Talking about thinking, here's something to think about. The human brain weighs about 3 pounds or only 2% of the body's total. So small and odd-looking, Egyptian burial priests removed and discarded it. To them, the heart was the essence of the pharaohs they were preserving.
Today we know differently. At our birth, the brain's complex circuitry is already largely complete. Waiting to be engaged as we grow up in a whirlwind of physical and metaphysical encounters over the next 80-90 years. At our death, this same brain ceases its physical activities while, according to some, its metaphysical activities endure.
Between those two points in time, these remarkable 3 pounds of neurons might be considered the biggest-bang- for-the-buck in the entire cosmos. The human brain crackles with an force-field proportionately vaster than even the power of the sun and the stars. And, unlike them, it can create ideas and beauties whose splendor will match almost anything Nature has to offer.
Why then we ask has the human brain created so much that is so vicious and vile throughout our specie's time on this planet? If you say Evolution has formed the brain, then why has Evolution gone so wrong so often? If you say God has formed the brain, then why has a good God allowed so much evil in His world? Darwin is not here to answer the charge; God is not available to sit in any witness chair.
Judged or not, the human brain continues to be the most extraordinary instrument ever known. Multiplied each day by a factor of 7 billion. How tempting such an instrument. How alluring such a force. And, predictably, how many human beings throughout history have sought to mesmerize and master these brains to their own ends. Think those Pharaohs...Alexander...Xerxes...Caesar...Attila...Napoleon...Hitler.
But even in conquered slavery or in forced concentration camps, our brains almost always remain our very own. To use or waste as we see fit. A fact that is in play whether we are at the controls of a space shuttle, bent over a maze of research tubes, or simply fingering a keypad like this one. Or, if you think about it, at night as all 7 billion of us slip off to sleep.
Somewhere between the consciousness of the day and the mystery of the dream, our brains can race and travel throughout an entire lifetime of parents, family, communities, friends, successes, failures, hopes and fears. Hollywood with all its cameras and computers can't come anywhere close to such drifting-off-to-sleep panoramas
Despite all the astonishing efficacies of the human brain, you still wonder why two of its choices. One, its ancient refusal to conclude all those other brains out there are far more like you than against you...! Two, its current search to discover everything about itself that is no more than the random work of Evolution rather than the intentional gift of some cosmic intelligence...!
I'll be thinking about both as I drift off tonight. Maybe you too.
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