Imagined damage

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The body of Homo sapiens (ma non troppo) is managed by a socialized brain, trained in the culture to which it belongs. Many of its decisions will arise, inevitably, from what this culture dictates. Network programs are genetically disposed to be activated by both expectations and beliefs. If not, we would not be human. The development of the neocortex only finds its evolutive sense in our learning ability by representing reality imaginatively without suffering from it, ruminating what has been learned (in theory and practice) to extract knowledge and to avoid real damage in the theoretical, simulated tests.

It’s impossible to imagine something that has marked us as a species without having in mind the very human imagination function.

The ability to imagine does not guarantee us anything. It’s a laboratory where uncertainty is processed, the past and the present are reviewed in order to anticipate the future, ours and others’. In this laboratory of simulation of reality, everything is possible. The brain can give appearance to all kinds of events.

– It’s like my head’s exploding … as if my arteries were swollen… as if my eyes were being pulled out …

The imaginative function is as real as breathing, digestion or kidney filtering but us sapiens (ma non troppo) don’t like to be reminded that what is perceived may come from the imagined.

– I’m not imagining anything, it just hurts.

Reluctance appears especially when assessing somatic issues. For God’s sake! pain perception can’t come from the imagined whatsoever. It necessarily has to come from a somatic physical disturbance or a psychological inconvenience.

Imagining is a neuronal function, namely, somatic. It’s not an ethereal, irrelevant function.

Tell me what you’re imagining and I’ll tell you what you’re suffering from.

Imagining reality doesn’t create it magically. It only attributes it a possibility-probability.

Imagining that the plane will fall into the sea does not make it fall, but imagining the journey as a dangerous one will trigger the perception of danger, as if… we were falling into the sea.  

The neuronal network imagines at all levels in all its layers, from the most basic circuits to the most complex ones.

It’s easy to deduce whether something comes from imagination or not.

It hurts and you have nothing, so the pain comes from the brain’s imagination.

The alarm has gone off. There are no thieves, so the system has imagined a possible-probable theft.

Experts do not consider neuronal imagination as a source of suffering. Anything can be one: arteries, veins, diet, wind, stress, (female) hormones, electromagnetic radiation, sociopsiconeuroimmuneendocrineosteomioarticular decontrol. Everything is plausible …

– So you are saying that it may hurt because the brain is imagining damage?

– Yes

– And… that’s it?

We should control imagination, avoid its ravings. But this requires experts to begin taking it seriously. Brains don’t imagine what they want, but what they can. They just ruminate what was presented as possible by the instructors.

I can’t imagine experts accepting the importance of the imaginative neuronal function all of a sudden.

– No wonder it hurts. Your spine is a mess.

– That’s what I thought… I wasn’t imagining things …