Until you appreciate something crucial - It is incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who counts as an Us, who as a Them.

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.

We are just another primate but a very confused, malleable one.

...I might continue to believe that there is no god even if it were proved that there is. A religious friend of mine once remarked that the concept of god is useful, because you can berate god during the bad times. But it is clear to me that I don't need to believe there is a god in order to berate him.

Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.

On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.

The frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until age 25, which is wild!