Hard-wired Eternity in Our Minds
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
One of my recent book finds was Wray Herbert’s On Second Thought. In it, the author posits two types of thinking Heuristic and Logical. Heuristic thinking can be thought of as “the hard-wired mental shortcuts that often shape our lives….”[1] When we use Heuristic thinking we are defaulting to predetermined ways of seeing and thinking about the world. One often discussed example would be our tendency to think in stereotypes. It’s a shorthand way of assessing risk or response to others, an automatic “if-then” analysis. The following lighthearted syllogism illustrates both its strengths and weaknesses: “Grandmother’s bake cookies. We like cookies. We like (don’t fear) grandmothers.” By stereotyping an older woman as a “grandmother” our Heuristic thinking determines this person is not a significant threat to us, and we move on to other people and things in our environment. If we took the time to do a deeper Logical analysis, we would have to note all the exceptions to this stereotypical “grandmother” image. A case in point, Dorothea Puente (1929-2011), convicted serial killer, who, in her 50’s, killed nine people (she was only convicted of killing three) who stayed in her boarding house in Sacramento, California, for their Social Security checks. I don’t know if she was much of a baker, but I don’t think I’d like to sample any cookies she made.
Heuristic thinking can be much more subtle than stereotyping. One of Mr. Herbert’s analysis was the Heuristic underpinning to our use of cold to illustrate feelings of loneliness, isolation, and separation. Here’s an example from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Rainy Day.”
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Herbert thinks our “instinctive” equation of cold and isolation is both learned and hard-wired. The individual learns to equate cold with separation because we all survive infancy thanks to the warmth of our mothers. He reasons that to be separated from “mother’s warmth” means depravation, discomfort, and distance. The structure of our brains he calls Heuristic thinking comes from the survival mechanisms in our minds from the mists of time when, in the cold of the ice age, our ancestors either found heat or died.
This discussion of hard-wired thinking brought to mind the following passage: “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Eccl. 3:11b). Another quote sheds light on hard-wired spiritual thinking:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” – Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)[2]
Paul expounded on this principle as well in Acts 17:22-27 where he speaks before the Areopagus in Athans. In verse 27 he concludes is argument about our observations (Logical thinking) and desires (Heuristic thinking), “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
I find it reassuring that God has made us people who are hard-wired to look for Him as well as logical beings who are capable of analysis of the evidence He has place before us. When we are thinking with the mind of Christ, we are fulfilling the deepest, oldest, and most permanent spiritual desires as well as intentionally imitating the Master.
(Photo credit: R. A. Stites, fireworks)
[1] From a book review by Lauren Gerber at: Bookshelf: On Second Thought | Psychology Today.
[2] Quote from: faith – Where does the concept of a “God-shaped hole” originate? – Christianity Stack Exchange
