The Canadian National Newspaper: Financial Crisis and Human Development Terrain Issues: Part II

Humans are complex sentient creatures. In addition, we also share behavioural as well as organic traits with other animals. For example, even when we lived as being primarily hunters and gatherers, we found the need to band together into management groups. That banding together, allowed the group to make claim to exclusive use of the territory on which it depended for the subsistence of its members, and that of their offspring.

Notably, however, over the period of our evolution, human susceptibility to autonomous changes in the elements of climate and weather, stimulated them to use their sentience and their observations, to seek to acquire an understanding of how our environment operated. Historically, therefore, humans have sought to develop new instruments and techniques (the technology), to handle how they are able to live in the respective environments at hand.

In those endeavours in technical creativity, humans have drawn on the capability of their mind. They then developed techniques that would enable them (in their respective societies), to achieve more sustainably. the wherewithal in behalf of their needs for food, clothing, and shelter, and also for security. However, analysts of human efforts in resource allocation, appear to have ignored that humans have also set out to use their resource management initiatives, to enhance their understanding of themselves as well as of their natural environment.

Accordingly, under the influence of mind, humans have evolved the capability to discriminate about, as well as to integrate relationships, among the many parts and wholes in the natural environment that have been revealed from time to time, (by their technical inquiries into their universe).

The influence of mind (to which respective persons are privately linked), has pointed respective humans, to a shared larger material universe, and has also pointed them to the possibility of a shared larger universe of sentience. It is therefore an evolving level of awareness, and sense of sentience, in which humans share.

The result is that, intuitively, under the influence of mind, humans have come to recognize that mind-guided living, is what they are essentially about. Therefore, although persons recognize that they have a need for “bread”, humans have also begun to see that their living is a process, that becomes an exercise in the evolution of their Consciousness.

Humans have come to see that the substance as well as the outcome from that living process, in which they are engaged, is fostered by, and is portrayed in (that is, defined by) how they allocate their time. Therefore, Conscious humans recognize that they are in a process of personal evolution. They have therefore become concerned about living-related issues that extend significantly beyond the level of material sustenance (“bread”) to which they will have access.

It is the operation of mind, which leads humans to also see themselves as time-use managers. Mind, and the respective personal linkages of respective humans to it, therefore leads persons to frame a normal built-in self-awareness of themselves as being choice-makers, as they set out to orchestrate their normal attempts to survive.

Additionally, the evolving awareness of the self which humans possess, and continue to develop, is simultaneously outwardly directed (at comprehending the natural environment), and is also inwardly directed (at what are the choices, among the available options, that they plan to make). The result is that, although respective persons see themselves as executing separable and distinct activities, the operation of mind leads them to also recognize that their existence is not separable and distinct from the remainder of reality.

In recognition of their personal linkages to mind, self-aware persons therefore do not allow themselves to forget that there are others like themselves, in the remainder of reality, who respectively understand their separability from the whole, at the same time that they have a mind-linked obligation to it. Accordingly, mind leads these persons at the same time, to recognize that communication with the remainder of reality, may have important survival benefits.

Indeed, the attributes of mind, enter into how humans select, interpret, and communicate about community. Self-aware individuals recognize that their linkage to mind, influences how they understand themselves. That linkage of persons to operating mind, also mediates how they understand the reality in which they find themselves.

Mind-linked, and mind-guided humans, therefore begin to recognize themselves, as respectively being complements to the remainder of a larger reality in which they survive. Aware humans are therefore led to recognize that mutuality with that remainder of their reality, is a requirement for healthy mind-co-ordinated living. Notably, too, this mind-directed awareness, contrasts with the focus of capitalism, which proselytises that respective persons are competitors with each other, in behalf of securing for themselves maximum private net financial-equivalent gain.

Arguably, therefore, mind-guided persons want preferred mixes of survival-supportive results to flow from, or to accompany, their effort and resource management decisions.

Meanwhile, this impact of mind on what humans do, also presents some unassailable responsibilities. The result is that toward understanding what the prevailing outcomes from choices in resource allocation mean for the living that we do, we may not overlook how sentience-linked priorities have been or are likely to be impacted, by the proposed or the executed choices. Therefore, in selecting among, or in analysing the results that arise (in association with resource and time-use choices in our environment), we may not overlook how the sentience-linked priorities that make for a better quality-of-living among humans, have accompanied the forthcoming results.

Horace Carby-Samuels is an Economist. He is the author of the book entitled Quality-of-Living and Human Development, that is published by Agora Publishing Consortium. Review this book at your local bookstore or library. Agora is a not-for-profit book publisher in support of critical public education, human rights, and social justice.

Become a Member:

Would you like to see other similar articles and critical commentaries in The Canadian National Newspaper? Then, show your support. Make a member-pledge donation, in support of the Membership Drive of the Pro-Democracy Media Foundation.

The Canadian can only continue to publish investigative articles in such areas, with the donations from members of the public in Canada, the U.S., and abroad. Consider making a donation of $50.00, $75.00, $100.00, $200.00 or more. Donors are eligible to receive our first collector's print edition in mail. Alternatively, you can send us a note to be placed on our special email list of members. Member-donors can also suggest articles or commentaries to be published in The Canadian.

The Canadian is a socially progressive and not-for-profit national newspaper, with an international readership. We provide an alternative to the for-profit commercial focused media, which often censors vital information and perspective of potential interest to the diverse Canadian public, and other peoples internationally.