It has been fun using our brains to think about our brains. I hope you read the other two posts in this little series. I would really like to have a serious discussion about how our brains work.
Because there are just so dang many unanswered questions.
What’s the deal with the huge parts of our brains that we don’t even use? Are we headed for some critical tipping point where that gray matter opens up and we begin to use our brains in new ways? And what possible avenues will open to us when that happens? Will we all be smarter than Albert Einstein? Will we develop telekinesis or be able to communicate directly with thought? Will our warlike tendencies give way to peaceful, easy feelings? Will we become more creative?
Which brings up another question. What exactly is creativity? We all have some of it inside us. Me, I have almost too much. I am a freak of nature. I am all art-side-of-the-brain. It was proved by science, as you may recall. Why can’t I memorize my multiplication tables or a phone number but I can make up stories all day long? Why does art seem almost more real to me than logic? And as a species, are we becoming more creative and artistic? I was watching Bill Maher on HBO a few months ago and he was talking about how these days, everyone wants to write a book or get paid for using their imagination. And he made a point that struck me as being very profound. He said that now, everyone wants to get paid to paint the pictures on the cave walls, but nobody wants to go out and hunt the mammoths.
Think about that for a moment. Can we live in a world where we all ‘create’ things, but nobody actually ‘makes’ anything? Tie that in with the fact that people are now spending way more time communicating on electronic devices than they do face to face, and we are headed for a rather interesting future.
And what about the fact that mental health issues seem to be proliferating at an alarming rate? Are our brains getting less healthy? It seems like they are inventing new psychological maladies all the time. Is this due to the stress of modern life? Or are the chemicals we overproduce getting into our systems and messing with our wiring? And will the new chemicals being produced by the drug companies really help fix the problems in the long run, or just end up making things worse? I do know that when we mess with nature, it seldom works out for the best. Rats are accidentally brought to some island on a ship. They have no predators so they take over, then we try to introduce some new animal to eat the rats. There is no example of this working well, as far as I know. Just something else to think about.
Okay, I guess I am done with this. I asked more questions than I answered. And both the questions and the answers are often troubling. But there are signs that we might be due for a great leap forward.
Tell me what you think…
Pouring My Art Out 
These questions and where we are heading scares me in that I think society is deteriorating because of our need for drama and constant communication.
Oh yeah… I wrote that… I used my brain… hey, I have already gotten three more likes on that post you reblogged… thanks…
really? Well that is cool…you deserve it my friend!
Just got another one…
Well you get more than I do…jealous…i am
Two more… people who never would have seen it except for you…
Well you are welcome. 🙂
I notice they are all likes… I wonder if any of them will comment… they may not know what to make of it and are being polite because it is on your blog. Oh, and nice comment you added to it… thanks again…
Even with all the smartphones there was not a soul captured it. Normally you can’t hide from a camera anymore. They all send pictures of the food when the go someplace nice to eat. My son did it from Disney World restaurants all last week They were all probably texting at the funeral. Such a cynic.
Actually, it was a fantastic funeral. I know. Odd sentiment. He was 52 and a stage 4 liver cancer patient and had time to plan it out and tell his wife exactly how he wanted it. He worried nobody would be there. About 100 were. His boss shut down the company for the day so all his employees could go. He kept him as an employee on sick leave for months carrying his medical and company life insurance. The company employees wore the orange company T’s, even the pall bearers he chose. He insisted. He wanted it to be an informal affair. It was the first time I never wore a suit to a funeral. I respected his wishes. Thirty cars cued up in a half-mile long procession for two hours and 90 miles on undivided highway to the plot at the family cemetery on the family farm deep in the country. He wanted them to drive the same route he traveled to the land, no interstates. We did.
You begin to wonder if you live in the right place sometimes. When we got about 30 mile away from the farm, oncoming traffic, school buses, semi’s, dump trucks, delivery trucks all pulled over and stopped.while we passed. People stopped mowing their lawns or working in the fields. They had no idea who it was, just what was happening. Bless the people of the land; country folk..
There is a lot to be said for the heartland. But it has its dark side too.
Make that “Eagles” above. I tout but seldom use the spell check it wuld seeem.
Try sticking random numbers in words… it doesn’t even care…
“Will our warlike tendencies give way to PEACFUL EASY, FEELINGS?” Uh, I believe that phrase was created by and now apparently purloined from Eales and Jack Tempchin. It’s one thing to have a song stick in our head, but quite another to blatantly steal from it and present it as our own work. Tsk. Tsk. But, then again, perhaps kismet formed that exact phrase in the grey cranial void and no malicious intent was intended. Speaking of malicious intent:
“There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware, It’s a small world after all.”
Just put it out of your mind. Try not to think about it. Mwha hahaha!
All that set up for one little gag. I must have better things to do.
I was just talking about having that song stuck in your head, and yes, I knew I used a line from an Eagles song, but you can’t patent putting three words in a particular order, because I’m already standing on the ground.
You are SOOOO shameless.
If you can’t quote a song in a blog then we are not on the stairway to heaven, we are on the highway to hell!
Ibid.
Isn’t that like a big extinct bird?
But that it were so. Sigh
Somewhere there is an undiscovered species and we will name it thusly.
Or one of those African savannah mammals?
Take that song and stick it.
I ain’t workin’ here no more…
I can stick that tune in four notes, Tom.
You couldn’t carry a tune if it was super glued to your hand… that might not be true, but I love that line…
FYi. Three weeks ago today, for the only time in my long life, I sang acapella and solo. It was at my brother-in-laws funeral. I sang Someday, a Blue Highway bluegrass gospel song to the surprise of everyone including my SIL and wife. I did a pretty good baritone too. I wish he could have heard it and I had no reason to sing it.
Nobody recorded it???
We have giant unused parts of the brain? Why haven’t advertisers taken to beaming in campaigns so we have them stirring round our heads all day. That’s my idea by the way just in case some advertising exec. reads your blog.
Well now I wonder if the unused part is where songs that get stuck in our heads bounce around…
Steady on…you could slip an annoying song in here and forever ruin my day
There is a kid’s ride at Disneyland that has a theme song that once lodged in your cranium can bounce around for weeks and make you crazy.
That wouldn’t be acceptable . I went to America and all I got was this lousy mental disorder.
That is our number one souvenir…
Where are these signs? And what do they say? I don’t see any signs of a great leap. Are we all supposed to be lemmings? Speak up man, speak up!
It would most likely start with a very few people being able to do things… what those things are, I have no idea… because the odds are I am not one of those people… or if I am we are in serious trouble…
A great leap forward? Or, perhaps a great crash, and start over…
You raised a lot of questions over the 3 parts, a lot of good questions that I don’t, and most people too probably don’t, have answers for. I can argue optimistically that perhaps we are destined to unlock hidden potential in the portions of our brains we aren’t using now, and I can argue pessimistically that perhaps we are devolving and using less and less of our brains than we used to use…
That is some world-class fence straddling!
I’m a Gemini through and through.
Never take a stand when two stands will work better.
Maybe there are new mental illnesses because we feel more comfortable with labels and maybe we hear more about the new illnesses because information travels at the speed of light now, when before we saved our interesting stuff for Sunday’s when the rates were down. It seems like we use most of our brains for something and that some parts work with other parts to make us function. We cannot exist in world of only creators, who will do the hunting and gathering?
Yes, maybe, I just wrote what the scientists told me, I don’t know. I think the drug companies make up new brain issues so they can create new drugs, and they might even be putting stuff in the old drugs that cause some of the new problems.
It seems like all the little eccentricities that used to make us unique have suddenly become mental illness. I have a friend who is extraordinarily uncomfortable at the grocery store and likes to have her husband go with her-“phobia”, I am not overly fond of planned social occasions “social anxiety”- really, what about personal preference? I don’t doubt the pharmaceutical industry is behind all of it- sedate the masses, make them shut up.
Depression is a strange thing. Is it just a matter of degree? I mean, nobody is happy all the time. That would truly be insane.
and sometimes there is a good reason for a person to be profoundly unhappy.
Everything comes in cycles.
Pretty sly there. Throw out a bunch of questions and get us to do all the writing for you so you can kick back with an ipad and work on your tan on the beach. You aint fooling nobody mister.
I got the copy of the kid’s book… just a few glitches in the artwork and one typo… gotta fix it and start all over…