Social Consciousness and The Mind

Today, the COVID-19 problem has raised social consequences more than any time in modern society. Few, if any believe...


Mini Review
Today, the COVID-19 problem has raised social consequences more than any time in modern society. Few, if any believe that God (god) will solve the global population of the current COVID-19 pandemic; instead they believe that the scientists will be the global hero's'. This idea has recently been epitomized from a comparison of how Seattle handle the COVID-19 outbreak vs New York City (NYC). Seattle gave control to the scientists whereas NYC did not. Consequently, Seattle had a 6 times reduced infection rate compared to NYC during the initial months of the outbreak. At no other time in contemporary society has global social consciousness been as profoundly obvious [1].
Scientists, using their minds, have typically played a background role in political decisions and America has suffered because of this. Too many people in the general population don't understand how scientists contribute. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the social status of scientists because it is from minds of scientists that will solve the problem. Embodied Cognition [2] defines the Mind as being the dynamic (50 millisecond rates) interactions between the brain, body, and environment. Scientists must use their (i) brain to think of solutions to the Pandemic and design experiments to solve the problem, (ii) body to carry out the experiments, and (iii) their environment also to carry out experiments. Hence it is the Minds of many different people that will solve all the problems needed to survive the Pandemic with scientific minds solving the discovery aspects needed to fight the virus. The obvious conclusions is that "…We will no longer be able to claim that the brain is the organ of the mind. Instead we will need to think about mind and the cognitive processes that make up the mind at the level of the whole brain-body-environment system." However, during historical times, Religions, and more specifically belief in God, was the unifying social fabric that gave people hope in times of war, pandemics, etc. To continue or maintain social consciousness, it is useful to compare origin of each societie's hope during historical times with contemporary society.
This can be achieved by comparing the word God to Mind in some of the main beliefs in society in both a religious and financial context.

With regard to religion as a source of hope, the original Serenity
Prayer (SP) [3] epitomizes belief in god, yet contained significant social wisdom: God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
The SP attributes God to a person achieving peace and serenity.
In other words, people did/do not have to rely on themselves for accepting things they cannot change and changing the things they can. Noteworthy, there is universal social wisdom (sw) following the word God in the SP. However, from a human perspective the sw advice can only be implemented when people use their minds.
Consequently, I suggest substituting the word Mind for God. This substitution humanizes the SP and I have denoted this modification as the hSW (human social wisdom statement), which is not a prayer.

It is written as
Mind, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
The original SP was written in 1934 by Reinhold Niebuhr, approximately 85 years ago, and Niebuhr was a Religious scholar [3].

Volume 5 -Issue 4
Copyrights @ Charles Pidgeon. Res & Rev Health Care Open Acc J 506 significance by contrasting the SP to the hSW. Many 12 step addiction recovery programs, particularly Alcoholics Anonymous, utilize the SP and this comparison will provoke discussions that lead to an increased understanding of social consciousness with regard to the role of the mind in human behavior.
Using the word God creates a prayer, i.e., a deity, who can give Serenity, whereas using the word Mind(s) means that people are to take responsibility for their own Serenity. In support of hSW being more contemporary, it has recently been published [4]. Fred Previc's opinion of the contrast between SP and hSW is interesting: "God' may be the producer of the universe but 'god' is a product of the human mind and its dopamine." "god" would exist even if Note that the capitalized form of "In God We Trust" is used today and in1956 the religious situation of America justified using God. Today, it is more salient to modify this phrase to "In Minds We Trust" because it is much more contemporary by emphasizing that all goods and services, infrastructure and political parties, etc., were created from the minds of people. Suggesting this modification provokes conversation among virtual every American social group.  Obviously, the funds could be used for any social purpose, but should be used to impact the greatest number of people. A better use of the money generated may be to use it as a fund for all Politicians raising money for election purposes. In other words, this could minimize, or perhaps eliminate, the need for big donors who have significant control of the Congress and Senate in America. If more money is needed for political campaigns than merely increase the tax to 3 peenies which would generate multiple billions of dollars annually. Credit cards are used much more frequently in paying for goods and services than cash. We suggest creating these items is particularly timely given the current elevated state of Social Consciousness. A key question is what the role of the deity gods in helping people with regard to providing hope for the future. From the above discussion I believe that the Minds of people will have a more significant role in social consciousness than gods.