Chapter 2 - Shrinking Dreams and Growing Doubts (1)

After having pulled some psychological strings to immerse you in the emotional world of the past for a moment, I want to take another leap with you. This time into the near future, from the perspective of a child pondering what it will experience when it grows up.

In such a future, the world would resemble a single adventure playground, where every country on Earth would be accessible and every culture experienceable. No ocean trench too deep, no mountain too high, and no castle too far to be discovered, explored, and researched with friends and playmates. Here, more people would follow their calling instead of meeting the expectations of others. Attending schools would be more joyful, learning would continue throughout life, and emotions would be lived more freely.

Back to reality and the dreams of today's adults – or what's left of them: Members of a future-oriented community should be aware that access to their earlier, childlike impulses is not only important but essential. This does not mean turning off their brains to naively fail at the real challenges of the present. Rather, it means critically questioning the world and its supposed rules, and despite the omnipresent noise, listening to the inner voice. It also means cultivating oneself and reflecting on oneself and one's interests in the light of current science.

Not only the currently perceived mood influences people. We are embedded in the culture and era into which we were born. If you get the impression that people in the past were sometimes treated barbarically, take a moment to consider how future generations will judge our time. The truth is: Prenatal imprints and experiences from our earliest past still echo actively within us and have the potential to influence us throughout our lives. People go through phases of increased susceptibility to imprinting at different stages of life: in puberty, when we fall in love, and in times of crisis.

Empathy, learning ability, and learning speed are impressively high during these periods, but, despite all neuroplasticity, not nearly comparable to the potential of the first phase of increased susceptibility to imprinting. This phase begins well before birth and ends by the third year of life. It leads to a two-year developmental stage that neurologists call 'use it or lose it.' During this stage, the brain is adapted for the specific tasks of our environment. Unused neurons, or unused nerve cells of the brain, die off. Synapses are connections between nerve cells. Synapses that are not used or infrequently used become weaker or disappear altogether.

We are dealing here with evolutionary mechanisms that have been optimizing since the beginning of humanity.

However, not every neural connection necessarily leads to advantages. For instance, the constant absence of a caregiver in early childhood can lead to a life-threatening incoherence in the brain. To counteract this, coherence is established by the growth of inhibitory connections of nerve cells above the actual attachment center of the brain, which can remain for a lifetime. This does not mean that people with this type of neural change are unable to form attachments for their entire lives. However, it does mean that they have to make more of an effort to become capable of forming attachments.

In environments where free creativity and autonomy are discouraged, children lose their enthusiasm for creativity and for exploring the world.

With the arrival of the fifth year of life, the 'use-it-or-lose-it' phase ends. But this does not mean that all possible negative influences that could affect our lives are now a thing of the past. Cognitive biases and mental shortcuts, also known as heuristics, are mechanisms that help us navigate the world. However, the more active they are in our thinking, the less motivated we are to actually change the world around us. Therefore, we are by no means immune to negative influences, such as excessive pessimism. Such tendencies can also be reflected in the way we use language later in life.

The question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' is typically answered by children with the syntax 'I will...'. When adults do not respond with 'I don't know,' which is quite telling, the syntax often shifts from 'I will...' to 'I would like to, but I can't.' with increasing age.

While our dreams shrink, our doubts about achieving them grow. And if we grew up in an environment that used a more restricted, limited language code rather than an elaborated, extensive one, it will be harder for us as adults to justify conclusions and instructions. – Unless we have actively worked on our linguistic and cognitive development.

Speaking is a conscious process. The center of our language processing is in the cortex, which is partly separated from the areas of the brain that contain our values and evaluations. The question 'How are you?' is an invitation to our counterpart to access the subconscious world of feelings and describe it with appropriate word choice.

The question about one's well-being can only be understood as sincere if the person being asked takes a lot of time to reflect, and the questioner has enough patience to wait for an answer. However, this is hardly feasible in everyday life, and even if it were, the answers could be meant differently than they are understood. The statement 'I am excited' could mean anything from looking forward to an upcoming event to extreme nervousness at the moment. Without knowing the biographical background of how a person's vocabulary has formed, it is difficult to understand them. - So if the question about well-being can at best be understood as a well-meaning platitude, why shouldn't I just respond with something trivial? Like small talk about the weather?

I am Nemesus. And if you feel that this chapter appears as gloomy as the cloud-covered sky on a summer day, you're spot on. The conclusion of the video series in the seventh and final chapter will bee brighter and more cheerful. But first, here's the summary of the second chapter by ChatGPT.

Quote: "Chapter two takes the viewer into the future, from the perspective of a child contemplating its dreams and aspirations. It emphasizes the importance of accessing childlike impulses and the ability to question the world and its rules. The immense potential of the human brain during the early years of life is highlighted, explaining how it is shaped by the environment and early experiences.

The chapter discusses how these early imprints and experiences influence us and how they are reflected in our language and behavior. Furthermore, the impact of imprints, cognitive biases, and heuristics is touched upon.

It concludes with the realization that the separation between our value system and our language is part of human nature. This can lead to difficulties in expressing our feelings and values precisely, and can even make it challenging for us to understand what we feel and why we feel the way we do." End of Quote