{"id":1015,"date":"2008-01-04T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2008-01-04T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1015"},"modified":"2011-08-22T03:49:17","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T03:49:17","slug":"blinded-with-science-thinking-the-mental-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1015","title":{"rendered":"Blinded with Science – Thinking: The Mental Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine –\u00a0January, 2008<\/a> (pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Nerds like to look at their brains and say “Hey there, sexy, that’s a nice big brain you got on\u00a0ya\u2019.” Admittedly, I include myself in this group. I think my brain is sexy; I know it’s not the\u00a0size that counts. I’m not going to say I’ve ever thought about the fact that my brain has\u00a0cleavage, but I just did, so now you know something about me you didn’t want to.<\/p>\n

I’m not just a neural narcissist. I like all kinds of big brains. Big, sexy brains make big, sexy\u00a0ideas. Smart people who figure stuff out are my heroes, them and the cyclops from Krull, and\u00a0Sloth from The Goonies. My highest respect is reserved for those big, sexy brains that try to\u00a0figure out how big, sexy brains work. So, out of my respect for the endeavor to unravel the\u00a0human mind, I am obligated to make fun of it.<\/p>\n

The mind became a popular thing to study when it became apparent that it had the capacity to\u00a0do really cool stuff – like make sharp things to poke with. The first renaissance in our\u00a0understanding of the mind began when ancient Greeks asked questions like: What is the\u00a0nature of consciousness and awareness? Where lies the soul? Why the hell is Leonidus\u00a0bitching about \u201cfreedom\u201d in 300 when most of the people in Sparta were slaves?<\/p>\n

Psychology and psychiatry are words derived from the language of those inquisitive, Greek\u00a0proto-hippies. They share the root \u201cpsyche,\u201d which has an interesting variety of\u00a0interpretations, including \u201canimating spirit,\u201d \u201cbreath,\u201d \u201cmind,\u201d and \u201csoul.\u201d So, just from the\u00a0word, you know psych-anything is going to be fun, because it lets you mess with people\u2019s\u00a0souls and still get credit for being all academic. It’s sort of like a televangelist getting to host the Nova series.<\/p>\n

One prominent and memorable psychevangelist was Sigmund Freud, who is best known for\u00a0his theories about your mama. Freud proposed that the primary motives of our lives are our\u00a0survival and sexual drives. He called these Eros, which is also what he called his penis. Freud\u00a0also proposed that cocaine is fantastic. Such propositions had a strong influence on other\u00a0people with interesting last names, such as Carl Jung.<\/p>\n

Jung, who preferred the pronunciation \u201chung\u201d for obvious reasons, was initially a supporter\u00a0of Freud\u2019s theories about the psyche. Later, Jung found his own theories more convincing and\u00a0began to question Freud’s fixation on boobies and blow. Unlike Freud’s theories, Jung’s are\u00a0complex and fairly relevant, so they\u2019re harder to make fun of. Jung is remembered primarily\u00a0for his foundational work in analytical psychology, his synthesis of Eastern and Western\u00a0philosophies, and developing the popular Swiss sport known as Freud Bashing.<\/p>\n

Psychology has produced a wealth of logical conjecture about the mind, but studies in this\u00a0field have always relied on behavioral signs and introspective, first-person reports. Other\u00a0approaches to studying the mind utilize our most classic innovation: sharp things to poke\u00a0with. Students of human anatomy learned very early on that the brain is located inside the\u00a0head, and that, once past the skull, you’re pretty much home free. Much of our fundamental\u00a0understanding of the brain came from deductions based on poking and electrifying parts of\u00a0the brain and seeing what twitched.<\/p>\n

Modern technology has given us new tools to understand the mind. We have advanced to the\u00a0point where we can observe the brain\u2019s activity, live and in Technicolor, with magnetic\u00a0resonance imaging, or MRI. The MRI was an initial disappointment to some neurologists,\u00a0who really preferred the poking and the twitching.<\/p>\n

With the advent of MRI, we’ve learned a great deal about where certain types of thoughts\u00a0might come from. For instance, the thoughts you are having right now, while reading this\u00a0article, come from the part of your brain where I planted a chip last night while you were\u00a0asleep. I also took your last Hot Pocket.<\/p>\n

Even with the combined efforts of psychology and neurology, we still struggle with our\u00a0understanding of consciousness. Our mighty sciences have showed us the road to a full\u00a0mastery of the brain\u2019s basic structure and function, but they’re still having trouble explaining\u00a0what thinking is all about.<\/p>\n

Consciousness itself is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in that Hot Pocket I stole\u00a0and ate while I watched you sleep. The awareness of one\u2019s awareness is a concept that few in\u00a0Western science have attempted to integrate into the discussion of the mind, mostly because\u00a0it sounds a little Eastern. This is due to the fact that many Eastern cultures have been\u00a0practicing and honing their awareness for millennia.<\/p>\n

Tibetan Buddhist practitioners are renowned for their powers of visualization and control of\u00a0attention. MRI technology has revealed that they are not just yanking our chain, either; they\u00a0really can do pretty impressive stuff. The Buddhist understanding of the mind is integrally\u00a0linked to happiness and compassion. This hippie nonsense is the primary reason that China\u00a0stole their country. Science is working to understand how these Tibetan mental athletes attain\u00a0such a degree of skill, but nobody buys the whole happiness and compassion thing. Pills have\u00a0a higher profit margin than meditation.<\/p>\n

Our trek across the grey, convoluted landscape of the human thinker has only just begun.\u00a0Even after thousands of years of thinking about thinking, we still have a lot to think about. It\u00a0is my hope that your thinker is as interested in thinking as mine is. You don’t have to think\u00a0like me, just think. And for God’s sake, read something. Oh wait; you just did. I was talking\u00a0to that person over there who’s not reading anything. Go give him this article and tell him he\u00a0has to read it. Don’t make me use that chip I put in your head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine –\u00a0January, 2008 (pdf) Nerds like to look at their brains and say “Hey there, sexy, that’s a nice big brain you got on\u00a0ya\u2019.” Admittedly, I include myself in this group. I think my brain is sexy; I know it’s not the\u00a0size that counts. I’m not going to say I’ve […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1039,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}