I think we do not really understand what our minds are. While it might be premature to presume that they have an ‘intended’ function, it is reasonable to observe that, in general we are dangerously misguided as regards what to do with them. Their sophistication is misleading; it is far enough beyond a mere survival asset that it comprises the opportunity to dominate. Yet from this very sophistication emerges the vulnerabilities to subversion by myopia that are the hallmark of our current and historical malevolence.

Terrestrial nature produced an animal with the capacity to directly alter the planet, however the majority of our enacted choices are omnicidal. Not recognizing that we, our minds, and our possible intelligence emerge directly from the relationships in nature — we attack them — systematically and profusely. This looks to me like the cognitive-relational version of an autoimmune disease. We no longer recognize ourselves in the living mirror of our evolutionary nursery and so we attack the body we are actually emerging from.

Something is wrong with our minds and it is not trivial.

At the same time, it is these minds which hold the answers, for they are a veritable museum of vestigial sensing and relational abilities which were amputated along the road to our modern relationship with technologies. These abilities have not been lost, however. They remain in a nascent state, awaiting contexts that would call them to activation and development.

So we have a paradox. Our minds have become the crisis that may call their own hidden capacities into expression. Our intelligence has almost completely malfunctioned, yet we must somehow employ it to reassemble something more like actual intelligence. And this is, in part, a vision of the irony that is the intimate nature and experience of the bicameral animal we are.