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  • I don't even want to cut down that branch,

  • I mean, that other thing unless we can move it somewhere,

  • but we are going to cut that branch down, you know, I...

  • Jacque and Roxanne appear to be resting up

  • and recovering from about 7 months of lecturing abroad.

  • Sorry to the people in Canada for the last few lectures that had to be canceled.

  • Also, anybody out there that is able to do transcribing

  • for some of the talks if you could contact me,

  • we'd be very grateful for that, if you could send me an email.

  • This talk, Jacque gave August 12, 2010,

  • and I'll be uploading it over the next few days in parts.

  • We are talking about investigating the nature of human behavior.

  • I think that what might help,

  • is if you go back in time and take some primitive people.

  • When I say primitive, I mean like outlying districts,

  • headhunters of the Amazon.

  • If you open a watch and show them the back mechanism,

  • they can't say how complex, how beautifully machined [it is].

  • They can't do that, you understand why? Anybody got a problem with that?

  • - Hold on, this video is not on.

  • It's on 'camera'. - Yes, press record.

  • - Yes, I thought you had done that. Sorry, yes, okay, go ahead Jacque.

  • - You've got to listen to every word because

  • they can't do it.

  • Now, if a psychologist wants to know how the brain works,

  • (say a neurologist) what he does is have you move your fingers,

  • and [he] picks up what area of the brain is active. Do you understand?

  • Then thinking, solving problems,

  • so they can map out what area becomes active.

  • That's all they can do.

  • They can't tell you whether it's right, wrong, good or bad.

  • They can map out areas of the brain by hitting your knee and getting,

  • picking up electrical signals from different parts of the brain.

  • You can map out the brain, but that doesn't tell you how the brain works.

  • Do you understand that up to now? Okay.

  • There are many people who try to study the mind.

  • You can't study the mind.

  • It's like taking primitive technology,

  • way back a hundred years ago,

  • giving them a transistor, saying 'what is it?'

  • They can't say what it is. They don't know what a transistor is.

  • They don't know what a capacitor is.

  • They don't know what a vacuum tube is.

  • All they can do is cut it. Now if you bring a chemist in,

  • he can tell you what comprises a transistor:

  • certain amount of magnesium, silicone, you know what I mean?

  • But he can't tell you what it is. Is that real clear?

  • Studying the brain does not tell you anything about it.

  • You have to study the brain's reaction in relation to the environment.

  • The brain is a responding mechanism.

  • When you shine a bright light in the eye it responds.

  • You can say this is how much of a response,

  • how little a response, but you can't tell what it is.

  • Studying the brain gives you nothing,

  • unless you study it in relationship to the environment.

  • A bird with wings can't fly where there is no air,

  • and will stop flying if you can put an oxygen mask on the bird,

  • and he will flap his wings and he won't get off the ground.

  • He won't even try to fly after a while.

  • Only with air there will he move.

  • Do you understand?

  • Now if you beat down one wing with more pressure,

  • you turn the wing into the wind, and beat down, he will bank.

  • A bird does not know how to fly instinctively.

  • He beats his wings different ways, and if it gets him

  • where he wants to go, by turning down, he moves forward.

  • If he turns it this way he stops in midair, if he's a hummingbird.

  • So, the bird responds.

  • To study the bird, you have to study the environment the bird lives in.

  • Do you understand that? There's no way you can dissect the brain

  • and say "This is what the man is like",

  • except in context of the environment.

  • Is that real clear?

  • If I want to study human behavior, what I'm really studying

  • is the reactions of human beings in a given environment.

  • I can't study human behavior. I can study their reactions.

  • When something is hot, they move away from it.

  • When it's cold, they might move toward it. It all depends.

  • If a man goes down to a river and sees a fish,

  • and if he reaches for it, he usually can't get it.

  • If he hits it with a club, it's faster than his hand reaction,

  • he might catch fish that way, clubbing them.

  • So what you can do, is you can't ...

  • The primitive brain doesn't look any different.

  • If you have a billion associations with ' boo-boo'

  • (a bunch of metaphysical stuff) billions of associations,

  • they are calming

  • because you believe somebody that gave you those associations

  • to know what they're talking about.

  • You don't even have to know what they're talking about.

  • If the chief says something, it's so.

  • If the king says something, it's so.

  • If a politician says something, it's so.

  • Right now they are concerned with foreclosures on banks.

  • They're concerned with giving the banks money,

  • and the banks didn't use that money for the purpose intended.

  • So, they have words like 'fraud'.

  • You can't do anything that way. You have to take in the whole picture

  • and ask "What is it that you want?"

  • "What kind of world do you want?"

  • I have drawings of different cities.

  • Those cities have an end goal. They are not just cities.

  • The goal of those cities

  • is to make things relevant to people that they respond to.

  • There's no other way.

  • Now, people that live in the city,

  • have many different reactions to the city:

  • "It's my home." "My grandfather was born there." "[It's] my favorite city."

  • but they really don't understand what a city is, what it serves.

  • They use words like 'shelter'. Home is a shelter,

  • but when you wear a diving suit and you go underwater,

  • that's a closed environment: 'shelter' for underwater living.

  • If a man goes out into space, he brings with him

  • the air in his suit,

  • and in that suit, he has all types of equipment

  • he may need on that mission.

  • If you give him a book, a novel to take out into space,

  • it's dead weight. It doesn't serve anything.

  • If you give him an emergency book of what to do

  • when oxygen stops or something goes wrong, that's something;

  • but a book about how Seminole Indians treat fish

  • would have no use in space.

  • Our society is loaded with 'how Seminole Indians treat fish'.

  • There's lots of superfluous information,

  • superfluous to the needs of people.

  • Must everything be scientific? If it is not, it's less valid.

  • Is there a place for non-scientific?

  • By non-scientific, do you mean speculative notions,

  • or scientific is "I don't know. Let's try to find out."?

  • Does it mean you'll find out? Not necessarily.

  • You will find out if you have the appropriate needs.

  • So, you can't ask "What is the brain?" or "How does it work?"

  • except in context of a situation.

  • I think there's some animals that respond to largeness.

  • A bear when he stands up, he doesn't try to impress you

  • with his size when he stands up.

  • He stands up, and if you react, he just stands up again.

  • It's not "I'm going stand up so I'll look bigger,

  • so I'll scare the guy." A bear doesn't think that way.

  • The neurologist that wants to study human behavior

  • is brought up to believe in free will to start with,

  • so he's already jammed. He's already hurt

  • because he can't look at anything objectively; there's no such thing.

  • He can only write down "When a man sees lava,

  • if he sticks his finger in it, it burns; he stays away from it."

  • He can only do that. Now the chemist wants to know what lava is.

  • He says "There's so much magnesium, so much melted rock",

  • but he still puts a label on it. He calls it 'lava',

  • and that means a word used, assigned to something.

  • If a person misbehaves or behaves very badly,

  • or behavior unrelated to the situation,

  • like I've seen a kid run over by a car,

  • and the mother says "He can't be dead. He must be alive. He can't be dead";

  • meaning the situation is unacceptable.

  • She is responding more on a feeling tone, rather than relevant.

  • Sometimes if you like somebody, and they die immediately, you say

  • "He can't be dead. He was just having a bowl of oatmeal."

  • So, you can't do that. You can only say

  • "I didn't expect that" or "Highly improbable,

  • I thought it was, anyway."

  • You can only talk about your relationship [to things].

  • If you meet with a person and, say,

  • (I'm going to exaggerate here)

  • they have a thousand neural associations, you know, in the brain.

  • Then you meet a person with forty thousand associations.

  • When you talk, there is more response,

  • less response with less associations. Do you understand that?

  • If a person is very simple,

  • he says "God wanted it that way. That's why it's that way."

  • That doesn't tell you a damn thing, except that person's reaction.

  • Using reason with them does not work

  • unless you equip them with the tools of reason.

  • There are no tools of reason except specific tools of reason:

  • how to fly a kite, how to build a wheel.

  • That's specific reason,

  • but general reasoning can not be imparted to people,

  • particularly if they like things the way they are,

  • meaning if their reactions are very simple.

  • The reason most people behave badly or poorly

  • is because they understand simple things.

  • A person once said to me

  • "When I ask you a question, I never get an answer. I get a lecture,"

  • because there are no answers.

  • If a guy says "Why does my brother get angry all the time?"

  • "Because he gets angry, that's why!' Well, that doesn't tell you anything.

  • You've got to remember if a person is that simple,

  • you don't have the time to fill in all that detail, unless they say

  • "I'd like to know step by step, what made my brother get angry",

  • and that's good because it shows some kind of inquiry,

  • even if they learn the words and don't know what it means.

  • Now you have to prove to them

  • that most language is based upon primitive reactions;

  • like if lightning occurs,

  • a primitive person might think that nature is angry,

  • or God is angry, or the god of lightning is angry; whatever they do.

  • If they are at that level, you don't want it,

  • but if you take native children away from their parents,

  • you can bring them 'up' to the modern world.

  • No matter how primitive a person is, if you take their babies,

  • you can make them scientific, chemists, anything;

  • but taking an adult

  • is jamming their whole associative system.

  • If you bring a primitive person to an airport,

  • he does not look at the airplane in terms of the wings and the struts

  • and the landing gear and wonder at all those components.

  • He can't do that. He can look and grin

  • just like you look at a tree when you're not into plant anatomy.

  • You can't see the tree.

  • An anatomist sees more of the tree, a plant physiologist, than you do;

  • or you may see clearer than he does, but he knows what to look for:

  • like whether it's the rings of the tree that tell him how old the tree is,

  • or the width of the rings whether there was a drought

  • or flood at that time.

  • He has learned to read, or she, has learned to read nature.

  • When I say there is no such thing as human nature,

  • there's human reactions to the environment.

  • Some are relevant. Some are completely irrelevant.

  • Knowing the difference, the guy says

  • "Why did you beat the hell out of your kid?"

  • He is way off the subject,

  • and the guy might say "My kid didn't listen to me".

  • That isn't the answer. It's the whole story. You know what I mean?

  • So [with] normal people (normal meaning 'having simpler reactions'),

  • you can't discuss human nature with them

  • because they have a fixed notion already of what human nature is:

  • some inborn propensities or characteristics

  • that are passed on generation after generation,

  • and if behavior were fixed, we'd still be living in caves.

  • cont'd...

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I don't even want to cut down that branch,

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