Daily Quote, Wednesday September 16, 2009.

Good morning everyone,

My call on the weather was pretty poor yesterday, so we'll just see how it goes this morning. :-)

Here is today's quote:

The brain is limited, primitive.

The brain has extraordinary capacity, but it has been conditioned and therefore it is limited. It is not limited in the technological world, computers and so on, but it is very, very limited with regard to the psyche. People have said, “Know yourself”—from the Greeks, from the ancient Hindus, and so on. They study the psyche in another but they never study their own psyche.

The psychologists, the philosophers, the experts, never study themselves. They study rats, rabbits, pigeons, monkeys, and so on, but they never say, “I am going to look at myself. I am ambitious, greedy, envious. I compete with my neighbour, with my fellow scientists.” It is the same psyche that has existed for thousands of years, though technologically we are marvellous outwardly. But inwardly we are very primitive, right? So the brain is limited, primitive, in the world of the psyche.

On Mind and Thought, p132.

Here is my reflection.

This quote speaks a little to the whole question of theory that came up at the study group and the blog on Monday. Why is the brain limited? Is it because we are using it to create and maintain the subject/object dichotomy? By studying other brains, like the psyche in psychoanalysis on the brain in neuroscience, they avoid looking at the subject and maintain the object as object and the subject as subject. If you look at the subject as an object, study your own brain and psyche, then the subject is understood and then is not a place of fear and isolating activity.

Best wishes

Robert