Could a fundamental misconception about the mind be severely limiting our ability to discover and innovate?

Most in the industrialized world will readily admit that we are emotionally and incentive driven. What if this seeming fact is missing another essential element—a third factor that is just as indispensable?

That is, what if there is another natural phenomenon that can’t be categorized as either incentive or emotional, yet completes a three-dimensional image of human behavior? If such an essential element existed, it would cause great dysfunction within our society—not to understand and examine.

If we are missing a third piece of the puzzle, without an awareness, complete acceptance, and mastery of the third element, we, as a race, would endlessly cope with circulating pestilence. A host of symptoms would naturally occur because of our misconception about ourselves and others.

Inaccuracies within a fundamental belief, embraced by society as fact, perpetuate unending hardships. It’s the natural universe’s way of saying, “You’ve embraced an incomplete or inaccurate theory; here are the side effects for your poorly thought-out, embraced belief.” These are societal ills of all sorts; they are the symptoms that we don’t have a fundamental belief quite right. Yet, as part of our hardwired makeup, if we embrace an idea, the human being will contort in order not to lose control and feel inferior (*see the end of the article for more about embraced beliefs).

As always, it’s important to be interdisciplinary when examining a belief. Let’s attempt a thought experiment about a society with a fundamentally flawed embraced belief:

Imagine we had the ability to observe and interact with a race that believes the earth is flat.

Entering the village, you immediately take notice of a statue—a man and woman dressed rather plainly. You read the plaque next to the statue: “All praise given to Zona and Zana, the two that make our universe operate. Without their divine, enlightened truths about our evenly level world, we’d be lost.” You see their pictures as you walk around the village and begin to understand how this group is guided by superstition.

You walk along the river, where you see a large, dam-looking structure. Balls of a sort circulate around the dam. You begin to realize that this enormous structure is an electrical generator; you begin to wonder if the path they took was entirely bad. You’ve never seen a generator quite like this, and you realize that the design is quite impressive.

Soon you come upon their library. You sit next to a man in his 70s who is reading a book. He looks over the book at you and starts a conversation.

“Another nice day; I saw you through the window enjoying the generator,” he says.

“Yes, quite impressive. Did you hear about the local woman that’s trying to build a flying machine?”

“Ha! Won’t people ever learn? The world is just too complex; there are too many natural forces working all at once. There are too many competing natural forces. Even if she glides for a while, she’ll just crash; they all do. No one will ever really understand how to fly; it’s general science 101,” he replies.

“Did you hear about those rocket experiments? Why do you think they appear to curve when we shoot them into the air?”

“That’s easy: the land is flat; gravity pulls it back down.”

“Maybe the earth isn’t as perfectly flat as we believe?”

“Ohh… dear Zona and Zana,” he says, slightly shaking his head. “You’re not one of those circle Earthers. Those guys are all nuts! That whole theory has been debunked over and over. We’ve empirically substantiated the truth; there is endless evidence-based practice proving how perfectly flat the Earth is. I’d even say it’s almost like a perfect piece of glass… if you saw it from far enough away!”

“Hmm?”

“Didn’t you hear about the study at Zana University? There are so many studies to prove the divine flatness. Now, you’re not going to sit here and keep questioning this?” the man says, sounding frustrated.

So…

If such a world existed, we know they’d be plagued by endless hardships—and yet that flat-earth race would always wonder why life was such a struggle. Endless difficulties would ensue: poor clocks, terrible navigation, terrible flight performance, a failure to understand rocketry, no satellites, no real weather prediction, and on and on.

High-IQ professionals would spring up in industries sustained by a passion for their jobs to deal with an unexplainable world that is so amazingly complex. The academics related would resemble what we see in our soft sciences—argumentation to win an argument based upon competition for competition’s sake.

The highly trained flat-earth professionals would believe that only those with the proper pedigree had any clue why the world is so dynamically inconsistent, making all acceptable theories homogeneous and never deviating from the majority’s embraced belief.

Entire lucrative industries would spring up; professionals would build their careers upon a particularly highly applauded theory that, from our perspective, seems convoluted—a highly complex theory on how to deal with ever-changing gravitational effects of the flat earth on which they live. These highly respected professionals would never be short of data and beautiful charts for consumers.

So many would rely heavily on the flat-earth–related soft sciences to support and feed their families. They’d be endlessly passionate about their labor, sound intelligent, and be extremely convincing—resonating their own emotional drives and feeling important and accomplished.

What if our own civilization has made a similarly fundamental miscalculation—one so ingrained that we struggle to see it?

Laugh at them, if we might. If we are missing an essential third element of why we do what we do, it would be far more harmful to a species than believing the earth is flat. Psychology and the way we perceive ourselves touch every aspect of life. If we have a gaping hole—or holes—the side effects would make us an extremely dysfunctional race. The way we perceive ourselves and our behaviors is far more inextricably interwoven with our discovery and innovation than we may acknowledge. It goes to the core of a civilization. It affects how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, and how we raise our children. Those making discoveries and inventing don’t leave their embraced beliefs at home; a complete person is interacting with others, discovering, and inventing. All of science starts with how we perceive ourselves. If we believe a magical sunbeam directs our thoughts and behavior, or if our fundamental theory is incomplete, we will confront endless hardships.

So, if there is a third essential element that drives human behavior, we’d be the unlucky race. We’d misdiagnose behaviors because we’re not working from the correct fundamental framework. From the onset, we’d end up being incapable of formulating accurate methods to overcome so many of the ills that impact us. We’d be vulnerable to highly intelligent, highly monetarily incentivized groups that would hyper-analyze the chemistry of the brain and insist they could sell you a drug or provide you a service that would cure a mental affliction. They’d misinterpret a more complete picture, replacing it with a two-dimensional belief about a neuron in the brain misfiring. Yet, the professionals would have impeccable charts and graphs with convincing data to prove points beyond a shadow of a doubt. Because they sounded so intelligent, we’d forget it was only a theory and buy their product or service.

Just as the flat-earth scientists might build complex theories to explain gravity’s strange effects, our own fields—psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics—may be layering intricate models on top of an incomplete foundation. The result? Persistent dysfunction that never fully disappears.

If we were missing an essential element, mental conditions would endlessly thrive and circulate; some progress would be made momentarily, only to decrease again—much like the ills in our society. Consider: suicide, obesity, alcoholism, drug addictions, gambling addictions, mood disorders, anxiety, mental disorders, homelessness, and so on.

These big problems are our society’s symptoms or clues that our fundamental framework is unstable and inaccurate.

This pestilence just decreases and increases over time. The professionals in our soft sciences are trained to hyper-analyze what is fully accepted, then continuously rename and rebrand it; yet these side effects—or symptoms—are always there, plaguing us. These professionals would argue that we’ve made incredible progress and that their group or industry has helped so many. They’d argue that an outsider with a well-developed, extremely logical, unbiased theory just isn’t equipped to be part of the conversation.

Humans are incentive- and emotionally driven, but they are also escape-driven. It’s the third missing element that is different yet inextricably interwoven with the other two. That is, we are incentive-, emotionally-, and escape-driven animals. Understanding this changes how we understand ourselves and our behavior. If you haven’t been taught how to provide the mind with an escape, the mind will choose an escape for you. Those who have experienced trauma are vulnerable to reflexively using powerful, harmful escapes without their own consent. Escapes are such a part of everyday life that most of us will never know when they’re being used.

The definition of escapes is precise and different from our widely held, culturally accepted definition.

The characteristics and attributes include:

• Escapes take time to perform.

• Escapes are familiar—a person knows what to expect.

• There are many escapes that are extremely unhealthy but can absorb attention to a degree.

They absorb varying degrees of attention. Escapes are an everyday part of life; you are always somewhere on the spectrum of being absorbed in the moment or being absorbed in an escape—or a variety of escapes.

Escapes are imperative; we use them every day. Escapes are as important to the human mind as water is to the human body. You can see the natural occurrence when someone stops smoking: they gain weight. When someone is put into solitary confinement, he or she may begin to hallucinate.

Escapes are anything that absorbs a portion of attention for a period of time and adheres to the rules stated. Eating, reading, smoking, meditation, physical pain, absorbing thoughts, music, exercise, sports, collecting, work, other hobbies—and the list goes on. Even chewing gum is an escape; it takes time, it’s familiar, and it absorbs a portion of attention.

This is the Mental Absorption Square. We are always somewhere on the spectrum. If you’re running away from a wolf, you’re entirely absorbed in the moment. Giving birth, at the moment of getting married, a roller coaster, car accident, or a truly novel experience you’re entirely in the moment.

If you’re at the movies, eating popcorn, and totally immersed in the film, you are likely almost entirely using escapes. Throughout the day, we are someplace on the spectrum between the two ends.

This is only a small part of what you’ll find on the Vac-Plat. To learn more, read my article on escapes and how to become your most prosperous self. You’ll find this and many other understandings throughout The Vac-Plat series. Check out vacplat.com.

Please be advised.
Disclaimer: This is a theory about the mind; it is not meant to act as medical advice. It is not intended to replace medical advice from a highly intelligent, capable, competent, reflective doctor.

*Embraced Belief Cloud Network

If you’re new to The Vac-Plat, there’s an axiom that Objective Compassionate Sentients hold called the Embraced Belief Cloud Network. Freud had an incomplete understanding of it, calling it the Super-Ego. He believed it was a driver of morality. It’s a cloud network comprised of billions of neurons within the human brain. When someone embraces an idea as fact, their emotions support the belief. It’s quite frustrating to most people when you, as an outsider, attempt to examine others’ embraced beliefs. Highly intelligent people can be seen contorting the world to fit an embraced belief. Embraced beliefs can be seen in religion, politics, and scientific/academic ideas. Underlying the Embraced Belief Cloud Network is the belief held by David Hume, circa 1739–1751, that people embrace beliefs they formulate emotionally and then defend logically.

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