Human mental development is a problem of dealing with the apparent chaos of the environment and discovering regularities and resolving them into entities that can be dealt with by the basic capabilities of perception and analysis and theoretical approximations of how to manipulate the perceived reality to the advantage of the individual in a pragmatic manner to achieve survival and prosperity. We start with mysterious visual shapes that are coordinated with sounds and manual contacts and all the resolutions eventually result in standard formulations that permit hierarchies of understanding to allow more and more perfect control of the environment.Eventually, as we mature, more and more of the environmental controls are set in the mind so that the basics are assumed and the process of dealing with realities is dealt with as complexes of basic assumptions. The innovative capabilities necessary to early development are eventually utilized less and less and the automatic mental mechanisms established in interactions with reality more and more take over the operation of daily activities. As with the automatic processes involved with driving a car or riding a bicycle or operating in complex social interreactions, most mental activities in older people become totally mechanical and with little originality. Diseases like Alzheimer’s can mutilate or destroy these mechanisms so that people who have abandoned their innovative capabilities become helpless. Even normal people acting with these psychological “macros” sometimes find themselves standing in front of a refrigerator or a closet wondering what they came to get. And the environment is not always so kind as to present situations solvable by automatic reactions. Shouldn’t basic education be oriented to preserve and enhance basic innovative capabilities rather than inculcating standard accepted mental mechanisms which dulls original thought and instills conformity in mental attitude? Rigid mental traditions can be deadly in the long run so the social chaos generated by the flexibility of innovation is outweighed by only a short term disruption.

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