Right Brain; Left Brain

We are made to think, to reflect, to wonder and make sense of the things we see.  The so-called "right brain" embraces and imprints images without knowing what they signify; it gathers in everything we hear and see without discrimination.  It is up to the "left brain" to make sense of the images we collect, to connect them to something we already know, and to derive meaning, or to make sense of, and to "name" what we are seeing.

Perhaps this process is the meaning behind Adam's experience of naming the animals in the Garden of Eden.  Whatever he called them, that was their name (Gen. 2:19).  So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air, and all the beasts of the field.

Whatever we call things, that is our reality.  We are made in such a way that we live in a world we "name," or make sense of.  The right brain does not "name" things; it accepts them.  So it stands to reason that if we can shut down the left brain -- prevent, or slow down, reflection -- we can re-shape reality through images imprinted on the right brain.

In The Art of Changing the Brain, by James Zull, the author graphically illustrates what I mean here.  Zull shows (p.144) a photograph of the visual cortex --part of the brain-- which has been cut out of a monkey who was euthanized while gazing at a picture of a half-wheel with spokes.  One look at the visual cortex taken from the dead monkey is enough to convince anyone that, as Zull says, "the visual world is literally and physically mapped in our brains."  Imprinted on the cortex are active brain cells arranged in a geometric pattern that converge in the center, just like the image of the half-wheel the monkey was seeing just before it died.

Zull goes on to explain that teaching is the "art of directing and supporting reflection [--or "naming"] the meaning of the images we see.  Part of being human is the ability to make sense of our world -- and once someone like Einstein, for example, 'names,' or makes sense of what we are seeing, we can all build upon, use, and extend the meaning he has named. 

Once we remove reflection, or learning, or naming, from the process of seeing, then it falls to other people to make sense of our worlds -- to "name" and to "define" reality for us.  Here is the danger of television, especially for young children.  There is no time to process, to reflect upon, and to make sense of one image after another, interrupted with powerful images and sounds of commercials, so the child becomes passive, rather than reflective.  The child is not, like Adam, "naming" reality for himself, making sense of what he is experiencing.  Someone else is naming his world for him. 

What we have created is a passive society:  tell me what to think, and I'll think that!  We have implanted images upon images without reflection.  If you doubt what I say, I invite you to notice what happens the next time you go to bed immediately after watching your favorite tv show.  Upon waking the next morning, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that your brain immediately goes back to the tv show, mulling it over, reflecting on what you've seen, processing it until you can make sense of it in your own mental framework. 

By our physiology, we are driven to reflect, to make sense of the images we take in.  That process is best supported through reading and language, rather than by stuffing in more images before we have named the first ones.  We are not made to watch tv, but as adults, we are able to handle it better than children, partially because we have already "named" our world and made sense of it.  Do we want tv producers and advertisers to define for our children what the world means?