We live in a world increasingly preoccupied with information or data. We attach value to the accumulation of more and more information. We believe that this will grant us greater control over the circumstances of our lives, or enable us to reach beyond ourselves.

Interestingly, one of its core postulates is that the essential sociality of us all, or the universal human impulse to relate to others. In so far as we are relationship-seeking beings, then, what is the connective tissue that actually binds people together, that gives effect to this relational striving? In contrast to the popular belief that knowledge precedes action, I argue that emotions are what prompt and sustain human interactions - and not emotions in the conventional sense, of private feeling states stored inside our heads, each with its own unique biochemical correlate. I regard emotions, instead, as intersubjective phenomena that can be said to exist between people. How else does one explain being moved by a piece of music, a spellbinding movie or a superb novel, if not that some mysterious element - an emotion - has connected to the heart of the composer, the director or the author to the heart of the listener, the watcher or the reader?

The neural embodiment of self, it seems, is extremely robust. Every perception, every action, every thought, every utterance seems to bear the mark of the individual’s experience, of his value system, of all that is peculiar to him. In Gerald Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection (as in Esther Thelen’s work on the development of cognition and action in children), we find a rich account of how neuronal connectivity may be determined by, literally shaped by, the individual’s experience, thoughts, and actions no less than by all that is hardwired and biologically given. If individual experience and experiential selection so determine the developing brain, we should not perhaps be surprised that individuality, self, is preserved for so long even in the face of diffuse neuronal damage.

I think we can, however, assert that our capacity for ‘good’ is of a higher order than our capacity for ‘bad’ and, therefore, merits our focus. I say ‘higher order’ because the science of the brain suggests that only the ‘good’ feeds human development. The ‘bad’ limits, even derails, human development. For example, when the human is born, the brain arrives not fully formed and needs further ‘processing’. That ‘processing’, as it turns out, is a form of the ‘good’. Key in this is sustained generative attention supported by the other components of a thinking environment.

To put its wisdom simply, one could say the fundamental human challenge is this:

It’s hard to learn if you already know.

Unfortunately, we are hardwired to feel as if we know—as if we see reality itself rather than a version of reality filtered through our biases, backgrounds, or expertise. But we can unlearn the habit of knowing and reinvigorate our curiosity.