The Faulty Walnut

our brains are brilliant instruments
able to reason synthesize remember and
imagine at an extraordinary pitch and
rate we trust them immediately and
innately and have reasons to be deeply
proud of them too however these brains
let’s call them walnuts in honor of
their appearance are also very subtly
and dangerously flawed machines flawed
in ways that typically don’t announce
themselves to us and therefore give us
few clues as to how on our guard we
should be about our mental processes
most of the walnuts flaws can be
attributed to the way the instrument
evolved over millions of years it
emerged to deal with threats some of
which are no longer with us and at the
same time it had no chance to develop
adequate responses to a myriad of
challenges generated by our own complex
societies we should feel pity for the
walnut situation and compassion for
ourselves attempting to live well
requires us to adopt a focus and ongoing
skepticism towards a great many of the
ideas schemes and feelings generated by
the faulty walnut that stands at the top
of our spinal column here are just some
of the many things we need to watch out
for the walnut is influenced by the body
to an extent it doesn’t recognize the
walnut is extremely bad at understanding
why it’s having certain thoughts and
ideas it tends always to attribute them
to rational objective conditions out in
the world rather than seeing that they
might be stemming from the impact of the
body upon its thought processes the
walnut doesn’t typically notice the role
that levels of sleep
sugar hormones and other physiological
factors play upon the formation of ideas
the walnut adheres to a psychological
interpretation of plans and positions
that are at heart
frequently merely bodily therefore the
walnut can feel certain that the right
answer is to divorce or leave the job
right now rather than go back to bed or
eat something to raise blood sugar
levels the walnut is influenced by its
past but can’t see its own projections
the walnut believes its judging each new
situation on its own mayor
but it is inevitably drawing upon
patterns of action and feeling shaped in
previous years this saves time and has
real evolutionary advantages except that
many situations in the present are in
fact deceptive resembling the past only
sufficiently to trigger a familiar
response while in fact having many
unique characteristics that get
overlooked at moments of ambiguity the
walnut can jump to some catastrophic
conclusions the walnut doesn’t like to
stop and think the walnut evolved for
rapid instinctive decision-making and
has a grievously hard time stepping back
to address what we might term the big
first-order questions so bad is the
walnut at thinking it often needs
another walnut nearby to help it along
its way thinking generates anxiety and a
desire to run fast in the opposite
direction because of the difficult
truths the walnut might unearth but in
the presence of another walnut we can’t
so easily bolt and turn back to the web
that’s why philosophy started as a
conversation and psychoanalysis depends
on two people unpacking one person’s
thoughts and associations sadly we
rarely call on other walnuts to help us
to think and usually pass the time with
walnuts chatting idly about sport or the
latest celebrity scandal the walnut is
bad at self-control and gets passionate
about and scared of the wrong things the
walnut constantly gets excited about
things which aren’t good for it sugar
salt and sex with strangers to start the
list advertising knows how to exploit
this cognitive frailty to perfection our
confusions can generally be traced back
to targets that would once have been
crucial and fitting for us to focus on
our desires used to be reliable in
simpler environments but in a
complicated conditions of modernity they
caused chaos the same holds true for our
fears in the past fears were simply
bound to things that could kill us fears
were a good idea to get us out of
genuine dangers but nowadays many things
excite our fear system without there
being any real threat we have panic
attacks before speaking in public for no
good reason while at the same time the
real more subtle threats of modern life
global warming or another subprime
mortgage financial crisis of
radar detection radars entirely the
walnut is egocentric not polycentric the
walnut is primed to look at things from
its own point of view it often simply
can’t believe that there are other ways
of considering an issue other people can
therefore seem perverse or horrible to
it sparking outrage or self-pity it’s
only in the last second from an
evolutionary point of view that the
walnut has started to try to imagine
what it might be like to be someone else
a symptom of this is that it’s learn to
take pleasure in novels but this is
still a fragile and pathetic capacity
which tends to collapse
especially when the walnut is tired and
someone is trying to persuade it of a
strange sounding idea the walnut isn’t
an independent thinker the warm that
grew up dependent for its survival on
the mood of the group or clan it’s
therefore highly primed to fit in with
common sense and prevailing opinion it
doesn’t generally like to use itself as
a source of original data or insight
other people’s opinions matter hugely
irrespective of how foolish they might
be or indeed widespread because we came
from small groups one or two compliments
can delight us one criticism can sow
panic is it tricky in the age of Twitter
the walnut misunderstands causality the
walnut used to think it might have been
responsible for the lightning in the sky
and that earthquakes were a result of
its own bad thoughts and deeds it took a
long while for that skewed perspective
to be overcome but the walnut still
constantly projects personal dynamics
and over produces generalities based on
things that have happened to it the
walnut is trapped by personal rather
than statistical or objective experience
being more vigilant about the flaws in
our walnuts gives us a range of
important advantages we can get better
at noticing the potential errors in our
judgments and ideas we start to avoid
mistakes when we know mistakes are a
constant active possibility then when we
deal with other people we can start to
ask ourselves whether they might be
acting from a walnut’ floor but not be
aware of this this can make us both
bolder about disagreeing with them and
also kinder and more generous in the
face of their less than sensible
behaviors and then when we deal with
large groups of people we can become
aware that
walnut’ does very weird things in packs
but that’s okay and no reason to panic
if we find our ideas a meeting with
resistance at hard compensating for the
faulty equipment that Nature has given
us is the task of what we would call
education culture and civilization the
floors in the walnut are also what makes
it imperative that we try to act with
kindness and tolerance we should at all
times go easy on ourselves and others
for we’re trying to do some very
difficult things around one another with
the use of a highly troublesome and only intermittently accurate tool