preface

I guess I should preface anything else I ever say by attempting to explain the major concrete philosophy I have about people, about life, about all that shit.

We are our brains.

This isn’t an earth-shattering concept, nor is it part of a great epiphany that makes me feel superior to anyone else who has ever thought of anything. I’m not trying to be deep, and I usually hate deep, philosophical, open-ended question discussions. So when I say that we are our brains, I mean it as something I accept to be, until great evidence contradicts, a simple fact.

Simple, maybe, because it’s four monosyllabic words and sounds fairly obvious, but I hope I’m not hiding behind just how complex human brains really are. An incredible amount of activity happens that shriveled cantaloupe. It houses an estimated 100 billion neurons, and yet four-fifths of it is water. It’s responsible for every rocket science problem solved and every toe stubbed. And many of its ins, outs, purposes still go unknown.

Basically, there is an incredibly long formula for who we are, part of which is filled in from conception, another part filled in gradually by every moment of existence thereafter. All of which is open to interpretation by, yep, the brain.

Thanks to a study done by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill, I may have a little something extra to explain and elaborate my point. The study followed 1,100 males in middle school and high school, aged 12-18. What researchers were looking for was an indicator, possibly genetic, of violent or “delinquent” behavior. Over a six-year span, subjects filled out surveys, highlights in life and behavior were noted, and, in the end, the study concluded that evidence supported the existence of a genetic link to aggressive behavior.

Essentially, our inclination to a certain behavior is wired into DNA.

Still, the study noted that genes apparently need to be activated by an outside factor. Someone with the potential to be a tyrannical asshole still needs the correct catalyst. Every human being carries an impossibly long “if ___, then ___” list, and the brain is only thing capable of consulting that list. Constantly.

Then there are those scores of studies implying, if not empirically proving, that spirituality is linked to activity in a specific spot in the brain. Either you’ve got spirituality potential in your head or you don’t. So far, I’m certain I don’t. A million gods could be looking down at me while I pick my nose, but my brain has so far lacked the equipment to make me think so.

But brains don’t just dictate the highlights of someone’s ethos. Hell, there’s even evidence to suggest that there’s a part of the brain just for remembering celebrities’ faces. Think about that next time you see an ad on a web site asking you to determine which actress’ lips are shown in a photo. But I don’t recommend you click on an answer.

I can’t leave out the rest of the body, but the body feeds the brain information. The brain decides which information is relevant. Chemical balance affects brain interpretation (hence my fascination with drugs). A whole chunk of the brain doesn’t even think; it just does and controls.

So who we are, what we do, is written in and decided by a soggy mass in our head.

I had almost a dozen teachers in my life pass out the infamous “Attitude” bit by Charles Swindoll on the first day of class. You’ve probably read it at some point. Maybe even half a dozen times. The second half of it is what has pissed me off from the first time it landed on a school desk in front of me.

"The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes."

My assumption whenever I received this mantra was usually something along the lines of, this teacher is going to knowingly do something I dislike and blame me if I get upset about it. I knew then that not everybody has control over their emotions, and that, most commonly, people have very limited control of how they feel. It’s entirely possible that a portion of every class that was handed a stack of Swindoll’s philosophy would have a positive reaction to the paper, but I never once thought it was worth all the trees sacrificed for the cause of a harmonious classroom.

And, hey, isn’t a reaction an act, as well? And why are we supposed to change how we act even though other people will act a “certain” way? And how does Swindoll expect me to change if he just admitted that we can’t change how people will act?

The essay would also always make me think of starving, homeless people in third-world countries featured prominently in National Geographic. I thought about how in charge they’re supposed to be of their attitudes. It just seemed, to me, that so many people have too many negative factors and catalysts for their brains to be especially positive.

Hope, I think, lies not in positively changing everything, but rather in changing something. Demanding that everything changes and blaming everyone else when it doesn’t always seemed overly aggressive and unsympathetic, to me. And so, I never felt inspired to keep Swindoll’s pesky charge around whenever someone issued me a copy.

I don’t think reducing the ethos almost seven billion people to a piece of tissue is really so depressing. I still don’t know what will happen on any given day, or who I will meet, or how someone will reveal themselves, or even what I will ultimately be capable of.

And, in the end, all I’ve got is my brain, this companion confined to my skull.