Though we share similarities with other creatures, we express aggression differently

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our ways of thinking.  Thus we are drifting towards a catastrophe beyond comparison.  We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. 

Our explosive creation of unprecedented physical power now requires that we plan our actions with wisdom more so than allow them to be directed by instinct and/or habit.  Self-mastery is the freedom to direct our thinking independent of what our nature and nurturers provide.  We require a newer way of thinking that can anticipate the future, take personal responsibility for its actions, and consistently direct our mental energy to beneficial outcomes.  Such is our challenge.   We have yet to develop an easily taught readily learned curriculum to teach our self to think using reason and wisdom more so than instinct and habit.  Such is the intent of this guide.    

Operating systems:  we create “families” of symbols to advocate preferred perspectives.

     The manner of thinking we inherit from our genes is distinct from that acquired from our nurturers; their perspective differs.  Less apparent is that by creating symbols to substitute for the common reality, we expand our opportunity to process data along many alternative paths.  Symbols enable us to independently design and add new meanings that lead to preferred outcomes.  We have done so with musical symbols and mathematical equations.  In addition to the basic word-meanings we are first taught and, through repetition, acquire as our habitual manner of thinking, i.e. our “native language,” we may add new language programs to manage data. 
 
     A family of symbols, ideas, concepts, and meanings designed to act for the specific purpose(s) intended by the programmer is what I shall call an operating system or O.S.  We have yet to develop a disciplined manner of thinking, an O.S. that consistently promotes constructive (“good”) aggression.  If we choose to free our self from nature’s (fight/flight) instinct patterns inscribed by our genes, and the habitual (dependency, prescriptive-blaming, and dichotomous “two-category”) thinking patterns inherent in the native language we acquire from our nurturers, we must create a newer way of thinking operating system (ANWOT O.S.) effective in directing our aggressive energy to constructive outcomes.   The ANWOT O.S. can be programmed to productively manage our aggressive nature by wisely harnessing the energy contained in words, i.e. specialized symbols.  ANWOT is the means to empower our emancipated self to wisely create and express its own perspective.  Freeing our self to wisely direct our aggressive energy requires that we recognize the means of function of the three masters of our thinking.

1. Nature’s O.S. is preprogrammed through our chain of ancestors and reproduced by genetic coding and the chemical “DNA.”  Nature acts by “instinct.”  It is primarily expressed by physical means, viz. chemical action, and later adds mental means.
2. Our nurturers O.S. is acquired with blind obedience from “others,” our parents/teachers and culture, and directs us by adding habit to instinct.  Habit is action acquired through repetition.  As interpretive beings, the meanings programmed into the words of our “native” language powerfully influence our thoughts and thinking, our feelings, and thereby, out physical actions.  
3. The O.S. of self-mastery is the means of thinking we add to our language, that we create to challenge the directives of nature and nurture, and to initiate original action.  A free mind is one that acts using knowledge and reason more so than instinct and/or habit.  I designate this autonomous freethinking mental entity, this source of will power, self (in italics).  I designate the operating system of this mental self, “a newer way of thinking,” i.e. the ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery.

Each of the three “would be” directors of our thinking advocates its favored behaviors through their own operating system (O.S.).  The characteristics of these O.S.s are readily identified.  They will be explained in this “how and why it works” stren.  Practical “what to do” strens identify the specific words and steps that expand the “will” power of self-mastery, and the wisdom to direct it to constructive action.  They are provided elsewhere in this Guide.  Practical strens are usually short, easy to digest, and can be mastered simply through practice; this, and other theory strens require reflection and study.  

Review of the issues relevant to aggression presented in other strens:

     I have above and elsewhere introduced the three basic masters of our thinking and the O.S. through which they express their perspectives.  Review them here because you will greatly enhance your skills in self-mastery once you “get it.”
 
     Most earth creature’s actions are exclusively controlled throughout their life by the physical means nature provides.  More complex inhabitants add new patterns of behavior that are acquired from their nurturers.  We are among those earth’s creatures that have physical and mental means, or operating systems, to process the “orders” of our directors.  However, we are exceptional by the degree we receive our “operating” directions from three masters.  They are (1) our nature, i.e. what we “inherit” through our genes and DNA, (2) our nurture, the “programs” provided by our parents and society, and  (3) self-mastery, our mind’s unique capacity to reflect on our thinking to engage in abstract creative problem solving, and to independently trigger action we call “will” power.  We are distinct by the degree we may add direction to our life’s experiences independent of (and often contradictory to) our first two masters.  Through our advanced mental processing, we may modify and invent words and symbols to create the ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery.  

     New “word switches” may change the path data is processed from our pre-programmed and habitual processing paths to the newer independent manner of thinking.  The ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery empowers us to engage in rational objective reflective thinking, to process and analyze information with minimal bias.  The easy word substitutions enhance originality, creativity, short and long term problem solving, and the exercise of “free will.”  

     EXAMPLE: We grow our ANWOT O.S. as we emphasize personal responsibility (“I allow” more so than “he/she/they/it makes me”), by replacing “prescriptive” words with “descriptive” ones (“should, must, have to” → “could, choose, I am wise when”), and by replacing digital words with analog words (“either … or” → “both … and”).  These specific word changes are expressed in the practical strens in this guide and further explanations are provided in theory strens, viz. Know Your Directors, Know Your Self, Thoughts and Thinking, Your Operating Systems.   Specific practical steps to create “good aggression” are identified in this stren and elaborated on elsewhere.

     Self-mastery functions by independent rational problem solving more so than the predetermined directives of our genes and/or the rules determined by the authority of our nurturers.  Reason is more likely to anticipate new and/or long-term consequences than instinct, habit, and trial-and-error learning.   Such processing has been called “no trial learning.”  Issues may be privately mentally rehearsed prior to taking action in our commonly shared physical world.   In becoming producer and director of our private mental motion picture, we acquire flexibility and may exercise originality.  “Anything goes” in mental rehearsal!  At first a sort of undisciplined playground, this mental area of our function becomes our “boardroom,” where representatives of nature, nurture, and our self meet to direct our life’s experience.  We empower self-mastery to wisely direct our Board by appropriate design of our adult operating system.  Processing energy to beneficial aggression = the ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery + wisdom.  

     Self-mastery is our resource to harness knowledge to perform our designated tasks.  It is our opportunity to choose among alternatives.  The outstanding feature of self-mastery is power, the Godlike quality of “making a difference.”   A most important insight … Self-mastery does not provide wisdom!   Power, of itself, does not convey values.  Freedom is the choice to act wisely, foolishly, beneficially, destructively, or any degree in-between.   Freedom doesn’t “demand;” it doesn’t require any specific direction!  This is why this guide contains my collection of “wisdoms” acquired from others over many years; it urges attention to your own value system.  Observation documents that our power of self-mastery is currently far exceeding our wisdom to constructively apply it.

     We may develop a science of thought control by recognizing the characteristics of our three basic O.S.s.   An understanding of our three masters and the O.S.s through which each direct our thinking suggests the first steps to constructive management of aggression.  How clearly do you understand the means nature, nurture, and your self express their perspectives?

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     This next section will explain the power of words as energy-laden agents of the three directors who control our life’s experience.  The classification of words by their source, i.e. into the family of their original programmer, enables us to build a science of mental management, including the constructive use of aggression.  Your power for self-management, to feel good and do good, will grow as you learn the characteristics that distinguish them. 

Here is an overview of the means we have available to feel good and do good.  Each item here introduced will thereafter be explained in greater detail.

1. The “magic” of will power: The brain’s ability to think and “will” power has enabled us to become master on earth.   Energy comes in physical and non-physical forms.  Our brain excels in its magic-like ability to transform physical energy into mental energy and mental energy into physical energy.  We call this mysterious non-physical mental energy to direct physical actions “will” power. 
2. Mental “hormones”: Words (symbols) may be programmed into the mind with meaning to have “triggerpower.”  Some meanings release more energy than others.  Words (like hormones, vitamins, and specific physical agents) can be programmed so their energy faithfully acts from the perspective, or “meaning,” provided by their programmer. 
3. Emancipation of our thinking:  We are joining nature and nurture as director/producer of our life’s experience.  Through easily taught readily learned mental management skills, we may expand our will and fortify it with trigger-power.   We may add new programs to our thinking to join nature and nurture as programmers of our thinking and actions.  This is called “self-mastery”. Our recent to evolve human brain enables us to alter what fate and circumstance make of us; we may powerfully modify our destiny.
4. Danger and opportunity:  If we are to survive the new era of self-mastery, we shall require a newer way of thinking (ANWOT) to wisely manage our mental energy.  The rapid development of physical science to serve our wants is unprecedented.  Our growing power for mass destruction and mass construction provides us both opportunity and danger as we choose from them.   Nature and our nurturers’ perspectives in programming our mental energy each predictably result in periodic expression of destructive aggression.  The red alert now sounding throughout the world is an accurate warning of unimaginable global destruction.
5. Our three masters: We can identify the three programmers who determine how the mind thinks because each operates from a distinct perspective.  They appear in sequence; first there is a, then a+b, and later a Board of Directors consisting of a+b+c.  
   1. Nature is master programmer at birth.
   2. Nurture adds new programs over our many years of growing up.
   3. Our “Self,” with maturation, is now becoming our third programmer.
      
      Nature, nurture, and self-mastery are the co-directors of our thinking, feelings, and actions.  Each program us with directions that serve their own individual and distinct perspectives.  The newest master programmer, which I designate self, using italics, is characterized by the ability to think independent of the perspectives of prior programmers, to initiate new programs and/or modify earlier ones.  The size and skillful development of our evolving brain provides us the unique Godlike will power to create original patterns of thinking.  Self-mastery is assuming direction of our mental power.  We are freeing our self from the whims of nature and our nurturers, instinct and habit, fate and circumstance.  We differ from other earth creatures by the degree we may acquire self-mastery.  Most commonly, our individual personal self-mastery is not attainable until after our 2nd or 3rd decade, with physical and mental maturity.  Historically, we are just now initiating this new Era of Self-mastery in which human selection is rivaling natural selection!   The focus of Good Aggression is how our self may program a newer way of thinking, ANWOT, that directs our mental energy to “fight” for our well-being, to “feeling good and doing good.”
      
      
6. Our three operating systems:  Having identified the perspective of each of the three masters who program our thinking, we can now identify the distinctive means they direct our thinking, what I will refer to as their operating systems (O.S.s).  The science of mental management requires an accurate labeling and classification of mental phenomena, as we have so done with physical phenomena.   Imagine an athletic competition with 2 or more teams where all participants including the referees wear the same uniform.  We require an understanding of the rules and the role of the participants.  When we direct our computer to serve our wants, we are limited by the operating system within the computer.   The word processing program in my computer allows me to express myself in a manner that a spreadsheet or drawing program would not, and vice versa.  Our will, no matter how powerful, is constrained when it must use only the operating systems provided by nature and our nurturers.  Nature expresses the wisdom of the past through genes and instinct; our nurturers express the wisdom of the present primarily through habit and role-modeling; self-mastery, emphasizing knowledge and wisdom, is most able to anticipate how we may direct our mental energy to a future that fulfills our wants.  Upon recognizing each programmers “language” or operating system, we may engage the newer manner of thinking that stimulates mental freedom and consistently promotes cooperation, compassion, sharing, love, problem solving, win-win outcomes, peace of mind, peace for humankind, feeling good and doing good. The opportunity to freely choose what we want more so than passively accept what we get requires adding a newer operating system, what I refer to as the ANWOT O.S.  The wonderful news is that we do not require a new language! We may create the desired new mental processing pathways by easy “updates” of our current O.S.s, i.e., simple modifications of our native language.   The most basic substitutions are provided in 7 and 10 that follow.
7. Cardinal first language changes to establish ANWOT:  Three simple modifications to our mental O.S. provide the foundation for mental freedom from the manner of thinking acquired during our decades of immaturity.  When possible, descriptive words are substituted for prescriptive words, analog words for dichotomous words, and 1st person personal responsibility words for the dependency words that blame some “other”.
   1. Descriptive words are substituted for prescribed words:
      
      When reasonable, replace I [you, he, she, they, it] should, must, have to with could, choose to, prefer, I am wise when ….  Descriptive words convey independent thinking, initiation, and choosing among alternatives more so than dependency and control by “other” authority.
      
   2. Analog words are substituted for dichotomous words
      
      When reasonable, replace either…or with both…and; for example, good or bad, right or wrong become the pluses (+’s) and minuses (-‘s) of each alternative.  The positive and negative issues on each side are considered.  Dichotomous words limit thinking to two usually inaccurate categories.  Reality isn’t so simple.  Most choices are better viewed as fitting on a continuous scale viewed from +10 to -10 rather than “all good” or “all bad.”  Most of life’s choices involve making our decision right more so than making the right decision.
      
   3. First (1st) person responsibility words are substituted for dependency words that blame some “other”
      
      He, she, they, it makes me … is replaced with I allow ….  This shifts processing information from the conclusion that others must change to initiating inquiry as to what is within my own resources to resolve this problem.  Thereafter, the “magical” problem solving sentence (later described) is added to replace the more common blaming responses that so often automatically follow making “others” the source of our stress.
      
             The most wonderful news is that ANWOT does not require a new language!  We initiate major changes in the manner we process information by updating our native language with the above three simple easy to learn and apply substitutions of key “word-switches.”
      
      
8. Freedom requires wisdom: Though many regard mental freedom* our most cherished possession, mega-power lacking wisdom is not an asset.  Independent thinking may be directed to destructive as well as constructive outcomes!  Self-mastery is the power to make a difference, to change, to initiate, to create with originality.  Wisdom is the ingredient needed to direct our will power for our short and long term benefit.  Designated as “strens” (mental strengths), the ANWOT curriculum includes a collection of the wisdom that has been shown by others to “work,” to direct our innate energy to constructive outcomes.  To mental freedom, wisdom adds peace-of-mind and peace for humankind.                                                                            [*Freedom (definition): independence, exemption from restraint, liberation, emancipation, release, self-mastery, becoming one’s own person, the will power to choose among alternatives independent of the dictatorship of nature and our nurturers.]
9. The ANWOT Curriculum:  The components of this guide’s curriculum to create a newer way of thinking are here proposed.  They are all readily teachable and learnable, and they are free for your taking.
   1. the 5 needed ingredients … faith in your self (yes, I can!), work, patience, direction, and risk-taking
   2. the upgraded vocabulary that fosters self-mastery [viz. see 7, 10]
   3. the mental response control panel: accurate recognition and labeling of the eight choices available to us to mentally manage information empowers us to direct energy to the preferred constructive patterns and avoid those usually harmful.  The MRCP has immense practical application.
   4. the stren collection: the wisdom others have identified that strengthen the skillful direction of mental energy to short and long term constructive outcomes for ourselves and the larger system of which we are a part. 
   5. the value system that is the basis of the wisdom to get what we want: those principals universally agreed upon by each of the major religions and shown to “work” by wise persons, past and present, viz. “the golden rule.”
      
      This mental management curriculum is designed to strengthen will power and wisely manage our life, to consistently feel good and do good (Good aggression!).  The Practical Persons Guide to Feeling Good and Doing Good is a growing collection of strens that comprise this curriculum.
10. Easy additional what-to-do word-switches for desired results:  These changes allow us to “re-wire” our innate emergency mental processing to wisely redirect our destructive energy to short and long-term constructive outcomes.
11. The time is ripe to rapidly spread the good news:  Technology permits, urgency demands, and wisdom inspires that we educate ourselves in ANWOT. We are rapidly increasing our knowledge of the skills required and we have recently created the technical means to spread our new wisdom.
12. A blueprint to popularize “good aggression”: We can envision a plan to communicate the newer way of thinking to reach, teach, and enrich our global population.  Will you participate in this plan to make constructive aggression our new way of conducting life’s business?  Your participation is requested, first to benefit yourself, and thereafter, to benefit our community.

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What follows is an elaboration of the above “preview.”  Self-mastery is the process of creating mental power to direct our own life’s experience.  The beneficial management of aggression flows from the skills we acquire for self-mastery. ANWOT is designed to strengthen the will power needed to expand our self-mastery and wisely apply them to feel good and do good. 

1. The “magic” of will power: Energy in different forms is the source of power.  We use mental “word” power to direct physical actions.  Wordpower provides willpower.  “Will” power enables us to rule earth; it is our resource for freedom from destiny.  
   
   Action requires energy.  Energy for action is commonly physical.  Consider what occurs when a spring is stretched.  Tension builds and energy is created.  The “stretched” spring returns to its resting state, energy is released, and the tension is relieved.  The spring may be stretched quickly or slowly.  It may be released almost instantly or it may remain under tension for prolonged periods. 
   
                                                  tension → energy → physical action → tension relief
   
   All life requires energy for survival.   Nature provides different forms of energy to create action.  Nature’s common pattern to resolve needs in biological creatures may be compared with the spring, though more complex:  It may be described as follows:
   
   need/desire → tension → arousal → energy → physical and/or mental problem solving → action → tension relief
    
        To biologic creatures, nature adds electrical and chemical energy to mechanical energy to conduct our survival behaviors.   Chemical and electrical changes create “tension.”   These physical changes are the source of energy to act on our needs.  A resting or “peaceful” state is restored as the need is resolved.  Tension increases as we grow hungry, our bladder or bowels fill, when we experience something very hot, and/or when we mentally anticipate a stressful event, such as having to give a presentation.  We experience arousal, there is an alert to do something and energy is produced.  We take appropriate action and the tension is gone.  We eat, pee, defecate, remove our hand from the hot object, give our presentation, and act to return to a resting “peaceful” state.  The tension is our energy resource to attend to the stressful issue.  At puberty, a new type of tension is experienced that directs us to our sexual organs.  Sexual activity relieves the tension and we experience pleasure. 
   
        The most recent-to-develop portion of the brain (the cortex and especially the frontal lobes) transforms physical energy into mental energy, and the reverse!  When we convert mental energy into physical energy we call this “will” power.   Einstein revolutionized our scientific thinking when he created symbols to identify the relation of energy to mass and its reverse – “E = mc².”  If an individual shows us an empty hat, covers it, reaches in and pulls out a rabbit, we are astonished by this “magic.”  We routinely create physical acts from a non-physical source.   The amazing newer brain routinely transforms mental energy into physical action and vice versa.   Creatures so equipped with this newer brain have conscious awareness.  They use non-physical symbols that substitute for our commonly shared physical reality to create a private mental reality.  We call the activity of the mind “thinking.”  Private thoughts and thinking co-exist with the physical reality we share.  “Thinking” is a non-physical source of energy to trigger physical action, to convert mental energy to physical energy.   This special mental “will” power to cause physical activity is proportional to the size, complexity, and skillful development of this newer brain function.
   
        Physical action is conducted through nerves and chemicals, such as hormones.  Non-physical or mental action is conducted through symbolic substitutes for the common physical reality we share.  Words (symbols, ideas, concepts) are a non-physical form of energy for our higher brain; they, along with nerves and chemicals, mediate action. 
   
        We are unique by the degree we use symbols, manipulate them, form concepts, assumptions, beliefs, and “creeds.”  Physical action is responsive to our mental processing of symbols. We “mind our business.”  You see, we not only convert physical energy to mental energy (consciousness), we use words to bring about physical activity.  We convert what is mental energy into physical energy.
    
                                                    Brain/body ←————→ Mind/consciousness
   
       Physical energy (activity) ←—— newer brain ——→ Mental energy (activity)
   
        Electrical/chemical/mechanical energy ←————→ Words/concepts/assumptions
   
        Our senses provide relatively objective data about the common physical reality we share, on the left side of the above equations.  Our physical sciences are very advanced.  They provide a great deal of practical knowledge about our physical self.  We have created complex means such as medicines and surgery to manage what is palpable to our natural senses.  Our practical knowledge of the use of words has been neglected.  Now we would be wise to focus more on the operation of our mental system and the practical means to manage it.  This guide purports to do just that.  This stren focuses on the mental management of “aggression.”  
   
        Mental processing of symbols provides us a non-physical “second signaling system.”  Symbols provide energy for mental action equivalent to the commonly recognized physical “triggers” of action.  Henceforth, when I refer to “words” and/or “language,” please understand that I am additionally including all those non-physical “mental” substitutes of physical reality that can trigger physical action – viz. symbols, images, concepts, fantasy, assumptions, and beliefs.   With the newer brain’s acquisition of an inner, personal, private mental world, “thinking” is added to physical experience and action:
   
                           Feeling ←→ Thinking ←→ Action   [All interact continuously]
   
   
2. Mental “hormones”: Words (symbols, thoughts, ideas) may be programmed with meaning to release energy.  Such words have trigger-power, some more so than others.  Words, like physical mediators of action, viz. hormones, may also be programmed so their energy faithfully acts from the perspective, or “meaning,” provided by their programmer to advocate a specific outcome. 
   
        All life has a predetermined energy system to fulfill their needs.  Energy in biologic creatures with thinking capacity is supplied by both physical means (electrical, chemical, mechanical) and non-physical/mental means (words, images, concepts, and the like).  Words are a second signaling system co-existing with our physical energy system.   Recognize that words are the mental energy source by which “will” is mediated.  We may program words with meaning and freely choose among them.   Wordpower is our source of what we call “willpower.”  Our mind “wills” our arm to move; an actor learns to “turn on” tears using mental energy.  Just as physical energy may stimulate mental activity, mental energy may activate a physical action. 
   
        Words that have been programmed to contain “meaning” are a source of mental energy; such words trigger specific action.   Can you recognize how words may act like a switch to “turn on” a programmed response?  Slowly say the following several times: mother, death, God, cancer, “bladder full”, your child’s (or pet’s) name, “You have to …”, “shut up!”, “spider” or “snake”, “bad!”, love, free, money, chocolate, lemon, wrinkles, sports, fefm.  Do some words release more energy than others?  Can you identify specific words, thoughts, or ideas that “turn on” some programmed response in yourself?
   
        The quantity and quality of the response depends on how the individual was programmed.  Consider how the same words … “Christian,” “Moslem,” or “Jew” may elicit different responses, perhaps opposite, depending on the individual’s prior programming.  The same word that may evoke tears in one may bring laughter in another.  Eyeball, monkey brain, dog, baby bird, ants, pig, and/or cow may be considered good to eat by people in some cultures whereas just the thought may elicit revulsion in others.  The meaning that is programmed into the individual influences whether the word triggers emotion such as joy, sadness, anxiety; and/or a physiologic change such as muscle tenseness, change in heart rate, or salivation; and/or a behavioral action such as eating, fighting, or running.
   
        Most of earth’s creatures are simple and lack consciousness.  They operate by physical “signals,” conveyed by chemical and electrical means.    We have added words as a means of function.  Words are a non-physical source of energy that serve as a means to get things done; they perform “work” just as nerves and hormones do work.  As we are primarily mental interpretive beings, words and concepts become the nerves and hormones of the mind.  
     
        Some words are more like nerves.  They transport generic energy from one location to another.  Other words are more like hormones than nerves.  They are not simply transporting data.  These words are messengers programmed to fulfill a mission.  Like the chemical messengers of the pituitary, thyroid, or sexual glands, they are “missionaries” advocating a specific action.  Such word messengers are loyal, like missionaries, to the perspective of their creator.  As hormones, enzymes, and other physical means are programmed to bring about action with a predictable outcome, words may be programmed to influence a preferred outcome. 
   
        Here is an analogy I find useful to understand the process of thought control and to develop a science of the mind.  Our “mental hormones,” or words programmed to advocate a specific perspective, may be thought of as “word switches.”  They “turn on” a preprogrammed action in a manner similar to the way a light switch controls which light is activated.  Physical electrical wires conduct energy generically; the wall switch determines which specific wired path the “juice” is conducted, and thereby which lights are activated.  Two light switches that look alike have different outcomes because they are wired differently.  The wiring is usually hidden.  “Word switches” that may appear similar lead to different outcomes because they are mentally “wired” differently.   Word switches, like light switches, determine which “meaning-path” is followed, and thereby the outcome of mental energy.  Accurately distinguishing one word switch from others, like accurately labeling our light switches (“hall light switch,” “porch light switch,” “living room light switch”), enables us to selectively choose from among the alternatives to attain our desired outcome.  Do you see that the knowledgeable selection of a preferred “word switch” is an effective means to directly influence action, just as providing or removing thyroid hormone is a direct method to alter our metabolism?  We have a unique source of power because our non-physical mental act of thinking, i.e. combining words and concepts, brings about a specific physical action.  And we may create words, program them with meaning, and freely choose among them.
   
        Meaning is the means words attain trigger-power.  Programmers create thinking power by coding “meaning” into mental substitutes for physical reality: symbols, words, concepts, ideas, images, and the like acquire trigger-power.  Symbol + “meaning” = trigger-power.  The programmer “wires” its perspective into the symbol so that its’ meaning remains loyal to its creator; the symbols convey the perspective and intention of the programmer.  Once we realize that identifiable programmers direct the magic-like ability to create physical action using (non-physical) mental energy, curiosity demands that we ask, “who are the programmers?”  What source “wires” our manner of thinking and action?  Three significant programmers may be identified:  nature (genes, DNA, fate), nurture (circumstance), and with development, “self” may become a master programmer.  
   
        The payoff of such inquiry is the discovery that, through education and the attainment of maturity, we, our self, become a programmer.  “Will” power is our trigger-power.  We, our self, may create the willpower to modify the trigger-power that has previously been programmed.  Self-mastery is our power to “make a difference.”  We may direct the trigger-power of symbols!  Eureka!  We see there is a way to free ourselves from the domination of our early programmers.  When we, our self, program symbols, words, concepts, assumptions, beliefs and related non-physical phenomena, we create mental tools.   We, our self, may forge a path to self-mastery and in so doing, acquire the trigger-power to emancipate ourselves from the domination by our earlier “other” master programmers. 
   
   
3. Emancipation of the Mind: Through self-mastery, we may assume the director/producer role of our life’s experience.  Our most recent to evolve “human” brain provides us with a new “word programmer” to add to what fate and circumstance make of us.  Through skillful development of this resource, we strengthen our will power and attain the ability to influence our physical and mental actions.  I write this self- programming function in italics to distinguish it from the customary emphasis on our physical attributes when referring to one’s “self.”  This new mental self may originate new programs and/or modify earlier ones.   It is the source of both our identity and our willpower, and our ability to become master of our life’s experience.
   
        This new capacity to program symbols, most prominent in the human brain, is characterized by the ability to think independently, free from the perspectives encoded by genes and culture, i.e. our nature and nurture.  The size and complexity of our newer brain, our creation of sophisticated language, the accumulation of knowledge, and the acquired skill in processing data enable us to engage in a special type of “reflective” thinking.  Beyond the thoughts and thinking that comprise “conscious awareness,” we become conscious of our consciousness.  As our brain acquires this ability to think about our thinking, manipulate it, modify and/or add original concepts, we experience a personal autonomous free-thinking “self.”  We stand apart from other earth creatures by the degree we use symbols to acquire Godlike power, originality, and the creation of an autonomous self, capable of relative freedom from the inherited behaviors provided by our genes and the prescriptions of our nurturers.  Thus, this self, this unique part of our mental function we refer to as “I,” joins nature and nurture, the two initial programmers of our life’s experience.   The highly developed complexity of our mind enables us to acquire a degree of self-mastery lacking in other creatures.  Our mental self is our source of willpower.  Processing words, i.e. thoughts and thinking, is the media by which “will” power acts. 
   
        The “reflective thinking” function is also our source of identity, our “personality.”  For example, we could readily maintain one’s muscle by providing the necessary nutrients to thrive, but we would hardly identify it as “aunt Emma,” or “Yes, that’s me.”  When we use the word “I,” we are more specifically identifying the unique part of our thinking that consciously reflects on itself and provides an independent and unique source of willpower. 
   
        With the growth of our willpower, our mind becomes the meeting place of three would be “masters,” our genes, our nurturers, and our self, where each is represented by word power.  Here, the word messengers negotiate to serve the perspective of the specific master who has programmed them, and to whom they owe their allegiance.  Through conflict and/or cooperation, our mind mediates the different interests of the word messengers.  As our self becomes stronger, it may pursue the wise directorship of its self and the other would be masters of our mind, those earlier “other” programmers of symbols who seek to direct our thinking and actions in their entirety. 
   
   Example: A car pulls in front of us.  Our instinct may urge a physical reaction, “Kill the bastard; smash into him!”  Our acquired mental blaming-pattern of response may demand a more symbolic act of physical aggression, “give him a piece of your mind” or “the finger.”  Our self may wisely intervene and remember we have a destination to reach that isn’t likely to benefit by an aggressive encounter.   The “self” is our personal source of “will” power, originality, and wisdom.  As will be explained, we require years of skill development prior to acquiring a significant, powerful independent self, this 3rd source of word power. 
                
        The development of this freedom seeking self and its power to wisely direct its self is the focus of this guide.   The focus of this stren is our self’s power to redirect destructive aggressive energy to constructively fulfill our wants.
   
        With the recognition of the trigger-power of words and their characteristic of being loyal to their programmer, we gain an important step toward self-mastery.  Soon, I will describe our ability to develop a newer way of thinking (ANWOT) that may consistently direct our aggressive energy to beneficial outcomes.  ANWOT is attained through simple teachable/learnable modifications in the means we process information to an action outcome.  ANWOT empowers our self to create alternative actions independent of “other” programmers.  It is the basis of what I label “thought control,” self-mastery, and the process of becoming one’s own person.  By adding wisdom to ANWOT, we may harness our aggressive energy to attain constructive outcomes more so than harmful outcomes.  Whereas our innate means of thinking is primarily designed to satisfy our needs, we can develop ANWOT to more beneficially satisfy our “wants.”
4. Danger and opportunity:  A red alert warning of global destruction blares throughout the world.  Our mastery of physical science grows our “muscle” to proportions beyond our dreams, beyond any experience, to the edge of hardly imaginable.  Our power for “human selection” is rapidly replacing “natural selection.”  Physical science empowers us to modify genes, clone life, venture beyond our planet, and create weapons capable of making our own Armageddon.  Our growing mega-power provides us neither direction nor independence; it may be aggressively directed to both constructive and destructive ends.  Self-mastery conveys unprecedented mounting responsibility upon us as ever more individuals and groups are able to change our world. 
   
        Unless and until we create a newer way of thinking, a science of thought management that can consistently provide wise direction to power, global destruction is a certain prediction.  The accurate identification of the three masters that direct our life’s experience, along with the perspectives they advocate, clarifies “why” we are so fated.  Our natural and habitual manner of expressing power includes destructive action.  We inherit, as part of our nature (DNA, genes), the survival of the fittest “fight or flight” instinct.  Our biology predisposes us to destructive physical aggression.  We acquire destructive mental aggression from our current nurturers.  The more “civilized” perspective of our nurturers prefers to convert physical aggression to mental aggression.  We are taught to survive and “make a living” using means such as social, economic, and religious dominance, competition (“beating” others), blaming, and related skills that too commonly result in harmful aggression.  History, itself usually expressed as a series of wars, doesn’t speak well of our prevalent manner of expressing power.  Nature, nurture, and we our self, often and consistently direct power to harmful outcomes.  Do you see; power, of itself lacking direction, is in the service of multiple masters! 
   
        Nature and nurture’s destructive physical and/or mental aggression will be expressed through their respective O.S.s unless a newer O.S. is provided to wisely direct the growing power of self-mastery.  The challenge we face is to provide wisdom to self-mastery and establish it as C.E.O. (director) of our growing power.  Instinct, trial-and-error, habit, and role-modeling (imitation) are dominant in the O.S.s we passively inherit and acquire as our “native language,” when we are physically and mentally immature.  The newer self-mastery O.S. must emphasize no-trial learning through cognitive rehearsal to enable us to better anticipate the future consequences of our actions. We need to equip ourselves for prevention more so than relying on past experience and established custom.
   
        We understand that in the course of evolution, organs have become more complex and specialized.  We marvel at the sophistication of our organs for digesting food, removing water, breathing, and reproduction.  Now will you envision our brain is also a series of specialized organs developed from simpler nerve cells to the out-pocketing of more specialized brains emphasizing specific functions: viz. coordinating “other” organ functions, survival [our emergency response system], clocks [puberty, menopause, wake/sleep, hibernation, etc.], reproductive function, homeostasis [maintaining steady temperature, breathing, etc.].  We are the growing edge of evolution!  Our cortex and frontal lobes, our most recent and rapidly evolving “organ”, enables us to engage in reflective thinking (think about our thinking), manipulate ideas, challenge the instinct and habit patterns we acquire from nature and nurturers, create and initiate new patterns, and become our own person.  I call this specialized area of our brain our “freedom organ.”  It is the residence of self-mastery.  This newest to evolve cortical brain empowers us to join nature and nurture as masters of our thinking.
   
        As we continue to expand the resources we spend on physical science and the raw power it produces, we fail to invest in the mental sciences, in developing the newer manner of thinking that can wisely direct us to consistent constructive direction of mega-power.  This phenomenon has been called “cultural lag.”  WMD directed by the operating systems favored by nature and our nurturer’s prevailing perspective have become our greatest source of danger.  
   
        We have yet to provide our newer means of mental direction, self-mastery, with a means of function, i.e. an operating system, that is capable of consistently processing power to favor constructive aggression, win-win outcomes, cooperation, love, humor, peaceful cohabitation, feeling good and doing good, and that emphasizes the long lasting outcomes we “want.”   In addition to our negligence with respect to others, we too often engage in destructive aggression within, and act as our own worst enemy.  Until we develop a newer mental O.S. to wisely direct the physical and mental power we our self create, its direction will continue to be determined by our nature and nurture. 
    
        Self-mastery is not complete without a mental science of wise thought control, one that can be simply taught and readily acquired in the manner we teach physical science.  Through understanding and action, with our vast resources, we can create the means to wisely redirect the impending disaster to a constructive outcome.  Independence is only of lasting value when accompanied by wise direction.  If we choose survival, we must teach ourselves to wisely manage the expanding destructive power our intelligence creates through mastery of the physical sciences.  The greater our physical power, the greater the danger we must manage.  While power promises attainment of nirvana, what is its value if we self-destruct along the way?  We require a science of thought control, a newer way of thinking operating system, to wisely direct our growing power to beneficial outcomes!
   --------------------
   
   The following shorthand expressions convey the basic issues:
   
   Constructive aggression = power + self-mastery + wisdom
        Physical science                  ——————>  Power
        Mental science, ANWOT   ——————>  Self-mastery, will
        Study of knowledge and     ——————> Wisdom: true sound judgment   
          reflective rational thinking
   
   Our three masters emphasize different sources of wisdom to process information:
      Nature           → trial-and-error and natural selection, primarily from past experience
      Nurture         → + habit and role-modeling, primarily from past and present experience
      Self-mastery → + cognitive rehearsal, “no-trial” learning, and reflective thinking,                                             from past, present, and anticipated future experience
   
   The Process of Becoming:  Nature [genes/DNA/evolution] + Nurture empower us                                                      with freedom of choice.
      Nature          → specialized organs → brain → multi-part brain →
                                cortex/frontal lobes = “freedom organ” → intelligence→
                                mental power → dominance
   
      Nurturers      → language (use of symbols) > mental power → physical science →                                        information storage + mass communication → collective intelligence                                   → mega-science/mega-power
                       --------------------
   Nature + Nurture                              → Self-mastery → mega-power→
                                                                  constructive and destructive aggression→
                                                                  “nirvana” + global destruction
   Self-mastery [ANWOT] + Wisdom → constructive mega-power → “nirvana”
                       --------------------
   Wisdom = the collection of those ideas and actions of many persons, present and past,                        that work to bring about desired outcomes +
                     the creative original concepts initiated by a freed rational mind
                       ------------------
   
   
5. We can identify three master programmers of meaning, each of which exerts its own perspective upon us, each who would have us responsive to its authority.  As mental interpretive beings, our life’s experience, the manner we think, and thereby feel and act, is powerfully determined by the meanings assigned to the words and symbols that comprise our conscious awareness.  Our DNA (genes) pre-wire us by birth with instinct.  We thereafter acquire habit from our nurturers.  Through repetition during our early years, our native language is programmed with words and symbols that automatically “turn-on” specific meaning.  Self-mastery, the power of will, gradually emerges from our prolonged stage of physical and mental immaturity. 
   
        Self-mastery is our power to modify the programs of “masters” nature and nurture, create newer programs, and to freely choose from the alternatives. Our uniqueness among earth creatures is by the degree we acquire skill in modifying and/or adding newer programs to our manner of thinking.We require sufficient abstract thinking ability to create a mature autonomous self.   [The early “rebellious” character of our emerging self may better be characterized by “won’t power” more so than “will power.”] 
   
        Nature, nurture, and our self each would have the other in the service of its own interests.  Self-mastery is our opportunity to override the programs previously established by our genes and our culture.  Our mind creates will power using the trigger-power of words that it programs to faithfully express reason.  Freedom to create, to choose among alternatives, to initiate action to fulfill our wants, to escape from the confining bars of instinct and habit, is among our most cherished goals.
   
        Whereas the patterns of behavior of most organisms are almost exclusively determined by “others,” by fate and circumstance, historians and philosophers have portrayed our source of control or governance as a three party system.   They metaphorically represent that our actions are the outcome of a struggle of conflicting interests within our mind.  The conduct of our life would be relatively simple, though quite uninspired, as it is with most earth’s creatures, if we were solely directed to perform the relatively automatic behaviors passively acquired.  However, the controlling forces within our mind are not so simply represented.   One common metaphor pictures a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, each giving contradictory directions, and a conflicted decision maker who must choose between the two alternatives.  Plato’s metaphor characterized a 3 part struggle within, in which a charioteer representing reason is pulled by two powerful horses.  One horse is insatiable lustful “desire,” the dark side.  The other is the noble passion of “spirit,” courage, and honor.  The driver’s task, “reason,” is to provide leadership.  Freud was awarded Germany’s highest writing award for clarity in expressing his views on the function of our mind.  The “id,” the inherited dark force within, is like a hydra, a many headed beast, insatiably seeking gratification.  Cut off one head and another grows in its place.  The “superego,” the demands of our stern parents and culture, is like a gardener watchful that every weed must be removed.  The “ego,” or self, courageous like a lion, strives hopelessly to be king, to rule the id and superego through reason.  While these metaphors are useful, they don’t provide adequate insight to the means to make effective change, especially the redirection of “selfish” aggression to the wise and constructive use of our mental energy.  Freud’s psychoanalytic “talking therapy” proved a useful research tool but an impractical method to benefit most.   These metaphoric portrayals of the function of the mind are preliminary steps to gaining insight, but they fail to clarify our means to directly influence action.  They offer little power to intervene.  Metaphors lack connection.  They are not wired into the program.
   
        The labels “nature,” “nurture,” and “self” provide an accurate and useful perspective of the identity of the three “controllers” within our mind.  Each operates through its own identifiable set of “word switches.”   The originality and value I claim we gain by applying this identification of the three powerful forces within us is that it leads to a practical, easily taught, readily acquired newer way of thinking.  Accurate labels enable us to classify those words that carry energy and power.  Words are active energy connections to our physical operating system.  They are not inert; they directly turn-on action.  They “work.”  Some words, like some hormones, create specific actions.  We derive our will power through the manipulation of symbols.  Words of the will power family may be identified that distinguish them from words of the instinct family and the habit family.  Identification and labeling of the words that are programmed to serve self-mastery provide direct power to intervene, to select preferred action paths.  
   
   Now let’s consider the characteristic perspective of the three masters who issue our commands.  
   
        (1) “Master nature”: When we begin life, our genes determine our nature, who and what we are, including “pre-wired” instinctual or “automatic” patterns of behavior.   While our genes are acquired from our immediate parents, they convey directions replicated, with some modifications, through an unbroken pathway to our earliest ancestors.  Nature emphasizes preservation of our life cycle by pre-wiring those patterns that have been most “successful,” i.e. that have survived through a process of trial-and-error.  Nature continues to improve upon and add new features to our survival patterns, a process we also replicate using our own mental creativity.  Older features may be replaced or modified, but often they are simply “layered over” by newer ones.  The most consistent threads are the biologic means to produce energy that all life requires to sustain it.  Most life lacks conscious awareness.   Our non-physical, mental process of thinking and signaling action is layered over our physical self.  Progressively larger brains add new features.  Nature continuously experiments to make improvements.  Later models have new features provided by increasingly complex pathways to mentally process information, greater ability to solve problems, and to flexibly manage life’s experience.  Being nature’s newest “brainchild,” we alone have the “equipment” to acquire self-mastery.  Most characteristics and behavior patterns we inherit remain relatively stable, inflexible, predictable, and automatic.   It is said “we are mass produced with little work by unskilled labor” and the makeup of our genes is “a gift we cannot refuse.”  
   
   One of our genes most persistent characteristic pre-wired survival behaviors has been called our fight or flight pattern.  Energy is programmed to “aggressively” or “assertively” obtain our needs.  Destructive aggression including physical fighting is commonly nature’s way to preserve life, obtain food, mate and protect the young.  Nature imposes its will by rewarding compliance with pleasure and/or the avoidance of pain. Our inherited manner of function is designed to preserve (pre-serve) through genes the “I want what I need” demands of amoral “selfish” creatures with a primitive mind, an immature mind, or with no mind at all. 
   
        (2) “Master nurture”:  External “controllers” such as our parents and our particular culture dominate our growing up period.  They program us to respond to non-physical beliefs and rules, “concepts” made meaningful by words and symbols.  This acquired set of mental controls is sufficiently powerful to compete with the often-contradictory wants of our genes.  Our nurturers impose very different “socialized” behavior to “fight” for our wants.   Physical fighting or running away is not usually effective in our relatively civilized society.   Our nurturers commonly restrain physical aggression and prescribe alternative means of control through mental domination.  “Symbolic” or mental aggression includes giving and/or withholding of rewards such as love, attention, and material “wants” (viz. dessert), “shunning,” social domination and restraints, “beating” others economically and in competitive “games,” and the like.
   
        Unlike the “language” operating system (O.S.) of our genes, which is designed primarily for short-term here-and-now physical action (eat, pee, sleep, attack, run, etc.), the language of our nurturers is designed to faithfully comply with their wants.  During the years of our most rapid learning, through the prolonged period we are dependent on our nurturers, we acquire a new “native language” O.S., a new means to process information.  New patterns of behavior, including our language and manner of thinking bear the perspective of our nurturers.  They are virtually indelibly “wired” within us.  Our physically immature and mentally undeveloped minds need to be taught how to avoid danger and survive in a “civilized” society.  The native language we acquire in our early years promotes blind obedience to rules and those who make them. Blind obedience is quite serviceable during our prolonged period of inadequate survival skills, when failure to comply can have serious, even fatal consequences. 
   
        While the native language we acquire promotes civilized behavior and provides symbolic alternatives to destructive physical aggression, it also dramatically promotes our use of destructive mental aggression.  Our “needs” to stay alive, obtain food, reproduce, and protect our young are usually satisfied without physical confrontation.  However, we aggressively mentally compete for our “wants”: the symbols of “success” … status, fame, social domination, winning, wealth, material goods, righteousness, etc.   
   
         The native language we acquire from our nurturers is “prescriptive.”  Information is processed as “should,” “have to,” “must,” and related authoritarian directives are enforced by symbolic reward or punishment.  Our nurturer’s operating system is also “dichotomous.”  Issues are reduced to two categories, “either…or,” easily understood by our undeveloped immature brain.  “Either…or” thinking distorts our perception and understanding.  Labeling restricted to two categories, viz. “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “bad,” “us” or “them,” “O.K.” or “not O.K!” leads to prejudicial (pre-judged) thinking and behavior.   The prescriptive and dichotomous manner of processing information becomes our way of thinking, our dominant basic mental O.S.  While this native language O.S. effectively converts physical aggression to mental expression, the prescriptive, dichotomous means of processing information disposes us to blaming, resentment, social aggression, prejudice, distorted thinking, uncritical obedience to authority, and dependency.  
   
        The words we acquire from our nurturers become “wired” to habitually lead to mental punishment of others and/or “guilting” ones self.  We learn that prescriptive behavior, including the way we think, ordered by authority “must” be obeyed or some form of punishment will follow.  The “cure” for thinking or doing “wrong,” what “shouldn’t,” “can’t,” “must not” or “ought not” be done (or not doing what “should,” “ought to,” or “must be done”) is commonly some form of negative consequence.   Whereas the vocabulary of our first controller, our inherited nature, is dominated by “yes” words, “no” words are the focus of our second master.   Improper behavior -- thoughts, feelings, and acts, are forbidden; they are labeled as “bad.”  The most ingenious tool of “nurturers” to restrain aggression is to teach the skill of self-punishment.  Punishment from an outside “other” can be avoided so long as we self-impose a bit of suffering for our non-compliance.  Aggressive energy is commonly redirected to oneself in a punishing form … examples are shame, self-blame, guilt, self put-downs, embarrassment, and the like.  They are powerful forms of punishment that often lead to depression, and even physical aggression towards oneself, including the extreme of “murdering oneself.”  Suicide is rare among other earthlings!  Our years of dependence provide an adequate period for our nurturers to program its characteristic “language” and manner of thinking, for even the best teachers require some time to create a “healthy” guilt producing conscience. 
   
        Aggression that is thwarted and/or prolonged, as in “resentment,” usually leads to negative outcomes such as tension and escalation of the conflict.  Because nature has primarily designed our body to respond to challenges immediately, sustained stressful states also commonly cause such physical symptoms as muscle contraction pain (headache, backache), chemical imbalances, and other “dis-ease.”   And most of the games and sports our culture supports are sanctioned expressions of symbolic “kicking ass.”   The “winner” enjoys a feeling of domination; the “loser” is deflated and soon starts planning how to escalate their power to “beat” the winner next time.  Though no one is supposed to be injured, those competitions offering the most danger and injury seem to enjoy the greatest audience.
   
        While not the focus of this stren, it is worthwhile noting that the physical “flight” part of “natures way” is also converted from physical running and/or hiding to subtle forms of mental “running” such as procrastination, apathy, giving up, abuse of substances, and suppressing or denying anger with resultant stress illness, viz. muscle contraction pain of various sorts. 
   
   The perspectives of nature and nurture may be characterized as follows:
    
   Nature:   “Yes, whatever pleases me, do!  I can do and take what I want.” [as long 
                      as I think I can get away with it]
   Nurture: “No, you shouldn’t, can’t, must not!  If it feels good, tastes good, looks
                     good, smells good, or sounds good, this is your conscience advising you
                     that it’s probably bad for you.”
   
   Both demand blind obedience to authority: nature by its pre-wired biological directions and our nurturers by their power to program your thinking, often claiming infallible knowledge as they sustain your life over a prolonged period of dependency.   Nature’s means are primarily physical; nurture’s are primarily mental.  
     
        Understandably, these two “dictatorial” masters are usually in conflict.   When we don’t get what we want, or we get what we don’t want, our “reflex” experience is frustration.  Chemical and electrical messengers are aroused.  Frustration is followed by “anger” and the urge for destructive action.  While the primitive mind may propose physical attack including hitting, biting, and in the extreme murder, the more disciplined mind, dominated by the mental O.S. of our nurturers usually succeeds in suppressing and/or subtly expressing our energy in a “civilized” non-physical way.  We convert the uninhibited physical short term, here-and-now “yes, do it” action to some socially tolerated, but longer lasting mental means of expression.
    
        Using the language or O.S. we acquire in our nurture stage of development, as I describe elsewhere, we learn to blame others, store and sustain anger, resent, engage in social aggression, jealousy, criticism, vengeance, anti-social acts, and/or direct aggression inward (“guilting” one’s self).   Chronic tension and anxiety foster stress related illness and neurotic behavior.  When our mental means fail, we commonly revert to physical aggression.  Sometimes nurture agrees with nature.  When this occurs, the two masters mutually support the physical aggression advocated by nature and/or the “socialized” aggression advocated by nurture.   
   
        I believe the pattern of frustration → arousal (energy) → anger → aggression is experienced universally and is known by every person.   Frustration is inevitable, for unlike our needs, our unrealistic “wants” will never be completely fulfilled.   Immortality, magical power, youthful energy and appearance, control of others, meeting and mating with a partner who is 100% compatible, and unrestrained continuous physical gratification are a few of the myriads of “denials” we can expect in our lifetime.   [Greek philosophers concluded several millennia past that the pleasures and treasures of the mind are superior to the pleasures and treasures of the body.  Given a choice between sustained peace-of-mind, goodwill among neighbors, and a scrapbook of fond thoughts, or intense but short lived orgiastic feelings, material wealth with a collection of exotic automobiles, expensive jewelry and the like, which for you is most tempting?  Which is wisest?  Becoming one’s own person through ANWOT is the cultivation of mental pleasures and treasures.  However, I am not suggesting physical pleasures are to be ignored.  Fortunately, our world supports “both … and” when we grow beyond the “either … or” second phase of thinking.  The wisely created persistent glow of the candle does not exclude the fiery “phfft” excitement of the rocket. ]
   
        Communally, our cultured nurturers restrict fighting through the threat (or actual imposition) of a punishment, censure, “fine,” jail, even execution.  Our government leaders and religious leaders uniformly advocate peace, but practice the same mental means of dealing with aggression that we see in individuals.  They prepare us for mass physical aggression that is regularly expressed when they believe mental restraints such as laws, agreements or “treaties” don’t work, especially when survival of their own “assumptive views” are threatened.   Most accounts of our world history are the highlights of its series of wars.   We observe perpetual conflict between the “haves” and the “have nots,” harmful competition, attempts to dominate, and destructive aggression.    The prescriptive, dichotomous thinking of our native language even encourages the “haves” to have more, as though the goal were to “have it all,” often at the expense of the “have nots.”  The behaviors observed in our community may be understood as a collective reflection of the specific O.S. dominant within us as individuals.  We point the finger at others and demand justice when the primary solution to “society’s problems” is within our self.  If historians have an opportunity to look back at our current life, we will be labeled “the age of speed and greed.”  Can we change this to “the era of wise creeds and good deeds”?
   
        (3) Self-mastery:  The manner of thinking or O.S. of our early years are those (1) necessarily inherited through our genes and (2) acquired from our nurturers.  Before we can “become our own person” and meaningfully think and act independent of our first two masters, we must have the prerequisites of self-mastery:  physical and mental maturity, complex language, and skill in abstract reflective thinking (i.e. thinking about our thinking). Studies of adult developmentindicate that most don’t reach this self-mastery stage of life until their late 20’s or 30’s.  Some never attain a dominant personal identity; they simply continue to comply with the programs passively received from nature and their nurturers.  One may attain considerable originality and creativity and assume attainment of self-mastery, but in fact retain instinct and habit as the actual director of his/her creative efforts.  For example, we discover nuclear power but direct its use to create destructive weapons more so than beneficial energy. 
   
        Unlike the marker event of our physical “birthday,” the more important “birth” (and development) of our mental self is rarely noticed, and I have never attended a party celebrating the beginning of a “mental self.”   This is because the “gestation” period for the creation of our self progresses gradually without a culminating climax, and we are not equipped to perceive non-physical mental phenomena as we perceive the more dramatic physical “birth” phenomena.
   
        If you are reading this stren, it is likely you have sufficiently acquired the prerequisites to manage the third stage of your development, the creation of the self of self-mastery, a self distinct from your inherited and acquired controllers.  Your brain is physically mature and your mind is sufficiently developed.  You process words and symbols, and can think abstractly while reflecting on yourself and the data and knowledge that you now have available to you.  Likely you have questioned the directives of your genes and the rules of your nurturers, and hopefully you have exercised a degree of rebellion and “won’t” power.   Now you have the ability to create an independent free thinking self, to strengthen your “will” power, and wisely exercise your ability to modify old patterns and/or originate new ones.  Your present self-mastery stage of development confronts you with your most critical challenge – creating a newer way of thinking operating system (ANWOT O.S.) that will wisely manage your new power.  Here is your opportunity to attain what many consider our most cherished possession – freedom … not simply physical freedom of our “muscles,” but mental control of our life’s experience, emancipation from the rituals and rules of our prior masters. 
   
   You may acquire the skill of self-mastery, to wisely direct the masters of your life’s experience by acquiring skill in ANWOT:
   
        To summarize thus far, scientists have provided us knowledge that our brain actually consists of multiple brains extending from the most primitive core to the newer outer layer.  From one celled creatures to humankind, there is a continued progression in size and function, related to the complexity of the organism: from no brain to a simple central nervous system or “nerve net,” the formation of a single centralized brain, the out-pocketing of a second brain with new functions, and thereupon increasing to the most complex seven part brain(s) nature provides us humans.   Behavior patterns increase with brain power: simple creatures act in response to outside stimuli, viz. light and temperature.  Others have internal automatic control.  While higher life forms have conscious awareness, humankind is distinguished by our degree of self-consciousness.  We are conscious of our consciousness!  We have the capacity to master our life’s experience.  I consider the most recent to evolve specialized portion of the human brain our “freedom organ,” whose function enables us to engage in reflective thinking and join nature and nurture as a member, even C.E.O., of our mental Board of Directors.  We would be wise to modify the common question, “Which is more important, nature or nurture?” to include a third new director, the “self” of self-mastery.
   
        Could you now imagine that our “multiple” brain causes our mind to operate with three distinct and identifiable sets of directions … instinct, habit, and will?  Each of our three controllers appears in sequence at a specific stage of our development.  We inherit instinct from our genes.  We acquire habit from our nurturers as we grow to maturity.  Free will develops slowly and does not acquire much strength until we have sufficient abstract thinking ability to create an autonomous self.   Genes, being our first “master,” initially rules alone.  The inherited behaviors of a less complex creature may remain its exclusive “boss” throughout its lifespan.   Our parents and culture add their directives over our prolonged “nurtured” stage of development.  Thus, throughout history, earth creatures have experienced a progression of controls provided by innate directors, and new directions are increasingly added through nurturers.  Those creatures requiring longer periods of dependence (related to brain size) acquire more directions from their nurturers, and thereby, possess more problem solving skills.  Control by these first two masters weakens if, when, and to what degree, we develop the skills of self-mastery.
   
        Humankind has initiated a new era of development.  We are adding individual and “global” self-mastery to “other” controllers.  We, individually, repeat the same process observed in the historic development of all creatures.  Our first stage of development relies on nature to direct what we are and how we act.  Our nurturers add new directions during our years of dependency.  Now we humankind find ourselves initiating a third “personal” self-mastery stage where we may alter the directions we have passively acquired.  We create powerful means for both constructive and destructive action, previously non-existent in nature and unknown by our nurturers.  Mastery in the physical sciences empowers us to alter the “rules,” to dramatically change both ourselves and mother earth as it has forever been guided.  Although we rapidly grow our power to improve what has been provided, we commonly become our own worst enemy.   Humankind has already created the means to destroy itself many times over.  Sooner or later, perhaps during our lifetime, our inherited and acquired destructive means of expressing aggression will surely result in a “big bang” of global proportions.  The critical task to be explained in the remainder of this theory stren is that we now have the means to develop a new disciplined manner of thinking, easily taught and learned, that can direct our growing power to constructive ends.   
                                                     --------------------
   The following shorthand expressions convey the basic issues:
   
   Nature    → genes → instinct → fight or flight → short term management
                → hormones, neurotransmitters, biochemical means favored
                → survival of the fittest, physical aggression, amoral
                → action paths predetermined, relatively inflexible  
                → dominated by instinct and trial-and-error
                → the wisdom of our historic past 
    
   Nurture → mental processing favored → mental aggression → blaming, guilting, shunning, ruling, discriminating, etc.
                → symbolic domination → economic, political and religious domination→
                     win-lose
                → habit and role modeling are added to instinct and trial-and-error learning
                → action dominated by establishment rules, habit and role-modeling [imitation]
                → the wisdom of our historic past + the wisdom of our present
   
   Self-mastery → mental processing favored → reflective thinking [thinking about our thinking, introspection, self-consciousness]
               → cognitive rehearsal and no-trial learning are emphasized more so than instinct, trial-and-error learning, habit, and role modeling
               → the wisdom of our historic past + the wisdom of our present +
                    the wisdom to rationally anticipate the future consequences of our action
               → prevention of what we don’t want; promotion of our best short and long-term interests      
   
   
6. Our three basic operating systems (O.S.s):  Learning starts with labeling.  Let us come to a common understanding of what is conveyed by the term “operating system” because herein is the key to freeing our will to attain self-mastery.  An O.S. is the means by which A gets to B.  A program that determines the paths, symbols, words, and concepts that thinking will be processed to an action outcome will be labeled a mental O.S..  Because our genes, nurturers, and self differ in their perspective, each creates its own distinct mental O.S., i.e. its manner of thinking, of processing information to reach their preferred goal.  Our manner of thinking and the consequent action it produces is determined by which of our mental O.S.s is dominant.    
   
        One type of physical O.S. is the system programmed into the computer to process input.  Computers may have multiple operating systems, such as a word processing program, a spread sheet program, a drawing program, and so on.  DOS, Word, Wordperfect, Excel, and Corel Draw are current examples.  Wordstar is an earlier word-processing program that is now virtually extinct; it’s been upgraded by newer programs that provide more options.  Similarly, we can upgrade the native language we first acquire by newer programs that expand our mental freedom (ANWOT).
   
        I would have more difficulty were I to create this guide using a spreadsheet or drawing program instead of a word-processing program.  Likewise, we create automobiles, trains, and airplanes that provide a choice of methods and multiple pathways, beyond walking, to get where we want to go.  Do you remember we once relied on the horse-and-carriage?  Whether we walk, drive, and/or fly represent different means or O.S.s we may choose to get to our destination.  Each means to our destination has advantages and disadvantages.  Trains move on tracks that provide the engineer limited flexibility in determining its course; we travel as a quite passive passenger.  Most times that we travel by auto, we are at the wheel and have considerable flexibility and power to steer our course.  A plane offers greater speed and “goes like the crow.”  Each has an engine and an energy source.  From their first “creation,” we continue to improve and use each of these means of travel.  Note that they are most effective in their own domain – the car does poorly on tracks, the train is ill suited for the highway, and so on.  I have used all of these major means of travel (and others besides) on one trip.   A chicken in the hands of McDonald’s, a fancy French chef, or an egg farmer, is managed with quite different outcomes. 
   
        As computers may have multiple mechanical O.S.s and we have multiple physical means to get where we want to go, biologic creatures also process their actions and get where they want to go using different means.   Our focus here is the way data is mentally processed to an outcome.  Windows is an O.S. that manages multiple other programs, each of which is designed to best perform a specific function.  Could you picture a mental Boardroom where our master programmers meet to determine how thinking and our O.S.s are to be managed?   
   
        It is apparent that an operating system not only provides its “operator” the means to function, it also sets limits to what it may produce.  My computer’s O.S. cannot print Chinese characters.  My Chinese daughter-in-law has equipped her computer with an O.S. that can.  Nature’s O.S. programs us to manage survival emphasizing periodic destructive physical aggression.  Our nurturer’s program us with language and new perspectives that expand the limits of our thinking.  Symbolic aggression is emphasized more so than physical aggression.  Nature’s O.S. is not capable of managing aggression in the manner we now devise using nurture’s O.S.  We are remarkable because, with maturity, we have the ability to add new programs and re-program existing ones.  We may expand our limits.  Mental freedom is the outcome of thought control.  As we acquire skill in programming new pathways to those of our existing O.S.s, we grow our freedom from the constraints imposed by our nature and our nurturers!  We grow the will power of self-mastery through an understanding of the three basic O.S.s (“languages”) specific to each of our three masters. 
   
        Combining knowledge, imagination, and reason, we may program truth and wisdom that exceeds the limits that nature and our nurturer’s O.S.s provide!  We are capable of programming our independence to become what we choose.    As we develop our own mental programming skills, we increase our creative power. We may direct our mental energy to intensify the destructive aggression that is periodically but consistently an outcome of our thinking.  Such is the perspective of our genes and predominant nurturers.  Applying ANWOT, we may direct our efforts to create programs that are beyond the capability of our present O.S.s, programs that consistently process information to constructive aggression.  Can you imagine programming our thinking to emphasize sharing, love, cooperation, endorsement, negotiation, conflict resolution, peace of mind, reason, no-trial learning, foresight, prevention, and the newer perspectives that direct our energy as a constructive participant in the global community of which we are a part?  Can you imagine creating an operating system that aggressively seeks hate, injustice, intolerance, and disease wherever they exist to attack and “murder” them?   We now have all the “equipment” needed to develop and popularize a science of thought control, i.e. the hardware and software to design an ANWOT O.S. that can safely and wisely manage our growing mastery.   The most wonderful news is that we may powerfully upgrade our thinking through 7 easily acquired mental actions.  ANWOT enables us to process our life’s experience to constructive aggression!  This, precisely, is the goal of The Practical Persons Guide To Feeling Good And Doing Good.    
   
        Using symbols, we create many O.S.s.  The means a biologic organism resolves tension and “spends” its energy to attain its desired goal(s) is determined by its O.S..   Most earth creatures (re-)act relatively automatically to satisfy their needs using one basic physical O.S. involving heat and/or light sensitive receptors, enzymes, hormones, nerves, and the like.  We stand apart from other creatures by the degree we have developed mental means, words and symbols, to determine our actions.  We devise multiple O.S.s or “languages” to mentally manipulate data and knowledge.  We have three basic mental O.S.s.  We create others for specialized applications.  Critical to our understanding “aggression” is that its manner of expression will vary dramatically depending on whether our gene’s, our nurturer’s, or our self’s O.S. is dominant in the processing of information.    
   
   (1) nature’s O.S.: Our gene’s endow us with the physical means to complete the life cycle.  We have muscles and organs and are physically “pre-wired” with the chemical and electrical means to “operate” them.  We are provided characteristic behaviors.  “Fight” or “Flight” is its prevalent means of survival.  Harmful aggression is common during physical confrontation to preserve life, dominate, obtain food, mate, and protect the young.   In addition to our physical means, our need for survival is represented in our mental O.S. in simple language signaling “eat,” “drink,” “flee,” “pee,” “engage in horizontal recreation,” and so on.  Because there is great survival value in anticipating danger, our mind is preoccupied more with danger than happiness.  This is why primitive thinking dwells more on the negative than the positive, why we worry more so than “optimize,” and why laughter is rare among animals and persons lacking the ANWOT O.S.  The demands of nature are powerfully persuasive because they are enforced by pain and/or pleasure, life or death.
   
   (2) nurture’s O.S.: To nature’s inherited mostly physical O.S., our nurturers have added a second, primarily mental O.S.   During our prolonged years of dependence, our nurturer’s teach us words and symbols to process data mentally.  Through repetition words and symbols are habituated to turn-on meaning, emotion, and action.  This early manner of processing information becomes our “native” language.¹  It is designed to direct our lives according to the rules of our nurturers and their “civilized” society.  Thus, physical fighting is prohibited and a new program re-directs physical aggression to mental aggression.  Since our native language must be effective when we are physically and mentally immature, its words are characteristically prescriptive and dichotomous (limited to 2 categories) and values are prejudicial (“pre-judged”), similar to nature’s O.S.  Years pass before we develop a self, an “I” to accept personal responsibility.  Understandably, the native language O.S. we acquire must be adapted to reflect our immaturity and dependency.  Such constraints to our thinking result in a distorted perception of reality and the establishment of predictable perspectives.  The child expects that “others” have the duty to protect and provide.  When the world fails to satisfy our needs and wants, to meet our expectations, we experience frustration.  We are prone to mentally blame others, “feed” resentment, “guilt” ourselves, and create methods to socially, more so than physically, dominate and/or get what we want from others.  The O.S. provided by our nurturers is designed for blind obedience and compliance with rules; it sustains dependence on “others” through various means of “approval” and/or symbolic and physical punishment.  Our nurturer’s demands are powerfully persuasive because during our many years of dependence, they have programmed into our thinking the habit of symbolic reward and/or punishment, endorsement and/or guilt.   As will be explained, we think using our “native language” as inherited through our genes and taught by our nurturers.  It dominates our thinking and becomes the controller of our life’s experience unless we add a newer self-mastery O.S.
   
   (3) the ANWOT O.S. (a new way of thinking operating system) of self-mastery: Only years after our birth, when we attain physical maturity and acquire sufficient skills of language and abstract reasoning, can we possess the personal power to challenge the habitual patterns established by our first two O.S.s.  Seven easy word substitutions are sufficient to initiate the ANWOT O.S.  They do so by redirecting the manner we think to assume personal responsibility more so than sustain the dependency of our first decades.  They modify the dichotomous thinking that separates data into “us” or “them,” that is the source of blaming others and/or guilting ourself.  And they engage rational problem solving for mutual benefit more so than winning by physical and/or symbolic domination of “the other.”  The ANWOT O.S. is artistically programmed by rational thinking, cherished as our own creation, and sustained by self-endorsement.  The experience of the freedom to create alternatives, and the inherent satisfaction in choosing among them, powerfully motivates us to seek self-mastery.   The “AHA” “eureka!” moment of insight and/or accomplishment is something of an intellectual orgasm.  Attaining understanding (knowledge), creativity, rational thinking, originating new patterns of action, problem-solving, acquiring a personal identity, and the positive experience from the generation of enthusiasm, meaning, and purpose are among the self-motivating rewards of self-mastery.   
   
        ANWOT is the O.S. we design to set our self free from the control of the O.S.s of nature and nurture.  It provides the choice to challenge and/or affirm the directions of our genes and acquired manner of thinking.   We expand our emancipation as we create our own programs and exercise independent rational thinking.   If and when we choose to take responsibility for our life’s experience, we experience tension.   Instinct and habit can be expected to resist giving up or sharing their established domain.  At issue is the relative strength of the O.S. provided by nature, the O.S. imposed upon us by our nurturers, and the self-mastery O.S. that we may electively choose to create. 
   
        Perspective determines how aggression is rewarded and/or punished.  It influences the path and outcome of thinking.  The O.S. of our genes may approve of stealing; the strong take from the weak.  Our nurturer’s O.S. may punish the same aggressive act with guilt and/or imposing punishment.   The O.S. of a mature self may negotiate a mutually satisfying way to obtain goods.  If you forgo dessert, nature’s O.S. may punish in the short-term (“How could you be so stupid to pass on the pie-ala-mode!”) while the O.S.s of our nurturers and self-mastery may provide long-term mental and physical rewards. 
   
        Let’s consider other examples:  (1) Nature: A hawk relieves its need for food by attacking and killing a smaller bird.  We kill animals for food but also satisfy our need for food by cultivating it.  (2) Nurture: Through real or symbolic power, humankind’s strong commonly dominate the weak and require others to provide sustenance/“wants” in a “win-lose” arrangement.   (3) Self-mastery: We may also obtain food by sharing knowledge and labor with others for mutual benefit, a “win-win” situation.  (1) The buck may fulfill its sexual interest through physical aggression and domination.   Testosterone, which is more prevalent in males than females, is understood to dispose to physical aggressive behavior, especially sex related.  (2) Our nurturer’s O.S. now labels forced sex “rape,” “primitive” and “unlawful.”    Our nurturer’s mental training in prescriptive thinking and the creation of rules has been successful in diminishing the frequency of rape.  Historically and currently, males are prone to fulfill sexual wants through symbolic (viz. economic) domination of “the weaker sex,” as would be expected when our second O.S. is dominant.  (3) Our present trend is towards more cooperative relationships among mutually consenting equals.  Yet, women remain subjugated in many area of the world.  (1) “Pee now, anywhere I like!”, (2) “I should pee in the toilet!”,  (3) “I wisely choose where and when I pee.”  Action depends on which O.S. is dominant! 
   
        We, like computers, may use specialized O.S.s in addition to our basic ones.  Each processes words and/or symbols using different pathways resulting in different action.   Here are examples of additional mental O.S.s designed for a specific purpose:
   (4) the O.S.s I label the “geographic” languages: English, Russian, Chinese, etc.
   (5) the O.S. of music: notations used in sheet music
   (6) the O.S. of higher math and physics: formulas and symbols to convey specific abstract ideas
   
        I designate the O.S.s of nature, our nurturers, and our self collectively as the “life-cycle” O.S. because they are created in sequence corresponding to our 3 life stages: birth, dependence on nurturers, and maturity.  Understanding them is basic because they provide the final common pathways that thinking leads to action.  The “geographic” O.S.s are those that are associated within specific locations.  “Fact” O.S.s, such as those of music and math, are so designated because they convey objective truth of the common reality.  I here emphasize the ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery because such knowledge enables our adult self to join fate and circumstance as masters of our life’s experience.  Understanding and applying ANWOT is the payoff and reason I write this Guide!  Even though our attention is first directed to our geographic O.S.s, as will be explained, they provide superficial information, distort our understanding of reality, and contribute to our expression of harmful aggression.  For example, our early manner of thinking acquired when we are immature is prone to judge a car (and a person) by its color and shape more so than the innards that determines it’s more important features.
   
   We may further wise management of our mental energy through an understanding of the important characteristics of our mental O.S.s:
   
   →        The “meanings” assigned to the words (symbols) of most mental O.S.s are individual, personal, and private … unable to be experienced in an exact manner by any “other.”  For example, consider how varied the response to a cross, a crescent, or six pointed star.  Meaning varies in each individual often leading to different action outcomes. Note that although “fact” O.S.s such as music and math are distinct O.S.s, the meaning of their symbols are constant more so than personal and private, and they may be understood irrespective of a person’s life-cycle and/or geographic O.S.s 
    
   →        All native languages are programmed to express destructive aggression!  Each of us, wherever our birth, acquire the native language O.S. that becomes the means by which we process thoughts and thinking.  When we acquire our native language throughout our first (but usually extended) decade(s) of physical and mental immaturity, the language our nurturers teach must necessarily be adaptive to our limited capacity to manage information. 
   
        Native languages reflect our dependency on someone(s) or something outside of our self to provide our needs.  Prescriptive words (should, have to, must) demand our obedience to authority.  Dichotomous words (either…or) convey a simplified but distorted understanding that limits reality to two categories.  This prescriptive, dichotomous, dependency perspective is indelibly wired into our manner of thinking by years of repetition.  The survival of the fittest “fight” perspective of our genes O.S. and the harmful mental aggression inherent in the O.S. acquired from our nurturers dominate all native languages and remain so unless and until they are modified. 
   
        Because societal customs, politics, laws, government, and religion are expressions of our dominant O.S., the prevailing orientation of our “civilized” society emphasizes good vs bad, right vs wrong, us vs them, win vs lose, our way vs your way, dominance vs submission, innocent vs guilty, yours vs mine, for vs against, and so on.  The prescriptive and dichotomous dependency manner of thinking that is mandatory throughout our prolonged period of nurturance converts physical aggression to more “civilized” mental harmful aggression ... blaming, guilt, hatred, resentment, winning, domination by symbols of authority, etc..  Physical and mental harmful aggression reside in our native language!   
   
   →        Through years of repetition and habit, the O.S.s of our genes and nurturers dominate our native language.  The ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery, unlike the passively acquired O.S.s prevalent in all native languages, has never been and is not currently a standard part of our formal education.  The ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery is an elective acquired through action more so than a “gift” passively received.  It is beyond our capability until we develop sufficient prerequisites: functional maturity, sophisticated vocabulary, skill in reflective thinking, and sufficient will power to rebel against established authority.  Until we add the self-mastery O.S. to our standardized education, the perspectives associated with survival of the fittest, dependency, and the prescriptive, dichotomous thinking of our native language will persist.    
   
   →        Although we tend to be more focused on the differences in our geographic languages, knowledge of our life-cycle O.S.s provides far more practical information. 
   
        Our innate needs arouse the same destructive aggression whatever our native tongue, be it French, German, English, Chinese, and so on.  The final common pathways that lead to action are similar even though our geographic languages that lead to them may greatly differ.  The words for “fight,” “hide,” “eat,” “mate,” and so on may sound and look different in each language, but the processing is similar irrespective of one’s geographic location.  Out actions are determined according to which of our life-cycle O.S.s are dominant, that of our genes, our nurturers, or the ANWOT self-mastery O.S. that we create. 
   
        Wars and destructive aggression persists among people of the same native language.  Esperanto is a universal language invented over 100 years ago with the hope of unifying persons of differing native languages.  While Esperanto does offer a common language, it does not provide a newer manner of thinking.  Persons of the same native language “war” on one another, attempt to dominate, compete and “beat” their neighbor.  Lacking the ANWOT O.S., native languages remain limited to the manners of thinking provided by their nature and nurture.  The means all native language process needs to an action outcome include the same common pathways established by our genes and nurturers.  Our native language consists of the O.S. of our genes and the O.S. we acquire through our decade(s) of dependence and immaturity.  Bullying and physical combat commonly originate from instinct.  Blaming others and/or one’s self, resentment, and social domination are common perspectives acquired during our nurtured stage.  Our innate needs, our wants and use of harmful aggression to attain them are relatively consistent.  Destructive aggression is aroused irrespective of one’s native and/or geographic language.  We would be wise to invest at least as much energy to understand and apply the life-cycle O.S.s as we presently invest in our geographic language.  
   
   →        Unlike our early O.S.s that emphasize cure, ANWOT adds prevention to our problem-solving repertoire.  [WMD require prevention …agree?]  Our genes wisdom has been refined over millions of years of past trial-and-error experience, linked in a continuous chain through our DNA.  Our nurturers’ perspective emphasizes our present wisdom, what we have become through habit and mimicking role models.   Its O.S. is most prominent in determining our establishment’s customs.  The ANWOT O.S. equips us to act on future wisdom!  The trigger words that turn on the ANWOT O.S. free our will to encourage reflective thinking, consider new alternatives, and assume responsibility for creative action.  Self-mastery emphasizes cognitive rehearsal (also called “no-trail” learning) to mentally process alternatives to reasonable outcomes before initiating action.  The newer paths to process data created by ANWOT emphasize forethought, patience, and thereby prevention (more so than cure as favored by trial-and-error or role modeling).  The ANWOT O.S. is the language of becoming, of our future, of what we may freely (and I hope wisely) choose to attain. 
   
   →        The O.S.s of our genes and nurturers are not adequate to wisely manage our new Era of self-mastery.  Upgrading our manner of thinking to manage the direction of mega-power self-mastery can readily be accomplished.   Thus far we neglect doing so.  Our society would be wise to institutionalize standard education in the ANWOT O.S. as we approach maturity.
    
        Native languages works fine within their geographic territory.  How effective is our native tongue in a foreign territory where the language differs?  Skill in the language of the land is far more useful.  An “English” native speaker will manage better in China by acquiring an understanding of Chinese.  The speaker of both languages will yet have difficulty in a third territory foreign to the first two until the new language is acquired.  The language of nature serves us well in the first stage of our development.  Our nurturers O.S. improves our ability to get what we need and want in our second stage of development.  On the jet propelled wings of physical science we suddenly find ourselves in the foreign territory of self-mastery.  The change is quite dramatic.  Here, we explosively grow our power, popularize WMD, and now alter the long established “rules of survival.”  In becoming our own person we have joined nature and nurture as directors of our fate and circumstance.  We face formidable challenges as we assume our new responsibilities.  Our first two “languages” are not up to the task when we travel to the land of self-mastery.  We require a third language adaptive to the foreign territory where our physical science has taken us.  Our personal and global well-being is now in our own “heads.”  Let’s now attend to our mental science and perfect a newer way of thinking operating system (ANWOT O.S.) adaptive to our new home.    
   
   →        Our continued well-being requires the addition of the ANWOT O.S. to those prevalent in our native languages.  The O.S.s inherited through our genes and the geographic languages acquired from our predominant nurturers during our immature years are dominant within our “native language.”  They well equip us to focus on superficial differences more so than likenesses, such as shape, skin color, appearance, gender, location, and the artificial symbols of virtue, of “goodness” … status, titles, wealth, religion.  Our native language excels in conveying instinct, dependency, prescriptive and dichotomous thinking.  Thus, our first manner of thinking distorts our understanding of the common reality we share; it is the major source of the self-deception that fosters hatred and prejudice.   This is why conflict is ubiquitous. 
   
        We devote an extraordinary amount of energy to teach geographic language, the three “r’s”, and other standard subjects throughout our first years.  The life-cycle O.S.s emphasize the common pathways that determine the manner we think, and thereby how we feel and the way we act.  How we think is our critical resource if we are to wisely manage adulthood.  Our society has yet to institutionalize standard education in ANWOT that upgrades our native language to deal with the challenges of modernity.  The reign of destructive aggression and wars we know too well will be extended until we upgrade the nature/nurture O.S.s dominant in every native language.  The ANWOT O.S. can correct such distorted perception.
   
   →        Consider this example of how our means of mentally processing information will vary in its path and outcome depending on which of our three O.S.s is dominant.    
   
        “Nature,” “Nurture,” and “Self” each would be master of our thinking!  Be the stimulus from “outside,” an internal physical need, or an original idea, each “master” processes data to an action outcome expressive of its own perspective:
   
   instinct, conveying the perspective of millions of years of trial-and-error experience;
   habit, expressing the established current perspective of our parents, teachers, and culture, interpreting the
        meanings of symbols as taught us in our first decades, and often persistent throughout our lifetime; and
   freewill, the power to initiate and choose among alternatives that we our selves design to direct our life’s
        experience and destiny. 
   
        We first respond to a stressing situation, or need, with chemical and electrical changes in our body.  Adrenalin is produced, blood is diverted to muscle, and energy is released among other characteristic physiologic changes, and thinking is alerted, perhaps to “emergency” status.  These changes prepare us to take action.   We give names to this universal experience such as “tension,” “frustration,” and/or “arousal.”  Rather than interpret this response as problem-solving “energy,” we commonly label it “anger.”  “Anger” is a word-switch favored by our native language O.S. that usually directs our arousal energy to fight (harmful aggression) and/or flight.  The following flow diagrams illustrate a basic difference in the manner our 3 O.S.s process information: 
   
   Nature: frustration → arousal → “red alert” →  “anger” → physical fight or flight.  The stressing event is usually perceived as emergency or urgent, rapid changes occur in our body, fight or flight action is immediate and of short duration, and the “red alert” state is resolved; it is history.
   Nurture: frustration → arousal → “pink alert” →  “anger” → mental aggressive act → constructive and destructive action.   The stressing event is often perceived as persistent.   Mental preoccupation and physical arousal is chronic and/or recurring, viz. blaming, resentment, guilt, jealousy, “social sabotage,” worry, competing to “beat” the other, sometimes leading to physical aggression when symbolic dominance fails.    
   Self-mastery: frustration → arousal → “pink alert” → “energy” → aggressive problem-solving → constructive action   “Energy” is a wiser more neutral label than “anger” to identify the chemical and electrical “arousal” activity we experience.  It “switches” us to constructive problem-solving outcomes.  Anger tends to stimulate an instinctual and/or habitual reaction.  By substituting energy, we make a “wordswitch” that redirects our thinking to reflection, reason, mental rehearsal, constructive problem solving, negotiation, and the conflict resolution skills of self-mastery, more so than the pathways of nature and our nurturers.   ANWOT alters the meaning of “arousal” to anticipate longer term consequences than instinct or habit:  the stressing event is interpreted as important information for mental processing to a preferred short and long term outcome.  Problem-solving, cooperation for mutual benefit, love, endorsement, humor, and the constructive expression of energy diminishes frustration and encourages chronic enthusiasm.
             frustration  → arousal  →  anger  energy → (harmful) aggression is wisely
             redirected through the ANWOT O.S. to constructive action
   
   The means each “master” satisfies their needs and “wants,” i.e. their perspectives, are distinguishable, one from the other, as English, Chinese, and German are readily identified.  Information processed through different paths leads to different interpretations and actions.  Our genes favor survival through physical domination; our nurturers “role model” and “teach” us an O.S that favors mental domination.  In our third developmental stage, self-mastery may actively participate in creating its own newer ANWOT O.S. that favors reflective independent thinking more so than the instinctive or habitual reactive thinking acquired from our genes and nurturers.  Nature and nurture usually teach its lessons after action when it is too late to reverse mistakes.  ANWOT promotes wisdom, long-term consequences, cooperation, mutual benefits, and rational problem-solving, more so than the flight or fight, economic, social, and religious competition, and the strivings for dominance common in our early O.S.s.  The ANWOT O.S. encourages survival by aggressively directing our energy to constructive outcomes, what might be called “cooperative mutualism.”
   
   →        Acquiring this image will strengthen your practical application of the ANWOT O.S. of self-mastery. Imagine a train beginning its journey on track A.  Track B appears along the way.  A switching point allows the train to remain on track A or continue on track B.  Track C appears further along tract B.  This time there are switching points that allow the train to return to track A, change to C, or continue on B.  The route and the destination of A, B, and C are identifiably distinct.  A very minor alteration at the switch-point may dramatically change the course and outcome of the journey.  Most words and their meanings are like generic tracks in our life’s journey.  Though our language consists of many words, and many generic “tracks,” there are a very limited number of “word-switches,” trigger words that determine which pathway our mind processes information.  We become a more effective conductor upon recognizing which “word-switches” direct our thinking to track A [the instinct O.S.], B [the habit O.S.], or C [the self-mastery O.S.].  Skillful use of a limited number of “word-switches” can powerfully redirect the processing of information from its native and/or nurture O.S. to our preferred self-mastery O.S.  Important word substitutions that “update” our thinking are described in 7. and 10. [pp. 46-49; pp. 59-63] Easily taught, readily learned, dramatic results … a “WOW” combination!
                                                                                                                     
   →        By recognizing the “word switches” distinct to each master, we may selectively “turn on” those switches wired with reason and wisdom more so than instinct and habit.  Because the operating system of self-mastery differs from the early “standard” manner of thinking provided by nature and our nurturers, I label it, “a newer way of thinking,” the ANWOT O.S.  It is our means to manage the competitive struggle characteristic of nature and nurture, and promote a cooperative partnership of the forces within our mind.   ANWOT empowers our thinking to redirect our destructive aggressive energy to chronic enthusiasm to feel good and “do good.”
    
        As “interpretive” creatures, most of our behavior is mediated through mental activity we call “thinking.”  “Thought control” is the means we influence the directions of our three masters … nature, nurture, and self; and their common means of function … instinct, habit, and will.  A science of thought control requires the classification of symbols into their appropriate O.S.  How much easier we could wisely choose from among the messengers of nature, nurture, and self-mastery if each came wearing a distinct color.  Let us imagine that words that advocate nature’s perspective were “instinctive” red, messengers of our nurturer’s perspective were “habitual” white, the word switches that express what we, our self(s), desire were “willing” blue, and “orphan” words that do work for all masters but do not advocate for any, were “impartial” black.  We could manage our mental energy far more wisely with knowledge of which team each player belongs.  We already distinguish sports teams with different colors and assign black to the “neutral” umpires.  We distinguish sports with multiple teams, such as track, simply by adding more colors.  We must be more innovative when it comes to conceptual rather than physical “teams.”  For example, it would be impractical to expect all Christians to wear one color, all Muslims another, all Jews a third, and so on.  There was an attempt to have all Jews wear a colored armband and be tattooed with an identifying number but this effort was far removed from our constructive mission.  And our natural differences in skin color has for the most part been divisive more so than cohesive.  Classifications based on superficial physical and/or symbolic characteristics alone will predictably be directed to include nature’s bent towards destructive aggression.
   
        Since nature, our nurturers, and our own mental messengers are not pre-colored, we have the task to create a classification system that identifies words with their creator.  We have this capability.  We classify people into religious preference using a variety of criteria that define a perspective.  Similarly, we may classify words and concepts by a variety of criteria that place them within the perspective associated with nature, our nurturers, or the newer perspective that we originate through self-mastery.  
   
   →        Minor word changes are sufficient to “switch” our manner of mentally processing data in the similar manner the single switch of a train track will significantly alter the trains route and destination.  This insight is the basis of teaching ANWOT!  Seven (7) basic easily mastered mental substitutions, what I call “word-switches” and/or “trigger-words,” are sufficient to redirect the dependency manner of thinking predominant in our native languages to the ANWOT O.S. characteristic of self-mastery. 
   
        Our life-cycle O.S.s are as distinct as that between our native language and a foreign language.  Just as the Chinese language is incomprehensible to the speaker of English, the O.S. or “language” of our gene’s, our nurturer’s, and our self may be foreign to one another.  The trigger-words (also labeled “word switches”) that turn-on the ANWOT O.S. are distinct from those that convey our gene’s and/or nurturer’s perspectives AND they are comprehended in the foreign territory of self-mastery.
   
        Our actions are primarily determined by conscious thinking.  Language (comprising symbols, words, thoughts, concepts, ideas, beliefs, assumptions, etc.) is the chief means information is processed in our mental O.S.s.  Specific “messenger” words and/or symbols convey the wants of each “would be” master.   They may be categorized within the family of one of our three basic O.S.s.  While words of the same family differ, their intended outcomes are similar.  They are on the same “team.”  In this manner, each of our three master programmers create their personal mental O.S. to express its perspective.   Words, once programmed, remain “loyal” to the wants of their designer, nature, nurture, or one’s self.    New words (ideas/concepts) may be programmed and added to a family of words to strengthen the advocacy of their programmer.  Self-mastery requires its own trigger-words to “speak” its interests, especially when they differ from that of nature and nurture.  By substitution of words programmed to express personal responsibility our self creates new paths, its own self-mastery operating program, an ANWOT O.S, that stresses innovation, reason, creative short and long term problem-solving, free choice among alternatives, and prevention more so than the instinctual and habitual patterns favored by our genes and nurturers.  A limited number of word substitutions create the will power our self requires to channel our mental energy to weapons of mass construction. 
   
   →        The wonderful practical news about ANWOT is that the O.S. of self-mastery does not require a new language.  We may significantly change the path and outcome of our thinking by 7 clearly defined “updates” in the native language we have already mastered.  These practical what to do modifications “switch” our manner of thinking to personal responsibility, reflective thinking, autonomy, originality, and creativity.   They convey a more accurate interpretation of reality by diminishing the prescriptive, dichotomous, dependency thinking that dominates our native language.   
   
   ☻ First mobilize faith in your will power to acquire the basic ANWOT skills by
        repeating,
                “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can … and I will try!”
   ☻ Substitute descriptive words (could, prefer, choose to, I am wise when …) for   
                prescriptive words (should, have to, must, ought) when reasonable
   ☻ Substitute continuous (both…and) words for dichotomous (either…or)   words when reasonable
   ☻ Substitute 1st person responsibility words (“I allow”) for blaming                                          dependency words (“he, she, it, they make me”) when reasonable
   ☻ Substitute “energy” for what you label “anger” and/or “anxiety”    
   ☻ Direct “energy” to the problem-solving mental response pattern (MRP)
   ☻ Rate action “urgent -- high, medium, or low,” instead of “emergency”, as will be appropriate in virtually every instance.    
   
      These simple ANWOT changes “upgrade” our manner of processing information.  Consider these examples.  (1) When we substitute “I allow” for “You make me” and/or “I am wise to” instead of “I have to,” we switch from the blind obedience, dependency, blaming track established in our first O.S.s to the more effective personal responsibility and creative problem-solving track.  (2) Considering the positives and negatives (both … and) of alternative choices offers a more accurate understanding than the oversimplified “right or wrong” “good or bad” dichotomous thinking appropriate when we are immature.  “Either … or” thinking limits our processing of information to two categories, distorts reality, and sustains our early prejudices.  (3) We are wired early to be impatient, self-centered, amoral, and seek dominance by “winning,” often at the “loser’s” expense.  We label the natural response of arousal and frustration “anger” and/or “emergency” which is commonly processed to harmful physical and/or mental aggression (primarily “blaming” and symbolic put-downs).  Our rational self has the capacity to recognize this is rarely helpful.  By re-labeling our arousal state “energy” (a neutral word) instead of “anger”, we switch our thinking pathway to a constructive problem-solving outcome.  By assigning a relative degree of importance for “emergency” we switch thinking to a rational problem-solving track instead of the reactive “automatic” response that may no longer serve our short and long-term interests.                                                                                                                     
   
        As we upgrade the software programs in our computer, improve our means of transportation, and add new features to virtually all of our physical resources, we are wise when we equip our manner of thinking to keep pace with maturity.  The horse-and-buggy and our first automobiles are no longer suited for the speed on today’s highways.  These trigger words equip our mind with the newer pathways and “meanings” necessary to keep up with the powerful muscles we now create and direct them to win-win outcomes.     
   
   →        Please understand that newly freed will power, of itself, like physical power, lacks wise direction!  The vocabulary of ANWOT trigger-words identified in this theory stren and elaborated in the practical strens is incomplete!   Additional mental skills are required to effectively direct thinking to consistently constructive action, to feel good and do good.  These additional skills are provided in this Guide’s practical strens.    
   
   →        In acquiring any skill, expect to require information, repeated application, and the regular recurrence of incompetence that will improve through practice.  The Guide is a collection of skill-building information and directions to direct our mental energy to constructive aggression.  It is a teaching resource.  If the Guide is simply read as a book, reason will enlighten you that its benefit will be limited. 
                                                     ---------------
   I now summarize for your consideration two insights of great practical importance that may be derived from the information provided:
   
   1. Destructive aggression persists because the passively acquired O.S.s of nature and our nurturers remain our predominate manner of thinking.  We have yet to popularize formal education in the newer manner of thinking that consistently harnesses our mental energy to serve as our chief weapon for mass construction.   The physical fight/flight amoral perspective of our genes is found in virtually all creatures, human and otherwise.  The necessarily prescriptive, dichotomous, and dependency manner of thinking our nurturers provide through our immature years has been quite successful in converting most of our physical destructive aggression to mental harmful aggression.  Blaming, guilt, prejudice, hate, resentment, and dominance through symbols embodied in our native languages are used more so than fists, stones, and newer weapons.  Since humans everywhere go through a prolonged period of dependence, our nurturer’s bent towards mental aggression is as universal in our thinking as the physical aggression we each inherit.  The ANWOT O.S. is unavailable to us until we attain moderate maturity!  ANWOT is sporadic.  Varying degrees are attained through energetic efforts, by spontaneous creative insight and willingness to rebel from establishment teaching, and/or being fortunate enough to have parents and/or other role models who themselves provide a “liberating” education.  There is no attempt to teach ANWOT to our masses.  We have not yet formalized education of our masses to upgrade our manner of thinking to cope with the tasks of maturity, of independence, of creative problem-solving free from established custom.  Harmful aggression is prominent in our culture, government, laws, and religions because the “establishment” expresses the perspectives dominant in our prevailing native language.  The critical point is that we need to incorporate ANWOT within our formal educational system so that it is as widespread as the O.S.s presently dominant in our native languages.  Education that updates our manner of thinking to survive in this New Era is worth the consideration we now give to the three r’s and the subjects currently emphasized in our educational establishment.  Until we do so, we remain dependent on trial-and-error, habit, and role-modeling, and “cure” as our means to problem solve more so than no-trial learning, independent creative problem-solving, reason, long-term values, and prevention.  If we choose to survive in our new era of WMD, we must establish ANWOT as our prevalent means of problem solving.
   
   2. An understanding of our 3 basic O.S.s not only enables us to predict which populations are most receptive for ANWOT and which most resistant, but also the means to reach those most resistant.  The initial architects and engineers of ANWOT may be found in those most ready for innovation, i.e. those persons who have somewhat discovered ANWOT on their own, have had ANWOT role models, and/or received a liberating education; those already advocates of peace and committed to love, sharing, and innovation (including most moderate religious groups); those sufficiently unhappy, depressed and/or neurotic who welcome and often even seek to find a newer way; and those already rebellious to the establishment, including the imprisoned.  Those most resistant will include those already indoctrinated to blind obedience to authority and fanatic ideologies, viz. faith based practitioners of most fundamentalist religions, hate groups (such as “skinheads”); those so deprived of the basic means of sustenance that their energy, both physical and mental must be directed to survival; those so oppressed by government that educational opportunity is denied; and those individuals who are psychotic, sufficiently retarded and/or brain damaged to be incapable of reason.  We could draw a line to represent those most ready to embrace ANWOT on one side, progressing to those most resistant on the far side.  Advocates on one side of the line will have no success with the resistors on the opposite side.  However, the resistors can be eventually reached as those closest to the ANWOT side are educated, “each one, teach one,” and ANWOT progresses across the line.  In time and with patience, those closer to the firmest resistors, those who have some credibility as role models that can make a difference, will be reached.  In my work in the field of substance abuse I learned that recovered (ing) addicts often had more influence than professional staff in helping others to recover.  They were more credible; their “language” was more comprehensible than staff with professional degrees.  For example, recovered addicts, now staff, were able to recognize who was bringing drugs into the hospital and would confront the offender: “If you choose to continue to bring in drugs, get out of the hospital or get your ass kicked!  Don’t ruin it for those who really want to clean up.”  [Perhaps the language was a bit more graphic!]               
   
                                                     ---------------
   →        You have a choice to make.  The “what to do” practical changes that convert harmful aggression to “good” aggression are quite simple.  This theory stren on “why it works” is far more challenging than “directions.”  “What to do” provides quick results but requires blind obedience; “why it works” stimulates innovation and ownership of action but delays tangible benefits.  Is it wiser to first address the practical “what to do” or the understanding of “why it works”?  I thought, “Yes,” begin with the practical to satisfy the ubiquitous impatience of most!   “No,” withhold the powerful tools until there is an appreciation of their importance and the personal motivation to use them that understanding generates!”  People differ.  You make the choice of priority between the Guide’s  practical and the theory strens.  Mix and match according to your interest.  While this theory stren emphasizes “why” ANWOT works, #7 and #10 provide six (6) easily applied “what to do” thought control skills.  Each is elaborated in the shorter practical strens.  Applying these “word-switches” will rapidly increase ownership of your mental processing, even if you don’t understand why or how they make a difference.  Use them to attain self-mastery and better manage your aggressive energy.   
   
   →        Consider this example of the principle of leverage that explains why dramatic immediate changes to improve our life’s experience can be made by minor clearly defined changes in our use of words: 
   
   For most, a house is acquired with a very small investment, a down-payment.  A mortgage is paid off over many years.  We move into our new residence and enjoy its benefits now even though we do not fully “own” until the mortgage is satisfied years later.  We expand our ownership with each payment.  Do you see how we may initiate dramatic “homeowner” benefits even though there is continual work to maintain our newly acquired asset?  The quick and easy changes identified in 7 and 10 may be thought of as a “down-payment.”  Begin immediately to enjoy the benefits of acquiring ownership of your own thinking while you continue to expand your benefits over the years that follow!  Keep the principle of leverage in mind as we turn to the curriculum of self-mastery. 
                                                     ----------------
        Dimensions:   The physical science that creates our immense mechanical power to serve our “wants” began with accurate classification of objective phenomena.  The design of useful products usually requires an understanding of the material with which we are dealing.  Labeling the dimensions of reality has been a critical tool in developing our sciences.  Classification of physical phenomena usually begins with defining the three dimensions of length, height, and thickness (horizontal, vertical, and depth).  These three dimensions provide a static image.  Because reality is in constant change, by adding a fourth dimension of time, we create a more accurate dynamic image of reality.  A motion picture is more informative than a snapshot; it is truer to reality. 
    
        Accurate labeling and classification of mental phenomena (words, ideas, and concepts) will enhance the creation of a mental science to wisely direct our growing power.  Concepts and images lack “weight”; yet, they release energy and share unique characteristics.  Our labels for the dimensions of physical reality are inappropriate to apply to the dimensions of conceptual reality, ideas and images and how they attain meaning.  Words and symbols are an important part of our physical action system.  They are switches that “turn on” varying degrees of energy and convey meaning that leads to specific action (as described elsewhere).   They have been described as “our second signaling system.”  Like our computer, meaning is processed within pathways designed by one or more “programmers.” 
   
        Practical labels for the mental “dimensions” that define our manner of thinking, i.e our mental reality, are a basic tool to design useful “updates” that improve our operating system(s).  They are equally important if we are to teach the skillful management of our thinking.  I have labeled four “dimensions”.   These include stage of maturity, endowment, mastery, and energy.  The integration of these dimensions results in what I call the composition of our mental O.S.  Appendix 2 is my attempt to label the dimensions of mental phenomena.  Such labels facilitate my understanding of the operating systems we use to process information, i.e. to think.  I hope you will join me in my quest to further the science of thought control.
                                                     ---------------
   
   
7. Cardinal language modifications to acquire ANWOT:  Three simple “word-switches” to our mental O.S. provide the foundation for mental freedom from the manner of thinking acquired during our decades of immaturity.  When possible, descriptive words are substituted for prescriptive words, analog words for dichotomous words, and 1st person personal responsibility words for the dependency words that blame some “other.”
   
        Born helpless and vulnerable, we require that everything be done for and to us.  These are our “magical years” because things just happen!  Our world consists of “me” and “not me.”  When the “not me” disappoints we cry and/or have a tantrum.  We are force fed a language, a culture, an interpretation of our self and our world … and we are glad because but for the “not me,” we would not survive!  During the years that follow, by repetitious trial-and-error learning and imitation we add basic skills, including our manner of thinking.  Nature and our nurturers have us process information in over-simplified pathways, necessarily inaccurate because of our continued years of physical and mental immaturity.  Prescriptive words (viz. should, have to, must) demand our blind obedience to the “not me” authorities.  Dichotomous words distort our world into two categories (viz. good or bad, right or wrong, us or them).  Dependency words (viz. he, she, they, it made me late, upset, do it, etc.) convey our helplessness and control by “not me.”  They point to the assumed source of our frustration and “justify” blame, commonly leading to physical and/or mental aggression.  Thus, our manner of thinking, i.e. the O.S.s provided by fate and circumstance, becomes habitual,  “stuck” within our native language … unless and until we take action to become our own person.  The modifications that update our thought processing to add a self-mastery O.S. are straight-forward; they are simple for all but those brain damaged or otherwise unable to comprehend.
   
        *Of course the five basic ingredients of change are required: willingness to try, work (practice), patience (change takes time), accepting direction, and risking letting go of the old established way.  *[I recognize that most have already taken steps to attain some degree of emancipation from their early “masters.”  However, identification of the specific steps to self-mastery enables us to strengthen the process and is the basis for a science of thought control.  We require recognition of key word-switches and a curriculum of specific skills if we are to develop a scientific discipline to teach and spread ANWOT.] 
   
           a. Substitute descriptive words for prescriptive words when reasonable:
   
               Substitute I could, prefer, would like, desire, I am wise when … for I should, have to, must, ought. 
   
        Descriptive words emphasize freedom to choose among alternative solutions. The prescriptive words normally acquired within our native language convey dependency on some authority other than our self.  They command blind action; choice is absent.   Edicts are to be uncritically obeyed, as demanded while acquiring our first O.S.s.  Prescriptive words discourage creative thinking and commonly result in harmful aggression to punish or control.
    
   Prescriptive words commonly lead to the blaming mental response patterns (MRP’s):
   
   The blaming-out MRP:
               He/she/they/it did what they shouldn’t have done (or didn’t do what they should have done); therefore, they deserve punishment. Anger leads to …  fight, hit, get him, teach him a lesson, hurt, damn him, kill the s.o.b., resentment, hate, blaming words, “shoulding,” and so on. 
                                                   
   The blaming-in MRP:
               I did what I shouldn’t have done (or didn’t do what I should have done); therefore, I deserve punishment. Anger at ones self leads to personal attack … guilt, shame, and/or some form of putdown. “I am … a jerk, stupid, unworthy, an asshole, etc., and even physical attack, the most extreme being suicide, “murdering oneself”. 
   
   Our natural exposure to prescriptive words during our growing up period fosters blaming and punishment.  It becomes a common response to frustration.  Descriptive words stimulate limit-setting more so than punishment.  Yes, physical limits are appropriate for antisocial and/or harmful behavior – with the goal of resolving an issue, not punishing an individual.  The distinction between “punishment” and “limit setting” is subtle but critical (see Appendix 3).
   
         b. Substitute when possible both…and for either…or words.
   
             Substitute analog “continuous” words for dichotomous words:
   
        The dichotomous either … or thinking we first acquire often misrepresents issues by limiting our thinking to two categories: good or bad, right or wrong, mine or yours, win or lose.  “If you aren’t for us, you must be against us.”  Most of life’s issues are not so clear.  If I love “a,” does it mean that I don’t love “b”?  “If I save money, I’ll give up something now and have some benefit later; if I buy, I can enjoy now and may be needy later.  Which do I prefer?”  Issues have + (plus’s) & - (minus’s) on each side.  We are more accurate when we average the pluses and minuses and view the result on a scale falling between -10 and + 10 rather than “the right way” or the “wrong way”; “all good” or “all bad.”  Averaging often conveys that choices have positives and negative on each side; there is no “right way.”  Yet, we commonly engage in a tendency to obsess over which is “the right choice” and put ourselves down for “making the wrong choice.”   More effectively, we best ask “What can I do to make my choice right?” instead of “What is the right choice?”
   
   Either … or thinking tends to over-simplify reality and result in prejudiced (pre-judged) distorted thinking.  My (our) views are “right”; your (their) views are “wrong.”  Dichotomous thinking is the source of most conflict and inappropriate aggression.  Here is an illustrative ditty I like:
                                       There is so much bad in the best of us,
                                       And so much good in the worst of us,
                                       That it ill behooves any of us,
                                       To put down the rest of us.
   
         c. When possible, substitute I allow …. (1st person responsibility words) for he, she, it, they make(s)             me …. (dependency words).
   
          Dependency words suggest helplessness, blind obedience, and commonly lead to blaming some “other.”  He, she, it, they … make(s) me crazy, late, gives me a headache, and so on.  First person responsibility words “switch” the thought processing pathway to constructive actions we may take, and away from the more common “instinctual” pattern of automatically directing our energy to demand that someone or something, the “other,” change.  We have immense power over what we may do; we usually have little or no authority to demand that the world change to suit our wants. 
   
          Upon substituting first person responsibility words, routinely add the “magical” problem-solving mental response pattern (MRP) that disposes us to constructive action.  The blaming MRP’s, just described, often lead to mental and/or physical attack and escalation of harmful action.  The way we perceive the events in our life is usually more important than the events themselves.  This simple substitution transforms our thinking from the perspective of passive victim to active problem solver. 
   
   The Problem-solving MRP:  Given this situation, what can I [we] do to reach the most desired outcome for myself and the “other,” for now and for later.
   
   We humans excel in the blaming MRP’s.  Major changes toward ANWOT is made just by substituting the problem-solving MRP for the negative MRP’s. 
   
        Practical strens convey the important beneficial consequences of using these three self-mastery word-switches, when possible, instead of those words characteristic of the O.S. utilized by our genes and expanded on by our nurturers.  They and each of the 8 MRPs are elaborated elsewhere in the Guide. 
   
        Please do not overlook that the process of getting “unstuck” is applicable generically!  Irrespective of one’s race, religion, native language, gender, wealth or lack thereof, status, physical health, and/or geographic area, we all share a relatively common gene pool and are each subject to years of dependency before we attain a mature adult state.  The ANWOT O.S. is freely available to all for the taking. 
   
   
8. Freedom requires wisdom: Though self-mastery empowers us to alter the direction  
       of destiny, freedom is a liability unless accompanied by wisdom!
   
        Here I state in its most simple form what I ask you to hold as a fundamental truth.  The beneficial expression of power requires wisdom.  Our prevailing manner of thinking, i.e. the operating systems (O.S.s) provided by nature and our current nurturers, are programmed to periodically engage in destructive aggression.  The fight or flight response we acquire from our genes and the thought processing skills we acquire by trial-and-error and by our nurturers role-modeling emphasize action through instinct and/or habit.  The instinct and habitual patterns of managing life’s challenges in our first decades include attaining success through dominance, destructive aggression and/or retaliation.  The prevalent manner most persons process information is to deal with unique challenges favoring old solutions that, too often, are no longer adequate.  These methods are no longer sufficient to consistently beneficially manage our newly created mega-power.  The new destructive forces we now create are so awesome that we are now the greatest threat to our individual and collective survival.  There is no longer a margin for error.  The threat is ominous, growing, and predictably immanent.   The heart of our problem is our thinking.  We need to continuously add newer means of thinking to constructively manage the explosive growth of our technology.  Prevention of harm and attaining our needs and wants is best attained through wisdom, education, cooperation, sharing, and the like.  We must fortify self-mastery with an upgraded operating system, i.e. a newer manner of thinking if we are to consistently re-direct our “aggressive” energy to productive outcomes.
   
        We now can understand “why” we engage in destructive aggression.  The manner we process information, i.e. the O.S.s inherited through our genes and the word meanings of the native language programmed through our first immature decades, supports a warrior “eye for an eye” mentality. 
   
        Nature, through an evolutionary process, has favored our brain, most specifically our cortex and frontal lobes, to enlarge in greater proportion than any other organ.  This newer brain, which I like to call our “freedom organ,” provides us the resource for reflective thinking, i.e. skill in thinking about our thinking.  It sharpens our intelligence and our capacity to create, to initiate, and choose among alternatives.  It is our resource to emancipate ourselves from the mastery hitherto exclusively provided by our genetic inheritance and the habitual skills we acquire from our nurturers.  To nature’s gift, our nurturers have provided us language, a mental operating system to vastly increase the potency of our intelligence.   Through reflective thinking and our use of symbols, we grow our self-mastery.   We join nature and nurture as directors of our life’s experience.   Human selection has joined natural selection.
   
        Intelligence is our greatest source of power.  Our intelligence is first directed to physical science because we are provided innate senses to detect physical phenomena; this is why the development of our mental science trails.  Witness our cataclysmic advances in storing data and sharing of knowledge, mass communication, travel, medicine, and of course growth of destructive innovations from sling shots, bullets, bombs, and now mega-bombs and other WMD.  We are the first generation with the ability to create life “our way” through cloning and/or destroy the world nature has provided.  Our scientific feats provide testimony to our Godlike creative powers.  What is to determine the direction of this power?  Instinct?  Habit?  Wisdom?  What combination of the three? 
   
             Intelligence → the power to free ourselves from the constraints of fate and circumstance. 
             Freedom     → emancipation from the directives we passively receive from our genes and our nurturers.
             Freedom     → opportunity to regulate the combined efforts of the would be masters of our life’s
                  experience. 
             Freedom     → the ability to choose between destructive and/or constructive aggression, to act
                  wisely and/or stupidly. 
   
        Maturity provides us the opportunity to develop sufficient willpower to wisely redirect our aggressive energy to constructive outcomes.  Humanity has reached the plateau of historical maturity that we are no longer simply objects of natural events.  We are forcefully changing our world through the collective knowledge we have attained.  Unlike other earth creatures and our early ancestors, rather than being fully responsive to the commands of nature and our nurturers, we are manipulating genes, challenging nature and our nurturer’s rules, and we are increasingly directing our fate.   If we wisely choose to survive the new plateau of power we have now attained, we must commit ourselves to develop a new manner of thinking. 
   
        Power is an outcome of our self’s mastery of physical phenomena.  Intelligence amplifies power.  Physical strength is our most primitive means of “survival of the fittest.”  The mind that remains servant to instinct and habit will direct knowledge and intelligence to do what has worked in the past.  The first duty of intelligence is to promote physical strength to survive, to exploit mental means to grow physical and symbolic might.  Thus, among its actions, we can expect that instinct will direct our mental energy to make bigger improved “muscles,” not merely sufficient but seeking virtually unlimited “overkill.”   Intelligence has led to newer means: slingshots, bows-and-arrows, and dynamite.  The present outcome of collective intelligence is to create mega-power, thus mega-bombs and other WMD.   
   
        The prevailing perspective of our nurturers is to use symbols to attain dominance.  Though non-violent mental means is preferred, we are programmed to fall back to physical means when our symbols of power are insufficient.   And of course, when our means threaten to dominate others, those “others” are likewise programmed to fall back to physical means.   The natural outcome of this teeter-totter is “escalation” of destructive aggression.  Absent mental self-mastery, the O.S.s of nature and nurture will predictably periodically release its expanding mega-power to attain its goals. 
   
        Unlike the striving for mega-power, the “gift that we cannot refuse,” mega-freedom and the mega-wisdom to beneficially direct mega-power are ours by choice.  We can strengthen our mental freedom through ANWOT.  We can grow our wisdom to direct freedom by study and application of the collective insights of creative minds, what is here called “strens.”  The combination of ANWOT and strens is our means to direct our mental energy to constructive aggression.  This Guide provides the steps to ANWOT and offers a growing collection of strens.   We may begin by recognizing the three masters who would dominate our thinking and by gaining knowledge of their distinctive operating systems.  As explained, self-mastery “word switches” that promote wiser thinking are readily substituted for those favoring the instinctive and/or habitual thinking patterns that are characteristic of nature and nurture’s O.S.s.² 
              
   Review of our three masters and the O.S.s characteristic of their domain:  
   
        I have indicated that our operating systems (O.S.s) are the means we use to attain a goal; each O.S. has advantages and limitations that persuade us to use one or the other.  Each is suited to carry out its specific tasks. 
   
        Our nature’s O.S.: The “language” of our genes favors physical means to initially determine our nature and range of behaviors more so than mental means.  Our genes physically “pre-wire” our first O.S. with the chemical and electrical means to manage life.  They provide the blueprint for our organs, their connection and function, and even multiple “clocks,” viz. to regulate onset of puberty, wake/sleep and menstrual cycles.  Patterns of behavior are pre-programmed to complete the life cycle.  They are relatively inflexible, favor competition, dominance, and short-term here-and-now pleasure-seeking pain-avoiding physical means to satisfy needs.  Nature’s way condones destructive physical aggression; it is the common means to the preferred end.  Instinct is amoral; it perceives physical might as right!  The drive to eat, reproduce, dominate, and to survive shows little respect for the well-being of others.  The “fight or flight” response, our predominant automatic emergency response pattern to deal with life- threatening danger, is commonly falsely triggered absent a real emergency.   
   
        Our nurturers O.S., and thereafter our self (self-mastery O.S.), add symbols that grow our mental means to mediate our activity.  Once our nurturers provide us our second basic O.S. throughout our many years of dependency, mental means of processing information, using symbols and sophisticated language, becomes our favored means to manage life’s challenges.  Like the first O.S., it is “given” to us with little choice on our part.  Our nurturer’s O.S. modifies the physical aggression coded in our genes by redirecting it to mental means of expression.  The language or O.S. taught by our nurturers is designed to teach physically immature and mentally undeveloped minds how to survive in our partially “civilized” society.  It emphasizes blind obedience to authority, sustains dependence on others and compliance with our nurturer’s rules and ideals.  Symbolic “beating” of others takes such forms as money, title(s), being “right,” win/lose competition, appearance, popularity, political and religious dominance, and/or the reward of a good afterlife.  It promotes prejudicial (pre-judged) labeling of “right” or “wrong,”  “O.K.” or “not O.K!”  Our nurturer’s language is described as “prescriptive” and “dichotomous.”  Information is processed as “should,” “have to,” “must,” and related prescriptive directives.  And issues are reduced to two (“dichotomous”) easily understood but distorted “either…or” categories.  This manner of processing information permeates our “native” language and basic mental O.S.  It expands our inherited physical O.S.  It is quite serviceable during our prolonged period of inadequate survival skills.  Use of words and symbols enables us to effectively transform physical into mental expression of aggression.  However, the prescriptive, dichotomous means of processing information we acquire from our nurturers throughout our years of immaturity disposes us to blaming, resentment, guilt, social aggression, prejudice, distorted thinking, uncritical obedience to authority, and dependency.  Although the language of our nurturers commonly prohibits destructive physical aggression by converting it to mental (symbolic) expression, its outcome is too often harmful.  Further, we retain the older “instinct brain.”  Primitive aggression prevails when symbolic domination fails.    
   
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   1. The practical strens on language provide the simple easy to learn word changes that “rewire” our primitive native language O.S. to favor the new manner of thinking.  Simple substitutions for the words acquired during our immature phase of development changes prescriptive thinking to descriptive thinking, and prejudicial (“pre-judged”) either … or thinking to more accurate and rational both … and  thinking.
   
   2. Continuous (analog) words, viz. “both this and that,” the “pluses and minuses” of each choice, more accurately convey reality than dichotomous (digital) thinking.  It is helpful to me to think of a digital and analog clock.  The hands in the digital clock jump from one number to the next; they are either 1 or 2 or 3 and so on.  The analog clock hands move continuously around.  They may be in between the numbers and thereby convey a more accurate representation.
   
   [Note: endnotes are continued after the appendices]