February 06th, 2018

Rumor has it that somewhere inside the noggin of this individual here, there is a brain.  A Big fat juicy brain.  There have been times in my life where that fact was seriously in doubt but since I am a living breathing sentient being, we can only assume that it is so.

​I grew up believing, and I'm not certain what the source of this information is, that the human brain only uses 10% of it's capability. Which would lead one to believe that we all have yet uptapped abilities, talents, intelligence and who knows what all else.  Which further leads us to think (or at least my thought process went in this direction) that our future generations would be the most amazing beings that ever existed as far as intellect  and ability goes.  Perhaps we would communicate telepathically, maybe we would be able to fly, I mean without a plane, or just have the ability to heal all injuries and cure all diseases.  Wouldn't that be amazing?  Hey I watched Star Trek, I saw those other beings with the huge brains.  Isn't that what the future is supposed to look like?

​Well, apparently not.  Over the weekend I happened across an article that, wildly, made the claim that our brains are not growing but shrinking. " What?"  I said to myself outloud, "What sort of balderdash is this?"  And I read the article.  Although very well written and documented, I had my doubts.  But something niggled at the back of my brain so instead of just tossing that bit of information away and moving on the next thing, I did more reading.  Which led to more reading and then still more reading. And dang it all, it turns out that, it seems to be true.  Our brains are shrinking!  And this is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in the USA.  What the heck?

​There are a number of theories as to the why of it.  Among them, Global Warming (?)  (Is there anything that won't be blamed on it?)  or possibly that we have found ways to use our brains more efficiently so that we actually go not need larger brains.  Then there is the evolution reason, people are much smaller than our Cro-magnon ancesters.  Women, for example, women have smaller narrow pelvis' than our distant ancestors did and therefore to allow for pregnancy and childbirth human heads (and therefore brains) have had to evolve smaller, more compactly.  I suppose that is reasonable. We do evolve over many many (many!!!) generations. For example, do you know that more and more people are now being born with no appendix?  We don't need it anymore so we are evolving away from it.  Same thing with wisdom teeth.  They just don't serve a purpose any longer.  How very efficient of us!

​But the theory the really rang clearly with me is that we just aren't using as much of our brains anymore as the generations before us.  We don't.  We don't have the same survival issues and therefore problem solving issues that they had.  We stare at blue screen, tablets, monitors, phones, televisions for an enormous portion of our day and lords knows what that flickering blue light is doing to us.  We don't memorize phone numbers anymore.  We don't have the same beautiful language skills that previous generations had (read some older books and marvel over the beautiful word use - it's a serious wow). 

Kids don't even have to learn the multiple tables anymore, they are instead encouraged to use a calculator!! GPS will get you to your destination, you don't have to read a map or remember the way to get anywhere. Schools don't teach cursive writing for heaven's sakes despite all of the studies that indicate the importance of it.  And now there is that little in-home brainiac computer thingie that will lock your doors, turn on your lights, change your TV channels and the room temperature with just your voice command.  I'm not certain that this was a step forward in our brain development.

​I don't see children inventing games to play anymore.  We did growing up.  In fact, I don't see most public schools encouraging creativity at all.  I see a lot of little baby human robots being created however with educational systems that seem to want to be identical.  Ridiculous.  Humans are born creative.  Schools are sucking that creativity right out of them.  I've been reading studies about that too.  How do you think new things are invented?  Problems solved?  Brilliant ideas born?  Through creative thought.  We should be encouraging it not programming it out of our young people.  

​Adults are so crazybusy, working, travelling to and from work, then the yard work the house work, the family and relationship work that when they finally do get to sit down, it's in front of the TV or the computer where they just zone out.  

​Or maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe it really is the fault of global warming. I don't know.  But the facts seem to remain, the human brain is shrinking.  How weird is that!  There is your little bit of random information to think about today!  And do  think about it.  Think.  Create, Reverse this trend.  Let's occasionally put down the electronics and grow our brains.  Sounds like a plan to me.