Proposed:

1. The human mind-brain is exquisitely evolved to juggle and interpret inputs in order to screen them for patterns.

This happens quickly (instantaneously, as far as our conscious minds are concerned) and sub-consciously.

It’s how we survive. We must detect the tiger before it leaps. By the time the big hungry kitty kitty leaps out of the undergrowth, it’s too late.

In other words:

2. Detecting the pattern that means “tiger” amidst the tangled, chaotic inputs of brushy undergrowth is an extraordinary and extraordinarily useful capability.

3. It’s also something that is going on consciously in our mind-brains. We don’t control it.

We are continually scanning the world to detect patterns that indicate potential threats.

4. Today, the inputs we scan include vast amounts of textual information and projected images.

5. Within this chaotic mass of inputs, we “see” patterns that warn us of environmental threats, economic threats, social threats, cultural threats — any number of “bogies” that our minds assemble, from those inputs, for the purpose of forewarning us so that we can take action before the actual threat materializes and hurts or kills us.

This happens in our minds.

6. “Threats” are therefore mental forms. They are future possibilities, not 3D reality.

They are bogies.

7. Each of us brings to our experiences certain biases that influence what inputs we perceive, what inputs we reject, and how we interpret inputs. These are in part learned, and in part the consequence of our personal histories.

For example, if I grow up in a financially-stressed household, I will be biased to scan for “forms” among the inputs around me that are in the “shape” of economic threats.

If I spend all my time with people who are convinced that man-made climate change dooms the world, I will be biased to scan for patterns in the sea of inputs around me that reinforce the threat posed to me by climate change.

And the more attention I pay to those patterns, the more I notice them. It becomes self-reinforcing.

I can look at a cloud and see a cloud. I can look at a cloud and say, does it look like a face?

And immediately I start to pick out shapes in the cloud that look like a face.

Anyone can do that. It’s the way the human mind-brain works.

THEREFORE:

8. When we condemn each other for “fearing the wrong threat,” we’re ignoring the fact that we are all — ALL — subject to the same fundamentals wrt cognitive processes.

The political “left” and political “right” in the US (for example) scream at each other largely on the basis of the need to argue over bogies. “This is the real threat!” “No, THAT is the real threat!” “OMG, how can you be so stupid to think that’s a threat when clearly it’s not!” “OMG, while you waste time on that threat, this REAL threat over here is going to destroy us all!”

We scream that the “other side” lacks the data to support its threat assessments.

This battle between us ignores the fact that even in the most thoroughly studied areas of scientific or social research, there are always scraps of contradictory (or seemingly contradictory) data — which means that an engaged mind-brain can find contradictory patterns, or can fail to see patterns that appear obvious to other engaged mind-brains.

It doesn’t take more than a couple hours of reviewing the arguments of one side to confirm this.

My bogie is no less valid than yours — and vice versa.

9. The fact is, there are NOT legions of people out there who hold their political positions because they are stupid or uninformed — on either side. I don’t care what the powers-that-be claim.

There just aren’t.

10. On the contrary, the problem is more fundamental and ought to be approached with empathy and compassion: we are all afraid. We all want to be safe. We are all doing our best to identify threats and protect ourselves and the rest of the planet from those threats.

I have been blogging here lately about the collapse of insect populations. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of articles about this trend online, now, many of which cite field research supporting it. But is the global collapse of insect populations objectively true? And is it really a harbinger of a broader environmental collapse?

I have no idea. And I’ve been on this planet long enough to have seen many, many environmental doomsday predictions fail to materialize.

This has taught me something very, very important:

Sometimes what looks like a tiger in the brush is actually just … the brush.

11. We need to stop condemning each other.

We need to stop buying into the politicians’ power games (which they play because their own fearfulness is allayed by persuading others to believe in their bogeys).

12. Reality is more pliable and subjective than we can even imagine.

13. Fear is not the answer.

14. We must learn to approach our disputes with kindness, and patience, and compassion.

15. We must learn to love each other.

16. That is why we are here. We know it.

17. That is the only thing that is true.

18. There is nothing else.