The brain’s just neat. And really, we don’t all the way give it credit for how neat it is, and how much it does for us. Sure, it gives us cool things like our deep thoughts and our ability to do crossword puzzles, but it does so much more for us, and much of the things it does we’ve attributed to other body parts. We don’t think of our brain as being a part of a rousing game of football, but every catch, every step, and every shoulder-check we throw into some big fat bastard’s stomach while blitzing the quarterback, that’s all our brain interpreting who knows how much information every moment, controlling our physical form, keeping us safe and clear-headed, and spotting those holes in the defensive line we need before we even know we’re aware of them.
In fact, there’s been some interesting research that Jerry Coyne has been discussing on his blog of late about the idea that our brains are so bloody awesome they may have ruled out free will . I don’t understand the science behind it, but according to recent tests, it appears that we make decisions at a brain chemistry level as much as seven seconds before we realize that we’ve made a decision. I’m no Johnny Von Brainsurgeon, so I honestly can’t weigh in on the topic except to say that if my conscious free will is an illusion, it’s an awfully powerful one.
And what about those olden-days jerks who would take their brains for granted so much? Attributing love as a function of the heart just seems laughable now, but once upon a time that was exactly where they thought our feelings came from. Of course, they also thought meat created maggots and that there was a God in Heaven watching down on us and controlling our every move (but any time we did something he didn’t like it was our fault, even if he was the one who controlled us), so maybe their opinions just aren’t that valuable at this point.
The brain is, in my opinion, the thing that modern day folk think of as the soul. Many of my contemporaries like to believe that there’s this thing inside all of us that contains our personality and our sense of history, and that when we die, that part continues on to whatever is next. I don’t buy that. It’s all the brain, and when the brain dies, we die with it. Of course, that’s opinion, but I’m pretty confident in it. The more we learn about how the personality and memories of a person are impacted by brain injury, the more we have to recognize that these are functions of the brain, not the ether.
I did mushrooms once. I know, killer segue. It was an experience to say the least. I was astounded to come to grips with how fragile my grasp of reality actually was, and just how easily my brain could, with the right encouragement, convince me of the absolute validity of the fantasies it was presenting me. In retrospect, my experiences strike me as if my right brain took over, and every now and then my left brain, who was way out of his depth at trying to understand what the bejesus was happening, would chime in with stupidity, causing the right brain to react and come up with fantasies on top of fantasies to explain to the left that everything was as it should be.
Prior to the mushroom trip, I had a certain quiet disdain for the mentally ill. I had always thought that reason should win out; that you know deep down that there can’t really be an international government plot to get you to wear sneakers so that they can use the titanium oxide in the soles to spy into your thoughts. But mushrooms taught me that reason wasn’t quite as good as I thought it would be at safeguarding me from the ridiculous.
I picked up Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.’s book, My Stroke Of Insight and have been enjoying it quite a bit (though admittedly I have some disagreements with it), and one of the things she keeps saying that I never really think of is the idea that all of this stuff I see and feel and taste is all essentially not as I perceive it. My brain interprets light rays picked up through my eyes and creates a vivid, three dimensional world. My brain grabs the vibrations of the components of my ear and determines for me how the world should sound. Touch… Taste… Smell… They’re all reactions turned into signals from nerves through to the brain, and we have a habit of thinking that they are so much more than simple interpretations by our brain. What we see is what we know.
Celebrate your brain today. Buy it a beer, or maybe something that won’t cause it damage. At least take a moment to reflect on it, because your brain really is a magnificent thing, the product of billions of years of evolution and the thing that has most benefitted our species in it’s quest to survive. Of course, whatever you do for your brain today, you might have decided it seven seconds before you knew. There’s just no surprising your brain.
Jim
