Lesson 2: The Dynamic Mind
The Mind is an Action Noun
Asperger’s is not a disease. It’s a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.
.John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’sHow Thinking is Made
Ready, pilgrim? We’re about to embark on one glorious voyage.
We’re going to learn how minds work. Especially your own darkly gifted mind. Sure, it’s unfair that non-autistic folks can go through life blissfully ignorant of how brains operate while folks like us carry the burden of reverse engineering our cranial jukebox just to know who we are.
Why am I so different? What’s going on in my head? And what should I do with my life, given my peculiar and profound mental differences? The answers to these autistic questions lay within the fundamental nature of Mind1.
In a series of lessons ahead, we’ll learn how minds work. All of ‘em. By the end of this journey, you’ll know the key differences between the minds of bacteria, bumblebees, baboons, biologists, and Bolivia. Only then will we truly feel confident in knowing how we autists fit into the cosmos. Only then will we experience the transcendent ecstasy of knowing who we are in the universe.
This ain’t no quick trip, pilgrim, so buckle up. There’s good reason autism has brought a century of scientists to their knees, spewing beautiful nonsense about our dark gift. It’s not that the source of autism is very complicated. It’s not. It’s a disruption of the people-painting powers of our Why module. But unpacking that simple explanation—feeling its meaning in our blood and bones as well as knowing it logically and cerebrally like Mr. Spock—will take time. And at least a dozen more articles like this.
But once you understand how thinking is made you’ll see how autism falls right out of it.
You’re probably better off if you don’t got a background in mindscience or mental health. No bad habits to unlearn. Most of what’s taught in universities about brains and thinking and purpose is wrong. Wrong in its foundations and therefore wrong in its conclusions. Wrong in its math. If you’ve already studied the brain in college or med school, much of what you’re about to read will seem unfamiliar and perhaps vertiginous. I’d recommend just jumping in and going with the flow with an open mind. Don’t try to match up what you’re about to read with what you already learned. It’s like trying to match Einstein’s relativity with what you learned about Newton’s universal gravitation when you’re better off plunging into bendy curvy space.
No more preamble. Let’s get going with a gentle visualization.
STUFF vs ACTIVITY
Imagine you visit a park with a basketball court. Pick out ten strangers at random, invite them onto the court, and toss them a ball. They stand around blinking at you.
Is this a basketball game? No.
Not even if all ten people, through an uncanny stroke of serendipity, happened to be professional athletes employed by the Boston Celtics.
A game is not defined by the identity of its players. A game is defined by how its players interact with one another. If your ten strangers form into two teams of five and began to dribble and pass the ball around the opposing team as they try to hurl the ball through the hoop, well then. Now you’ve got a basketball game.
It’s the same with the human mind. A mind is not defined by the identity of the physical stuff inside your skull. Your mind is not defined by its neurons or molecules. Your mind is defined by the physical activity inside your skull. By the way all the molecules and neurons interact with one another.
A man dead an hour has the same brain cells in his skull he did the hour before, but no thinking is going on because the brain cells are no longer interacting. A corpse is like ten people standing around a basketball court: no game, no mind.
Here’s the single most important thing to understand about minds, especially if you want to understand autism: a mind consists of activity.
The word “mind” is an action noun. Like “game,” “dance,” or “explosion.” Both an explosion and a mind are examples of what mathematicians call a dynamic system. The key word being dynamic: a dynamic system is defined by its activity.
The dynamics of a particular system—such as an ocean, the stock market, the weather, a basketball game, or a human mind—consist of the way the system’s activity changes over time. Whenever you read the term dynamics, you should think of change, action, or activity. The whole reason the word “mind” is an action noun is because the mind is a dynamic system.
Because the mind consists of activity. Your own mind consists of seeing and remembering and planning and reaching and sequencing and locating and identifying and inventing and deciding and comprehending and loving.
Understanding a mind’s activity is the key to understanding how it thinks, which is why dynamic systems theory is the most useful branch of mathematics for investigating how minds work—including autistic minds. This activity-focused perspective on thinking is called “Dynamic Mind.”
Dynamic Mind tells us that if we want to identify the ultimate physiological source of autism, we shouldn’t go questing for magical stuff. We should go questing for magical activity.
Previous LESSON: Lesson 1: How Autism is Made in the Brain: Introducing the Consciousness Cartel
Next LESSON: Lesson 3: Why the term Neurodiversity is Unscientific, Immoral, Harmful, and Just Plain Silly.
Read FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS about Dr. Ogas and the Dark Gift
Biologists have a ready term to refer to all species that ever were: “life.” Neuroscientists lack a corresponding term for all minds that ever were, so I shall employ “Mind” for the task.