The importance of developing the mind

I thought I’d share with you one of the reasons that I think this is so important. 

We humans have been blessed in our brains with the best computer that the universe has so far produced and it has enabled us to have lives filled with so much more opportunity than our ancestors. Without it I wouldn’t be able to speak to you like this now. However, we are in many ways still subject to a huge number of selfish primitive urges and if we’re not careful, we might end up ruining the world just at the point where we really should be able to understand it and use it for everybody’s benefit.

As far as I am concerned the only way to solve the problems we have all created is by thinking about them. This can be hard, sometimes unrewarding and take time. It can be so tempting to go for the easy solution and this pursuit of the easy solution in my view is one of the factors that leads to the terrorist acts that seem to plague the world right now. 

I suspect that part of the mindset that produces these acts is the belief that it would be so much easier if a particular group of people, whether those of a different religion or political persuasion, just ceased to exist or was cowed into submission. This, aside from the devastating pain and hurt this causes, is as a result of lazy thinking. Actually solving the problem of us all living together is hard, really hard - so much easier to just get rid of people who are different from us. This is why it is so important to commit to developing the brain / mind. We should be trying to solve these problems in such a way that everyone is able to live the life that they would aspire to live.

I’d be interested to hear what anybody else out there thinks.