COLUMN: Brain is overrated, egotistical
The brain is the most grossly overrated and conceited organ of the body. It keeps self-inflating with drivel like mind travel, ESP and the notion that “we haven’t tapped 90 percent of its potential.”
When you hear this type of psycho-mumble, take into consideration it’s the brain bragging. All this boasting obscures the concept that it is probably just as likely that the entire brain has already been tapped. The brain itself is just involved in an elaborate PR job.
Maybe the reason we forget things is because the brain is already full of sitcom theme songs and game show trivia. The brain, having evolved in an age when there wasn’t so much to remember, has quickly used up all the memory in its hard drive in the modern age of mass media.
Maybe it is the brain that is holding the rest of the body hostage because it is insatiably jealous of not having the power of movement itself.
Take note that the brain is constantly trying to sabotage the body by tempting it with potato chips, double bacon cheese burgers and deep fried zucchini. Left to its own devices, the body would exercise regularly; eat only low fat choices from each of the four food groups; choose monogamy as its natural state; contribute regularly to individual retirement accounts; and drugs, alcohol and stimulants wouldn’t be necessary if the brain wasn’t constantly trying to bust out of its cranial confines.
Let’s look at some of the gambits the brain has tried to pass off in recent years:
• Extra Sensory Perception (ESP): The brain has trouble minding its own business, so it is always trying to hone in on the thoughts of others … or so it tells us.
Most of us don’t even have proof of regular sensory perception, much less extra sensory perception. If we had even normal perception we’d never marry the wrong person, buy lottery tickets, put our lives in the hands of politicians or try to start home business foisting overpriced beauty products and vitamins off on our friends and relatives.
• Past Lives: If everybody has past lives, why is it we continue to make the same pathetic mistakes? Why is it nobody recalls a recent past life like “I was a Milwaukee postal worker who died in 1956, and I’ve come back to warn the human race that nine-digit zip codes are the work of the devil.” Why indeed? Past lives are just another concoction of the brain trying to make itself sound more important than it is. In reality, it can’t even remember where you parked your car at the grocery store 25 minutes ago. How can you trust its recollections of life on the lost continent of Atlantis?
• Visualization: This is the idea that if you visualize something enough, it will come to pass. If this was true, adolescents would be having sex about every five minutes and the NBA would be full of slow, stumpy 45-year-old men who could dunk from the foul line and pass behind their backs.
• Atheism: This is arrogance carried to the extreme in that the brain thinks there is no superior being anywhere in the universe.
• Right Brain/Left Brain Theory: This is just an attempt on the brain’s part to double the amount attention it deserves. I can never remember if it is my right or the right of the person who is looking at me. Then when I look in the mirror I really get mixed up. I suggest north, south, east and west brains for accuracy.
• Baldness: The brain’s last-ditch attempt to draw more attention to itself.
Ignorance is bliss – at least I think so.
Slightly Off Center appears every Wednesday in the Statesman. Comments may be e-mailed to dhinkamp@msn.com.