A friend of mine, in a way that’s harmless for the most part, is very susceptible to pop psychology, things like psychic projections, numerology, astrology, channeling positive energy here and there in order to receive what you put out. I make fun of him, of course, mainly because the source of his interests seems always to be the Oprah show, which he records daily and quotes as a news source.
On Friday though, he shared something with me that I have to admit captured my attention for most of the weekend. “I have been thinking,” he said, almost conspiratorially, “and I’m pretty sure I only use about two-eighths of my brain.” There have been many television shows on the subject, he told me. There is no shortage of information on the Internet, and Louise Hay – a spiritual guru with an astonishing number of devotees – has written on it extensively. And Oprah, to be sure. My friend happens to have HIV, and he wondered, over teriyaki chicken, if there was a connection. “What if there’s a part of my brain that I don’t use that has the ability to say no to an infection?” he wondered. Does the mind make women who believe breast cancer is in their genes have a higher rate of the disease? Do people who consciously believe they are protected against HIV have a lower rate of infection, in spite of the prevailing wisdom that they’re actually at a greater risk?
The entire topic, I think, is ripe for harvest by the enlightenment industry, but it did make me wonder. We pay an excruciating level of attention to our bodies. We’re obsessed with what we eat, or don’t, our weight, our flexibility. We go on diets and take pills by the millions. Since most of us sit on our ass most of the time, we go to the gym, where we strive to keep our bodies in good working order. When’s the last time you heard someone say they’ve finally found the perfect brain instructor? Or how proud of themselves they are for having gotten in the habit of spending 15 minutes every morning doing memory stretches?
The main thing I wondered about, on Saturday morning, is language, and how much of it is clunking around in the parts of our brains we do not access. The best professor I ever had once said that people who believe that children learn language by memorization are way off the mark. “They learn English because they’re geniuses, and they’re geniuses because nobody has told them not to be,” she said. My professor believed all toddlers who can string the most basic sentence together should be awarded a Ph.D. She was from Nashville.
One day a few years ago, I was sitting at the table with my brother, his wife and my nephew. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was before his younger brother arrived, so my nephew could not have been more than two and a half years old. We were talking about words that contained verse: diverse, converse, universe, versatile. It was on a Sunday morning, and I believe our conversation got going as a result of the weekly word game on NPR, which I love. After listening to the discussion for a few minutes, my nephew, still confined to a high chair but able to drink his orange juice from a grown-up glass, said, “When mommy goes backwards in the driveway.” I guess I had not been properly warmed up after trying to keep up with the radio puzzle because it took me a few seconds before I realized that he was referring to the word reverse. He heard other words with 'verse' in them, which must have triggered his recollection of the term reverse, then used his brain to use a completely different word - backwards - in a phrase about his mother's driving. I’m not saying I think my nephew should be awarded a doctorate degree, but recalling the discussion over the weekend did make me think of my professor and her rejection of the memorization theory.
On Friday though, he shared something with me that I have to admit captured my attention for most of the weekend. “I have been thinking,” he said, almost conspiratorially, “and I’m pretty sure I only use about two-eighths of my brain.” There have been many television shows on the subject, he told me. There is no shortage of information on the Internet, and Louise Hay – a spiritual guru with an astonishing number of devotees – has written on it extensively. And Oprah, to be sure. My friend happens to have HIV, and he wondered, over teriyaki chicken, if there was a connection. “What if there’s a part of my brain that I don’t use that has the ability to say no to an infection?” he wondered. Does the mind make women who believe breast cancer is in their genes have a higher rate of the disease? Do people who consciously believe they are protected against HIV have a lower rate of infection, in spite of the prevailing wisdom that they’re actually at a greater risk?
The entire topic, I think, is ripe for harvest by the enlightenment industry, but it did make me wonder. We pay an excruciating level of attention to our bodies. We’re obsessed with what we eat, or don’t, our weight, our flexibility. We go on diets and take pills by the millions. Since most of us sit on our ass most of the time, we go to the gym, where we strive to keep our bodies in good working order. When’s the last time you heard someone say they’ve finally found the perfect brain instructor? Or how proud of themselves they are for having gotten in the habit of spending 15 minutes every morning doing memory stretches?
The main thing I wondered about, on Saturday morning, is language, and how much of it is clunking around in the parts of our brains we do not access. The best professor I ever had once said that people who believe that children learn language by memorization are way off the mark. “They learn English because they’re geniuses, and they’re geniuses because nobody has told them not to be,” she said. My professor believed all toddlers who can string the most basic sentence together should be awarded a Ph.D. She was from Nashville.
One day a few years ago, I was sitting at the table with my brother, his wife and my nephew. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was before his younger brother arrived, so my nephew could not have been more than two and a half years old. We were talking about words that contained verse: diverse, converse, universe, versatile. It was on a Sunday morning, and I believe our conversation got going as a result of the weekly word game on NPR, which I love. After listening to the discussion for a few minutes, my nephew, still confined to a high chair but able to drink his orange juice from a grown-up glass, said, “When mommy goes backwards in the driveway.” I guess I had not been properly warmed up after trying to keep up with the radio puzzle because it took me a few seconds before I realized that he was referring to the word reverse. He heard other words with 'verse' in them, which must have triggered his recollection of the term reverse, then used his brain to use a completely different word - backwards - in a phrase about his mother's driving. I’m not saying I think my nephew should be awarded a doctorate degree, but recalling the discussion over the weekend did make me think of my professor and her rejection of the memorization theory.
