How Well Do You Know Your Brain?

Earlier this week, I received an email with the question above in the subject line. It prompted several thoughts, none of which landed anywhere close to the subject of the email message which was sent by Web MD. I am not sure if Web MD has me pegged as someone interested in brain research, or if they were just trying to attract the attention of all their email subscribers. In any case, it was a quiz on brain research. I started it twice and, the 2^nd time I had 88% right, and was branded 'an Einstein among responders,' for answering 88% of the questions correctly. That's 15 out of 17, but I guessed right on three of them, so I could as easily have scored 70% and been an 'also ran' like anybody else.

The truth is I thought it was a message about knowing yourself, a subject I don't suppose even occurs to modern email publishers, including those at WebMD. Reading a PR expert recently, I came across the notion that the best speakers aren't those with the best content, but those that share a little bit of themselves when they speak. It reminded me of Thoreau, who famously wrote "I should not write so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.' People can engage with writers like Thoreau, not because they like the woods, but because they know they will get a bit of Thoreau himself in the mix, and they keep coming back for that—at least I know that's what I come back for. The facts about the woods surrounding Walden Pond hold no particular interest for me. There's a pond back of my house I could walk around, but Thoreau wouldn't be along sharing what enters his mind.

The other thought all this gives rise to is Socrates' oft-repeated dictum—"know thyself." It is inscribed atop a famous building from that era, too….OK; I looked it up—the Temple of Apollo at Delphi… There are at least a dozen ancient Greeks to whom scholars attribute the statement, but Socrates spoke about it a great deal. One of the many takeaways from Socrates on the topic was the folly of attempting to learn the seemingly obscure things without first attempting to know oneself. You simply don't have a reference point for all those factoids you assemble. Makes a lot of sense to me. All too often, I hear people drone on and on about some obscure notion, but they never relate it to themselves (and thus don't reach me).

But another lesser-known aphorism Socrates liked was "nothing too much," a concise way to say "all things in moderation." So, enough about all this.