“Everywhere we look, economics plays a dominant role in how institutions now operate. And the more we measure human progress in terms of dollars and cents instead of dollars and sense, the greater the myopia becomes. As remedies to the worlds most complex and dangerous threats become limited to profitable investments, the full talents of the human organism never come to bear.”
Rebecca Costa, first time non-fiction science writer, has captured the interest of the largest publishers in the world. Theoretically Costa has managed to orbit the Globe in the first three weeks of her book’s release by simple virtue of the unprecedented interest it has drawn in China, Korea, Australia, Japan and, the UK. It all began in the United States, right here in Central California.‘The Watchman’s Rattle’ by Rebecca Costa is suddenly storming the minds of great thinkers around the world.
Costa is positioned to rattle things up significantly for ‘great thinkers’ as well as average and non-thinkers alike.
Costa’s recent publication, appropriately entitled The Watchman’s Rattle (an antiquated warning apparatus used to forewarn villagers of impending danger) could be the long awaited ‘superman kryptonite’.
Costa’s five years of research at Harvard and Stanford and her familiarity in the field of pioneer thinking during the technology boom in Silicon Valley coupled with her ability to use her brain to clearly delineate between beliefs and facts, has enabled her to exploit the next evolutionary “tool,” the human mind. Costa has collated and compressed volumes of centuries old and new documented evidence about certain aspects of our brains into a legible and easy to read text.
Through a coalescence of history, social science and biology, Costa reveals re- use of the greatest weapon of mass destruction ever known or realized by man, the human brain.
This new tool is nothing more than a cultivated skill we can use to assure our survival on planet Earth. Imagine conquering the powerful trap of learned thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that have slowed progress and prevented complex problem solving in human history. Imagine evolving at the same pace as social complexity.
We know that there are many more solutions to problems than can be perceived by the limited handful of brains appointed as “the best and the brightest,” yet we have been socially influenced by the limited beliefs of shortcomings of organized societies. Human behavior has been systematically repeated generation after generation, often without a standard, and often based solely on beliefs rather than on repeatable facts. This has lead to a form of mental gridlock, according to Costa.
Costa points out how we are living in a political climate of global ‘mental gridlock,’ the results of which are not going to be resolved by changing colors from blue to red in Washington D.C.;
Costa has bridged gaps connecting not only domestic violence to gang-related activity but she has woven terrorism, global warming, oil spills and pandemic viruses together logically and systematically. The timing and marketing of the research found in ‘The Watchman’s Rattle’ may serve to posture our civilization from creating its very demise, as has been the case in pre-existing civilizations.
To make her point, Costa tells a cute but pertinent story of a guy stuck with a flat tire located just outside of an insane asylum. As he is just about to return the lug nuts to the spare tire, he inadvertently tips the hubcap and all the lug nuts roll down a drain. “Now what are you going to do?” utters a voice from within the fence of the asylum who had been silently observing. “I guess I am stuck until I can get some assistance” he replies to the inmate. Responding again from within the confines, the inmate says, “Why not take one lug nut from each of the other three tires just to get you to town?”
“Why that is genius! How did you come up with that?”
“I may be crazy but I’m not stupid,” replied the voice from behind the fence.
Proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are all born with an inherent ability to receive “insights” or ‘ideas,’ the task now at hand is to find ways to agree on the difference between facts and beliefs, as Costa puts it.
We can now rely on the use of established facts to guide us away from the historical pattern of extinction by murdering each other over personal beliefs, and begin again putting the wellbeing of the greater good at the forefront of human needs on topics that range from economic trends and pop culture to education and environmental policy.
Her book reveals how we can reverse the downward spiral of government debt, pollution, crowded jails and more of society’s ills. She presents references to scientific evidence that the human brain can be retrained to comprehend, analyze, and resolve complex problems. Science names it “Insight-on-demand.”
The Watchman’s Rattle is a brilliant manifesto-cum-platform for dialog and meaningful exchange of ideas. “Now wait a minute, a great idea doesn’t care where it comes from,” Costa said her father told her at a young age during a father-daughter debate. Sounds like genius runs in her family, and probably yours too.
