On Brains

While I'm clearly not the most objective judge of matters concerning myself, I would like to think that on the whole I am an averagely normal person. I sleep, I eat, I shower, I drive, I work. Then I drive again, then I eat, maybe I go to the gym, then I sleep again. Oh, I missed an eat in there, after the work part. Then there would be more work after that eat, then back to the second drive. This is getting a bit specific so I'll assume that you get the gist already.

In summary, I do "things". I might make a cup of coffee, stroke the dog (this is not a euphemism, it is a real dog) or even decide to change my t-shirt. I know; I'm a crazy bastard. The part which worries me ever-so-slightly is that I really have no idea how to do any of those things. I can walk down stairs, but I don't know how to walk down stairs, as evidenced by the wobbling that happens if I think about it too hard. I know the basic components and I know how to want to do them enough that they end up happening, but the sheer volume of steps between my choices and the results are gaping chasms of mystery.

The electrical currents that fire the synapses that fire complex entanglements of nerves into action simply to grasp a few fingers around a cup handle are unfathomable to me. That's not even taking into account that in each of those synaptic firings there are whole processes that the cells must go through at the molecular level to allow any of it to happen. That's all before I've even boiled the kettle.

Just by reading this sentence your mind is doing millions of operations that, if it knew about them, would blow itself. It's hardly surprising that science is now revealing that the desire you feel to do things may not be your own; that your brain could have made the decision seconds in advance and sent it your way to perform; a super-villain / henchman relationship in which, I am afraid to say, you are most definitely the bitch. It has long been understood that the body is essentially a message-passing system between your mushy parts and the outside realm; a conduit allowing the real personality inside to operate in the bizarre landscape known as "the big room". Or to keep the explanation classy, like Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ask your grandparents.

But to think of the brain as a parasitic entity, instructing you to take certain actions while doing its own secretive work in the background, and to think that using the very organ whose motivation I am currently questioning, is quite a concern. What if it can hear you reading this? What if mine can hear what I'm writing? If I was it I'd be pretty annoyed at me right now. Perhaps you're not concerned? Then consider the possibility that you have been passed a message commanding you to dismiss it as a concern. True enough, it is enabling me to type all this but perhaps that's what it wants me to do. Am I giving it the excuse it needs?

After all, the mind's work is not always in one's best interest. Just take its well-established trend of playing terrible tricks, especially when it has some extra juice to play with while you are idly watching television, driving a well-known route, washing dishes or - deity help you - playing Angry Birds. Thoughts are constantly being formed and tumbled, covering all kinds of topics that you may not be interested in. But your brain is interested in them and that's really all that matters. Some of these thoughts will buoy to the surface, bringing with them a net benefit as you end up working through a problem or coming to a satisfying conclusion about an event in your life. Some of them, on the other hand, could send you crazy. These might mould themselves into dreams and get you while you sleep or simply pop into your head in the middle of a mundane task and make you analyse them in ways you never wanted to.

You are a captain, convinced he is at the helm when in fact he has been drugged, locked in a cupboard and is actually sitting in his own filth, happily navigating on a toy wheel.

On Platitudes

My next admission isn't a traditional - or even intuitive - way to convince anyone reading to continue doing so, but it's one that leads to my point and so I must take it: I am not the world's greatest communicator; I'm not even sure I'm a decent one.

I'll stumble through the smaller talk of a social situation until the participants are inebriated enough to tolerate each other's actual opinions and frequently I'll have prepared myself in a similarly alcoholic fashion. So while the meaty portion of a conversation can find my teeth firmly embedded in it, the beginning and end cause me particular bother in the Awkwardness Department. Or maybe it's the Department of Awkward? Whichever sounds the most awkward.

My problem is that there's simply no creativity in our regular greetings - everything is another repetition of the evolutionary processes we use to say "we're both people and we're both here" and then, some time later say "I'm going over there and you're not". You'd think we'd have dispensed with these language constructs after millennia of using them ad infinitum; not to move past basic politeness, but for everyone to have recognised that they are unneccessary in order to begin talking.

I wouldn't say I'm anti-social, but I like to avoid these cringe-worthy conventions wherever possible. My goal is normally achieved by turning up in the middle of a pre-existing conversation and jumping on the groundwork laid by people who have already spat out enough trite phrases to get them somewhere meaningful. I'm not particularly proud of that, but the Internet allows me to be even worse as when it comes to initiating communication, if my would-be conversational partner is not able to witness my decision to not contact them, I probably won't do it.

Just look at the anguish even a basic note would cause - for starters, I'd have to waste a whole paragraph on "hello" (or variety thereof), a word whose definition truly escapes me - perhaps it is Latin for "insert something more useful here". I'd probably move onto a bog standard "how are you?" so broad in scope that any value is diluted away. I may even choose not to ask the question at all and instead "hope" that "everything is all right" with them. After all, why would I want my expectations of their perfect life to be challenged by any facts that may arise?

After a clumsy segue into the main content of the message and an equally weak exit from it, I would be forced to make the obvious suggestion that the recipient may like to respond to me, and that if they did I would appreciate them having taken the time that it had taken them. By sending them something in the first place I am purposefully interrupting them so unless they or I happen to be a sociopath (and I'm not ruling it out), it is something so obvious that to highlight it is pure, uncut redundancy at its most redundant-est.

Having said all of that, if the use of platitudes was a felony, I would be typing this from a maximum security wing of Her Majesty's least fine establishment. Well, it would either be there or just before I was caught, trying to spell it out in my own semen on the floor of a secluded cottage in the woods. It's my hypothetical arrest scenario, I'll do as I please. Then again, if I were locked up I wouldn't need to use it anymore as I would surely have been sacked with haste. Especially after it came out what I'd done to the laminated tiles in some unlucky family's holiday home.

For it is the formality required in business that trots out the Three Tiers of Regards. There are your regular common-or-garden "Regards", your gracious "Kind Regards" and my favourite, at the top of the hierarchy; "Best Regards". The best regards, that is. Better than anyone else's, and probably the most genuine you have ever been given. If you receive an email from someone and they haven't written "Best Regards", you must consider it a slap in the face. That person didn't care about what they were sending (and by extension you), and so provided sub-par regards. Whatever a regard is, anyway.

It's all pretty meaningless, but without this framework we seem unable to communicate; without it, what would we lose? I don't have the answer. Maybe in a few generations' time language will have mutated as to make platitudes redundant. Perhaps they would be replaced with a series of simple facial indicators, or a limb- or digit-based gesturing system that turns out to be even less efficient. But for now, this all I can say:

Best Regards,
Man Write Words