I think there is hope in trying to teach people how to operate their brains.
We have a lizard, an early mammal, and a rational human inside each of us, wrestling for control.
It took millions of years for us to develop this great brain. For most of our evolutionary history, we were stuck in the lower brains, our actions predestined by the laws of survival, territory, aggression, sexual reproduction. Now we have a cerebral cortex, and we can ignore or sublimate our reptilian urges. We’re just not very good at it.
People like Tim Leary and Carl Sagan thought that there was a lot of hope contained in this machinery. We spent millions of years living like savages, killing each other with sticks and rocks, and then suddenly we have cities, writing, and the average person is not spending all day struggling for survival. The individual can be taught to orient himself on something bigger and cooler than the immediate tribe. The individual can learn to examine his own intelligence and refine it. If there is hope for our race, it comes with the idea that we can stop acting like lizards.
Is it possible (or desirable) to totally turn off the lower brains? fuck no! But you can learn to recognize when the lizard and monkey are sitting in the driver’s seat and toss them out if they’re driving recklessly.
Maybe if we can get the economy and government to stop sending DANGER messages, people will be able to shake themselves out of lizard mode.
ah, wishful thinking
on 
on 
I am the lizard king and I can do anything so STFU and get back to work.
Sorry, it was too easy. Now I feel like a jerk, There ya go, society did effectively castrate my lizard brain. There is hope.
Using the word “rational” to describe any portion of us is misleading. I think the term you want is “symbolic” since that portion of the brain specialized in juggling symbols (“things which represent things”). The interesting thing to note is that it juggles according to certain rules commonly referred to as “fallacies.” In my opinion, human intelligence is little more than figuring out which fallacies to apply to which symbols; the rest is just mapping emotional responses to symbols in context.
Also: I thought this was my blog. Why are other people posting here?
so.. humans NEVER act rationally, they only act “symbolically”? ehh I dunno about that. Encouraging people to act super symbolically is not the future I’m aiming for.
No, they act humanly (and think symbolically), and “humanly” is sometimes indistinguishable from “rationally.” Cf. the Chinese room.
I specifically avoided referring to the rational parts of the brain as the “human” parts. To me, humanity incorporates all three parts – the logical thinker, the emotional mammal, and the territorial lizard.
Are you intentionally misunderstanding me for the Discord of it? Because it is kinda funny, in a “why am I not changing the channel” way.
I referred to the “rational” as symbolic, and to all of it as human; hence the “sometimes indistinguishable” remark.
And please, do not get anyone started on the difference between acting humanly and acting humanely
As a friend of mine likes to say, the lizard brain is the seat of The Four F’s:
Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and Sexual Relations.
By the way, which would you rather have ruling the world, Pinky or the Brain?