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Drew Brittondrewbritton@gmail.comEnglish 101Lori Pollard-Johnson7 Dec 09

The Brain, the Mind, and Misunderstanding

Andrew Britton, a Pierce College student having escaped the clutches of public high school, struggles to provide profound and insightful responses to essay prompts. Baffled by the

complexities of the world, he yearns to find answers and meaning through language and artful expression. His essay The Brain, the Mind, and Misunderstanding is a portrayal of his

disappointments in a life full of missing answers and infinite possibilities.

With the creation of Earth (or occurrence, depending on your beliefs) spawned something

far greater. Something far more extraordinary—dwarfing even the most superior effects of

nature. The pinnacle of everything existent in the universe, consisting of one-hundred billion

neurons and weighing approximately three pounds, everyone is in possession of this mysterious

super organ—frightening. Of course, all great creations come packaged with defects. One of the

most prominent predicaments we face as humans is the lack of true consideration for others.

Oliver Sacks’ essay, The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See, investigates the vital

relationship between unavailable senses and how the brain compensates for those senses—

specifically with blind persons. Based on several observations, and written accounts by people

who are blind, a new perspective has been discovered: the ideas that suggest the brain is fixed,

rigid, have been replaced by a more structured idea that the brain is capable of rewiring itself to

cope with having lost sensory inputs. With this thought in mind, Sacks presumes that previous

experiences captured and placed into memory through senses do, in fact, shape the brain and

mind. But do experiences alone shape our perceptions and expectations of the external world?

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Can our experiences enrich our inner realities, and provide us with intuitive ways of perceiving

the environment if sight or hearing become nonexistent? “To what extent are we the authors, the

creators, of our own experiences?” (506)

Similarly, author and clinical psychologist Martha Stout explains dissociation and sanity

in one of her works, entitled When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday. Dementia

(insanity), the deterioration of cognitive and rational functions in the brain, is a common

occurrence in anyone who has suffered a traumatic event. Also explained in her writing, hand-in-

hand with the different states of dementia is dissociation. Dissociation is a defense mechanism

that induces a person into a detached state, completely separating crucial mental processes from

a person. Emotions and memories connected to the root of trauma are disregarded as one

dissociates themselves from the conscious world. If a majority of the population has experienced

dementia, in mild forms, how is sanity measurable? How can insanity be readily available as a

label for hypersensitive people?

The two essays share obvious problems. Oliver Sacks suggests that the brain influences

the mind, and vice versa; blind people can recreate a visual copy of the world based on their

experiences and memories. On the other end of the spectrum, Martha Stout’s newfound

knowledge of dissociation implies that in order to distinguish the unreal from the real, we must

conquer our limitations. Stuck in the gilded constructs of modern society, how can the brain

possibly rescue us, time after time, from the conditioning we have become victim to?

A new approach should be put into action. Instead of becoming reliant on solely vision,

the human’s primary sense for perceiving the environment, we must consider the capabilities of

our other natural senses. Just as with people affected with blindness, are we, too, blinded by

today’s societal standards? The almost infinite advertisements plastered on billboards and

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buildings, the true forms of beauty as portrayed on television, the stereotypes assembled in the

confines of someone else’s skewed reality and then unleashed on the public—the lemmings. If

we could experience literal blindness, would that alone begin the cleansing of our polluted

minds?

Also, should people be classified as insane simply because of their brains’ coping

techniques (however unique and bizarre) with the stresses of the external world? Should we

continue to label people as sane or insane, if, according to Stout, nearly everyone has

experienced insanity?

My solution is simple. We should take into account the variety of experiences all people

have endured—without taking on the wearisome task of recognizing every individual person. For

years the human mind has been clouded by the outside creations and limitations of culture;

various great and not-so-great thinkers blanket the masses with their best or worst intentions,

sometimes without enough concern to examine the possible repercussions. Our realities are

constantly subjected to change based on the exerted realities of others. But, realizing the actual

diversity across minds is the first step into fully understanding one another with no expectations.

Understanding is a power everyone possesses—only few can realize.