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Zack Lynch Zack Lynch is the founder and executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO) and co-founder of NeuroInsights. He serves on the advisory boards of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT,Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, the InnerSpace Foundation, the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies and SocialText, a social software company. His book on how brain science is changing our world will be available July 2009. Please send newsworthy items or feedback - to Zack Lynch.
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July 28, 2004

Is Perfection Impossible? A Case for Neuroliberty

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Posted by Zack Lynch

"Must we know drunkenness to know sobriety? Must you go through hate in order to know what it is to be compassionate? Must you go through wars, destroying yourself and others, to know what peace is? Surely, this is an utterly false way of thinking, is it not?

First you assume that there is evolution, growth, a moving from bad to good, and then you fit your thinking into that pattern. Obviously, there is physical growth, the little plant becoming the big tree; there is technological progress, the wheel evolving through centuries into the jet plane. But is there psychological progress, evolution? That is what we are discussing -whether there is a growth, an evolution of the "me," beginning with evil and ending up in good.

Through a process of evolution, through time, can the "me," which is the center of evil, ever become noble, good? Obviously not. That which is evil, the psychological "me," will always remain evil. But we do not want to face that. We think that through the process of time, through growth and change, the "I" will ultimately become reality. This is our hope, that is our longing -that the "I" will be made perfect through time.

What is this "I," this "me"? It is a name, a form, a bundle of memories, hopes, frustrations, longings, pains, sorrows, passing joys. We want this "me" to continue and become perfect, and so we say that beyond the "me" there is a "super-me," a higher self, a spiritual entity which is timeless, but since we have thought of it, that "spiritual" entity is still within the field of time, is it not? If we can think about it, it is obviously within the field of our reasoning."

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti.

This type of thinking has profound implications for neuroliberty...more on this in time.

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