Thinking

We are a species which claims that its ability to think separates us from the animals. Yet, I see much illogic and a lack of reasoning. I’m sitting in this massive waiting room in Odessa station at 0800, having caught the overnight sleeper train from Kyiv to Odessa for $20. There is a reception desk with two ladies that looked like it was for payment to use the hall and act as a mini cafe. There is no money to collect and they have nothing to sell. Having run a business and also spent ten years as a computer consultant, I see inefficiency everywhere. Apparently, the body, which would be the subconscious, gives the brain a ‘sugar hit’ first thing in the morning. I assume that it does this to get the morning started until our prehistoric ancestors could locate food.

Glucose, a form of sugar, is the primary source of energy for every cell in the body. Because the brain is so rich in nerve cells, or neurons, it is the most energy-demanding organ, using one-half of all the sugar energy in the body. [Harvard]

Although, another source says twenty-five percent:

Your brain uses 20 to 25 percent of your body’s glucose; balance is vital for brain health and function. [Psychology Today]

This morning, I had my mug of decaf coffee to get the day started. The train has a coal fired urn for general use. Whilst writing this, I know that I will crave a hot chocolate shortly. My brain seems to need a sugar hit to function well. Although, I am suspicious that it is purely an addiction to sugar. I remember a presentation in Down Town Hostel, Prague. It was entitled: ‘Sugar. The first drug we give our children.’ Irrespective, the brain needs sugar. Vera Novak tells us:

“The brain is dependent on sugar as its main fuel, It cannot be without it.” says Vera Novak, MD, PhD.

It may be that I have a hot chocolate because my subconscious is nagging me to eat something sugary, so I give in and drink a hot chocolate to make the nagging feeling go away. I can get some more work done when the brain is not pestering me to search out food and sugar.

So, either a mild sugar intake is needed to keep my brain functioning to capacity, or I have to eat sugar to rid the annoying interruptions my subconscious gives when it demands I search food even when not needed. I am clearly about ten kilograms overweight, but my brain demands I eat.

Sugar levels in the blood and thus in the brain should neither be too high not two low, both in the short term and in the long term. High and low blood sugar levels have a significant negative effect on brain function. I will have to cease writing withing the next quarter hour to go seek sugar. Again, this may be to maintain brain sugar level, or may be just to get rid of the annoying nag from my subconscious. Interestingly, the annoying nag also disappears if something interesting is occurring particularly if it involves chatting with an ‘interesting’ female.

Apparently, a human brain uses twice the quantity of sugar that is used by a chimpanzee brain.

Human blood sugar levels rise and fall during the day. They tend to be higher after meals and fall to a lower level between meals. When blood sugar is very high or very low, there is a significantly higher occurrence of  alterations in mental status. In extreme situation, coma may occur. [Psychology Today] 

Our brain needs a constant supply of glucose for brain health, And the supply should be between certain levels. Any irregularities in the short term or the long term tends to lead to brain health issues. We must not also forget the other issues with inappropriate sugar intake, including diabetes and pre-diabetes. To hammer this home, I give you this from Psychology Today.

High blood sugar is linked to brain dysfunction through the direct toxicity of elevated glucose levels, as well as through problems with insulin signaling (this tends to accompany diabetes). Additionally, high blood sugar may lead to brain cell growth suppression and even death in the hippocampus (a part of the brain key to long-term memory) as well as elevated inflammation, vascular damage, impairment in the blood-brain barrier, mitochondrial issues, increased oxidative stress, and problems with synapses. [Psychology Today] 

I’m now in a bomb shelter in Odessa. It is the basement of a big entertainment complex. A lady showed me how to push the buttons on the coffee machine to get my kakao. The labels are in Ukrainian! I am satiating my sugar craving interrupting my thinking. The seats are metal and a bit cold, although they have a layer of carpet to prevent the bum getting too cold. Yet again, is the cold the problem or the sensation of cold interrupting my brain process. Certainly, my cold bum is interrupting my ability to plan these sentences. The last two sentences had four typing errors picked up by the automatic spell checker. My typing is affected by the interruptive nature of cold bum. The subconscious is creating a constant annoying feeling to prompt me to do something about cold bum even though I am sweating a bit with my red down jacket and black beanie.

Most of the people in the ‘bomb shelter’ are either staring idly into space. fiddling on their phones, discussing nothingnesses with the next person. The security guard sitting next to me is nodding off and his head fell back and nearly smacked the wall. What is the brain doing with we sit idly staring into space? Our brain seems to idle generating random thoughts. Some thoughts are idiotic and are rejected as stupid. Some thoughts are on favourite topics like upgrading motorcycles. Some thoughts recount yesterday’s excitements. Some thoughts are about random recent encounters with persons of interest. Some thoughts are about friends and family. Some thoughts are about just about anything. This is not what Henry Ford is suggesting in his comment:

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. Henry Ford

Everybody has risen and walked off. It is time for me to find a cafe with a warm seat as I cannot check in to the Katerina Hotel until 1400.  Thinking requires energy and time. Imagine having to reason through all the pros and cons for every decision we make. We might think in ever expanding circles to decide what to have for breakfast. It is so much easier to follow patterns. I try to resist such a tendency to follow patterns of behaviour. I say to people: “Do something different each day. Go to work a different route. Go to d different cafe. Talk to different people. Make each day different.” However, having to think about every detail of your daily life would be mentally exhausting. I came to this cafe in this complex because it looked adequate. It had seats, tables, view, and decent looking staff. I did not puzzle whether it was my best option. I would be mentally drained if I spent such mental effort over which cafe to choose and would struggle to accomplish this writing. We tend to develop a systematic way of operating and follow repeated patterns. I am writing in this manner to encourage you to monitor how you are thinking. I wish you to monitor how you make decisions and how you think.

Professor of psychology Gregory Neidert estimates that human brains run on idle ninety to ninety-five percent of the time. Thinking burns three times as much energy as watching television. This suggests that thinking is ‘hard work’. It certainly uses energy like a high power computer used for bitcoin generation. I fin that to think clearly enough to program or write, I need a non-interruptive environment, comfortable seat, clear timetable ahead, an empty ‘to-do’ list, temperature control, peace, and more. If I have things on my mind, a system of pop-up reminders seems to operate. The pop-ups may be each individual action, or a general pop-up that I have other items to do, such as send out business invoices. Thus my writing is most productive when away on an overseas trip. Even with good intention, work on this book will slow to a crawl when I get back to Perth home life with all its distractions including fitting that upgraded carburetor to my race motorcycle. I can improve my chances of getting good thinking occurring if I relegate ‘compulsory’ activities to ‘optional’. I sometimes refuse to look at emails until after mid-day. Whilst writing this, my mind went to ‘idle’ and watched the shopper pedestrians on the floor below. It seems that it is human nature to conserve brain use and thus conserve energy. Those who use their brains for a living tend to be the highest paid professionals. Most people would not wish to have their brain operating at that level all day. Minutes ago, I sauntered past a shopping centre security guard. I age a nod. If I push the nod contact effort, I sometimes get a nod in return. I don’t know what it must do top fit male brains to stand looking physically powerful but with no brain stimulation for days on end.

As I read:

On the opposite end of the spectrum, high blood sugar is linked to brain dysfunction through the direct toxicity of elevated glucose levels, as well as through problems with insulin signaling (this tends to accompany diabetes). Additionally, high blood sugar may lead to brain cell growth suppression and even death in the hippocampus (a part of the brain key to long-term memory) as well as elevated inflammation, vascular damage, impairment in the blood-brain barrier, mitochondrial issues, increased oxidative stress, and problems with synapses.

I am sitting in a cafe called: ‘Sweet Story’!

Of interest, if you mind wanders to human interactions in recent times, it is reasonable to realize that others might right now be thinking of you. For those that are prone to negative thinking, just realize that others think of you when you are not around and they will be thinking nice things of you — certainly better things than you think of yourself!

I was talking to a young girl at a cafe last week. she spoke numerous languages due to changes in living location. English was at the bottom of the basket skill wise. She was thrilled to chat with a native English speaker. I taught English as a second language in 1975 in Tehran for six months. As needs, I separate my words and use simple verb tenses. I avoid: “I would have, had I have known.” I asked what language she used in her thinking process. She said she jumped around between languages in her head. She may even use different languages in different sentences. I have assumed that we use language to order our thoughts in our head. If I say to you: “Food”, an ‘icon image’ of food comes up in your forehead. If I say: “Mother”, an icon image of your mother comes up in your forehead. It is not like a photo, it is like an icon image. It also seems to have an emotional component depending on their status as friend or foe. If you think of, say, breakfast, you should be able to notice the icon-image forming along with a feeling for the small of bacon. If I say “sun”, an icon image of a sun occurs near our forehead. This might explain the characteristic flaming yellow globe used in old paintings. If I say “tomorrow”, we have issues with our icons as tomorrow is the daylight time after the darkness of night caused by the sun going down. In sequence:

• Sun goes down.
• Darkness.
• Sun comes up.

Our word for day has a dual meaning. It acts as a date-time arbitrarily put as midnight to midnight. It also means the period from sunrise to sunset. Irrespective, tomorrow has a complex process as regards icon-images. More complex thinking has to occur.

Sources tell me that humans have only had words and spoken language for around 70 000 years. We could argue over the exact time-span but it makes no difference to this analysis. Before we had words, you and I had to get on without words. I have found that I can get on with other humans without the use of words. I walked into my four-berth compartment last night, and with a gleam, I said: “I’m Andy form Australia.” Nobody could speak English. The big male worker type held a stony face like I was a non-entity. I did not back off with my facial expression. He subsequently gave an almost imperceptible ‘communist’ nod with no facial expression. The mother did not even turn her head. Her young daughter cowered behind her mother and fear of the man with red jacket and red glasses. The mother did not reciprocate the whole journey, although the daughter ceased to cower. My experience is that she would only be friendly to me if her mother demonstrated acceptance by talking to me. The big male communicated with straight stern face using had gestures to use the vacant seat next to him. We got on as equals with no language. A Cossack dancer of nineteen joined us. He spoke little English, but I gave him confidence in language and his English improved dramatically during the night. At nineteen, although accomplished in his dancing career, he was very interested in anything he could learn form this seventy-three year old backpacker doing a circumnavigation of the globe by train.

From this analysis, I had assumed that we think in icon-images for simple items and truned to language for more complex thinking. The following blogger differs:

It is incorrect to say you think in a language. The thoughts that you hear in your head are the thoughts you think you think. You think in symbols and then translate to a language, it simply goes on at a speed that is tens of thousands times faster than your awareness. You perceive in a language, which is to say, the conscious awareness of your thinking is in a language, the one you are using the most. Hearing people are probably more aural than visual and are hearing their thoughts as if spoken. People born deaf are visual and perceive their conscious thoughts in visual form, perhaps in their signed language, but both are actually thinking (the step prior to conscious awareness) sybolically.

I have spoken to accountants who have spent several 20 hour days working on a new spreadsheet say that they “think” in “electronic spreadsheet.” the same is true of programmers who might temporarily be aware of their thoughts or dreams in a program language , the same is true of composers who might temporarily think in musical notes substituting for thoughts. Meditators and mathematicians frequently discuss their awareness of “thought” being symbolic, one thing substituting for another and conclusions made as if it were in a formula. The actual thinking is occurring in one’s own personal symbology, and the awareness is expressed in a language.

…

So, persons who are born with absolutely no hearing, think no differently than the rest, they use a personal symbology just as everyone else, they merely use a different language overlay for their awareness of their thoughts than those who hear. — Somebody called ‘Anonymous’.

A mathematician also states that he thinks in the language of mathematics without translation to a English. I also know when I am computer programing in a database language, I start thinking in the language although some of it is verbalized.