Hard wired or Trembling Web
The human brain is capable of infinite change and adjustment to circumstances and the right kind of intervention. Truly, a trembling web.
Are we hard wired or flexibly webbed?
The brain is a metaphorical pattern matching organ – a trembling web. What this means is that we make sense of our daily experiences by relating it to what have “stored” as past experiences. That what is happening now is similar in some way to a past memory.
When you think about it – pretty well all human progress is built on what has happened before. How can we (as individuals and societies) made sense of the past and how can we build on it to “progress” further. After all, we don’t start from scratch each morning when we wake up.
This has to be a metaphorical recognition process. How is this like what happened before? So we are always on the lookout for similarities and connections in order to make sense of what is happening to us now.
And finally: how do we know that a metaphorical pattern match has been made? Well, by the emotion that we feel – that is the same as before.
Stories, metaphors, allegories, myths and pictures are so important
Here are two very different images that relate to contrasting ways to see the potential you have for change.
We can see ourselves as hard wired and no matter how well we are wired, this determines the direction of all that we can do.
Or we can realise that the human brain is like a trembling web in the powerful metaphorical description of Ian Robertson in his Mind Sculpture.
That everything that makes us who we are is embroidered in a trembling web of 100 billion brain cells. On average , each cell is connected 1000 times with other neurones, making a total of 100 000 billion connections. That there are more cell meeting points in the human brain than there are stars in the galaxy.
The human brain is like a web – able to change and adapt to circumstances Listen/download
