Wednesday, March 14, 2012

How? - addiction

Before there was ever a creative side of the brain, when only there was a brain that controlled our simple motor functions, selection needed to work with some form of variation to allow the creative to sprout.  In a previous article, I talked about why this creative sprouted.  Now lets talk about the ‘how’.

Let me draw out a scenario to better illustrate my idea. 

The stage: a field
The actors: 2 predators with only a brain capable only of only simple motor functions. 
The goal:  survive. 
The method of survival:  catching prey.   

Both these predators are masters at catching prey when limited to simple motor functions.  So in order for one of them to be successful, it has to do things differently from its rival.  To remain faithful to the purpose of this article, the way this success happened was one of them developed a brain that could on top of control the movement of its body, could also creatively devise ways to catch prey outside of using just its body. 

In order for this to be possible, It would have to be able to have an idea, and be faithful to it until fruition.  It would have to be able to FOCUS!!!!! 

This was impossible with just a brain that robotically controls a body by neurotical patterns ingrained into over generations of selective success. 

In the cerebral of our champion, there was a special occurrence that happened by some freak genetical shuffle that allowed for it to develop the ability to focus.  Whenever it thought of a new idea, a chemical was released in its brain.  The brain happened to find this chemical pleasing, I dare say addictive.  Thus it wanted the chemical more and more.  And since the only way for the chemical to be released was by having a new idea, what easier way than to just continue down the road opened up by the original new idea. 

The mastery of this new Ability allowed our champion the ability to devise new tactics in catching prey and win the competition.  But please understand that the predator that experienced this occurrence for the first time wasn’t the one devising all the complicated survival tactics we see today in nature.  It was an ability that took millions of years to develop and it is still improving today.  And the prey were privy of it also.  Hence the equally ingenious methods of survival against predation.

But our distant relatives were only able to take this creative ability so far.  They were never able to remove it from the confines of survival.  Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, a species that eventually developed into us homo sapiens, was able to take creativity from the bog of survival to the whim of its imagination.  In fact this is probably where imagination comes from. 


Observations.

As an organism, we are all limited by the same thing: energy.  We only have so much energy. And depending on where we place it, we develop accordingly.  It is clear, by the physical size of our brains, that homo sapiens put the majority of it’s energy into the development of this creative brain, while other species like the tree placed all its energy into the longevity of life itself.  Many insects put most of their energy into replication.  Many animals developed their creative brains as far as they needed to stay ahead of the game, but returned the focus back to their physical bodies.

I wonder if people with addictive personalities are simply people who produce more than needed of the chemicals that create addictions in our brains.

Addiction has a bad wrap. Usually thought of as something evil.  Some outside force introduced into our bodies whose sole intention is destruction.  While this is true, our very bodies dangle addictive carrots in front of our brains to lead us down mental paths that have been historically successful.  Brilliant!!!

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