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Sages down through the ages have lined up to testify to the virtues
of the examined life and to lament what an unwieldy thing is a mind
left untended. Consider the observations of three.
"Those who know much about others may be smart, but those
who understand themselves are even wiser"—Lao Tsu.
"You could drop a leaflet or a Hubbard squash on the head
of any person in any land and you would almost certainly hit a brain
that was whirling in small, conventional circles. There is something
about the human mind that keeps it well within the confines of the
parish, and only one outlook in a million is nonparochial"—E.B.
White.
"We have met the enemy and he is us"—Pogo.
We happen to believe that the "something" E.B. White
was talking about actually amounts to a biological imperative faced
by humanity, and that the imperative is as inescapable in the organization
as elsewhere. Here's why.
Medical research reveals that within the first six months of life
the human brain doubles in neural capacity, doubling again by age
four. No other creature on the planet experiences comparable brain
expansion. The body has about a hundred billion nerve cells, and
every time the brain thinks a thought, a record of the transaction
is preserved in the archives of muscle, blood, bone and organ. Experience
shapes us. Events compose our lives.
Throughout childhood, the human brain is a frenzied construction
site where neural structures are assembled in response to stimulus.
During this time, countless circuits in the brain are rushed to
completion. In the course of construction some connections are bolstered
into massive conduits of habit. Others are systematically diminished,
sometimes even dismantled.
This is not metaphysical speculation, but part of the best current
explanation science has to offer about what makes us tick. It is
this process that lays the foundation for what Dr. Robert B. Livingston,
a leading brain researcher and former medical school faculty member
at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and UCLA, calls the human "world
view." Each of us has one, says Dr. Livingston, that is the
highly subjective image of reality presented to us by our senses,
senses created by the interplay of heredity and the impressionistic
sculpture of our life experience. But that's not all.
Livingston reports that the intensive brain development of early
childhood is followed by an amazing event. During a single three-week
period of adolescence, power to the construction site of the brain
is drastically cut back. The brain's metabolism falls to half its
previous rate, and we are "biologically wired," as Livingston
says, with the conclusions, attitudes, suspicions, biases, inklings
and anxieties of our most impressionistic years. This occurs to
every individual, and it so profoundly impacts the way we lead our
lives it might actually be the single most important event in all
of human history. We say this because it locks us into a way of
being that will govern us more forcefully, and more ruthlessly,
than any tyrant unless we learn to intervene.
Livingston concludes that this "biological wiring,"
this deceptive "knowing" about the world—our pig-headedness
if you prefer—could threaten humanity more than any other factor.
The reason, he explains, is because it can lead to dysfunctionally
rigid ways of perceiving and interacting with the world around us.
It can cause brilliant companies like Pan Am to become extinct,
fuel holy wars, result in economic systems that jeopardize ecosystems,
incline us to misuse technology in the waging of wars that weapons
can win but people can't. The only hope, Livingston has concluded
at the end of a long and distinguished career, is for humanity to
learn a lesson about itself that has eluded our species so far.
The lesson? We believe personal mastery is as good a name for
it as any. Liberating ourselves from the conditioned, automatic
responses to life that endlessly loop us into the same frustrations
is one of the hardest things anyone can ever attempt. Accepting
the need for this is not an admission of inadequacy, but a recognition
of what it means to be human. And what it means to be human is to
understand that we possess a psyche on which the world has long
been at work before we get much of a shot at responding to the world.
Dealing with this reality is always worth the effort, because even
the smallest successes are immediately rewarded with proportionally
greater personal freedom. This, in turn, leads to greater creativity,
productivity, satisfaction, joy, expanded life possibilities.
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