The Bifurcation of Thought — Darwin, Csikszentmihalyi, & Lao Tzu
The theory of bifurcating human thought incorporates Darwinian natural selection, Dawkinsian memetics, and mindfulness practice. It represents a psychological quest that has proved profoundly beneficial in my journey away from the conditioned thinking of my formative years in a controlling religious organization.
Anyone who has experience growing up in a closed community as part of a New Religious Movement (NRM) will recognize the importance of the theory of bifurcating human thought. For victims of conditioned thinking in the ideologically totalist environments of NRMs, the initial period of awakening can be nothing less than traumatic. It leaves one with a firm determination to never fall for psychological victimhood again; to be fiercely objective and critical.
The result is that many ex-members experience a period of extreme pessimism, distrust, and contrarianism. This is a natural and understandable reaction to the thought control of their upbringing. It’s a mental state common to trauma recovery of all kinds. But it doesn’t have to be permanent.
I too was brought up in such an environment and formed a similar determination during my religious deconstruction. The initial reeducation phase is intense, like drinking from a fire-hose. But the process of spiritual inquest has introduced me (and continues to introduce me) to some profound thinkers. This article discusses some of them and how their theories contribute to what I will refer to as the bifurcation of human thought.
The bifurcation of thought is an amalgamation of the theories of Charles Darwin, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Lao Tzu. Embracing and understanding this cognitive process has helped me to distance myself from my religious indoctrination. I believe it could be helpful to others as a forward-looking strategy for ever-increasing enlightenment and anti-ideologicalism.
Darwin
Most of us met Darwin in grade school and, if you are reading in the West, probably from the mouth of an educator with a worldview influenced at least in part by the Judeo-Christian theology. Given the creationist propaganda that I was simultaneously consuming from my religious organization, my initial reaction to this fundamental principle of biology was dismissive and didn't include a full understanding of the implications of the theory.
A more comprehensive understanding of Darwinian natural selection came from reading Richard Dawkins and that nutty professor I used to watch in grade school, Bill Nye. In his book Undeniable — Evolution & The Science of Creation, Nye provides an excellent explanation of how natural selection by genetic mutation contributes to the near-infinite development of new species. The biological sciences have created a nomenclature to organize species based on commonalities; kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. But this is simply a theoretical framework for understanding the natural world. Nye explains that the natural world is in constant flux; genetic mutations appear and disappear and are selected and deselected for survival by the environment. Phenomes that survive eventually become new species.
Like the branches on a tree, organisms bifurcate to into ever-evolving complexity. As one branch becomes two, and two four, etc, so one species becomes two, two become four, etc. This is the bifurcation of organisms in the natural world based on the principles of Darwinian natural selection.
Csikszentmihalyi
Many people know Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from his popular research on the flow state; that optimal state of intellectual challenge and individual skill that causes one to lose track of time and be consumed by the task at hand. Flow is a therapeutic mental state and has been connected to well-being in a number of studies (Zito et all, 2019)¹.
But it was Csikszentmihalyi's theories in The Evolving Mind — A Psychology For The Third Millenium that applied Darwin’s theories of natural selection to the evolution of human psychology. Csikszentmihalyi reintroduces the reader to the concept of memes. These memes aren’t the kind from social media. Memetics was introduced in the 1970s by the British ethologist and prominent atheist spokesman, Richard Dawkins to describe how units of human information evolve by process of natural selection, similar to how organisms do.
Further, Csikszentmihalyi asserts that the optimal development of collective human psychology leverages memetic evolution toward complexity. True individual and societal progress results from ever-increasing complexity; in both our psychological constructs and daily-to-day activities. Subsequently, more subtle and nuanced philosophies and, by extension, varied and refined social structures, political systems, and communities come into existence.
Lao Tzu
Reading Lao Tzu’s The Art of War, The Tao Te Ching, and listening to Taoism — Essential Teachings of the Way and Its Power by Ken Cohen on audiobook finally helped me understand why so many counter-culture Westerners get Yin-Yang tattoos when they rebel against society. Reading Taoism philosophy after growing up with the restrictions of Western categorical thinking is both refreshing and liberating.
In Ken Cohen’s Taoism, the author guides the reader through some elementary Taoist meditations. One of the purposes of Taoist mediation is to deconstruct categorical thinking. This means that as soon as a practitioner becomes aware in consciousness of a category of polar opposites (i.e. black-white, good-bad, masculine-feminine, heterosexual-homosexual) allow your mind to accept and release the psychological illusion. Subsequently, the mind performs a profoundly creative process of bifurcating the category into ever-increasing complexity (i.e. shades of gray, moral ambiguity, non-binary gender, pansexuality).
Putting It Together With Mindful Awareness
Fundamentalist religions are prescriptive and coerce members into following a strict code of do’s-don’t, rights-wrongs, truth-lie, and many other binary thinking patterns by means of published propaganda. Once awoken, it is common for disillusioned religionists to fall back into extremist thinking. After being extremely passionate about the religion’s mission, they awaken and become extremely passionate opposers. This tendency of polarized psychology runs deeper even than the religious thought reform of cults. However, a concerted focus on bifurcating thought avoids the tendency for such polarization.
Mindfulness practice plays a vital role in allowing the bifurcation of our thoughts. During meditation, one may become aware of resistance to certain thoughts. This is usually because of deeply entrenched fear or bias. Disallowing thought in such a way arrests the bifurcation process.
On the other hand, when a practitioner accepts all thoughts and feelings into conscious awareness he out may alight upon an instance of categorical thinking. This provides an opportunity for the creative potential of the mind to bifurcate the category into limitless alternative possibilities.
This is Darwin’s natural selection at work in our neurology. It is Mihaly’s evolution toward psychological complexity. And it is implicit in the pursuit of the indescribable Tao.
It is the worthy work of the newly liberated religionist.
References:
Zito, M., Cortese, C. G., & Colombo, L. (2019). The role of resources and flow at work in well-being. Sage Open, 9(2), 2158244019849732.
