Brain Power
A common misconception about the human brain that parapsychologists and psychics often cite to support their claims is that we only use about ten percent of our brains and that the remaining ninety percent contains the strange mechanisms of psionics. Allow me then to quip: if we’re only using ten percent of our brains, who’s using the other ninety? Okay, I’ll stop trying to be clever now.
The ten percent shtick is a crock of shit. The entirety of the human brain has already been mapped. Each part of the brain has a known and proven function. No, there is no mysterious ninety percent. The brain is not the seat of the human soul.
Yet where did the ten percent lie come from? Ironically, there is a scientific origin for this, albeit deliberately twisted so as to serve the ends of charlatans and sincere but misguided fools. Listen carefully now. This here is the straight dope:
We know that the brain functions because of neurons. At any given moment, approximately ten percent of the total amount of neurons in your pointy little head is firing electrical pulses like a bunch of drunk South American freedom fighters. Yep, just ten percent. But what if– all of a sudden– eighty, ninety, no, a hundred percent of your brain’s neurons suddenly fire up? Would you then gain powers far beyond those of mortal men? No, my friend. Since your brain would then be commanding your bodily functions to freak out all at the same time, what you’ll get is the mother of all epileptic seizures.
Look, I’m not saying that there are no more mysteries left to investigate about the human mind. God forbid we run out of mysteries. Imagine how utterly boring human existence would be without them. I’m not saying there is nothing fascinating about life either. We can explain love and thought and inspiration on paper as chemical and biological processes but that doesn’t take any of the magic away from the actual experience. Stars may be dull balls of gas but they sure are pretty. Human beings are more than the sum of our icky parts.
Steel Said,
September 16, 2006 @ 9:04 am
Whatever you’ve been smoking lately, I want.
.
Seriously, where have you been getting your ideas? One moment you’re talking about clairvoyance and now this. I guess it doesn’t matter since I don’t give a fuck as to whatever you write about as long as you sate my fetish for hifalutin’ words and the way you arrange them. That’s the only reason I keep reading your posts godfuckindamnit!
Randy Said,
September 17, 2006 @ 9:28 am
Powdered scorpion tails. And you don’t even suspect that I’ve been slipping it into your drinks for the last three years.