farming began and cities were invented in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. By 3,200 BCE, written language was beginning to be used for religious and government rituals and trade. Significantly, Egypt had the longest stretch of royal hereditary institutions (leadership dynasties) for about 3000 years! The Ancient Egyptian empire lasted until the death of Cleopatra in 32 BCE, which is considered the end of pharaonic Ancient Egypt. From then until the end of the Roman Empire in 450 CE ["Current Era"]; and throughout the middle ages from 450 CE to 1450 CE just prior to the beginning of the Renaissance, there was almost total infinite ignorance about human brain functions. Nobody used words in polite or educated conversations that described brain structures and mind functions! Only a few independent thinkers out of more than a billion people who were alive during that whole long period of time could imagine the immense value that their brains gave them for controlling the exploration of our planet Earth. During that long period of many centuries, many different words were used to describe many different foolish ideas about the imaginary causes or purposes of human behavior and the human brain. Even during the past 500 years --- up until now --- virtually all humans have been ignorant about the complex structures of their brains and the specific manageable functions of their minds! Because of the Renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Scientific Revolution of the 19th and 20th and 21st centuries could emerge in full force. To clarify, it is important to remember not to be confused by ancient ideas about physical brain structures and mental mind functions. The ancient ideas about human behavior were thought up during ancient times, long before there was an English language or the invention of modern science. Vast numbers of people have believed in imaginary myths and fallacious magical thoughts to explain the causes of their own behavior and life itself with almost no true knowledge until the Enlightenment and Scientific revolutions of the past three hundred years. However, the discovery of neurons and their essential causative functions in producing human consciousness and human memory functions was a spectacular landmark of human achievement by the late 1800s CE and early 1900s CE and then throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In spite of the marvelous discovery of the purpose of brain and mind functions, there is still very little reliable brain knowledge accessible to ordinary people in the public and private education systems of America and the mass media worldwide. Most so called "educated" individuals have had very little knowledge to understand how they can control their own mental functions and behavior after the 1990s, which were the U.S. Decade of the Brain and the early 2000s when brain research became better funded by the U. S. Government. However, after 30 years of focused government and private institutional brain research, and with discoveries about the brain becoming more accessible in the mass media and social media and in scientific text books and journals and DVDs, reliable brain information is now more widely available in bits and pieces to the general educated public. From kindergarten through college, everybody could be learning how to control his or her own behavior more efficiently and effectively by learning several skill-sets. They could be learning how to turn their emotions on or off by using their own natural willpower potential and by knowing how their mental functions actually work. Now there is a vast consensus among scientists and therapists in democratic countries in addition to the U.S. In addition, scientists are now able to use computerized microscopes and laser beams to "see" human brains actually functioning at the nano-microscopic level. Now, finally, after dozens of millennia scientists can identify and measure brain functions and brain health. Also, they can explore other issues related to the brains and behavior of all kinds of animals and plants at the tiniest levels of human perception with the aid of powerful computerized microscopes. Also, the new technologies are helping doctors "look" at neurons and their connections, which are synapses. The current huge government-funded science effort to understand the brain's connectome is designed to help sick patients who have brain disorders and diseases so they can be treated better. Also, as a side-benefit, the research will be able to help everybody live longer healthier lives in the future. Remarkably, a new pivotal understanding of the evolution of consciousness has resulted from research using the fossil record. By studying the history of the existence of ancient single-celled and simple-celled plants and animals, new evidence is providing a fascinating timeline of the development of conscious life on Earth. Now, after 350 million years of animal consciousness, there is new evidence of the emergence of “distance vision” in some marine animals such as squid and octopuses. This discovery has shown how the use of conscious decisions or "strategies" helped various sea creatures locate and capture food using the evolved visualization capability (over hundreds of millions of years) of their incredible eye structure. From then on in the timeline of the history of the development of consciousness, some species could strategize and think of alternative ways to catch prey up to 20 feet away, instead of having to eat whatever they bumped into! Now, in the early 21st century, you can learn what is true and what is not true about your mental functions. You can choose to learn the new brain vocabulary, which was invented by professional brain scientists working tirelessly for more than a century, from the late 1800s until now. Today, it is known that your brain makes possible your own enlightened self-awareness based upon modern scientific understandings about evolution by descent. Now there is no need for ancient traditional faith-based beliefs in the magical powers of supernatural beings to make human meaning possible! When children and adults are properly taught about deep history in a secular humanistic educational context, they can grow up with the scientific language that they need to thrive in a multiplicity of ways. That is because human life itself is multi-dimensional, depending upon how brain savvy people are. This essential awareness of a person's mental forces (brainpower) depends upon how many important brain words (derived from science) there are in educated people's personal vocabularies. You can think about your own resilient adaptable self-identity as craving consilience with all of nature and the universe. "In science and history, consilience is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can converge on strong conclusions" and thus provide authentic verification of existing scientific facts. [Source of definition = Wikipedia] For example, the idea of consilience is now an active principle in neuroscience, where cognitive neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and psychologists, as well as philosophers and artists can collaborate in dynamic teams to analyze all the new brain data. Then they can comprehend what it means and explain it to other scientists and the general public, so everybody worldwide will be able to understand the truth, using the English language! Also, it is essential to remember that when you optimize your brain knowledge and focus your curiosity, you will be using 100% of your mind's willpower to become more self-aware. This phenomenon requires the interaction of your prefrontal cortex and your limbic system in new synergistic ways. This secular humanistic realization can help you fulfill your most passionate plans for achieving a meaningful life. At the highest levels of intelligence, you have four major mental functions: creative willpower, lucid thinking, logical reasoning, and long-term memory consolidation. These powerful civilized psychological forces (intellectual prefrontal cortex-driven brain) can override and control your primitive biological urges (emotional amygdala-driven brain) in order to satisfy your current mindful intellectual and emotional needs. For example, your creative willpower, can change what you are feeling and thus help you postpone instant gratification long enough to see the big picture of future possibilities. In other words, your behavior can be managed better when you understand just how profoundly your brain's physical structure makes possible your mind's mental functions. It is especially important to learn how the "executive function" of your prefrontal cortex interacts with the dopaminergic neurotransmitter circuit in your limbic system (reward center) in order to motivate you to choose altruistic social behavior and also provide you with pleasure. The philosophy behind this new educational approach to explaining the importance of understanding your brain's structures and your mind's functions is called the "whole brain" model of cognitive training. You can use this model to optimize the functions of your mind and be more focused on your most important personal values and social goals. Then you will be able to avoid useless social behaviors and dangerous addictive habits. RECAPITULATION OF MAJOR IDEAS Today, a science-oriented way of thinking can be the basis for establishing a rational method of increasing trust in democratic principles, rather than relying on the mistaken obsolete religious ideologies of the primitive pre-scientific past. It is time to replace obsolete spiritual and economic ideas with informed reasonable democratic programs which foster equality of opportunity and lifelong learning. The function of your creative willpower can help you understand the principles of "intellectual freedom" and the "right to read" for everybody. Children can grow up to become responsible people with rational altruistic utilitarian social values, when they are empowered by secular scientific educations. There is no need anymore for superstitious thinking to explain human brainpower since we now have genuine knowledge about the mind's mental forces. You can now delete the false memories related to magical mythical religious words, such as "soul," that might be in your childhood memories. Then you can start thinking about more constructive rational scientific humanistic ideas, such as whole brain cognition, enlightened reasoning, and creative imagination. You can learn to use each of your powerful mental forces to strengthen your willpower and conquer anxiety and negativity. In this new context, certain national economic policies should be changed, which favor only a small percentage of our American society. Many economic policies give huge monetary advantages to only a small part of our population and the rest of the world. The 15 brain flash cards, which introduce the 15 major brain ideas, all have quick links to files, which are named DETAILS and SOURCES. Also, essential QUOTES from the perspective of science (concerning the sources of human consciousness and free will) are documented with references to neuroscience, biology, and psychology books. The quotes are directly accessible from the Quotations about Human Consciousness link on the homepage of this website. To conclude, the text on the 15 brain flash cards promoted on this website with the 15 brain diagrams, provides an easy way to learn the basic details required to understand your mind's interactive functions and adaptable self-identity. They provide you with a sensible comprehensible scientific context for managing the new brain knowledge and your new brain vocabulary. With the new knowledge and skill-sets, you can re-define yourself and your infinite human potential: one idea at a time. To predict the future, you may have to create it yourself! RECOMMENDATION: You can re-read this summary according to a reinforcement schedule, such as a few hours later and a few days later and then several times in the next week or two. This strategy can help you take advantage of the power of the spaced-repetition method of memorization. Such deep introspection can strengthen your willpower and increase your self-esteem by changing your adaptable self-identity. REMEMBER ALWAYS: You Are Your Adaptable Memory! instantly return to: TAKE 15 STEPS ON THE HUMANIST STAIRWAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT or instantly return to: WEBSITE INDEX ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas®