How to think

I don't know about you, but nobody ever taught me how to think. Inside all of our heads is a brain, a squishy weird thing that we only vaguely understand. Sure, it's an electro-chemical device, with different kinds of receptors and processing units. But how it makes decisions is a complete mystery.

I want to propose the concept of our brains having an operating system, similar to the way a computer works. Thousands of lines of code create the pathways for information processing and a method by which external inputs are filtered, distributed and manipulated.

This Brain Operating System came fully installed at birth, but not fully activated. It takes at least ten, and sometimes twenty years for all the modules to work as they should. Importantly, experiences in the world are critical to accessing the full power of the organ/operating system combination. Learning, in other words.

So while experiences, book learning and handed-down wisdom are all part of bringing the immature brain up to full steam, there is little thought as to how to use the operating system once it's up and working. Just like our computer's OS, our BOS can be used in many ways. Knowing how to find these capabilities should be on every school's curriculum, but apparently learning to use condoms and watching "An Inconvenient Truth" is deemed more important.

There are built-in flaws, bugs, idiosyncrasies and even vast unused capabilities in the BOS, and understanding their existence is equally important. I want to focus on these in future posts.

So the question remains, why is there no formal training for even the most basic functions for which we use our brains every day: what we eat, whether we smile or frown, how we choose friends, with whom we have sex.

For example, did anyone give you a good template for making decisions? Have you ever been taught to notice when your brain is ignoring things to which you should be paying attention? Do you know when your brain is using emotions to fool you into a course of action counter to your well-being? Can you recognize when your thinking is taking you in the wrong direction?

Perhaps I am the only one not completely in control of my brain. But I doubt it.