If you have a difficult decision to make and ask someone for advice, people usually tell you, "Follow your heart". The folk wisdom recognizes that a brain shouldn't be relied on in important matters. In fact, the scientists found recently, that a heart has a lot of nurons, even more than muscle tissue. The new approach to studying the heart as a brain is called neurocardiology. But the question I pose goes beyond even that. If a heart is a sort of a brain, it is still a brain. My question is: can there be thought without a brain of any kind? Can a brain impose more limitations on thinking, rather than promote it? Is a brain a cause of a 'closed mind'? Can 'thinking outside the box' mean to think outside one's brain?
The brain stores everything in categories and subcategories in a very orderly way, just like a computer database, to make remembering and learning easier and faster. But that creates problems such as stereotyping and discrimination, because when brain retrieves data, it comes up packaged in a particular category. For example; when we see a man stumbling along the sidewalk we automatically label him a drunk. In order to be truly objective we have to understand how a brain gets information and make an additional effort to take it completely out of the category the brain stuck it in.
If we learned to delay forming an opinion every time we saw something, like in the case of the stumbling man, we wouldn't immediately label him as "a drunk" and allow for a possibility that he maybe hurt and needs help. Our brain's automatic response may cause us to walk away from a hurt person.
I believe people overestimate the importance and the intelligence of a brain. We assume that when a brain thinks, it is equivalent to us thinking, but it isn't always the case. Most daily activity of the brain is automatic, and they have to be, because our lives would be hell if we had to think about every step we take and every muscle we need to use during each movement. But when it comes to actually thinking originally, creatively and objectively, relying too much on our brain can be detrimental, because it is most likely going to bias and limit our thoughts. Most of the time we have no idea our brain is doing that, and even if we suspected it, we are not always sure what planted belief system in our programming is distorting our thinking in which direction.
We assume that because a person with a brain damage turns into a vegetable, a brain is necessary for thinking, living and learning. I believe we are mistaken in that assumption. Take a coffee maker - you use it easily to make coffee every morning. Suppose you wired it into some giant computer that controls the appliances in your house, and that computer broke down. Now that same coffee maker doesn't work. But there is nothing wrong with it - it works just fine, all you need to do is disconnect it from the computer again. If our brain is such a computer, and thousands of wires (nerves) connect it to every part of our body, then when the brain fails, our body stops working, although there is nothing wrong with it.
Lets recall the brainless creatures - plants, molds, amoebas. They learn new stuff, react to their environment, adapt, hunt for food, and even know time. And all that without a brain. I think, when a very complex organ evolves, its complexity comes at the expense of something else. After all, nothing is free. Take our eyes, for example. They are extremely complex, and we rely on them greatly. But if we become blind, after a while other senses develop and start substituting for the eyes' work. A single celled organism doesn't have eyes, ears or nose, but you should see it chasing after a bacteria as if it did:
That is why things like meditation are so important - we need to periodically practice to disconnect from our brain and realize that it is not the boss of us, but WE are. So what does this "we" mean? Where is it located and how does it direct us and our brains? Is it the soul? Is it inside of us or outside?
No comments:
Post a Comment