In earlier posts, we have discussed concepts like “self,” “qualia,” and “free will.” We claimed they are illusions created by our brain/body thinking mechanism — very convincing illusions, but scientifically invalid.
The March 14th issue of New Scientist Magazine contained an article that bears on this subject. The opening line of the article captures a major shift in thinking about Alzheimer’s disease:
Alzheimer’s may start outside the brain. Inflammation in organs like the skin, lungs, and gut during midlife may trigger Alzheimer’s disease in later years.
“Alzheimer’s disease has long been viewed as something that originates inside the brain. But an in-depth genomic analysis suggests it may initially be triggered by inflammation in distant organs such as the skin—perhaps decades before a person’s memory starts to decline.
This radical reframing of the condition may explain why Alzheimer’s drugs have been disappointing to date, because they act too late in the disease progression.”
Thinking Isn’t Only in Your Brain — It’s in Your Entire Body
One of our most basic assumptions about thinking is wrong. Thinking does not begin and end in the brain. The whole body thinks. We may imagine the brain as the command center. But the entire body is a vast network of continuous two-way communication.
Immune signals rise and fall; Hormones circulate and alter behavior; The gut communicates with the brain; The skin constantly senses and reports. Signals are always moving—back and forth, across the entire organism.
What we call “thinking” is not located in one organ. It is the ongoing pattern of responses across the whole system.
Instead of “the brain thinks,” consider: stimulus → organized response → integrated response → ongoing chain.
This thinking applies to the entire body. The brain is a major hub, yes—but it is not the origin of thought. It is part of a larger process.
An Alzheimer’s patient may not realize how deeply the disease has altered his thinking; his perceptions are distorted; his conclusions may be wrong. His memory is unreliable.
Yet he still feels: “I am thinking. I am deciding.” From the inside, the process still feels like control. Like all of us, he believes he has free will.
We also do not perceive the mechanisms behind our thoughts, nor do we see the countless signals shaping every belief. Do not experience the lifelong accumulation of stimuli driving our responses.
Yet we too conclude: “I am in control. I have free will.”
If inflammation in the skin can begin altering thought decades before symptoms appear, then the same principle applies more broadly: Our thoughts are the result of processes we neither see nor control.
Hit your thumb with a hammer. Eat an orange. Have a conversation. Experience a loss. Each event alters the system—chemically, electrically, structurally.
Years later, you may hold a belief, make a decision, or express a preference without the slightest awareness of the chain of events that produced it.
The illusion of self and free will
From this perspective, the “self” is not a controller. It is the ultimate illusion — the story the system tells about its own activity. It’s a useful story—but still just a story.
Just as an Alzheimer’s patient cannot see how inflammation has reshaped his thinking, a healthy person cannot see how a lifetime of stimuli has shaped his. The difference is not in kind, but in visibility.
In the same way, the feeling of control does not prove the existence of a controller. The bottom line: Everything responds to stimuli. In living systems, those responses become organized, integrated, and continuous over time.
What we call thought, belief, desire, and self are patterns within that process. The Alzheimer’s patient shows us what happens when the system breaks down. The rest of us experience how convincing the system is when it holds together.
You may feelthat you have free will, but consider these familiar stimuli, many of which you may have experienced.
Lack of sleep: One bad night and people become irritable, pessimistic, and impulsive. The same person, same “self,” produces different conclusions about life. A rested brain plans long-term. A tired brain seeks immediate relief. Hunger: Low blood sugar leads to anger, impatience, and poor decisions. Eat a sandwich, and suddenly the world looks reasonable again. Caffeine: A cup of coffee can increase focus, confidence, and even risk-taking. The “you” before and after caffeine is measurably different. Gut bacteria can have a profound influence on your thinking. Certain gut bacteria are linked to depression and anxiety. Change the gut, and mood can change. Gut microbes influence what you want to eat — sugar, fat, and specific foods. You think you want it. Your gut may be nudging you. It’s one reason why dieting can be so difficult. Fecal transplant studies show that transferring gut bacteria from one animal to another can transfer anxiety levels, boldness vs. caution, and even social behavior. Same brain structure. Different gut → different behavior. Pain: A headache or back pain narrows attention and reduces patience. Chronic pain sufferers often develop different outlooks on life. Prescription drugs: Antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and even blood pressure drugs can alter mood, motivation, and decision-making. Hormones:Testosterone, estrogen, and cortisol all affect aggression, attraction, stress response, and confidence. Illness and inflammation Even a mild infectioncan cause “brain fog,” fatigue, and pessimism. The immune system is quietly rewriting your thinking. Noise:Your concentration drops, errors increase, and frustration rises. Heat and cold:Extreme heat increases aggression and reduces cognitive performance. Cold slows thinking and reaction time. Lighting:Dim light can reduce alertness; bright light can improve mood and focus. Brain states → different “selves.” Time of day: Morning vs. late-night thinking can be radically different. Ideas that seem brilliant at 2 AM often look foolish at 8 AM. Stress:Under stress, the brain shifts toward quick, survival-oriented thinking — less nuance, more certainty, more error. Peer pressure: People say things they know are wrong just to fit in with a group. Authority influence: If a “trusted expert” says it, people believe it — even when it conflicts with their own experience. Repetition (the “illusion of truth” ): Hear something often enough, and it begins to feel true. Consider the thought processes of people who watch Fox News vs. people who listen to public radio. Optical illusions:You see something that is not there — and you cannot “decide” to see correctly. Advertising and framing:The same information, framed differently, leads to different decisions. Every salesperson knows this. Childhood experiences:Early rewards and punishments shape adult beliefs and preferences. Trauma:A single event can permanently alter risk perception, trust, and emotional reactions. Habits: Repeated actions become automatic responses — what feels like “choice” is often just rehearsal.
Then, there are all the diseases that affect our thinking. In addition to the aforementioned Alzheimer’s, we have”
Other Neurological diseases affecting memory, judgment, and personality — all change progressively. The person does not choose confusion. It is imposed. Parkinson’sdisease is known mainly for movement problems, but it also causes depression, apathy, and impaired decision-making. Stroke: A small area of brain damage can eliminate speech, alter personality, and change emotional responses Mental illnesses cause depression and anxiety disorders. (harmless situations feel dangerous, bipolar disorder (the same person cycles between grand certainty (“I can do anything”) and deep despair; A urinary tract infection can cause confusion, hallucinations, and personality changes. Encephalitis/brain infections can rapidly alter cognition, behavior, and identity. Hormonal and metabolic diseases: Thyroid disorders (hypothyroidism leads to sluggish thinking, depression) (hyperthyroidism leads to anxiety, agitation)
Every one of these examples shows the same thing: Change the inputs, change the body, and you change the thoughts. If microbes in your intestines can alter your mood, influence your cravings, and change your stress response, then the idea of a self-contained, independent “thinker” is wrong.
You often might say: “That wasn’t really me — it was the caffeine,” or “That wasn’t my belief — it was the lack of sleep.”
If alcohol can change judgment, hunger can change temperament, noise can change reasoning, hormones can change desire, and inflammation can change cognition, then what we call “free will” is simply the name we give to decisions whose real causes we don’t recognize.
You may think you have free will — we all experience that feeling — but it is just nature’s illusion.
What are commonly termed “consciousness” and “free will” are nothing more than stimuli that lead to responses, which in turn lead to more stimuli/responses, in an endless chain. There is no magic. It’s all physics. It’s all stimulus → organized response → integrated response → ongoing chain.
Governor DeSantis: We’re #1Florida tops the nation in ICE arrests this year.
ICE agents in Florida have made more immigration arrests so far this year than counterparts in any other part of the country, outpacing even places with announced “surges,” new data shows.
The Miami Field Office for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Office is credited with about 120 arrests per day in 2026 or 9,880 total as of March 10.
The Florida arrest data reflects the efforts of Gov. Ron DeSantis, President Donald Trump’s closest ally in his mass deportation agenda. DeSantis last year opened Alligator Alcatraz, a horrifying immigration detention center in the Everglades swamp.
Minnesota, where a so-called surge left two U.S. citizens dead, still trailed Florida. The St. Paul field office had made 5,530 arrests as of March 10, about 4,300 fewer than the Miami office.
Florida carried out 19 executions in 2025, surpassing Texas, Alabama and South Carolina combined, and more than doubling the state’s previous record. The unprecedented pace is drawing sharp reactions.
Each execution costs an estimated $24 million.
Florida also leads the nation in death row exonerations. This means 30 people sentenced to death in Florida have since been cleared, found innocent and freed.
“That’s an alarming number to me. Thirty is a lot. That’s 30 innocent people who were either sentenced to be executed or sentenced to death who should not have been?”
How many innocent people have been executed in Florida?
Florida is the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including in schools.
Florida plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools, said state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a prominent immunization critic.
The move would make Florida the first-ever state in the U.S. to withdraw from requirements credited with increasing vaccination rates in communities and preventing outbreaks of infectious diseases.
The rollback could result in fewer school children getting immunized against deadly viruses such as polio and measles.
Florida is No. 1 in school book removals and restrictions for third year in a row
The most targeted book in Florida last year was the classic “A Clockwork Orange,” which was removed at least 14 times. Also in the top 10 was “Wicked,” which inspired the famous musical and the popular fantasy romance, “A Court of Mist and Fury.”
During the 2023-24 school year, Florida had more than 4,500 instances of book removals, according to PEN America. The year prior, it had more than 1,400. The current numbers being less than the year before aren’t comforting to Baêta. She says, for example, if books with LGBTQ+ themes are removed one year, they’re not getting replaced with other books with LGBTQ+ themes the next.
Advocates against the removals warn that books with LGBTQ+ or racial topics are being disproportionally targeted.
Florida leads the nation in home insurance non-renewal rates, as insurers withdraw from the market. Florida has some of the highest homeowners insurance costs in the U.S., with average annual premiums reaching around $6,642.
We Americans are accustomed to puffing out our chests and claiming that we are the greatest nation on earth. We probably have the greatest fighting force (or did until Trump appointed a clown to lead it), but otherwise we have fallen far from the top.
(And please no smart-ass “Love it or leave it” comments. If that’s your best, you are a FOX News viewer without the intelligence or honesty to understand facts. So stop reading now, and get the rest of your information from Donald Trump.)
Here is an example of the greatest nation on earth:
By Sriparna Roy. March 12, 202612:03 AM EDT Updated March 13, 2026
Unlike state and local governments, the U.S. federal government never can run short of dollars. Even if it stopped collecting taxes, while tripling its spending, it still would not run short of money.
March 12 (Reuters) – Roughly one-third of Americans cut back on food, utilities or other daily expenses to pay for healthcare last year, research from the West Health-Gallup Center showed on Thursday, as steeper prices and rising living costs hit households.
A nationally and state-representative survey of nearly 20,000 U.S. adults in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia, conducted from June to August 2025, found that 33% of respondents had made at least one trade-off in daily expenses to pay for healthcare.
This was far more common among Americans who do not have health insurance, with 62% of those surveyed saying they have made at least one sacrifice to pay for healthcare, including 32% who had to borrow money and 24% who had prolonged their current medication.
Among those with insurance, close to three in 10 have made at least one sacrifice, the survey found.
Most Americans with private health insurance are paying higher premiums and steeper out-of-pocket costs in 2026, including millions of people in the government-subsidized Affordable Care Act plans in which extra COVID pandemic-era subsidies have expired.
One-third of Americans had to cut back on food, utilities, or daily expenses to pay for healthcare? The greatest nation on earth??
Hah. Gimme a break.
It’s not that the “greatest nation on earth” can’tafford healthcare. It’s simply that the right-wing government of the greatest nation on earth doesn’t want to pay for it because …uh…it would benefit the poor, whom everyone knows are lazy, good-for-nothings who want everything free. Right?
Oh, and then there’s the right-wing excuse that aiding the poor is “Socialism” while aiding the rich (via tax dodges) is good old capitalism.
Here is what some capitalists say about that:
Fed Chair Greenspan
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
Fed Chair BernankeFed Chair Beardsley Rummel
Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Beardsley Ruml: “The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. The public purpose which is served should never be obscured in a tax program under the mask of raising revenue.”
Federel Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.
Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill
Statement from the St. Louis Fed: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.” You can find it in their publication titled “Why Health Care Matters and the Current Debt Does Not”
Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill: “I come to you as a managing trustee of Social Security. Today we have no assets in the trust fund. We have promises of the good faith and credit of the United States government that benefits will flow.”
Former President of the ECB and Prime Minister of Italy Marie Draghi
The European Central Bank (ECB), like the U.S. government, is Monetarily Sovereign. Press Conference: Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, 9 January 2014 Question: I am wondering: can the ECB ever run out of money? Mario Draghi: Technically, no. We cannot run out of money.
Paul Krugman, an award-winning economist
Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize–winning economist): “The U.S. government is not like a household. It literally prints money, and it can’t run out.” — Numerous op-eds/blog posts
Hyman Minsky (Economist, key influence on MMT) “The government can always finance its spending by creating money.”
Eric Tymoigne (Economist) “A sovereign government does not need to collect taxes or issue bonds to finance spending. It finances directly through money creation.”
Yes, though the compulsive liars of FOX News may disagree, true experts will tell you that the U.S. government has the unlimited capacity to finance healthcare insurance for every man, woman, and child in America, while still having sufficient funds for any future wars that Presidents may initiate to distract voters from the latest scandals.
Then, in a last-ditch effort to take dollars from the pockets of the poor, the right wing will falsely claim that “too much” federal spending causes inflation. (“too much” is any amount that helps the poor but doesn’t enrich the President’s family).
You will notice that there always is enough money to start wars and to prosecute enemies. As this is being written, the Conservatives request an additional $200 billion to fight an unnecessary war, which will subsequently require billions more to replenish our depleted munitions.
Those brave fighters won’t be deterred by the loss of human life or myths about inflation.
The next time you are forced to choose between paying for health care vs. food, clothing, or school for your kids, do remember to thank the Republican Party and President Trump, and name another street after him.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 