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The Human Mind 41

Until you thought about this question, you were not consciously aware of your breath-
ing, but now you are.1 It is a simple example of how stimulation can bring thoughts from our
unconscious into awareness.

Question: When people dress, why does a woman put her left arm in first
and men their right? And why do they cross their legs in different ways?

Most people react to deception at an unconscious level and may have an intuitive feeling
that they are being misled without quite knowing why. For example, we notice other people’s
body language and emblems and, once we have made an unconscious determination, our
minds may become closed to further input. To get to the deep truth it is imperative that we
remain alert to everything around us and elevate our suspicions to conscious level.

If it does not look or feel right, ask yourself, ‘Why?’
Never consult a psychiatrist whose office plants have died

The brain and mind

EVOLUTION (IN VERY BASIC TERMS!)

Some 3.5 billion years ago (can you even imagine how long ago that was?) single cells floated
around the planet, with no brains, spines, eyes, ears, legs or even golf clubs. The best they
could do was to drift towards a light source and if they bumped into something, chomp away
at it. You can still see this behaviour today as kids chomp away in McDonald’s. Bumping into
things and then chomping at them is an inherited instinct.

Darwinism, which has held to be accurate except in the case of investigators, proposes
that the human gene pool was refined as a result of natural selection, sexual selection and in-
herited instincts.2 Faculties that were useful were incorporated and subsequently hard-wired
by the development of new cells in both the body and brain. Patterns that were beneficial
to survival were replicated and those that weren’t were thrown in the bin through a process
known as atrophy. If lying had been bad for survival of the species – any species – it would
have atrophied during earlier evolutionary periods. The fact is that deceptive instincts and
abilities are ingrained in humans, animals and – according to Prince Charles – in plants, be-
cause they are useful.

Some researchers believe that deception is instinctive and is the baseline cognitive state,
overridden in humans by conscious intervention. We are not clever enough to know the an-
swer, but nature suggests that both hard-wired and learned deception evolves depending on
the ability of opponents to detect it.

The rule in life is ‘If you don’t use it, you will lose it’

1 You thought to yourself ‘Bullshit’, but now you are thinking about your breathing: go on admit it
2 Lamarkianism