Sunday, September 27, 2020

Rewiring Our Brains?

 I'm sure you've seen the claim that this-or-that is "rewiring our brains"? Leaving the faulty metaphor aside, our brains are not "wired" in the first place, I think this is one of those terribly useful claims that usually comes with an ulterior motive. You know, like:

"all we need to do is spend just a little (or a lot) more money on the (homeless, war on drugs, war on poverty, healthcare, national defence, climate change ...) and the problem will be solved"

Uh-huh. What's really weird is that voters keep believing this stuff. Some of them, at least, the rest know that their government jobs depend on it.

But back to that "rewiring the brain" stuff. You know it is complete nonsense, right? But if you are reading about listening habits on Spotify, or the new fad of bullet journaling, or work habits, or work environments, or a host of other things, they always seem, mysteriously, to be connected with someone trying to sell a new book, project, product, program or website. You need this to

  • rewire your brain!
  • stop your brain from being rewired!
  • rewire your brain in a better way!
  • to help others rewire their brains!
It reminds me of the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up."

No, you can't rewire your brain and therefore neither you nor anyone else has had their brain rewired because that is just a stupid metaphor. All this boils down to claims about a different way of thinking about things. And just about the most salient truth of recent decades is that since education has been rotted from within by post-modernists, there is damned little thinking going on in the first place. If that is what is meant by "rewiring your brain" I think that we should go back to the older word for this phenomenon: ignorance. Oh, yes, and that explains voting patterns as well.

Now that we have that figured out I think we have the right to listen to some Bach. This is the Netherlands Bach Society take on the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 by Bach. And it ain't gonna rewire your brain!


1 comment:

whydis said...
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