The First Thing We Learn From Studying

None Of The Individual Metal Hunks Of An Airplane Have The Property Of flight, But When They Are Attached Together In The Right Way, The Result Takes To The Air. A Thin Metal Bar Won't Do You Much Good If You're Trying To Control A Jaguar, But Several Of Them In Parallel Have The Property Of Containment. The Concept Of Emergent Properties Means That Something New Can Be Introduced That Is Not Inherent In Any Of The Parts.

As Walt Whitman Correctly Surmised, We Are Large And We Harbor Multitudes Within Us. And Those Multitudes Are Locked In Chronic Battle. There Is An Ongoing Conversation Among The Different Factions In Your Brain, Each Competing To Control The Single Output Channel Of Your Behavior. As A Result, You Can Accomplish The Strange Feats Of Arguing With Yourself, Cursing At Yourself, And Cajoling Yourself To Do Something - Feats That Modern Computers Simply Do Not Do.

All Life Is No More Than A Match Struck In The Dark And Blown Out Again.

Knowing Yourself Now Requires The Understanding That The Conscious You Occupies Only A Small Room In The Mansion Of The Brain, And That It Has Little Control Over The Reality Constructed For You.

Imbalance Of Reason And Emotion May Explain The Tenacity Of Religion In Societies: World Religions Are Optimized To Tap Into The Emotional Networks, And Great Arguments Of Reason Amount To Little Against Such Magnetic Pull.