Self-Actualization

 Self-actualization is one of the most strange and mysterious mental concepts. Probably very few of us can say anything clear and understandable about it. At the same time, all of us somehow have some idea about ourselves, about our past and future. Our ancestors didn't have to be too busy thinking about such topics, they had ready answers to it in the form of religions or traditions. In the end, their fate was determined in advance. I don't know if it's good or bad, but today, it seems, even in the places we're all used to considering the most conducive, people no longer have a "ready" future. So now we're left hoping we can somehow create this future for ourselves. In any case, even if we fail, we will know we have tried.

First I want to show you this simple scheme. We, "tonux.gix", had a long argument about some details here. We're regular guys, no one has a biological or psychological education. But such things interested us even before we started to do something together, and we shared things with each other as soon as we learned something interesting on this subject. Today cognitive science is at its peak and you can easily find great sources to learn more about it. Here we're going to share all this with you. It's clear that our generalizations are very simple. All we want to do is imagine these things visually. Our imagination is the best way to deal with visual data. As soon as we visualize something, it immediately begins to seem more understandable.

So, here is a picture of self-fulfillment, as the expansion of the comfort zone by moving into the unknown. The comfort zone is everything that we love, know and are able to accomplish. This is where our relatives, friends and acquaintances "live". Not them themselves, of course, but their "virtual models" - their images inside us. I mean here the internal structure of our "I". In general, this is what our ancestors all over the planet imagined, the only difference is that they mainly thought that all this was happening not in the head, but in the heart:) Gradually, when people began to record various strange cases, and when there were enough of them, it became clear that this is, indeed, brain function. Recently, there has been a lot of interesting scientific evidence to support this, and adding countless extremely interesting, previously unknown details. And also significant developments in machine learning (AI) give hints on how it works.

To put it very simply, we have three levels of neural networks that together give us an idea of ourselves and the outside world and shape our desires and actions. The basic level of reactions should have appeared very early, perhaps as soon as life arose. It could have been something very simple, not necessarily with self-awareness as we understand it. Even in quite complex organisms, far from all of them understands what happens when they see themselves in a mirror, for example. But even very simple organisms, it seems, in order to function, had to somehow separate themselves from the environment and react to its changes. It worked as a response to the signal from the sensors. Perhaps the most interesting thing about early organisms was that they had to change generations to change their reactions. Plants don't have any neurons yet, but complex reaction systems sometimes create quite complex behaviours. In order to move successfully in space, it was already necessary to have environment models. Early chords (vertebrates) already had neurons and, to all appearances, could have quite complex adaptive behavior patterns system. Perhaps they already had some forms of self-consciousness, if we understand it as free will. Later on, purposeful behavior developed even more in reptiles. As a matter of fact, it seems that those parts of the brain that had appeared in them for the first time and that are present in us, are the ones that form our sense of self-identification in the simplest sense of the term.

As for neocortex, which only mammals have, it may be an entropy sensor, if I may say so. It catches patterns in everything that it sees. It doesn't always "know what's good and what's bad". Mostly it works in consensus with other parts of the brain. Here it is necessary to understand that much of what concerns our brain is not precisely verified by scientific data, in the same way that the fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun is, for example. It's mostly hypotheses. Sometimes they are confirmed by research, sometimes it's too early to tell. In any case, our brain is an extremely complex structure, and everything we say here is very simple. In addition, there has been a clear increase in the number of studies on this topic in recent times, and their results often change our previous ideas. We talk about it because the progress in this area it's incredible, and it's just impossible to refrain from talking about it.

So, it turns out that as we live our lives, we gradually form a certain structure from everything we feel and learn, which we call the notion of ourselves and the outside world. This structure allows us to develop and interact with other people and the environment. This is probably the process of self-realization. At the same time, of course, the more perfect our perceptions are, the easier it should be for us to obtain resources and the more use we should be able to bring to everyone around us. In fact, the entire structure of our perceptions are waves of joint excitations of our neurons. So far, there is no conclusive data on anything more. That doesn't mean I can claim that there's nothing more. It's just that there's enough of what we have so far to imagine all of this somehow. The chains of our thoughts, ideas and concepts are probably what we should develop and improve in ourselves.

It's also wonderful that humanity's new achievements in many fields, especially with AI, promise us new opportunities to expand the "horizon" of our understanding. Since the scope of our understanding is currently confined within our brains, this naturally limits the expansion of its "horizon". And this is the true quality of our life – the scale of ideas we live within provides a vision of all problems and opportunities within that scale. Furthermore, futurists also promise an increase in our lifespan. Along with the expansion of our own understanding, this should also provide the ability to operate with those understandings for longer and in more detail. This means we will be able to enjoy every moment of our lives more "vividly", I hope. All of this is what promises the best opportunities for each of us and for all of us together. If we managed to be useful for you with this story, it was a small act of successful self-realization for you and for us. It seems to be a case when what you share becomes not less, but more, because it becomes more important. So we really appreciate you being with us.