— David Brooks (link) The young achievers are tutored in every soccer technique and calculus problem, but when it comes to their most important decisions—whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise—they are on their own. Nor, for all their striving, do they understand the qualities that lead to
Tag: Brain & Mind
And men should know that from nothing else but from the brain come joys, laughter and jests, and sorrows, griefs, despondency and lamentations. And by this we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and we see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what sweet and what unsavory… and by the same organ we become mad and delirious and fears and terrors assail us
— Hippocrates (Greek physician 460-377 BC)
The human brain wasn’t built for modesty…
— David Eifrig Jr. It feels good to make the right call. Maybe you predicted the Super Bowl champ at the start of the season or backed the winning presidential candidate early on. When you look back and can say you knew what was going to happen, it gives you bragging rights. And in the
You can’t do much carpentry with your bare hands and you can’t do much thinking with your bare brain
— Bo Dahlbom
What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?
From “When Breath Becomes Air” P. 71 While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons work in the crucible of identity: every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of our selves, and every conversation with a patient undergoing brain surgery cannot help but confront this fact. In addition, to the patient
It was the relational aspect of humans – i.e., “human relationality” – that undergirded meaning …
From “When Breath Becomes Air” P. 39 I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, it’s virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It