DIMENSIONS OF OUR THINKING
On creating a science of mental reality

This important theory stren suggests basic word handles to establish a science for the mental management of data, i.e. “thinking.”

Although thinking is our most important survival resource, we have yet to establish a science of mental phenomenon!  Through eight years of post-graduate education, I have neither attended nor am I aware of a course in how we think.   It would seem wise to provide every person, through a universal educational program, with the knowledge to update the immature manner by which we first process information to attain skill in mature thinking.  We have developed material science by creating measurements of its characteristic physical dimensions, viz. height, width, length, mass, and change over time.  Dimensions serve as a basis for the design of material things.   Reasonably accurate labeling of the mental dimensions that shape our thinking would be a basic tool to create and teach the science of mental reality.  Science requires labels that provide information about its subject matter.  The value of mental dimensions is their practical application to educate the masses in the newer manner of self-mastery thinking.   Wisdom in the management of our life’s experience, will power, and freedom from fate and circumstance are universally desired goals.    

Nature has equipped us with senses that recognize physical phenomenon.  Though it has failed to directly so endow us with regard to mental (conceptual) phenomenon, nature has provided us the means to do so … the latest to develop cortical portion of our brain.  Our nurturers provide our brain with sophisticated language.  Our brain is sufficiently advanced that we may engage in reflective-thinking.  We are self-conscious; we think about thinking.  We can update our thinking.  We can re-design it. 

Mental reality, unlike physical reality, may be characterized as “virtual,” non-physical, and conceptual.  Because of the nature of mental reality, don’t expect the dimensions of thinking to be palpable in the same manner we can identify and measure physical dimensions.  Rather a conceptual understanding of the dimensions that shape our thinking is sufficient to conduct experiments that have pragmatic results, results that modify established thinking and stimulate the creative design of a more effective means to process information.  As we continually improve the software that processes information on our computers, let us do so with the manner we think! 

I have arbitrarily identified five labels that convey useful knowledge for a scientific teachable understanding of the mental management of conceptual reality.  They are geography, composition, chronology, energy, and knowledge.  As with length, height, and width, the mental dimensions of conceptual reality also don’t stand alone.  Mental reality is to be understood through some combination of its basic identifying characteristics.      

1. Geography*:  In our first years, our nurturers provide us words and symbols that become our native language.  The identifying label we give to distinguish each set of collective symbols is usually related to geographic location, viz. English, French, German, Chinese, etc.  Though the words of each language may differ, and indeed may be unintelligible between languages, they tend to express similar “parallel” meanings.  This is because nature’s genetically encoded instructions are similar for its creatures irrespective of geography.  Innate fight or flight behavior, basic survival needs, nurturing, and inherited patterns demand similar meaning word-tools even though the symbols used may differ.  Run, hide, fight, etc. in any language are processed (“wired”) through a more similar than different mental pathway.  Mental pathways initially develop to service nature’s demands!  Thus, even though geography is the most common label we use to identify the symbols by which we think, I consider geography one of the least informative dimensions to assess our mental processing system.  Geography is to mental dimensions a bit like color is to physical dimensions; it stands out in our perception but is less useful for scientific application than other characteristics.  The striking variation of the coloration of butterflies belies the similarities and predictability of their manner of function.  Nature has provided us senses to recognize our visible differences; our brain must develop conceptual skill to recognize and scientifically apply the more prevalent characteristics in our mental function.  We mislead ourselves when we fail to understand that the manner of thinking of every complex creature, no matter how different in presentation due to its location, initially functions in a similar manner.  ANWOT emphasizes our similarities more so than our differences.  Though our senses selectively favor our differences, let’s prepare our mind to address our sameness.  Geographic labels misdirect our attention to superficial differences in our appearance and language.  
   
   Humankind is genetically driven by similar instinctual patterns of behavior.  Our first operating system (O.S.) emphasizes survival through fight or flight; it is passively acquired through our genetic inheritance.  Though languages superficially differ, the “wiring” or operating systems that transform meaning into energy and action are similar.  Creatures with a more prolonged period of nurturance add a second means (O.S.) for processing information.  It emphasizes language that serves the wants of parents, teachers, culture, and demands of the environment.  To our wiring, habit is added to instinct!  Irrespective of geography, our prevalent nurturers tend to instill similar meaning symbols of survival with the native language O.S. we passively acquire to process information – economic, religious, and/or social domination, competition, winning, titles, recognition, immortality, and related rewards.  The words may look and sound different but the meanings and “wiring” support similar behavioral outcomes.  Composition, the inter-relation of instinct, habit, and will, the degree each influences our thinking, is far more critical than the geographic language by which we phrase our thinking.  Our mental uniqueness is the self-directed operating system we create to express our own freed will.
   
   [*Geography is the closest single-word label to designate the name we give to our first manner of thinking, one’s native language.  Though not totally accurate, I am not aware of a more appropriate word in the English language.       
   
   
2. Composition (context): Composition is the mix of the decision-makers present at our mental Board of Directors.  As earth’s most complex creature, our thinking has three directors, nature, nurture, and our emancipated self, what I call “self-mastery.”  Our thinking is initially guided by genes.  Thereafter our nurturers add habit.  These we acquire passively, totally out of our control.  Mental freedom or self-management is available as an elective.Nature’s direction, which have been coded in our genes over millions of years, initially has absolute rein.  During our years of development and dependence, our nurturers, i.e. parents, authorities, and culture provide us our second set of directions emphasizing custom, tradition, and habit.   With physical and mental maturity, we may add self-mastery, a third director that we our self create.  Nature, nurture, and self each mentally process information through “wiring” of their own creation (their distinct operating system, O.S.) designed to serve their individual perspective.  Thereby, data is perceived and may be “translated” to faithfully serve three distinct, often conflicting perspectives.  The same information may be interpreted with different meanings leading to very different, even opposite, action outcomes.  Although masters’ nature, nurture, and self each strive to dominate, action is determined by some combination (cooperative and/or competitive) of their joint efforts.  Composition addresses the degree each of our three masters is represented on our decision making Board.  The context of the Board, and its Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.), will vary according to the dimensions here described. 
   
   Do you recognize that most earth creatures are limited to the program provided by their genes?  There is no “Boardroom.”  Nature rules with the absolute unchallenged authority of a king.  For those species requiring periods of nurturance before independently taking on life’s tasks, role-modeling and imitation assumes a prominent role.  In general, the longer the period of dependence prior to physical and mental maturity, the greater number of votes that nurturers gain in relation to nurture’s influence at the decision-making Board.  Because nature has provided us such a complex brain (especially the size of our cortex), because over the last 50,000 years our nurturers have created language, and because of our skills in storing and sharing knowledge, we alone may attain a significant degree of self-mastery.  Unlike the programs we passively inherit and acquire, self-mastery is an “elective” skill requiring the development of reflective-thinking, i.e. the ability to think about our thinking.  By growing our self-mastery we may join master nature and master nurture as directors of our life’s experience.  We, our self, may even become C.E.O. of our mental Board of Directors if we so motivate ourselves.  Studies of adult development indicate that we don’t become eligible to become C.E.O. at our Boardroom until our third or fourth decade!  Many scarcely take advantage of the opportunity.  They remain “stuck,” directed by instinct and habit as provided by “others.” 
   
   Composition helps us understand that the little voice we listen to is not “a” voice but three individual voices competing to direct our actions.  Our journey to mental freedom requires exercise, education, and discipline of our reflective-thinking self if we are to survive as a species.
   
   
3. Chronology (maturity):  Chronology is the dimension of time.  It is related to composition.  Life is best understood as a motion picture more so than a snapshot.  We recognize dramatic predictable changes through our life cycle.  We have a personal life cycle and are a small part of a cosmic life cycle.  Our opportunity for self-mastery is only available to us well into the adult stage of our life cycle.  Our planet earth also has a life cycle to which we are historically a part. Within cosmic history, humankind has attained a dramatic new plateau.  Human selection is joining natural selection.  We are rapidly thrusting ourselves at the control of our personal destiny and may now dramatically influence earth’s destiny. 
   
   a. Personal chronology: Newborns arrive with an array of behaviors prescribed in DNA and/or genes that encode millions of years of development, now replicated in seconds to years, depending on the gestation period of the species.  Most earth creatures are independent from their birth; they are fully equipped to survive with little or no nurturance.  Their behavior and life cycle are stereotyped and predictable.  They remain servant to the directions prescribed by fate and circumstance.  Another large group of creatures require periods of nurturance.  Nurturance usually adds new patterns of behavior, acquired through imitation, role-modeling, and trial-and-error learning.   To nature’s prescriptions, nurturers add their own demands.  In our case, nature prescribes many years of dependence, and custom may extend our dependency into physical maturity.  Some of our nerve connections are incomplete until late in our second decade when we reach our peak of physical maturity.  Our “puberty clock” doesn’t usually turn-on until our teens.  Studies of adult development indicate most don’t acquire sufficient adult mental maturity to “become our own person” until our 20’s or 30’s.  Some individuals never acquire significant freedom from their initial directions.  The manner we process information varies dramatically related to our personal age and stage of development.  Of course, we recognize a decrease in function with age.  
   
   How would our description of the thinking of a newborn, a child, an adolescent, and a self-sufficient mature adult differ?  This Guide labels three stages or phases of development: (a) “a” = conception to physical birth, nature’s gene determined stage; (a + b) “b” = our nurtured dependent stage; and (a + b + c) “c” = self-management, thinking emancipated from the demands of nature and nurture.  Would you agree that the new wiring we acquire from our nurturer’s adds to rather than replaces the instinctual patterns provided by nature?  Our nurturer’s directions combine with nature’s prescriptions.  To the degree our self develops the skills to think for its self, independent of our early masters, we join nature and nurture as a managing partner. The creative action choices we our self make adds our perspective to those actions demanded by nature and nurture.  Rather than being ruled by “King Nature,” we more accurately recognize that power is shifted to a Board of Directors comprised of nature, nurture, and our self.  Initially in stage (a) of our life cycle, nature dominates as the sole member of the Board, gradually to have (b) nurture grow in strength, to be joined many years later by (c) the “self-mastery” upstart.  Can you imagine the struggles that my go on at the Board’s meetings to determine who will be Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.)?  Can you imagine the shifting of voting power over time and the “political platforms” of the three parties who would each be C.E.O.?
   
   Our stage of development helps us understand our manner of function.  Simple creatures that primarily rely on instinct share a similar manner of function with one another and with more complex creatures that are yet immature; they each act according to nature’s pre-programmed perspective.  Persons who remain blindly obedient to the rules of their nurturers, even though of different geographic areas and speaking different native languages, are on a similar horizontal plane.  A mature person who has attained considerable self-mastery in his/her thinking, and willfully validates and/or challenges the rules of instinct and their nurturers, has reached a newer vertical manner of function than a physically mature person yet mentally dominated by instinct’s and his/her nurturer’s dictates. 
   
   b. Cosmic history:  Consider how a star or planet may “mature” during its life cycle, from birth to death?  Our earth is estimated to be several billion years old whereas modern man, Homo sapiens, has been around a pittance by comparison, perhaps a quarter million years.  How would an alien visiting earth describe it soon after its “birth” thre billion or so years ago?  Three million years ago, filled with plants and creatures but prior to human life?  Today?  Change is part of natural phenomena.  What might an alien visitor conclude about the creation of earth? … nature? A super force? God?  God through nature?  Would the alien likely conclude the same creator of earth was the creator of each language? Our cities? Atomic bombs? 
   
       I would like you to recognize the drama of our current generation(s).  We, you and I, now, have initiated a new epoch in history!  We exist at a critical turning point in our manner of function.  Our very survival is now in our own hands, perhaps more accurately “head”!  For the first time in history, and very rapidly, a species (yes, us!) is acquiring the means to manage our world, to influence our destiny.  No creature has had the power to change the world as we know it.  In our time, we have created the means of mass destruction and mass construction!  Our thinking resource has empowered us to master nuclear power and to make and disperse weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to an increasing number of “trigger” holders.  We create life “our way” through cloning, prolonging life, manipulating genes, invading distant planets and applying other “muscles” of science.  “Human selection” is joining (perhaps replacing) “natural selection” in managing our destiny.  Independence is no longer our choice!  It has been suddenly thrust upon us.  Nature and nurture are pushing us out of their nest.  To the manner our world has been managed throughout history, we suddenly insert our own will.  Our survival rests on accepting our new responsibility and the danger that is inherent in our emancipation.  I believe chronology demands that we act to modify our manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.  Do you agree?   
   
   
4. Energy (power):  The release of physical energy is a readily recognized phenomenon; it is a common thread in all life.  Can you recognize that words and concepts also have an energy dimension?  As hormones, enzymes, and various chemical substances may lead to significant specific activity or be relatively inert, can you imagine words and symbols may similarly vary in their activity.  Just as some individuals have more muscular physical power, one may develop the use of words (concepts) that provide greater mental release of energy than others.
   
   We now understand that the meaning assigned to symbols releases energy and triggers specific physical action.  This concept enables us to recognize that thinking and the energy produced are programmable.  We create self-mastery and mental freedom by modifying and/or creating new wiring offering more effective interpretations and meaning.  Self-mastery, the power of freedom, is our ability to update our mental wiring to provide direction to our energy. 
   
   Words such as Mother, Dangerous! And Shut up! are commonly programmed to stir up more activity than rock, space, or a nonsense word like fefm.  Would you agree that words may be “charged” with differing amounts of energy depending on the “programming” of the individual?  Consider how our nurturance influences the manner we respond to words such as “Christian,” “Muslim,” “Jew”, and even their symbols.  The same food savored in one culture may cause revulsion in persons of another, as seen in the contrasting mental and physical response to the following: cow, pig, ants, baby bird, dog, sheep’s eye, monkey brain.  Words such as “cancer”, “wrinkles”, “ugly”, “football”, “hairdresser”, “sex”, “chocolate”, “heroin”, “free,” and so on may stir up a very different release of energy depending on the individual’s manner of thinking.
   
   Our growing science of x-ray imaging is now showing how different symbols stimulate varying degrees of energy and activity in our brain.  We are increasing our knowledge of how words and symbols are transformed into physical energy and vice versa.  We can predict the dimension of energy will become increasingly important in developing a science of conceptual reality. 
   
   
5. Knowledge (Mass): Pragmatic knowledge, reflective-thinking, and wisdom, i.e. our ability thinking about our thoughts and modifying them, conveys power.  As we expand our knowledge, we may consider it grows in mass.  Knowledge enables us to convert physical energy into conceptual power.  Knowledge in mental reality is somewhat akin to how mass is a characteristic of physical reality.  Humankind is unique to the degree we acquire and grow knowledge and devise methods to share and pass our largess on to future generations.  Knowledge is cumulative and expanding in virtually all areas.  The size and mass of our knowledge grows like a snowball rolled in the snow.  As has been said, we stand on the shoulders of the giants who have preceded us.  Science grows with knowledge and vice versa.  I am told more scientists are alive today than the total number of those who have lived in the past.  We are not only rapidly expanding our body of knowledge; we are accelerating its rate of growth at the limits of our comprehension.  Most scientific discoveries have been made in the last hundred years, a finite period in our history.  The opportunity to emancipate ourselves from the perspectives imposed by nature and our nurturers is an even more contemporary phenomenon.  Our mass of knowledge has reached a critical fulcrum in which humankind engages in human selection alongside natural selection.  We need to recognize that, while we are expanding the mass of knowledge that empowers us to direct our destiny through our physical sciences, we are allowing the mental science required to wisely direct our growing mega-power to remain stagnant.  We can predict that sooner or later the intolerable destructive power of knowledge, under the direction of nature’s perspective and/or our nurturers’ perspective, will be unleashed.   

Discussion: The practical value of the dimensions of mental reality

Einstein’s recognition that physical mass could be transformed into energy (E=mc²) led to the development of atomic power.  Anticipating our first weapon of mass destruction, he prophesied, “Everything is changed; we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”  We require a science of conceptual reality that rivals our science of physical reality if we are to spread the newer way of thinking Einstein envisioned.  Dimensions convey knowledge germane to developing and teaching the newer manner of rational thinking we require for our ultimate survival. 

The literal meaning of science is “to know.”  To know is to grow.  As with physical science, dimensions provide a starting point to know and grow conceptual science.  Physical dimensions provide basic knowledge essential to manipulate matter and bring us the fruits of our material sciences. The subject of mental science is knowledge of how we think.   Concepts are the matter of mental manipulation!   Humankind is dominant on earth because of the manner we think.  Our excellence is the product of our skill in manipulating will.  Labels are the handles that allow our mind to “grasp” concepts.  While these arbitrary labels for the dimensions of mental reality are subject to improvement, the basic information they convey provides the substance to build a science of thinking. 

Dimensions serve as “handles” to grasp concepts of our personal mental reality, manipulate them, and test their relationship and validity to the common physical reality we share.  In helping us understand the workings of our thinking, they allow our reflective self to customize its own ANWOT O.S. and initiate wiser management of our life’s experience.  Dimensions are concepts that enlighten our thinking about the manner we think, strengthen the self-mastery component of our thinking, and enable us to become an effective chief executive officer at our “mental Boardroom” where decisions are made.  As our science in recognizing the dimensions and dynamics of conceptual reality approaches the sophistication of our physical sciences, we will dramatically improve our thinking.  Rather than remain like an arrow shot out of a bow, let us develop the means now available to us to wisely direct the course of our own choosing.    

Mental freedom to direct our thinking to preferred outcomes requires education.  The dimensions of conceptual reality (thinking) are themselves concepts that further our knowledge to complete an ANWOT educational curriculum.  To these dimensions we may add further knowledge to improve our thinking, for example: the contribution of nature, our nurturers, and our self in the manner we think; contrasting the prescriptive, dichotomous, dependency words acquired through our first decades with the descriptive, analog, personal responsibility words that are characteristic of mature thinking; the use of trigger-words that redirect our mental energy to pathways that lead to preferred outcomes; the collected wisdom others have demonstrated to be effective; recognizing the eight mental response choices available to us; and the universal values that may serve as a basis to add virtue to our manner of thinking .  Let us use these dimensions to build a science of thinking.  We urgently need to make education in mature thinking as popular as we now widely teach the physical sciences.

Keep in mind that we are interpretive creatures.  Conceptual reality, what we accept as “truth,” depends not only on the quantity and quality of the data we receive; accurate interpretation strongly depends on the meaning we assign to it.  Unlike the physical reality we share in common, conceptual reality is personal.  The interpretations assigned to data often lead to assumptions, beliefs, and/or religious concepts that may not be testable in the manner we do so with physical reality.  Conceptual truth is relative; it is modified by knowledge.  During our years of immaturity and dependency, we have little choice but to blindly accept the perspectives inherent in our genes and the concepts our nurturers teach us.  For example, “fight or flight” has been the chief effective means of survival for earth’s creatures.  Knowledge remaining servant to nature’s ways will predictably be directed to make more plentiful and effective bombs/WMD.  We can predict it is a matter of time before someone(s) unleashes them … unless we “update” our manner of thinking … until we challenge our fight or flight “wiring” and replace it with a newer conceptual reality that advocates the benefits of sharing, compromise, win-win relationships, love, peace, and the values we preach but thus far neglect to teach.

  Freeing our thinking to direct our life’s experience and now to even powerfully alter earth’s destiny incurs danger as well as opportunity.  Self-mastery burdens us with the task to re-evaluate the assumptions of our nurturers, to maintain what is reasonable and rebel against what may have been beneficial, but now has lost its usefulness.  We need to continually “update” our manner of thinking to fit our rapidly changing world.   Realize that we may choose to express our new power constructively and/or destructively, to produce useful energy and/or bombs and WMD.  Nature and our prevalent nurturers’ perspective advocate the expansion of power and its application when faced with conflict.  While harmful aggression may have been effective with primitive weapons, teeth, fists, clubs, and so on, it is no longer protective of survival when we create weapons of unimaginable destructive power.  The manner of processing conceptual reality employed by nature and nurture is not programmed to anticipate and deal with the longer term consequences of our actions.  They are too heavily influenced by instinct and habit, emphasizing our past and present.   

We have the resources to develop a newer way of thinking and the communication technology to rapidly educate our populous in ANWOT.  We have collective wisdom.  We need only mobilize our will to create the newer wiring in our thinking that promotes  skills of peace more so than war, cooperation more so than competition, tolerance more so than prejudice, win/win more so than win/lose, sharing more so than owning, no-trial “cognitive rehearsal” learning more so than learning by imitation and/or trial-and-error.  We cannot afford to learn by the error of a nuclear holocaust.   ANWOT emphasizes reflective thinking, emancipation from instinct and habit by the application of free will, and the wisdom we acquire from knowledge.   
 
We have discovered the link between the ape and humanity.  It is us!  Humanity, in addition to referring to the human race, means the quality of being humane: benevolence; kindness; mercy; sympathy; tenderness; goodwill.¹  We see sparks of humanity, but we won’t be there until we can better deal with our widespread inhumanity.  I hope this brief consideration of the dimensions of mental reality encourages you to join in popularizing a science of thought control.  Combining the skills of thought management with the collected wisdom now available to us, we can redirect our growing self-mastery from the destructive aggression coded in our prevalent manner of thinking to constructive aggression.  We require ANWOT to attain the ends that best serve our short and long-term interests.   It is our surest means to elevate our own humanity and so “infect” others.