50 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
how to „love‟ that he ends up deceiving, shooting, killing, blowing up,
destroying and maiming, all in the name of so-called love.
Most Mercy persons talk about love. However, I suggest that as the Mercy
person grows in mental maturity, his definition of love will change. It is as
he goes beyond his own feelings, and learns about the hopes and hurts of
others, that his actions of „love‟ acquire a character which is worthy of the
term.
Neural Networks and Mental Life
We have taken a brief look at the relationship between the Mercy
internal world, defining experiences, and fear. This may give us the
impression that defining experiences always have a negative influence.
However, the strong feelings associated with defining experiences can be
positive as well as negative. For instance, I suggest that positive defining
experiences play a critical role in the mental development of a baby.
The mind of the baby is like an empty
slate, or a vacant house: The shape is there,
but nothing has been written upon it; the
mental house has been built, but the rooms
are still unfurnished. The newborn mind
may not be able to do or say much, but it
does live in a human body which can feel
hunger, thirst, cold, and warmth. I suggest
that it is pain and pleasure from the physical
body which makes Mercy strategy the first
mental room to operate within the mind of
the child. If we existed as disembodied
beings floating through the air, other mental modes might develop before
Mercy thought. But, the baby is stuck within a body which feels. Within
the first day of his life, he has been spanked on the bottom by a doctor, felt
the warm touch of a mother, suffered hunger, and been fed. Very quickly,
an emotional network of Mercy experiences develops. The experience of
seeing the face of mother, for instance, creates a good feeling because it
reminds the baby of the pleasant satisfaction of being fed.
Childhood experiences with the strongest emotional labels
automatically become defining experiences, for there is no internal world
to resist them. These emotional absolutes form the kernel of personal
identity. When enough memories join themselves to a defining experience,
then the mental fragment becomes „alive‟ and starts to operate. Slowly, the
baby develops a personality with likes and dislikes. At first, personal
identity is quite fragile. Almost any emotional experience contains
sufficient feeling to become a defining experience around which Mercy
thought can integrate. Even ragged old teddy bears and squeaky little toys
become emotional seeds from which mental „life‟ develops. Try to take