BETTING ON HIGHER HUMAN POTENTIAL ~ STUMBLING UPON THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF ATLANTIS vs. UNEARTHING THE ROOTS OF OUR CREATIVE CAPABILITIES ~ by Carla A. Woolf

Originally, the title of this article was going to be “Will All Those, Frustrated by the Use of Approximately Only 20% of our Brains’ Potential – Please Stand Up!” 

Why do we keep going around in circles, repeating human history? Might it be because we keep doing the same old things, thinking the same redundant thoughts, rarely questioning the mundane, are afraid to challenge the status quo, and my personal favorite – because we’ve failed to devise any rigorously substantial material that boldly proposes how to unplug the other 80% of our intelligence skills? As Einstein so eloquently put it, “Problems can never be solved at the same level of awareness that created them”. 

Here’s the conundrum; the law of supply and demand is an impediment in human progress. A successful business-person consistently mentored a simple piece of advice to up-coming successors in business. His motto was “find out what people want and get it for them.” This is great advice for business, and it ought to be even more so for brain development. However, it has adverse effects on our traditionally acquired model of human brain development, which has remained tapped at a capacity of about 20%.

What we’ve been culturally conditioned to want, has been smoothly and deceptively regulated by the artificial rules of money and business. Compare that with what we’d genuinely want if we were cultivated to utilize 100% of our brains’ operating potential – especially if money had nothing to do with how we’d make daily and lifetime decisions.  If we do a little meditative math here, any one of us would likely be inclined to admit that these separate decrees of desire are at odds.

What’s most significant about this oddity is that the genuine rules of brain development can actually solve all of the world’s problems, while money only suspends or temporarily covers up humanity’s problems. As soon as money is scarce, or the buying power of money has waned, then humanity’s problems become exposed and the events of human history engage in their regularly scheduled performance of atrocious reruns. As the events of history show, neither friend nor foe are barely the wiser at  using our prefrontal cortexes and thus, the dramas and traumas of limited human potential are set to be staged in uncreative repeat performances – except when people are at their most noble, that’s when the best of creative human abilities unfold. If we truly followed this example, we’d be far more advanced and we’d have infinitely more developments to count than atrocities. Why are history books (especially school books) filled mostly with stories of dominion and war than testimonies about true human accomplishments?

As we begin an age of enlightenment that unveils how humanities troubles are actually challenges of human brain development, while “too big to fail” businesses have done everything they can to tighten their global grip on unfair money practices, it’s clear that the criteria for championing human progress must be prioritized in favor of pursuing higher brain potential over sustaining the superficial scores of money guidelines – which cause wars and dominion over resources.

Humans are naturally compelled to demand what they want, still it’s only fair to confront ourselves with this obvious question: Are we at ease with what we’ve been culturally poised to want, which continuously influences the economic mood swings of the laws of supply and demand, which then decides the marketable values of our natural abilities, thus determining how money rules over us and our qualities of life?

Human brain development, that is, emotional human brain development is indisputably dependent upon the quality of our relationships – and unfortunately, money rather than emotions, has too grossly influenced the quality of our relationships. As relationships and brain development go hand in hand, this beseeches us to explore the role of emotions in fulfilling total brain potential – specifically love as the motive for all other emotions.

Perhaps, right about now, you might be saying, “hold on, you gotta be kidding, right? What’s the deal with trying to sneak in this topic of love? Tell us about Atlantis already!” Well, just wait for it – let’s settle this once and for all, because real love and real brain development are hopelessly devoted to each other, and as long as we each possess a brain, we’ll never be able to escape this hook-up.

It is so commonplace to hear people say that love and relationships need a lot of hard work. Well that has just got to be the most elaborate hoax of deceptive hogwash ever circulated in human history. Does anyone really believe that in his or her right mind? And I mean literally, in the right side of the mind-brain, where emotions do most of their cognizing ~ this exact side of the brain that only as far back as the 70’s was thought to be as useless as an appendix hanging on the end of our digestive tracts that should be removed at the first sign of trouble?? The point is that, if love gives us that much trouble, maybe we should remove it too! Or, perhaps we can take a few moments to redefine what love’s function really is in human development.

We are born ready to receive unconditional love. We easily accept it without judging it – and it’s free! We never have to procure a loan to purchase it. If parents are in their right minds, then babies get unconditional love freely, without having to engage all the innuendoes of a “relationship” that must “work hard” to experience “love”. Honestly, what kind of hard work are babies expected to do in order to receive unconditional love? Granted, some babies never experience the birthright of unconditional love, and that is the first clue toward understanding that love is humanity’s most fundamental challenge. What that means is that we’ve become overly tolerant of the conditions that have devalued humanity’s greatest asset – love.

Socio-economic customs force us to be much less tolerant of the conditions of money’s operations. Money masquerades as a fair ruler and great indicator of people’s abilities. But if money was as sincere as it’s depicted, then society’s rulers, who’ve made the money game a mandatory activity for everyone, should provide each citizen with the necessary game pieces. Perhaps, society’s rulers ought to consider granting each newborn with an unconditional pre-set monetary endowment so that every person gets a real “head start” in life. This way, everybody may have a fair shot in participating in the superlative scheme of society’s money game.

If love and money shared any genuinely similar qualities, then unconditional money would be capable of fulfilling the same needs for brain development that unconditional love can do. Nonetheless, for now we are still faced with the reality that in most societies, we do need money to live. So one major solution in expediting human progress lies in either, arranging love and money in a happy marriage, and/or reconstituting money so that it submits, or is subject to the natural rules of unconditional love, so that human development can really leap forward. Essentially, love and money must reverse roles. But first we must set-up the genuine rules and roles of unconditional love, because while some folks have access to unconditional money, none of us have had access to unconditional love, which is why we’re all stuck on the lower percentage end of the human, or brain development spectrum – either way, they’re one in the same. In any event, money must become the follower and love must become the ruler -- that is, if we are seriously anticipating the prospect of unlocking latent human brain potential.

Studies show that the human brain is designed to operate and conduct knowledge on the virtues and values of compassion and optimism, and our first knowledge experiences are all based on emotions, particularly the emotion of love. Without a doubt, love was never meant to be such hard work – we should never have to work so hard to process the knowledge of love. Love is meant to work for us in everything that we do so that life is truly worth living.

On the other hand, we should never find it so easy to hate as we so often do. Once again, according to the human brain’s most natural sensibilities, love should be effortless, and hate should be virtually incomprehensible. Even if and when we should feel un-guiltily free to experience hate, we should still be capable of processing hate in
accordance with the brain’s hard-wired building blocks of compassion and optimism.

In other words, hate can also have a proper knowledge value when the values of knowledge, namely compassion and optimism, are used to process the emotion of hate. If hate is used to process the emotion of hate – when the esteem of love ought to be functioning as the underlying and motivating value for all emotions that supply knowledge to all of our abilities – then the non-common denominator of hate causes abilities to become decentralized, i.e., abilities become disengaged by the non- supplemental factor of lovelessness. This hardly results in a formula that can supply the connecting rationale features of intuitive reasoning and computational thinking skills. This has been the unfavorable fate of humanity – hate leading hate, hence the ongoing proclamation that reasoning and emotions are a mismatched couple.

This unreasonable belief, or inclined persuasion of thinking, has been perpetually cultivated throughout the ages and etched into our psyches, debunking the mutual admiration between the various complexities of the brain’s abilities that should be working peacefully, but instead are engaged in a constant war. Unless, and until hate can also be conducted by the intuitively acquired virtues of compassion and optimism, then humanity will continue to generate the battleground between love and hate within our brains that unjustly promotes the battlegrounds of hate in human relationships, whether on the individual level or on a global scale.

Advocating awareness for changing any issues of human progress must evolve beyond the identification process where we all solemnly nod our heads in agreement and say, “hear ye, hurrah”, especially in the usual aftermath of experiencing tragedy and adversity. We have to actually have to do something about change itself – in foremath fashion, and we need to put our creative heads together to accomplish that! Think about it, the human brain is ultimately designed to foresee, decide and administer the creative benefits of our abilities. But as I write this article, the word processor insists that “foremath” is a non-existent term, consistent with the mode of our usual uncreative intelligence habits to consider negative aftermath consequences – “aftermath” being an acceptable term for the word processor. Why are we so reluctant to acknowledge that aftermath, as well as hindsight, are really unacceptable terms for genuine brain development? Apparently, we need to do some major reconditioning of our abilities and the words we use to define them.

As adults, we need to use our heads to change our hearts. However, where child development is concerned we need to ensure that young hearts intuitively develop into
quantum thinking heads. So, where is the key information to be found so that the scales will actually tip in favor of higher human brain potential? How do we ensure that what people want can be more duly synchronized with their unique abilities as they would be more closely developed to the 100% side of the human potential spectrum? Hear ye, now we can deal with the all-consuming buzz about the lost civilization of Atlantis.

The context here is to challenge our historically ingrained approach for solving humanity’s problems – an approach I’ve come to describe as the “The Atlantis Effect”. By coming to terms with the fact that our potential is latent within us, then our expeditions for unleashing higher human potential must be done likewise, within us. But even our modern approaches for uncovering our dormant cognitive potential, are still influenced by this peculiarly archaic phenomenon. We are relentless, even inexorable as we insist that the secret for discovering higher human potential can be found somewhere out there, or somewhere in the past, instead of looking forward. Consequently, we embark on hopeless expeditions to unearth Atlantis, and an array of other ancient civilizations, for which we are bent on believing, will disclose some divine knowledge that will prove to magically endow us with true human potential.

By the time we reach adulthood, all of our abilities should be intuitively developed – darn it, our intuitions should be intuitively developed. And to ensure that we’ll never be mass-produced replications of one another, then our creative abilities also need the assurance of intuitive-cognitive development. Whatever we think is lurking beneath the ruins of Atlantis, it will never do us as much good as what is lurking beneath our own undiscovered potential, which incidentally, needs to be expedited as soon as possible.

So, where is the expedition for our undiscovered abilities? Our greatest potential lies in our brains’ final developmental ability to perform intuitive reasoning and computational thinking capabilities – better known as common sense, good judgment, advanced critical thinking, and supreme cognitive quantum processing skills – which really means using the full power of our prefrontal cortexes. But these skills require the impetus of creativity, signifying that, if we are entering adulthood with a mere 20% of activated brain potential, which is synonymous with lacking in prefrontal cortex applications, then somewhere in the initial construction of our brains’ early cognitive development skills, there is some kind of mis-construction going on – specifically a lack of creative construction.

Humanity’s primary “intel” challenge is that we’ve become culturally locked into wanting a reduced amount of possibilities, which dampens our creative abilities.  History has generated a dysfunction whereby, we deflect any interest in relishing any knowledge about something we’ve previously known nothing about, especially if it threatens to shred our familiar patterns of information. This dysfunction is also systematically sustained by traditional educational means. Yet, humanity’s biggest breakthroughs have emerged when we are finally willing to accept some piece of constant and timeless knowledge about the universe that we’ve previously known nothing about, which always reveals some parallel information about ourselves (as opposed to just some past event or status in history). It’s these features of knowledge that provide opportunities for advanced development, such as in Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect that has paved the way for us to create televisions and computer screens.

Whatever civilizations knew five or ten thousand years ago, we are just as capable of understanding if we are open to cultivating and using all of our brains’ potential. What’s more, and we ought to have deduced this by now, is that folks of the past were likely using more of the (creative) right side of their brains than we are. If we can figure out how to do that, we’ll probably figure out whatever it is that they had figured out, plus we’ll have the advantage of having tapped into a significant use of the left side of our brains, which civilizations of the past had likely fallen short of accomplishing - - there, big secret revealed!

Okay, take a breath, if you’re still with me, there’s nothing unusual about administering a bit of mental CPR when we’ve exhausted our usual notions and cultivated concepts about life and human potential in general.

Let’s explore some lesser-known assumptions. During our early learning years, we are unable to conduct reasoning or common sense as a foresight process, but as previously mentioned, this is a skill we rely on most as adults. Also in early childhood, we are unable to theorize or compute multiple variables of information as an abstract process. For these skills we need a developed prefrontal cortex, which during the early years is somewhat, underdeveloped. But in place of that, the generosity of nature has provided young children with the ability to imagine, and those in charge of young children’s brain development must pre-cognitively issue creative learning options –  while children are in the sensitive stage of learning everything intuitively. The applications of early creative learning imitate the precursory properties of adult intuitive reasoning and computational thinking capabilities. Yes, the early stage of learning, specifically the 3-5 year old phase of brain development, is the proving ground for advanced computational thinking skills.

Now we can know exactly why preschool is so important, rather than ambiguously stating that it is the “foundation for everything” – assuming that we understand the definitions of “foundation” and the universal basics of “everything”. Now we can begin learning what needs to be done so that future generations will do what human minds  are truly capable of doing in quantum precognitive formats. Now we can answer the relative references between Atlantis, creativity, intuitive reasoning, computational thinking, the laws of supply and demand, the brain’s hard-wired properties of compassion and optimism, conscientiousness, human progress, super-advanced human brains, the essentials of early creative learning and the possibilities of tapping into that extra 80% of dormant brain potential.

So, here it is – rumor has it – that the most written about subject over the past two millenniums of human existence has been about the lost civilization of Atlantis. Meanwhile, there is a topic that is the least written about, the least documented, least understood – and therefore least demanded and supplied – and that is the topic of the early years of our developing brains, specifically between the ages of 3 and 5 years old (a.k.a., the preschool years). More significantly, what is floating around the mainstream way of thinking is failing to provide the information we need for unclogging latent human potential, such as Atlantis and any other superficial proposals for advancing human development. Clearly, what we need, is to explore what has failed to make it into the mainstreams of knowledge and information, namely, the early stages of human brain development – the field of knowledge we’ve been so disinterested in because we know so little about it.

How is it that we propose to know so much about something that we’ve never had any access to ~ how is it that we’ve produced so much literature on the topic of Atlantis? How is it that we know so little about early brain development ~ how is it that such a miniscule amount of informative literature has been produced, specifically on preschool development, when these young human beings are to be found running around everywhere? How does all that even begin to make any sense?

It may come as a shock to know that the 3-5 year old stage of brain development is the least supplied topic of information in the world, but what is more shocking, and obviously consistent with such a low supply, is the extremely low demand for knowledge about this subject. What is the reason for putting up with this anomaly? While we are living in an age of information and technology, demanding transparency and privacy all at the same time, what mutiny has insubordinated any passionate demand on our part to know about something that will lead us toward what we want most – to know everything!? Now that’s something to write home about. Yet, true to the laws of supply and demand, there are zero supplies meeting the zero demand about how this early stage of human brain development can and will, prove to tell us everything we want to know about the universe – about ourselves and our true potential.

Now, while some individuals might be immediately compelled to argue with the assumption of the insufficiently documented 3-5 year old brain development stage, and are already fleeing to the nearest library or internet search engine in order to invalidate this premise, keep in mind that the key words for overturning this assumption would be to include finding a resource that explains all of the functions of preschool development as completely inseparable and interconnected features of; early emotional brain development, intuitive development, language development and creative development as a singular process that can simultaneously cover all of the other learning functions of early cognitive development. Sounds dizzying?!?! --- But that is the criteria for preschool development, and the bridge that must be traversed in order to stimulate the full power of our brains that eventually will activate the total creative potential of our uniquely human prefrontal cortexes. Such a resource has yet to be acknowledged, if it is indeed out there. Chances are, you’ve also thought about early development as the key to real human progress, but have you thought about it in these terms?

Of course, it’s only natural for us to be curious about what’s out there. But it seems we may be a little too zealous with the yearning to welcome back long gone aliens and bygone prophets, as well as engaging in archeological searches beneath ancient monoliths that have yet to reveal any worthwhile secrets – as though we need permission or approval from antiquity to acquire and practice the rights to think for ourselves in these modern times, or any time at all.

The mysterious events of times past may still prove to be fateful occurrences that we can look forward to learning from. However, until they come to pass, our own creative human brains are our best asset and best available supply for creating higher human potential. Extracting the best of our brains’ potential means embarking on a deeper expedition about that early phase of creative human development that retains the title of being the least explored and seemingly least interested topic of human development.

We reserve the right to believe anything we want to believe, and that right includes believing that all of life’s mysteries can be uncovered by discovering lost and long gone civilizations of the past. But the real mysteries of life are hiding in plain sight. It’s been said that the human brain is the most complex entity in the universe and that it is a microcosmic rendition of the universe’s properties and operations. Certainly, there must be a phase where all those processes are at a simultaneous crossroads – and there is! All the clues, pathways, gateways, orders and functions of the universe are exactly paralleled in the 3-5 year old brain – all poised and ready to be observed at one interconnecting junction. It is here that everything we can possibly want to know about ourselves comes together, and it is at this phase that it all gets fundamentally tied together. It is from this platform that humanity will be able to devise a “Theory of Everything” – something that scientists are all stumbling over to be the first to discover. For as long as we pretend or believe that the true discovery of ourselves can take place by any means other than understanding the fundamental phases of early brain development, it will proportionately parallel how long we dismiss and ignore the secrets of the universe, and thus, our true potential.

Now this article could easily end right here, but there is a little more to consider.

In conclusion, here’s how it all really works:

While creativity may give all the appearances of being an optionally frivolous feature of human intelligence processes – or that it is hardly necessary for the everyday responsibilities we perform to get through life and survive another day – it is our reasoning abilities that we do need most to get through our day-to-day activities, which for some of us might also be defined as needing a reason to get through another day of living. To whatever degree we are aware or unaware of it, we are compelled to renew and re-create an assortment of reasons for living and fulfilling our sense of  responsibility (which properly defined is the inclination to respond to our abilities).

If there were only one rote way to reason or conduct moral thinking and responsible behavior, then we’d have to call it something else – perhaps it would have to be classified or described as mechanical imprinting ?! Reasoning is our final and most supreme intelligence skill. Reasoning needs responsible thinking. Responsible thinking requires the use of our abilities. Abilities are unique and therefore demand creative development. All of these skills are energized by our emotions. Emotions provide all the reasons to respond to our abilities. Creative intelligence is precisely the reason why the human brain must be engaged in diversified learning over the course of two and a half decades of cognitive brain development. If reasoning were possible without creative thinking, then nature could have easily designed an area of the brain for reasoning the same way it has designed functions that regulate processes we never have to consciously worry about, such as breathing. All in all, there must be creative ways to reason that remain consistent with the hard-wired values of compassion and optimism.

To capitalize on nurturing young children’s creative learning skills is in the best interest of current and future human progress. The future is going to depend on advanced reasoning capabilities more than ever before – and as we all know from the words of a famous song, “children are the future”.

Reasoning skills have long been held in the esteem that they are only of the highest order and caliber of thinking when they succeed in eliminating any forms of passion or emotional inferences, which are too often regarded as emotional interferences. But all of our intelligence capabilities are rooted in the cognitive development of our emotions – in conjunction with the brain’s hard-wired predilection to process all knowledge by the values of compassion and optimism – which are dependent upon the elements of unconditional love. That is what defines emotional literacy as an intuitive process that supports the full creative development of all of our unique abilities.

All things considered, it’s absurd for us to presume that we can perform intelligent reasoning without intelligent emotioning, indeed it is the prefrontal cortex’s ultimate purpose and intent to treat both of these as indifferent processes. It is the only prospect for cerebral peace that will end the battle within the human brain.

If we hope to take stock of our genuine potential to create a world of prosperity for everyone, then we must reconcile that our brain matter matters in every matter of human existence. Creativity must flourish, money needs to be re-born, and reasoning must become synonymous with authentic love.

It’s time to stop denying the inextricable links between creativity, “emotioning” and reasoning. It’s time to demand a supply that is very much needed, one that can ensure our ability to process unlimited patterns of knowledge when the fundamental wiring of our brains are being creatively constructed. Perhaps too, it’s time to leave Atlantis, and its potential secrets, to reveal itself in its own good time to a future generation of higher
thinking minds that will actually be capable of understanding it – if it is ever discovered
at all. (Edited by Bryce Conway)