Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness.

The mechanical mind has a passion for control — of everything except itself. Beyond the control it has won over the forces of nature it would now win control over the forces of society of stating the problem and producing the solution, with social machinery to correspond.

Straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way. That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist behaving as if it were not true.

fascinating discussion of the…cyclical nature of history. Mankind is predictable. Governments mistreat people — their own people and others. They always have, and they always will. So the people react. There is action and reaction. This is how history has progressed and how it always will.

I have a more fractal way of working, if you like, it is more like the way most people’s minds actually work. They don’t work in any linear way. When your mind wanders if you ever pay attention to some of the paths it takes, you generally find it’s these paths of association that can link all over the place. …The movements of the mind don’t follow any linear pattern, they can’t be explained with a mechanistic, clockwork view. You could find quantum models of how the mind works that might fit.

These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

today we live in a world that is global and exponential. The problem is that our brains — and thus our perceptual capabilities — were never designed to process at either this scale or this speed. Our linear mind literally cannot grok exponential progression.

The human mind is a pattern, nothing more. The first dim flicker of awareness in the evolving forebrain of Australopithecus carried that pattern in embryo; and down through all the ages, as the human neural engine increased in power and complexity, gained control of its environment in geometrically expanding increments, the pattern never varied.
Man clings to his self-orientation as the psychological center of the Universe. He can face any challenge within that framework, suffer any loss, endure any hardship—so long as the structure remains intact.
Without it he’s a mind adrift in a trackless infinity—lacking any scale against which to measure his aspirations, his losses, his victories.
Even when the light of his intellect shows him that the structure is itself a product of his brain; that infinity knows no scale, and eternity no duration—still he clings to his self-non-self concept, as a philosopher clings to a life he knows must end, to ideals he knows are ephemeral, to causes he knows will be forgotten.

A human is a complicated organic/electrical system, which is immersed in a culture. Try raising a monkey like a human, it won't work, you need the human's certain brain characteristics (including self-reflection) in order to create a truly intelligent creature. The brain processes inputs and perception in very particular ways, and I think until we understand the underlying processes better, there is no way to really simulate it in software. Computers will continue to be good at simplistic analysis, and raw processing power, but the subtlety of emotions is something intrinsic to the human organism and culture.

The world doesn't always happen in a linear manner. Nature is much more creative than that, especially when it comes to time and the manipulation of time and space. Europe has gifted us with inventions, books and the intricate mechanics of imposing structures on the earth, but there are other means to knowledge and the structuring of knowledge that have no context in the European mind.

"The [character-]armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature.

The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in "material" but in "spiritual" things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature.

Both the mechanist and the mystic stand inside the limits and conceptual laws of a civilization which is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods. This civilization forms the mechanistic-mystical structures of men, and the mechanistic-mystical character structures keep reproducing a the mechanistic-mystical civilization. Both mechanists and mystics find themselves inside the framework of human structure in a civilization conditioned by mechanistics and mysticism. They cannot grasp the basic problems of this civilization because their thinking and philosophy correspond exactly to the condition they project and continue to reproduce. In order to realize the power of mysticism, one has only to think of the murderous conflict between Hindus and Muslims at the time India was divided. To comprehend what mechanistic civilization means, think of the "age of the atom bomb.

Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings — that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.

how can it be that the modern human mind is capable of precise logical analysis, and yet simultaneously permits us to accept religious beliefs that should crumble beneath even the slightest rational scrutiny?