Total Access: Using The Other 90% Of Our Brains - Americans
10 March 2011By Jane Stillwater
For years, scientists such as Albert Einstein and
William James have been telling us that we human
beings only use 10% of our brain capacity. Wouldn't it
be marvelous if we could use the other 90%? Can you
imagine all the great ideas that we might be able to
come up with?
Great literature -- we'd all become Shakespeares!
Great art -- I wanna be Michelangelo!
Great science -- Einsteins on every corner, they'd run
out of Nobel Prizes!
Great music -- your child would truly be baby Mozart.
Great humanitarians -- would you rather be Buddha or
Jesus?
Or perhaps the opposite might happen and we'd end up
with more Hitlers, Stalins, Atilla the Huns and Dick
Cheneys. Oh crap.
But how do you go about accessing the other 90% of
your brain? Meditation? Dreaming? Hitting the books?
LSD? Peyote?
At one point in time way back in the 1960s, I ate some
mescaline down at Big Sur -- and it was immediately
revealed to me that NATURE is the most important thing
in the world. According to Mescalito, living within
the context of trees and grass and mountain vistas and
fresh air offers the most meaning to the human brain
that there is. As the day wore on, however, both
Mescalito and I began to think that perhaps pancakes
were the most important thing.
But taking mescaline didn't make me a genius either.
Don't try it at home.
"Go to college! That will make you smarter!" my mother
always told me -- back during a time when women were
just supposed to stay home and play-act at being June
Cleaver. So I went off to college. Got a masters
degree too. But did that make me a genius? I wish. And
it didn't make any of those Yale and Harvard graduates
who run the Federal Reserve into geniuses either. It
just made them better crooks and liars and helped them
to figure out new and better ways to keep their butts
out of jail.
In these crucial times, it is so very important for
the human race to use more of its brain capacity and
to evolve. We have been basically thinking like
cavemen for all too long. For instance, take the
situation in Libya. When confronted with a desire on
the part of his people to obtain more democratic
institutions, Muammar Gaddafi responded exactly like
the most primitive caveman might have. He started
killing people, his people.
And what has been America's answer to problems in
Afghanistan, Tripoli. Washington, Wall Street and
Wisconsin? Pissing contests that involve violence and
threats. That's not evolution or wisdom. That's
Neanderthal.
But perhaps the next generation will do better than
our generation has done. To paraphrase one of my
favorite bumper stickers which now reads, "Imagine a
world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected
and loved: World Peace in one generation!" -- maybe if
we want and nurture and protect and love the next
generation instead of just stealing its future,
perhaps we can also get more geniuses as well as just
more whirled peas.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who was given a
rather strange research opportunity: She had a massive
stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion,
speech, self-awareness -- all shut down one by one.
Then she worked really hard to get all of her brain
functions back. Maybe we can learn something from what
happened to her and build on her experiences as well.
http://www.ted.com/ talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_
stroke_of_insight.html
I've also heard that art, music and other forms of
creativity can also expand our brains -- and make us
better at math too. According to an article in the
Harvard Educational Review by Eric Jensen, "Research
from the studies discussed in [Arts With the Brain in
Mind] and the experience of countless classroom
educators support the view that visual arts have
strong positive cognitive, emotional, social,
collaborative, and neurological effects."
And, given all this well-researched information, what
are the powers-that-be in America doing with it right
now? They're making major cuts to funding for our art
museums, school music programs and literature grants
in order to have more moolah to invest in their
bloody, useless, uncivilized and paleolithic wars.
Good thinking? Hardly.
Eating healthy stuff is supposed to be good for your
brain too. Nothing processed. No sugar. No artificial
sweeteners. Breast-feed your kids. That kind of stuff.
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-cake-blues-back-before-there.html
And while looking for ways to get a spacecraft to the
moon, one NASA scientist used to deliberately work
himself to exhaustion, fall asleep, dream about the
answers to his problems, wake up suddenly, and have
his wife hurriedly write down what he had learned from
his dream before the solutions were forgotten.
But I don't have a wife, so no deep thinking or going
to the moon for me. I'm screwed.
PS: Speaking of music, I just starred -- well, sort of
-- in a new punk-rock music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2be3NBB2I
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