“Instinct” is intelligence. What enables us to operate unintelligently is hubris.
The way that I see ‘instinct’ among the animals here is that of a fairly strict programming passed from generation to generation. It may happen that over Time there are changes ie. Survival of the fittest. But human intellect lets us experiment in all different directions. It’s the presence of self-interest combined with a lack of compassion ie. what’s best for all, that makes for a disaster. Was the ‘me and mine’ inevitable…I guess it was…because, as Bohm put it: “We could!”
And we did!
Question is can the brain give it up as it sees our destructiveness worsening as our technology expands?
How ever thought explains the human brain’s behavior, the question is, Why doesn’t the brain awaken to the full extent of what thought is doing from moment to moment? Without that quality of awareness, the human brain can only continue in its wayward way.
Because perhaps the brain’s condition is electrical and chemical. Resistant to change. And involuntary reflexes keep it in line? Thought doesn’t seem to be able to change it radically. Especially if its potential is realized through it being silent! Any approach that involves ‘time’ is useless…
Thought is not the problem! Thought is the instrument the brain uses to keep the brain hypnotized, dependent on thought!
Pardon my emphasis, but until the brain awakens to the fact that thought is not the problem, thought is wasting the energy needed to realize what thought actually is.
Thought doesn’t seem to be able to change it radically. Especially if its potential is realized through it being silent!
Is thought ever silent, inactive, or is it just “tuned out”, ignored, denied, when it’s not being put to some practical use?
If you have ever attempted to practice meditation, you know that thought just keeps on going, how ever mindlessly, trivially, repetitively. If you work at it determined to succeed, you can create the illusion of silence, no thought, and conclude that thought has stopped.
Or, if you’re more interested in what’s actually happening than in what you want to happen, you will see that thought is perpetually, mindlessly, streaming its contents, thereby creating the illusion of your own reality, your own truth, You as the most important person alive.
Thought isn’t doing this intentionally because thought has no intention. Thought is like a typewriter, a voice, doing what the brain intends it to do, and the conditioned brain’s intention is to create and maintain the illusion that nothing matters more than I because I never dies, never stops, never quits being who/what it thinks it is.
Thought is both the prison and the escape mechanism, but the mechanism can only carry out the conditioned brain’s intensions.
I meant the brain needs silence and that can never come about through the noise of thought, the past.
You said that thought isn’t able to “change it radically”, and I said thought cannot do what the brain doesn’t assign it to do. Thought is to the brain what a tool is to its user.
True freedom then is when the brain realizes that it must not be swept away by the past, by the ‘known’. It must meet the moment in silence.
I wouldn’t say the brain is “swept away by the past”, but that it depends on its content which, despite constantly undergoing modification and updating, is a closed system that presents what purports to be an accurate depiction of actuality. This, for us, is normality.
Krishnamurti, however, says this is insanity because freedom is choiceless awareness and direct perception which depend on silence and emptiness, literally nothing.
Freedom sees the self it must be at times
You ask, “Is awareness what’s going on sufficient?”
What’s going on where? If this “where” is in “the relatiinships with yourself and its surroundings”, we can say sufficient, taking K’s words into considerstion that is “If you don’t understand about yourself, you have no base” to talk about anything else.
Can you stop thinking? If you can, that’s amazing that you can start from there, if you like!
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I can’t stop my stream of content, and even if I could, I couldn’t believe I had because I am my content.
The streaming can’t stop until I stop screaming for help.