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The addition of the Psych Spectrum turns our thinking spectrum into a thinking square—and now our discussion can get interesting.

We can think of the Psych Spectrum like this:

In one dimension, our beliefs landscape is The Idea Spectrum i.e. the What You Think axis. And that’s important information, but the value of what one thinks is entirely dependent upon how they came to that belief in the first place.

The hard thing is, we’ve all been trained to think in only one dimension—in the What dimension. We look at people’s behavior, their words, their tendencies, their habits, their demeanor, their disposition—and we stop there. The Psych Spectrum adds the critical second dimension to the equation that asks why people act the way they do. Or you can put... See more

Our intellectual motivation will normally reflect our values—or, more accurately, the way we prioritize our values. Most of us value both health and culinary pleasure—but whether or not we binge on Skittles is determined by which of those values carries the most weight in our heads in that moment. It’s as if our values are arranged in our head as a... See more

When we look through our x-ray glasses at someone whose Higher Mind is, at the moment, running the show, we see a prominent Higher Mind in total control, the Primitive Mind still makes a fuss, but the Higher Mind just yanks it back like a dog owner walking his dog.

Without these goggles, we’d look at a human and just see what a human looks like in one dimension. That’s the What of a human, and it includes all of the aspects of their behavior, their beliefs, and their personality.

Looking at everything in one dimension just shows us what’s on the surface of all these parts of reality. But when we lift the covers off the What of life and look at what lies beneath, we’re reminded that there’s a second dimension to everything as well.

Back in the hunter-gatherer days, the Primitive Mind was mostly on point—but in the modern world, it’s our collective mental illness. And no one is immune.

Where we are on this y-axis is a result of the state of our internal tug-of-war, so the first question we need to ask is: how do the two minds think?