In the grand scheme of things, your mind is as unique as your finger
prints or your retina. No person has been like you or will ever be as
exact as you. You are a special data bank of thought and information
collected over your lifetime to the point where you read this, and then
forever after.
Have you ever stopped to think of the
most unique events of your life, or even the ones which seem mundane and
far from extraordinary? These events shaped the way you think, your
neural responses, your patterns. Every one of them can trigger a
preconceived action. You are at this point in time, all of your prior
patterns. Those are broken when new information enters, and a new neural
link is made.
Many people will go a lifetime and make a
minimal amount of re-linkings, some people will constantly create new
information and links. Memories are accessed all the time in our minds,
sometimes changing and adding new information to them, but it doesn’t
change large portions of our brain, neural, structure. The neurons can
create new links at any time.
The problem we face in
society is we are working with many dimensions of the mind. Not just
the patterns, but the outcome of the patterns, and biology of the brain.
When we try and convince people they have done something wrong, they
sometimes don’t see or accept why it was wrong.
A mind
pre conditioned into a pattern can be changed, but through work with the
existing ones, replacing, revisiting and changing memories, which can’t
be trusted. Memories are flawed, but they create a person who is
individual because of the pattern that they created.
People
who don’t obey social laws and constructs, or mores, have often been
conditioned mentally to not obey them, to hold them as suspect, or
believe themselves above the law. In some cases the person has emotional
or mental, even physical trauma behind the creation of these patterns.
Once
a person has broken some of the more extreme social laws, such as
murder, they can’t be trusted to follow them again. It is hard to
convince a person who has taken a life, in many instances, that they did
something very wrong. Over time they may or may not come to accept
that. It varies, mostly by the situation. Though prison has the ability
to reinforce negative patterns, and the breaking of social laws.
Each
of us though, is an amalgum, of memories, and patterns, strewn throught
the brain stored in the neurons, each of us have lived different lives,
seen things from personal perspectives. Even those who go through many
of the same things, still will have variables, experiences which are
different from every perspective, and build upon prior experiences. Even
one variable is enough to alter a pattern, which, often times there are
many dynamics. Things the person saw, thinks they saw, can alter their
perception.
There are seven billion versions of this
world, how it functions, the patterns and establisment of boundaries.
Seven billion ways of seeing the world, but you can only see it from
yours. While you can empathize with others on their experiences, and
patterns, you realize that you can’t take on another persons
perspective, and even your perspective can just be what you have created
in your mind.
Our reality is as real as we make it, we
define ourselves over and over. Our minds seek our comforting patterns,
and we remain individuals. Though we can be made to believe things
which alter our outlook on life, we have a personality based on the
patterns which first formed us. Things which we don’t think about. Why
do we laugh at certain jokes, become offended, cry, feel sad, happy,
love a certain way?
We are programmed by birth to mock
the behaviors of those teaching us, yet we will inevitably become
unique. Sometimes having to go back and reprogram the core programs and
patterns set by the primary care takers in our lives. The mind being a
highly complex diverse organization of neural connections. From those
primary care takers and our first years we begin to develop a sense of
self and self awareness. After that period of time we continue making
secondary connections based upon our primary development. Interactions
we have with other humans alter and define ultimately who we think we
are. Based upon that is our social, romantic, and emotional behaviors.
Often
times we need help externally based to sort through the memories, and
help to alter them. People can be as much a victim of their neural
patterns as they are a product of them. This is why society is such a
hard and dynamic structure, yet one worth the effort and time. In all of
our realities, there is no one reality which is more real than the
others. Yet today when you look out from your eyes, all you will see is
your own reality reflecting back at you, but you at least know that your
reality only exists inside of your mind.
Rachel Johnson 