THE VAIN BRAIN
Everyone has a vain brain.
It embelishes, enhances and aggrandises us.
It excuses our faults and failures, or simply rewrite them out of history.
It sets us up on a pedestal above our peers.
But do you know?
These positive illusions are in fact essential to us.
Without a little deluded optimism, we might start doubting our very existence.
Failure is perhaps the greatest enemy of the ego,
and that is why the vain brain does its best to barricade the door against this unwanted guest
For instance, when we look back at our failures,
we always tell ourselves that the odds were stacked against us
and that the failure is inevitable.
This is called 'retroactive pessimism' and it makes failure more acceptable.
Memory is one of our ego's greatest allies.
Notice that good things about ourselves tend to secure a firm foothold in the braincells,
while the bad stuff has a habit of losing grasp and slipping away.
not only does memory collude with the brain in the information that it lets in,
but it also controls the information that it lkets out.
All brains contain an enormous database of personal memories that bear on our self concept,
the who-am-i question to ourselves.
This self-concept of ourselves is conveniently shifting, all the time.
Whenever our self-concept we are wearing no longer suits our motives,
the brain simply slips into something more comfy.
What happens is that the vain brain cells in us,
calls in memory to make sure that the most attractive self-cncept fits.
The vain brain's most powerful protectorate is reasoning,
When our ego is under attack,
we tend to spend a great deal of effort trying to cross-examine what went wrong.
As with anything that threatens our egos, we push our standards for evidence that might challenge our rosy beliefs absurdly high.
thinking now that our vain brain is deceiving?Think again.
There are people in this world whose vain brains are least active.
For them, they get unusually close to the truth about themselves and the world.
Their self-perceptions are more balanced and they can assign responsibility for success and failure more even-handedly, and their predictions for the future is more reaslistic.
They are usually the clinically depressed.
_____________________________________
Everyone has a vain brain.
It embelishes, enhances and aggrandises us.
It excuses our faults and failures, or simply rewrite them out of history.
It sets us up on a pedestal above our peers.
But do you know?
These positive illusions are in fact essential to us.
Without a little deluded optimism, we might start doubting our very existence.
Failure is perhaps the greatest enemy of the ego,
and that is why the vain brain does its best to barricade the door against this unwanted guest
For instance, when we look back at our failures,
we always tell ourselves that the odds were stacked against us
and that the failure is inevitable.
This is called 'retroactive pessimism' and it makes failure more acceptable.
Memory is one of our ego's greatest allies.
Notice that good things about ourselves tend to secure a firm foothold in the braincells,
while the bad stuff has a habit of losing grasp and slipping away.
not only does memory collude with the brain in the information that it lets in,
but it also controls the information that it lkets out.
All brains contain an enormous database of personal memories that bear on our self concept,
the who-am-i question to ourselves.
This self-concept of ourselves is conveniently shifting, all the time.
Whenever our self-concept we are wearing no longer suits our motives,
the brain simply slips into something more comfy.
What happens is that the vain brain cells in us,
calls in memory to make sure that the most attractive self-cncept fits.
The vain brain's most powerful protectorate is reasoning,
When our ego is under attack,
we tend to spend a great deal of effort trying to cross-examine what went wrong.
As with anything that threatens our egos, we push our standards for evidence that might challenge our rosy beliefs absurdly high.
thinking now that our vain brain is deceiving?Think again.
There are people in this world whose vain brains are least active.
For them, they get unusually close to the truth about themselves and the world.
Their self-perceptions are more balanced and they can assign responsibility for success and failure more even-handedly, and their predictions for the future is more reaslistic.
They are usually the clinically depressed.
_____________________________________