We stand at the precipice of human existence, facing twin existential threats in climate change and artificial intelligence. Yet, there are no saviors in sight. Why? Because what we currently hold up as ideal is the very reason we are imploding
Societies collapse when they enslave humanity's masses into building empires of concrete and greed. To do this, they systematically cripple all big picture thinkers. For centuries, we have actively suppressed the very intelligence that could be our salvation: somatic intelligence and infracognition, the body's wisdom.
Iain McGilchrist's seminal work, "The Master and His Emissary," provides a framework for understanding this catastrophe. McGilchrist argues that the brain's right hemisphere (the "Master") - which deals with holistic, contextual understanding - has been subjugated by the left hemisphere (the "Emissary") - which focuses on narrow, decontextualized, categorical thinking. But McGilchrist's insight only scratches the surface. We haven't just imbalanced our brain hemispheres; we've severed ourselves from the vast intelligence of our entire bodily system - our infracognition.
A shadow looms over humanity
A shadow cast not by external threats, but by our own hands. For centuries, we have been architects of our own demise, systematically dismantling the very foundations of our survival.
What happened to our wisdom? It is written about historically as if it was as real as the clear, clean rivers that once flowed through ancient forests, where indigenous cultures thrived in harmony with nature. Wisdom is driven by infracognition. It is the lifetime of knowledge one builds at the somatic level and transfers to our cognitive. It is our generational and primal understanding. But we have silenced it just as we have burned the ancient forests and polluted the clean rivers.
In bustling cities that replace once healthy land, a new tragedy unfolds. Our need to survive creates more and more children born with gifts of heightened sensitivity - our potential saviors - but instead of valuing these children with high awareness, we do the opposite. We deny them any reprieve from overwhelm and label and punish them by ignoring their unique needs. Those who can't become blank slates must be broken, even if it means force-feeding pills to dull their emotions. The school-to-prison pipeline only grows for those who can't fit in.
The concrete jungles are not humanity's playground. The societies today, once built by slave labor, are sustained by those whose wages are unlivable - in some ways worse as wage slavery. The devaluing of somatic intelligence left our countrysides to dwindle, forcing their younger occupants to cities where we find ourselves increasingly disconnected from the natural world. Intuitive knowing of the cycles of seasons has been replaced by the negative emotions of grueling schedules of repetitive work for hours on end, forcing us to push our somatic intelligence aside just to survive.
In our schools, a great narrowing took place. The vibrant, holistic understanding of the world was replaced by rigid, left-brain thinking. Children were taught to prioritize only the facts right in front of them, so that people and numbers become the same. Trees and animals alive have no value until they are products that can be tallied. The banality of evil takes hold of too many souls.
At the helm of our societies, we elevated a new breed of leader - the corporate psychopath. These individuals, devoid of empathy and infracognitive awareness, steer us towards short-term profits at the cost of long-term survival. Under their guidance, we sail ever closer to the precipice of our own destruction.
The consequences of our actions now surround us like a fog. We are blind to the dangers our senses should have known instinctively. As artificial intelligence races ahead, we find ourselves confused that it does not work for us, unable to see it is replacing us because we now lack the qualities that make us creative humans. The climate crisis looms, but for too many it pales compared to the economic crisis. Most of us are too tired to move, too tired to try to comprehend the magnitude of the threat.
Perhaps most tragic of all is the silencing of our brightest minds. Those sensitive individuals whose big picture knowing previously guided us through turbulent times have been marginalized, their voices drowned out by the cacophony of a world gone mad.
Even as we teeter on the brink of extinction there remains ways to fight this. In order to navigate our future we must find this wisdom. We must immediately reclaim our lost abilities, reawaken our dormant awareness. This is not just a possibility - it is an imperative. Ironically we have been delivered a strange ally in this fight. We can harness the power of AI to help us take back our wisdom. To use it as extension of ancestral intelligence. We can create communities driven by a deep, visceral understanding of our connection to the earth, taking decisive action against climate change. We can create societies rebuilt on the foundations of empathy and adaptability, nurturing the full spectrum of human potential.
We must learn about our body wisdom our infracognitive abilities that use our emotions as the guide towards unprecedented innovations and solutions. This is our last chance, our final opportunity to rewrite the story of our species.
Infracognition is not mere bodily intuition or a subset of emotional intelligence. It is our primary survival mechanism - a sophisticated system of pattern recognition and navigation that operates below the level of conscious thought. This is the intelligence that animals rely on to survive in harsh, unpredictable environments. In humans, it's a powerful, holistic form of cognition that integrates vast amounts of sensory data to guide our actions and decisions. It is the big picture we have left behind when we entered into competition. It is the purpose behind your emotions.
The tragic irony of our time is that our lives were never truly at stake before in the way we've been conditioned to believe. Yet we were taught to act like they were, creating a perpetual state of stress and competition that has eroded our connection to infracognition. Now, faced with genuine existential threats like climate change and AI cognitive replacement, we find ourselves paralyzed, unable to effectively fight for our survival.
This paralysis stems from a profound loss: they have stolen our big picture. The very cognitive tool we need most to address these unprecedented challenges has been systematically suppressed and devalued over centuries of cultural conditioning.
To address the existential challenges we face, we must reclaim our stolen big picture. This reclamation begins with recognizing the grand deception: the constant state of competition we've been living in is not our natural state. It's a fabricated reality, designed to keep us disconnected from our true selves and from each other.
When we reawaken our infracognition, we restore our ability to see the big picture, to sense the interconnectedness of all things, and to navigate the complex challenges that threaten our existence. The path forward lies not in further competition or technological quick fixes, but in reclaiming the vast, integrative intelligence that is our birthright.
The future of our species depends on our ability to reclaim this stolen and destroyed innate wisdom and reintegrate it into every aspect of our lives and societies. It's time to break free from the artificial constraints that have bound us, to reconnect with our true nature, and to face our challenges with the full power of our human cognition. Our survival and our ability to thrive in harmony with our world depend on it.
References:
Skinner, L. (2024). Infracognition: The Somatic Mirror of Metacognition. Gifted ND, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.giftednd.com/post/novel-theory-a-new-kind-of-cognition-infracognition
McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.
Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage Books.
Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harper.
Pert, C. B. (1997). Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine. Scribner.
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