Programming Your Mind

IBM's Watson

For a moment, imagine your mind as a blank slate, an amazing Supercomputer waiting to be programmed.

Is it possible to re-write the firmware that is your brains operating system? Is your firmware open source code or a closed system?

The social and psychological sciences tend to take the view that Human Beings are 'formed' socially and psychologically by nature as well as by nurture and that there are inherited traits that society can build on and to some extent modify.

Early in the seventeenth century, it was statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon who, first strongly established the claims of Empiricism - the reliance on the experience of the senses - over those speculation or deduction in the pursuit of knowledge.

John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding restated the importance of the experience of the senses over speculation and sets out the case that the human mind at birth is a complete, but receptive, blank slate (tabula rasa) upon which experience imprints knowledge.

Locke argued that people acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring. People begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones.

Is this what determines the built-in software that is our mind (our firmware)? Or as individuals do we have the free will to program our software from experience? Let’s consider the mind as a white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. Locke did not believe in powers of intuition or that the human mind is invested with innate conceptions.

In his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1697), Locke recommended practical learning to prepare people to manage their social, economic, and political affairs efficiently. He believed that a sound education began in early childhood and insisted that the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic be gradual and cumulative.

What about today? Is the education we receive passive? We live in a society exposed to more information in a single day than our forefathers were exposed to their entire lives. What are the affects of Television, the Internet, radio, blogs, social media, text messages, and the plethora of information allowed to fill that Tabula rasa?

Through our free will are we allowing our blank slate to be filled with ideas that build strength of character, values, information that teach us to grow and develop as an individual? To build character, integrity, and a strong work ethic, (useful information)? Or do we passively allow junk to filter into our minds to fill the slate with garbage?

Think about it. What a captivating concept!

Comments

Night Before Christmas

I n this episode, Night Before Christmas . . . (In the spirit of Edgar Albert Guest) I’ve wrestled with the tangled lights the way I always do— With just enough patience left to see the project through. I climb the ladder carefully; the years have taught me how. To take my time with every step and keep a steady brow. We hang the faded ornaments I’ve known since I was small, the chipped, the cracked, the tilted ones—I love them best of all. Santa’s lost a bit of paint, the stars’ leaning right, but oh, it casts a holy glow across the room tonight. The kitchen hums with activity, with laughter, and with cheer, as voices drift like echoes from a long-forgotten year. The floor is strewn with paper scraps, the clock is ticking slow, As Christmas finds its own sweet pace and sets our house aglow. The hallway grows a little still; the lights are dimmed, and low, Small shoes are lined in messy pairs to wait for morning’s snow. The fire's warm, the room is full, the world is deep and wide,...

Un-Work the Old-Fashioned Way

🎩 In this special episode. How to Un-Work the Old-Fashioned Way It’s 2026! Yes— this is the year! A different kind of start—you feel it right here? No lists! No demands! No fix-all-your-flaws! No “New You by Tuesday!” No rules! No laws! Those resolutions? Bah! Dusty and dry! We’ve tried fixing everything —so let’s ask why. Why rush and correct and improve and compare, When noticing quietly gets you right there ? So here’s a new project—no charts, no clocks, No boxes to check in your mental inbox. It’s bigger than busy and smaller than grand, It’s called Un-Working —now give me your hand! Un-Working’s not quitting or hiding away, It’s setting things down that shout “Hurry! Hey!” The hustle! The bustle! The faster-than-fast! The gotta-win-now or you’re stuck in the past! That’s the work of Un-Working— plop! —set it free! The titles! The labels! The “Look-At-Me!” The crown that kept sliding and pinching your head— You never looked comfy . . . let’s try this instead: Pick up a tel...

The Thought Experiment–Revisited

In this episode. The Thought Experiment–Revisited The Boy on a Light Beam In 1895, a sixteen-year-old boy did something we rarely allow ourselves to do anymore. He stared into space and let his mind wander. No phone. No notes. No “Optimization Hacks” for his morning routine. Just a question: What would happen if I chased a beam of light—and actually caught it? That boy was Albert Einstein . And that single act of curiosity—a Gedankenexperiment , a thought experiment—eventually cracked open Newton’s tidy universe and rearranged our understanding of time itself. Not bad for an afternoon of daydreaming. Imagine if Einstein had been “productive” instead. He would have logged the light-beam idea into a Notion database, tagged it #CareerGrowth, and then promptly ignored it to attend a forty-five-minute “Sync” about the color of the departmental logo. He’d have a high Efficiency Score—and we’d still be stuck in a Newtonian universe , wondering why the Wi-Fi is slow. In a post I wrote back in...

Shaping the World—Within

In this episode, Shaping the World—Within by Patrick Ball The world has gotten very good . . . at interrupting us. It lives in our pockets. Buzzing. Vibrating. Tapping us on the shoulder with breaking news, political friction, global crises, and a steady stream of what’s gone wrong since breakfast. It’s a kind of “gotcha” world — designed to keep us looking down. At the screen. At the fear. And, every so often, at the clock . . . wondering how the day slipped past so quickly. But here at On the Fly , we take a slightly different posture. Not denial. Not disengagement. Just a small, intentional tilt of the head. First—there’s the power of the lens. You still get to choose where you aim your attention. While the world debates the headlines, you can look past the pale. Point a telescope at the Milky Way , and you’re not escaping reality—you’re widening it. Wonder doesn’t erase worry. But it reminds us that worry isn’t the whole picture. Then there’s the quiet strength of small th...

On The Fly

Search This Blog