Science geek here again. This time I’m considering the mind, brain generally, and our perceptions of what we perceive as reality. I’m of an opinion that though everyone might see the same thing, how each individual perceives what he sees are as different as night and day.
The Nova episode that I watched the other night is as telling of what each of us view as real or fake. It’s why magicians are still performing their acts of illusion, or delusion if you will, and wowing the audiences even in this day and age of skepticism.
Our brains are programmed by our environment, parents, friends, and the intangibles such as mutations. Whatever one person might view in a certain situation including cataclysmic events and not sense they perceive the same thing. Instead, any traumatic event will invariable result in many people telling a vastly different story based on their past experiences, when and how they were raised and the intangibles of their own life experience.
I’m a living example of my own trauma when I suffered a stroke in 2002. Many things on my brain that wasn’t affected is as poignant as what I lost. I lost some physical traits such as use of my left arm hand and fingers. I’m walking with a noticeable limp, but most of my memories are still there, my speech didn’t change—I was born with a cleft lip and pallet that speech therapy more or less fixed—still have my hearing and eyesight because those areas of the brain were not affected by the stroke I had. But, I’m noticing other changes that aren’t physical but mental.
Like that minor, Phineus Gage, I noticed changes in my personality that weren’t apparent 23 years ago. I tended to be even keeled with a mild temperament. I was often taken advantage because I wanted to be accepted into whatever clique I wanted to befriend. It also explained my affinity for heavy drinking in my younger years, and probably why many people in higher positions of power didn’t see me as leadership material.
Since my stroke, my personality has shifted more toward being impatient and temperamental toward certain people, and being terribly angry at myself. I have been warned numerous times that this behavior is unacceptable at work. When I saw that on Nova last night, how Mr. Gage’s own behavior issues were laid out, it made sense that the stroke I had also caused personality traits that are part of that portion of my brain happened near the frontal cortex and on my right side.
Of course, with age, one has to put that into perspective how our personalities also change as well as our genes and how one was raised, be it a single parent relationship or even an abusive history that goes back many generations.
As I have said before I have grown to appreciate Nova and other science programs more because I like learning new things about myself and the world around me. I hope we all can appreciate how we see the world through another lens and respect those differences, and embrace everyone’s perspectives and coexist.
Jerry Schellhammer 