The Fundamental Tool of Survival, Part 1

When one believes of survival, one can't assist but believe of the proverbial "survival kit." In fact, endurance and endurance kit seem, oftentimes at least, to be kindred to synonyms. There looks to be a certain aura, a mystique if you will, surrounding the very impression of the endurance kit.

Why such as is the lawsuit is not, in fact, very difficult to discern. One can appreciate this captivation when he come ups to see the endurance kit as it is in the noumenal, i.e., as it is in and of itself. The endurance kit is but a aggregation of tools. It is no more than and it is no less. Mankind, a tool-wielding species, is genetically hardwired with a arrested development for such as tools.

But there is one endurance tool that is often overlooked in treatments of the so-called "tools of survival." In fact, this endurance tool doesn't come up in any endurance kit at all. The ancients were utilizing this peculiar tool of endurance even long before the coming of flint knives and axes. What might this peculiar tool be? And can it in fact be utile at all if it doesn't come up in a convenient pocket-sized endurance kit or in a Rambo-styled knife?

The tool that I talk of is the head tool of survival. Indeed, this peculiar tool is the necessary stipulation for all other tools (in relation to both their being and utilization). Without it, the other tools would be rendered useless--tools themselves are useless without a user and users are useless without minds--minds capable of cognizant and purposive acts. Yes, I am speaking of the tool of the human mind. But, hey...you knew that, right?

Before one can use a tool there are respective cognitive procedures that must first take topographic point in the mind: 1) A sentient physical thing recognizes that there is a deficiency in his organic capacity and that an entreaty to external agency (tools) may supply for a solution and addition functionality. 2) Via rationalization, a job is constructed and subsequently its solution developed (first as hypothetical build and later as theory). 3) The solution proposes the parametric quantities of the "tool" that volition widen innate and organic capacity (tool as conceptual build here at this point). 4) The appropriate tool is constructed from above conceptual paradigm and conception goes more than concrete temporally. 5) Adaptation happens via mold strategies based upon tool use and effectiveness. 6) This in bend imparts itself to the eventual manifestation of standardization.

Again, non-organic tool use presupposes an organic tool, that tool we name the encephalon (or mind). Where there is tool use there is thinking. Where there is thinking there is plasticity. Where there is malleability there is adaptability. Where there is adaptability there is an increased capacity for survival. The head is the head tool of endurance and this is so because it supplies for the algorithmic rules of adaptation.

We have got briefly surveyed some of the more than conceptual issues in the above. In the follow- up to this article (this is portion 1 of a two-part series), we will look more than closely at the matter-of-fact issues as well.

Copyright © 2007 by M. Shane Huey. All rights reserved.