The process of Human self-consciousness and the development of linear, analytical, thinking and linear perception

The partial stability and equilibrium of our immediate surroundings and the orderly natural cycles on the human scale have helped human beings to gradually develop a linear model of the world based on order and stability and eventually a linear logic (or thinking) which has been the dominant way of thinking, especially in the last two centuries. In the early stages of human development, human beings started to use their hands and vocal system to increase their ability to cooperate with each other. They used sign language for short-range communication and vocal projections for long-range communication. They mimicked the sounds that other animals made to attract harmless animals and distract dangerous ones. Combining sign language and vocal projections eventually created a subjective virtual world of information; an abstract concept, separated from real objects. The separation of subject from the object started us down the road to abstract thinking and the linear perception and thinking of self-consciousness. Thus, we have elusively experience ourselves as independent, separated from the living network. We therefore attempt to protect our separated self from the rest of the universe. Linear thinking is self-defensive, self-protecting, self-assertive, dominating and biased to liability management resulting in violence and negativity.

Linear systems are reductionist and deterministic systems which provide predictability and certainty, when we analyze an event we reduce it to a few dominant causes (the inherit tendency towards power law distribution always provides a few dominant causes in any event) and neglect most insignificant factors. Focusing on major factors of an event along with the proportionality of cause and effect in linear systems provides certainty and makes linear thinking a judgmental logic. When we are judging a person, or an event, the self-assertive and quantitative nature of linear thinking does not allow us to be observant and aware of those behaviors in our actions or value systems as long as they are quantitatively insignificant. Therefore, linear thinking does not give us a chance to cognitively enhance and purify our acts and values. In contrast, systems thinking is based on the behaviors of living systems that perform at the chaotic zone (where there is no proportionality of cause and effect), which makes systems thinking observant and nonjudgmental.

Linearity is an approximation to a nonlinear reality; order equips linear logic with predictability, determinism, certainty and a sense of control over outside events. Certainty provides a deterministic tool to make judgments that lead us to abstract belief systems. Since our linear logic is based on the proportionality of cause and effect, the chaos and uncertainty in the nonlinear world highlights the non-proportionality of cause and effect and inconsistency of our linear judgment system, including our values and beliefs and having a sense of control over events.  Therefore, linear logic has a negative attitude toward chaos and change while systems thinking embraces the chaos as a stage of creativity and emergence of a higher fractal order and self-organizing process. Also, certainty brings expectation and planning, when our plans don’t manifest, and our expectations are not meet, we become obsessed with closing doors and negativity rather than paying attention to the open doors and opportunities that this so called “failure event” provide us.  Linear thinking with its defensive mechanisms codes our judgment system with fear, guilt, blame, anger, negativity, violence, hopelessness, and liability management, lowering the quality of information processing in chaotic events and challenges. This indicates the limitations and insufficiency of linear logic and signifies the necessity of a nonlinear logic and systems thinking to explain the nonlinear world.

It is very important to recognize that linear logic, reduction science and its corresponding technologies are incredibly useful tools that enabled us to achieve our current understanding of nonlinear science, the concept of the living universe, nonlinear logic, and even our realizations of its own limitations and liabilities. We use it successfully in all our routine activities, including communicating this article with its readers.  The main purpose of this article is to unify linear and nonlinear thinking to achieve the ultimate potentials of our creative mind.

The perceptional shift from linear to nonlinear is a move from self-assertive to integrative, from rational to intuitive, from reductionist to holistic and from separated to connected. It also shifts our values, from consumption to conservation, from competition to cooperation, from quantity to quality, from domination to partnership, from rigidity to flexibility and from liability to asset management. It also shifts our state of mind, from negativity, blame, anger, revenge, violence and hopelessness to optimism, forgiveness, tolerance, peace and hope. As we shift from linear to nonlinear thinking we gain a greater ability to intuit as well as to process information analytically. Systems thinking provides a hopeful, creative, peaceful, ecologically harmonic framework to deal with a nonlinear, chaotic, digitally integrated world.

The human brain perceives and process linear and nonlinear information primarily in two different regions. As scientist Jill Bolte Taylore explains in her book My Stroke of Insight, our right-brain and left-brain hemispheres process information quite differently (Dividing the brain into the right and left sides is over simplification and is not a systemic approach, but the construct simplifies our discussion). The right side of our brain primarily perceives and processes information in a nonlinear manner creating a model or perception of the world that is connected to the living web of life, while the left side primarily perceives and processes information in a more analytical, linear way, creating a model or perception that separates us from it. The right brain is observant, nonjudgmental, holistic, feminine and spiritual, while the left brain is analytical, deterministic, judgmental, reductionist, masculine and materialistic