Trust me, I'm a brain

I had assumed, when I started noticing my unconscious thoughts, that I’d be listening in on a single voice, perhaps a cosy audiobook read by Stephen Fry. Not only am I wrong about the tone (my thoughts are better imagined in the voice of Christopher Walken), but I’ve wildly misinterpreted the size of the industry. My inner monologue is an empire incorporating a film studio, up to the minute news feeds, Twitter, magazines on every issue from current affairs (The Economist) through to specialised interests (Dogs Today). 

There is an ongoing radio show in my head  called “Expert Opinion” featuring one stuffy academic who performs vast speeches on their specialised subjects. These subjects include any source that strings two “facts” together in my head, including David Attenborough documentaries, Reddit and Stephen King novels. Their favourite word is “actually.”

There is a whole social media conglomerate whose sole purpose is to produce sick burns and exit lines after the fact. My brain liked Linkedin so much, it installed it wholesale in my head, with a constant stream of information about all the rungs on the career ladder I could have taken, how everyone else is doing, and what I should have been working on for the last 10 years.

A news forecast delivers glaring headlines on disasters that might occur, or are furtively occurring in the other room. 

“Partner Slips on Extension Cable! Tragic Window Plummet!” 

“Fridge Door Left Ajar! Chicken Breasts in Peril!”

This newspaper is one of the largest features in my brain. Its big business is assessing upcoming risks and forecasting the worst.

“Heart to Heart with Annie: 5 Ways This Conversation Leads to Disaster…just like that faux pas in 2002. Is this the end of friendship?”

In some ways, this thought stream makes sense. With a good analysis of the past we can make astute decisions about what will happen in the future, and start moving our chess pieces to ensure the best possible outcomes, right?

Our brains are not designed to make plans based on a photo realistic portrait of the past. When the brain is making decisions about what will happen next based on what happened before, it doesn’t call up those golden, lingering evenings on the beach drinking beer out of the bottle. The brain (specifically the amygdala) is interested in red flags, the moments of risk or failure. It takes a stern look at what’s coming up and assesses it for anything remotely similar to our past disasters and then goes to work. This is why we don’t tend to linger on the Sunday puppy cuddle party, but double down on the Monday “attend at 9am sharp, yours sincerely” HR meeting. Because this is where the danger is. 

But being ready for danger is important, right?

The amygdala isn’t an emergency broadcast system

“STORM FORCE WINDS 50/55, HIGH TO ROUGH SEAS WITHIN 20 NM RADIUS OF THE CENTRE. OVER.”

It’s a newshound. Its job is to notice danger and then talk about it constantly, until an even worse headline comes along. It’s being paid by the square inch. Our unconscious thoughts are true in the way that the Daily Mail shows a true state of the world. Disaster keeps us focused on the content that can (sometimes) get us killed, and it sells papers. As much as it wants to protect us, the brain also has a vested interest in keeping our attention.

And bad news is addictive. We keep buying into the thoughts, because if we stop, we might miss something that will get us killed, or embarrassed at Eva’s baby shower. But the amygdala gives us a skewed view of our lives. The headline is never 

“Why the Whole of Next Week Will Go Swimmingly. Surprise Cake?”

Shocker that we start waking up feeling like Ripley, in Aliens. Some H.R.Giger shit went down yesterday, it’s going to happen today too and we have a pulse rifle at the ready.

How much is it helping us, wandering around the flat with a subconscious pulse rifle in the morning? Making porridge becomes difficult without shooting a hole in the floor. People tend to respond to us weirdly, even when the safety catch is on.

The amount of time that is actually useful for us to prepare for danger is shockingly small. Even in the case where difficulty is assured, looming out of the mists of Monday morning, there is little we can do to prepare. Worrying isn’t preparation because it doesn’t produce functioning products, like a sword, or a slideshow presentation of why we are right (with diagrams). Even the rehearsal; where we practice our dialogue in an upcoming conflict is always wasted when we reach the dreaded moment and Susan locks her pitiless gaze onto us, derailing our carefully prepared argument with a curveball:

“Don’t sweat it. In other news, I’m moving to Honolulu.”

Or worse, 

“I didn’t even notice.”

We can’t prepare for a conversation when we only know half of the dialogue. We are working overtime to produce complicated glass funnels and flasks for a situation that ends up requiring a shovel. Over and over again.

Humans are exceptionally good at improvising. When a situation comes at us out of the blue like a belligerent cow galloping from the mist, our brain quiets, our sense of time shrinks to the moment. We raise our hiking sticks and shout, the picture of calm assurance, sending the beast back into the fog. We are great in the moment. Whole parts of our nervous system are designed to switch into action mode in under a second, powering the muscles, raising the heart rate and even in some cases giving us super strength, the ability to lift cars and punch out evil henchmen. Even in conversation our ability to listen, pivot and respond is on point. The brain wants us to believe that we can’t trust ourselves on the spot. History, even our personal history overwhelmingly shows otherwise.

We cannot protect our future selves by worrying about them. All we are doing is teaching ourselves to be distracted in the now instead of being aware. As it stands, when the future we are worrying about becomes the present, we will absent mindedly lean on a tiger while worrying about the next bit of the future and be eaten. The big secret that the brain is obscuring? The only way to succeed at the present (which is to say all the future moments that become the present) is to be in the present. It’s the only place where shit gets done, and if we live there instead of tuckering ourselves out worrying, we’ll be a lot less exhausted and infinitely more focused when the shit hits the fan. 

Getting good at the present involves being in the present. Who knew?

Why, when it is clear that our unpractised selves are capable of handling about 80% of the chaos coming our way, is the brain insistent on micromanaging?

The brain is like a huge public service sector. It started out with the best of intentions, but the industry has grown monstrous. While it does still serve the common good (us), it also serves a tribe of spoiled millionaires who have grown attached to their gold plated helicopters and have their eye on a private island. The end goal of the brain is to have us entangled in this web of media soundbites at all times, with only brief moments of presence to avoid skin burns and traffic collisions. If we realise that most of our future problems were best managed by simply showing up and not worrying in advance, the brain would lose business. Elon Musk isn’t interested in a new way of doing things that involves him fetching the tea and working 2 days a week.

No one wants to imagine their brain as Elon Musk. Instead, perhaps imagine the crisis management system of the brain as John Wick (not the delightful Keanu Reeves but the grim action hero he plays). There are times where John Wick will save your life. He operates fantastically in situations where everyone is trying to shoot him, or in meetings where it’s appropriate to interpret your host's expression as an instruction to lop your own finger off as a sign of fealty. Less appropriate is John Wick attending Eva’s baby shower. He brings the mood down, his present is dangerous and he treats the popping of balloons as an excuse to empty a pistol into the wall. 

If we don’t want to end up on the “special” table with angry Uncle Bob and the kid who bites everyone, we need to learn how to stand down our action brain.