Finding True Purpose #6 #cong22

William O'Connor

Synopsis:

To really live you must have faith. You must trust yourself to the totally unknown, to a Nature which doesn’t have a boss because a boss is a system of mistrust.

Total Words

779

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. Some of the things we perceive to be truly fundamental today may actually be just accidental.
  2. In the West we have made the truth our highest value but this is weak compared to the actual power of belief.
  3. Anxiety is the green light to seek your true purpose
  4. Here is the choice. Are you going to trust Nature or not?

About William O'Connor

William (Billy) T. O’Connor is Foundation Professor and Director of Teaching and Research in Physiology at the University of Limerick School of Medicine, Ireland. He also holds a position as Visiting Research Scholar at Flinders Medical School, Adelaide, South Australia.

Contacting William O'Connor

You can connect with William via LinkedIn or see his work on Inside the Brain.

By William O’Connor

The key to a happy life is the ability to transcend personal suffering, find a balance, and recognise that the world has problems. This requires purpose (mental effort) and those of us who strive to better understand ourselves in the world come out the other side as a new person, with some peace of mind and a purposeful way to live.

A limit to finding true purpose is the fact that we do not know that some of the things we perceive to be truly fundamental today may actually be just accidental. For instance, the brain uses systematic patterns of thought to produce philosophy including science, mathematics, literature, ideas and beliefs including a belief in a deity to guide us towards new insights. What we need to understand is that none of these may be fundamental in themselves. They are just tools that our ancestors used to probe the unknown and to see what is possible – knowing that what is common for us is just a tiny sliver of what actually exists.

In the West we have made the truth our highest value. This motivation while important is weak compared to the actual power of belief. We are born into a culture which often insists on a particular religious or ideological philosophy as fact and the only way to understand ourselves in the world, but adhering to this belief may cause personal suffering by impeding insights necessary to achieve your true purpose.

Especially nowadays, anxiety is often seen as something wrong and negative – a weakness or an illness. But anxiety is a fundamental ingredient of being alive. To feel and to think is to be anxious. How can you not be anxious when it is a natural response to a confusing and uncertain existence that you did not ask to be a part of? Yet, anxiety is the green light to seek true purpose. The trick is to try living with-and-through it as you move forward into the unknown, and as you take the leaps of faith into what you truly believe makes it all worth living and dying for.

The Chinese believe Nature to be purposeless. However, in the West when we say purposeless, it is a put down and there is no future in it. When the Chinese say Nature is purposeless they mean it as a compliment. It is like the waves washing against the shore going on and on forever with no meaning. Haven’t you ever gone on a walk with no particular purpose in mind? Well, it is at that moment that you are a perfectly rational human being because you have learned purposelessness. All music is purposeless. If the aim of music were to get to the final bar then the best musician would be the one who got there fastest. It’s the same with dancing. The aim of dancing is to dance and it’s exactly the same with your life.

The problem is that many of us believe that life has a purpose. Priests insist that we must each follow God’s purpose but when asked what that is they are silent. Here is the choice. Are you going to trust Nature or not? If you decide not to trust the purposelessness of Nature then you will need to fence yourself around with rules and regulations and laws and obligations. To really live you must have faith. You must trust yourself to the totally unknown, to a Nature which doesn’t have a boss because a boss is a system of mistrust. There is a wisdom in insecurity. A wisdom that is hard earned. Let this wisdom be your true purpose.

Brains, leadership and belief #46 #cong21

William O'Connor

Synopsis:

A person is what he makes himself to be, and those who lead and inspire help facilitate this process.

Total Words

797

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. There are leaders, and there are those who lead.
  2. Leaders hold a position of power or authority, but those who lead inspire us.
  3. We follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to.
  4. We have to value this self-creating freedom that is enjoyed in our time.

About William O'Connor

I am Foundation Professor and Chair, Head of Teaching and Research in Physiology at the University of Limerick Medical School. My research focus includes the emerging field of neuroeducation – the brain science of learning – particularly those factors which allow the human brain to learn optimally. I retain a strong commitment to scientific outreach and communication. This is best illustrated through my popular Inside-the-Brain website, Twitter and Facebook accounts, which report on the latest findings from the world of brain research.

Contacting William O'Connor

You can see William’s work on the Inside-The-Brain website or send him an email.

By William O’Connor

In the summer of 1963, 250,000 people showed up on the mall in Washington D.C. to hear Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Dr King was not the only man in America who was a great orator. Nor was he the only man who suffered in a pre-civil rights America. In fact, some of his ideas were bad. But he had a gift. He did not tell people what needed to change in America. He told people what he believed; and the people who believed what he believed took his cause, made it their own and created structures to get the word out to others such that 250,000 people showed up on the right day and at the right time to hear him speak. These people travelled long distances to Washington for what they themselves believed about America. It was not about black versus white: 25% of the audience was white.

Dr King believed that there were two types of laws in the world: those that are made by a higher authority and those that are made by men; and not until all the laws that are made by men are consistent with the laws that are made by the higher authority will we live in a just world. It just so happens that the civil-rights movement was the perfect thing to help him bring his cause to life. By the way, he gave the “I have a dream” speech, not the “I have a plan” speech. We listen to politicians now with their comprehensive 12-point plans. That is not leadership and it is not inspiring anybody.

Today, there are leaders, and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority, but those who lead inspire us. We follow those who lead, not for them but for ourselves. Those who start with a belief have the ability to inspire those around them, and to find others who inspire them.

Is the brain wired for beliefs?
One answer is that the brain is wired to make predictions about what is going to happen next based on what has happened in the past, and in some ways, predictions are like beliefs. For instance, scientists write about scientific predictions as if they are beliefs or explanations that are pre-emptively offered to anticipate and explain the world as we see it.

Knowing that the brain is wired for prediction explains why we find uncertainty so stressful and if it persists, it can actually make us sick. In this way, religious beliefs can reduce the uncertainty of our own experiences by explaining the unexplainable. This also accounts for why those things we now explain through science were once thought of as magic or caused by a deity.

The explanation that the brain is wired for prediction is a general explanation to understanding how we make meaning. The brain of a newborn is not just a miniature version of an adult brain. Its wiring is incomplete. What infants are doing is waiting for a set of wiring instructions from the world. In this way, the people who raised you influenced the wiring of your brain including what to believe and what is meaningful to you. As we mature into adulthood, we have one self-creating freedom in that we can accept or reject these instructions. In this way, a person is what he makes himself to be and those who lead and inspire us help facilitate this process. We follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to. We have to value this self-creating freedom that is enjoyed in our time.