Pinker and the Brain Brain Brain Brain...

1.  The words I chose are not of Steven Pinker, but of renowned English philosopher John Locke (page two of article):  “Let’s suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished?  …To this I answer in one word, from EXPERIENCE,” to which I heartily agree.

 

2.  Pinker's borrowed phrase resonates because much, if not all, of my learning style derives from experience; in other words, I learn best through examples.  Case in point:  a couple friends and I recently sat down to play the vastly nerdy and complex book-turned-movie-turned-board game, “Game of Thrones.”  In retrospect, the first twenty minutes of talking about actual game play fell on deaf ears—it was only when the raiding and pillaging actually commenced that I began to fully comprehend.

To me, this quote ranks pretty high on the profoundness scale because it also ties in nicely to a belief I’m partial to—that, as human beings, we are able to assign meaning to our own experiences (or, as Grandma Moses put it, “Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be").  Why do some pencil pushers find their jobs fulfilling while others would rather ditch the cubicle and hit on the waitress at Chotchkie's?  Me thinks it lies in the amount of meaning we choose to assign to certain tasks, beliefs, thoughts, etc.  Perhaps a more poignant example:  this post.  This post, in my humble opinion, has the capability to only have as much meaning as I’m willing to provide it.  I could spend hours pouring over Pinker’s article and a couple more carefully placing every syllable and consonant within the Blogger website; as a result, this experiences becomes a rewarding one—I find meaning in it.  Yes, events like family reunions (depending on the family) may possess inherent value for almost everybody, but for many others, it’s all about how you play the cards. 

3.  Over 20 years ago now, “science” discovered that oat bran lowers cholesterol.  “Whoopee!” the piggish public cried, “now I can eat all the steak I want for dinner as long as I have some oat bran-fortified potato chips for breakfast!”  As a result, consumers (more generally, 'society') began to dictate more and more of what nutritional 'science' dove into—“give us more of that information about stuff that won’t kill us!”—now, people have more knowledge about omega-3 fatty acids then they ever cared to know ("Effect of flax addition on the flavor profile and acceptability of bagels," really?), but they're unhealthy as ever.  Oh, and this is while disproportionate numbers die in the hospital and starve on the streets due to poor nutrition status.  ...Point blank:  am I asserting science and culture’s simultaneous molding of one another are bad?  Hardly (matters of black and white are best reserved for penguins), but it is important to be aware of the process.  The clay molds the sculptor as the sculptor molds the clay; if both base their work on what they see, what will be the final creation?

A pressing question for the less idealistic among us:  are people’s lives at stake?  No, not always; however, what may be more precious to some is also being juggled:  pride (if you guessed ‘money’ or ‘where the new STSS building gets put,’ you weren’t far off).  And as for whether or not I care…well, if you’ve read the second portion of my blog post, you maybe conclude that maybe I do care, maybe I don’t—come to think of it:  maybe you care, maybe you don’t.  In the end, does it really matter if we care or not, or is the empowerment of the knowledge that we may be more in control of our own fate than we think good enough?