Are Your Thoughts Your Own?
The central nervous system controls most functions of the body and mind. Our central nervous system is comprised of the brain and the spinal cord. I would like to discuss the brain and how we have lost the ability to discern between our own thoughts and external thoughts implanted in our brain.
The brain is capable of making its own reality, so the input we give to the brain affects the reality. During this pandemic we have been conditioned to believe the world is under attack by an invisible enemy called covid-19. Our only source of information is the media we consume either on television or online.
The same stories are broadcasted on every network, thus it has become our reality. Although there may be a virus present 99% of us do not know anyone who has fallen ill from the virus let alone has died from it.Yet the reality in our brain is fear and to be very cautious to even step foot out of our own house because the entire world has been shut down to protect us from this deadly virus.
The basal ganglia is responsible for our habit making behaviours, which in turns becomes our instinct nature. Over time our instinct nature alternates between active and reactive. Currently, we are in a very reactive state of mind. The Hong Kong Flu in the late 60’s was as dangerous or even more dangerous than the current pandemic we are facing. Yet many of us are unaware during this time over the course of 2 years the world did not shut down and in fact the largest gathering of people for music took place in the form of Woodstock. Over 500,000 individuals gathered in what can only be described as the complete opposite of social distancing, maybe social uplifting is the cure.
Perhaps during those times as psychedelics were more openly consumed, the boundaries placed on our realities were far different than the ones we live within today. As a society we seem to be unaware that there is not a huge difference from filming a movie to filming content for news reports. Both are staged events and have media crews with a set script and location and time to execute.
Misinformation is far more dangerous than covid-19, but we pay no attention to it and we fail to recognise the false realities created in our brains by consuming toxic content. Our central nervous system has been compromised and as a species we are well aware of that, which is why mindfulness is currently on the rise.
The course I recently completed on Coursera, Understanding The Brain: The Neurobilogy of Everyday Life has given me a better understanding of the functions of our central nervous system and how uniquely advanced we are as humans. Based on our capabilities, it should be a crime to allow media to dictate our realties by influencing us to live in fear, which in facts lowers our immune system. The environment we live in impairs us from reaching our full potential because we cannot discern external from internal. We should look more closely how the brain works and how much it is currently being manipulated to understand the remedy for destructive behaviours.
We must re-develop behaviours in our basal ganglia to positively affect our prefrontal cortex because that is where decisions are made. If we continue to allow our brain to be compromised by not understanding how our central nervous system functions we will have no choice but to live in a reactive state and submit to the reality presented to us.