Conscious Ideas

Conscious Concepts and Ideas

A possibility by Joshua Drew Plovanic

Concepts and ideas can act as driving forces behind behavior and cognition. Sometimes the idea or concept can be an original conception or ideation. Other times someone else’s ideas are imprinted into the cognitive processing system of the brain and then take over the cognition and thinking of the person. Someone who ascribes to a particular ideology, whether political or apolitical, will have altered behavior to fit the ideology they ascribe to. For example, someone who ascribes to an ideology on the political left will often dress in a certain way, eat certain foods, listen to certain music, read certain books, watch certain movies, and engage in certain cultural activities. These activities are often uniform with other people who have been influenced by this particular ideology. The same is true for religious and philosophical belief systems. Once these belief systems are imprinted upon a human mind, the behavior of the person is often radically altered. However, radicalization is not always a negative. Sometimes the infection of a radical belief system can be a motivational factor for positive behavior change. Imagine if you converted to a religion that strongly encouraged a healthy lifestyle, being kind to others, in particular the less fortunate, and valuing life, especially human beings. I refer to an “infection” because that’s exactly what ideas and the subsets of ideas do to a human mind. It is like an information contagion. Similar to how a computer virus infects a computer system or server. The aforementioned statement about radicalization is true from a certain perspective. However, radicalization is a negative when the ideology or belief systems have no value of human life or property. That is when it becomes a negative because the conscious ideology leads a human being to steal from others things of value, kill others, and destroy things of value. To prevent this, certain agencies and institutions must make a united and strong effort to instill ideologies and belief systems that enforce the value of human life in a populace that may not have a value of human life and property.

In order to be successful at this effort. The institutions and agencies at work must account for the culture of the target nation, and to understand any culture, you must understand the language of the people who are a part of that culture. If you can’t understand the language in its complexity and foundation of the words and their meaning, how can you possibly hope to immerse yourself into that target nation’s culture and complete the objective of instilling a value of human life into the populace? Now the best avenue of approach to this problem is working within an education system. If you want long-term stability in a nation, the future generation is the primary target for the instilment of a value of human life. You need a compulsory, well-funded education system in the target nation in order to accomplish this feet, and a well-funded education system comes along with a stable and successful economy. However, a stable economy usually requires enough political stability to get there, and political stability in the target nation may only come with foreign military intervention in order to enforce the necessary amount of political stability in the nation. It may require decades of military presence in the region to accomplish the goal of changing the hearts and minds of the target culture in order to instill a value of human life in the majority of the populace. Much like in our own country, where the vast majority of the populace values life, and the slim minority that doesn’t is marginalized and contained and neutralized, this instilled value of human life in the target culture would prevent much political instability in the future, and those who don’t have a value of life are rendered impotent.

Ideas and concepts can be predatory. They often "consume" weaker or less potent ideas by either drowning them out or absorbing the more appealing tenants and qualities into their own make-up and dismissing the rest of that idea. In the United States, we have a system that, for the most part, fosters a positive "collision of ideas" which encourages growth from the competition of these ideas within the forum of academia, the arts, and business that sets constraints on the game and prevents most ideas from being destructive or their hosts from taking revenge when they are usurped. "Hosts" of ideas are human beings or any advanced system capable of processing the information that entails the idea, such as an advanced computer server. However, the most advanced processing system that is capable of hosting a potent idea is the human mind. The human mind is complex enough to elaborate on an idea and be a catalyst for the evolution, growth, and development of the idea and the mind has the ability to develop a construct of reality based on that idea. Once a human being bases a construct of reality around an idea, that person is under almost total control of that idea, ideology, or belief system. The construct is very difficult to undo, revise, or break in that mind.

The marketplace of ideas operates as a game in the sense that these ideas compete for value and the best or most effective idea is usually bought by consumers to fit their specific needs. Oftentimes, when an idea is rejected by potential hosts, it can become hostile and belligerent and act out violently through its own hosts towards the group of potential hosts that have rejected it. In Idea cannot survive on its own merit; it needs a complex processing system, such as a brain or a computer, by which to spread, to evolve, and to occupy to achieve its agenda and serve its primary function. Without a viable host, an idea dies. When I speak of ideas, I use the term sweepingly to encompass political and apolitical ideologies and belief systems of all kinds. Most ideas have their origin point in the human imagination, a field of the human experience that is poorly understood, albeit a very important element in the psychological make up of a man. Many theories suggest that the human imagination evolved with mankind for survival necessity, i.e. it gave us the ability to be creative problem solvers and allow us to find our way out of dangerous situations. It can act almost as innate, genetic memory, as our imagination provided us with the ability to analyze, think abstractly, and creatively engage within our world so we could have joy and pleasure in our existence, a fact of evolution often overlooks is the joy  and pleasure factor in creating new things and coming up with new ideas. The pleasure system in our brains, such as dopamine and other neurotransmitters, provided a chemical reward for our achievements. This chemical reward can also be brought about by our imagination and imaginary achievements. The ability to experience pleasure and satisfaction are indeed evolutionary traits that developed solely because if a creature enjoyed their existence, they are much more willing to fulfill self-preservation. Also, pleasure is a reward for an accomplishment, like sexual pleasure is a reward for securing a mate and passing your genetic heritage onto the next generation.

The imagination is like a well with fish that you can't see the bottom of and you have no idea where the fish come from, and the fish are ideas. The depth of the imagination is evident in our arts and culture. It is indeed one of the most profound mysteries of the human condition is the source and purpose of the imagination. Ideas that are considered myth and legend often come alive in our minds and use us as their acting force by which they operate within. The imagination can be a source of great pleasure in this regard if we can suspend our disbelief in what is plausible and what is not, either as an escape from reality or as an exploration of reality. If an imagination of a man is grounded in what is possible, some of the most amazing feats achievable can be achieved because of a grounded imagination, as the imagination enhances our ability to problem-solve by enabling us to visualize the scenario, system, and problem. As for ideas, they both originate from within the mind and are external, because the external world heavily influences the internal construct. In fact, an idea that has little grounding in reality will not spread fast or operate efficiently, because as soon as it tries to fill a function or operate its agenda, the lack of reality within it becomes apparent and the hosts begin to reject it. There are exceptions to this, such as ideas of fiction designed solely for pleasure and for intrigue, but even these ideas and stories have moral and educational applications and are often heavily influenced by real world scenarios, because if they are not relatable, their propagation and spread fails and they fail to secure hosts. Being grounded in reality is essential in political and apolitical ideologies and belief systems. If ideas can't fulfill their function because the agenda is unrealistic, than the idea fails and begins to lose hosts. Some ideas, however, become so hostile and predatory and parasitic that they hold a death-grip on the minds of their hosts, and they in some instances can cause the host's death through the self-destructive agenda of the idea. The agenda and function is unrealistic, but the idea is so enticing and so potent that the host is willing to die or kill for it. This goes back to my discussion on the value of human life. If an ideology causes you to dehumanize the hosts of opposing ideas to achieve its agenda, than your ideology is negative and detrimental. It has a high probability of not valuing your own life as well as the lives of its opponent's hosts. It will do anything to achieve its objective and agenda. One thing I know about ideas not grounded in reality is that they always fail. They have no foundation to operate upon and when the delusion is discovered for what it is by the host, the construct of reality built around it falls apart and the idea is rejected by the host. When someone realizes something to be inherently untrue, the realization of the lack of reality causes rejection. The problem is getting people to realize the falsity.

God as a living idea

Whether you believe in a deity or not, the idea of one exists nonetheless. The idea of God is one of the most powerful ideas known. It drives behavior in a majority of people across the globe, and it is used to consolidate power and mobilize human beings across borders, language barriers, and cultural differences. This idea occupies the mind and shapes human value systems, legal processes, and cultural heritage. The idea of God is used to shape political ideologies and belief systems, and inspiration from this idea drives men to write down its agenda and dictate its laws, whether it's the men's imaginations or literal inspiration from this living idea. The idea of God is living in that its traits described in texts, as well as its nature and motivations occupies the mind of individuals and drives their behavior. It lives, as an idea, in the mind, and this idea is transmitted to other individuals through text or word of mouth, or by other means, such as pictures and sounds. The concepts that make up this powerful idea are readily understood by others. Still, some choose to reject the idea, possibly because their neurology is wired in a way where the idea isn't received or understood, or because they choose to reject it, even though their choices are made because of their neurology and something in the circuitry of the brain rejects this idea. As previously discussed, ideas need a host, and once it gathers hosts, it has the physical capacity to exert influence on the physical world and actively do work within it. Often times an idea, like the idea of God, needs a "spearhead" to maintain order within a group it occupies, usually entailing a leader or leaders, to structure the group which the idea has taken control of. Once order within the collective group has been achieved, the idea has a physical means to achieve its agenda and goals. The people who follow this idea are acting agents of it. They are the ones who do the necessary work that the idea desires to be done. If an idea is powerful enough, it can survive the death of its host group by being transmitted through education and instruction to the next generation of hosts. Ideas like democracy, God, and others do this, as they have done through hundreds, if not thousands, of years. These ideas live because they govern the cognition and behavior of their hosts in a way that guarantees their survival, and they are conscious because they actively drive their hosts to fulfil their agenda. Ideas can start with one man, and once the facets and traits and aspects of the idea has been developed, it takes on a life of its own and the individual becomes its carrier in a sense. He spreads it within a group and often becomes its figurehead within that group, further developing the idea until it is sufficiently powerful enough to spread to as many hosts as it can, as well as ensuring its survival long after its carrier and figurehead has died. It does this often by appealing to the values and desires of the people it targets, and it adjusts itself accordingly to be more readily accessible and acceptable to different audiences. People often immortalize the carrier and origin point of the idea, putting him or her on a pedestal of adulation and praise, but his idea lives quite like an information virus for the human brain, and once the information the idea is made of is processed and understood by an individual, it becomes a driving force of behavior and thinking of that individual, and if the idea is shared by another group, the idea drives the collective behavior, structure, and cognition of that group, forming a machine out of the individuals that it occupies so it can better achieve its agenda. The idea of God is a prime example of living information. If God does not exist as a tangible, substantial entity, he exists as a living idea, which has a massive consolidation of hosts. Conflicting interpretations of this idea can cause conflict between the different ideas about God. The broad interpretation about the nature of this idea can lead to a phenomenon of a living idea within a living idea. Different groups that are hosts for the idea of God may have a different perspective on that idea, and that different perspective leads to a new living idea about the idea of God, and new groups are formed within the original idea, and these groups often conflict with one another. The respective ideas that govern and occupy them compete with each other for new hosts and to conquer each other by conquering the hosts of the other idea. Sometimes the idea drives its hosts to kill or destroy the hosts of other ideas. This concept is known as a war of ideas. Ideas are broad and include ideology and belief, and these ideas compete for resources for their hosts, new hosts, and strive to conquer the idea it is competing with, whether it is a conquest of the physical, or a conquest of the minds of the hosts of the targeted idea. This is very psychological in nature, as the spread of an information contagion targets the mind specifically to garner allegiance to the idea and the spearhead that it leads through. It usually entails verbal and written communication aimed at the hosts of the targeted idea, as well as other stimuli, such as images and music. The mind is targeted by appealing to the human being's priorities and values, as well as his or her culture leisure preferences. The idea presents itself as a more positive and beneficial alternative to the individual's current belief system, and appeals to their senses and priorities by promising a better way of life and a more purposeful existence.