The Monkey And The Spreadsheet

When the mind was fidgety, like a monkey

When you felt restless, it helped to understand drives. The mind perceived, recognized and interpreted. It set goals and acted. Those five faculties were managed by sovereign intelligences. Out of these, it was the fourth intelligence, which set goals, by translating feelings into drives. A feeling of fear dictated an escape drive, whose purpose was to achieve safety. That demanded instant responses, varying across species. A deer bounded away. A bird took flight. A fish swam off. While the activities of running, flying and swimming differed, it was the the drive, which achieved the objective of escaping. Drives often made you restless.

Intuition managed drives

Drives have been described in the book, The Intuitive Algorithm. Intuition, a pattern recognition algorithm, enabled the mind to respond, from input to output, within just 20 milliseconds. The incredible speed of this process depended on massive combinatorial memories in nerve cells and this elimination algorithm. These vast memories enabled nerve cells to remember and trigger drive sequences, with infinite contextual finesse. Drives enabled birds to build nests, selecting secure locations and suitable materials. The wracking sobs of sorrow, or the relaxing movements of a belly laugh were both drives responding to emotions. Such drives were the inherited responses of nerve channels to varying feelings and emotions.

Search components of drives

Not all drives produced motor outputs. To achieve their objectives, drives also demanded an intelligent evaluation of the environment. If the objective was to escape, that goal was hardly possible by heading into the predator. Increasing the distance from danger demanded evaluation of many escape routes. That goal could even be achieved by slipping into a safe sanctuary, inaccessible to the predator. Like the underside of a rock.. Drives involved a search of multiple contexts to discover the right answer. When a person sat down to write a shopping list, drives evaluated the stock in the larder, the likely menus, the stock of toiletries, and cleaning needs. Drives delivered item lists to the working memory, to be jotted down. By contextually searching the mind, drives played a valuable, creative role.

The "Aha" experience of drives

Such drives, searching across varied contexts, were not limited to humans. Konrad Lorenz described a chimpanzee in a room which contained a banana suspended from the ceiling just out of reach, and a box elsewhere in the room. "The matter gave him no peace, and he returned to it again. Then, suddenly - and there is no other way to describe it - his previously gloomy face 'lit up'. His eyes now moved from the banana to the empty space beneath it on the ground, from this to the box, then back to the space, and from there to the banana. The next moment he gave a cry of joy, and somersaulted over to the box in sheer high spirits. Completely assured of his success, he pushed the box below the banana. No man watching him could doubt the existence of a genuine 'Aha' experience in anthropoid apes". Even monkeys inherited creative drives. And restlessness.

The burden of responsibility

The need for a solution had given the animal "no peace." This dilemma was not limited to animals or just ordinary people. It was a problem at the highest levels of professional life. Mathen had retired as director of a major medical college and hospital, where he had gracefully managed the myriad problems faced by the institution. He mentioned that, when he rose from bed the morning after retirement, he felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulders. His subconscious drives, seeking solutions to a barrage of issues, had become inhibited. He felt unburdened. A multitude of such drives operated in your mind. Some of those could discover no solutions. Which caused restlessness. Understanding those drives and acting to manage them could be a step to peace of mind.

Many conflicting goals

life was a creative process, facing a train of baffling problems. The options were to fight, compromise, or retreat. Each context triggered distinct emotions. Anger, friendship, or fear triggered competing drives. Intuition provided a narrow focus to each drive,