Why do we have Two Brains?

Why is the Cerebral Cortex Split in Two?

There are several existential questions we need to ask ourselves
as to why we each walk around with two brains housed inside a single head

Why are two cerebral cortex's necessary for our survival?
Do both brains experience the same perception of reality?
If not, what is the basic function of each brain?
How do we process information?
How do we consciously access both brains?
Which side of the brain engages us in dreams?
Why do we dream?
How important are the answers to these questions?


If we can determine the precise evolutionary purpose underlying the need for having two brains
can we, then, evaluate the survival advantages of two separate modes of perception in a more comprehensive manner than we do at present.?


From that position of knowledge we may be able to redefine the enigmatic dynamic of the human psyche – of being both objectively analytic and subjectively intuitive at one and the same time. - and thereby devise and introduce an entirely new methodology designed for a more holistic dual brain education - and in doing so - improve our intelligence and the ethical quality of our lives.


What Science does know about the two brains

Anatomically, we know from split-brain research that the left side of the cortex controls the motor reflexes of the right side of the body and processes mental perception analytically and that the right hemisphere handles the left motor reflexes and is the source of intuitive insights.

Left and Right Brain Modes of Perception

Intellect - intuition
Convergent - divergent
Digital - analogic
Secondary - primary
Abstract - concrete
Directional - free
Propositional - imaginative
Analytic - relational
Lineal - non lineal
Rational - intuitive
Sequential - multiple
Analytic - holistic
Objective - subjective
Successive - simultaneous
J.E.Bogen
"Some Educational Aspects of Hemispheric Specialization "
in UCLA Education 1972

Though not conclusive there is some validity to the argument that the left and rights sides of the brain respectively represents the masculine and feminine principles of the individual psyche

Here are some insights from the I Ching or Book of Changes

Yin - yang
Feminine - masculine
Negative - positive
Moon - sun
Darkness - light
Yielding - aggressive
Left side - right side
Cold - warm
Autumn - spring
Unconscious - conscious
Emotion - reason


After examining data from his split-brain experiments neurosurgeon Professor Sperry made the following statement:

"The main theme to emerge is that there appear to be two modes of thinking, verbal and non-verbal, represented rather separately in left and right hemispheres respectively, and that our education system, as well as science in general tends to neglect the non-verbal form of intellect. What it comers down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere."

Roger W. Sperry
"Lateral Specialization of Cerebral Function
in Surgically Separated Hemispheres" 1973


In the forty years since wining the Novel Prize for Sperry's work on the two brains, neither the State nor private educational systems has done anything about that warning from the Nobel Prize laureate and tried to correct the imbalance. The main reason why is because nobody as yet has explained exactly what the value of intuitive input is or even why the brain is split into two separate modes of perception in the first place. Consequently nobody is certain how to devise the exact right brain exercises that could correct the imbalance.

One of Sperry's disciples, Dr. Betty Edwards, devised a system of simple drawing exercises designed to excite the right brain into creative expression. She achieved almost instant success with all her beginner art students within a few weeks they progressed from initial childish sketches to astonishing minor master pieces. Since then her book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" has sold several million copies and remains a perennial best seller

So we know, at least, that the right brain is home to artistic perspective and that with a little stimulus it responds positively and beneficially.

But we still do not know exactly how valuable or how vital that input is - not just in terms of encouraging a more holistic conscious development - but also in terms of how the output of both brains working in harmony could improve the general level of the human intelligence quotient and social behavior in particular

In the next segment
I will post a visual exercise that clearly reveals left/right brain conflict
You can then decide how serious this disconnect is
and whether you want to correct it

Please fell free to comment.

to be continued.....

Alien Abduction

Imagine your first sight
of your birth site
the moment you left the womb

Staring up in an operating theater
Blinding light
back-lighting masked faces
looming in and out of the shadows above you
pairs of eyes
staring down
unloving fingers
poking and prodding
cold instruments pricking

and we have a recollected infant vision of a hospital birth
indelibly imprinted on consciousness
one that resurfaces years later
and more or less mirrors the same negative discription of an alien abduction
many thousands of "abductees" attest to

This is one of the reasons why a natural birth
in a natural environment home
is essential

Galileo and the Prodigal Son

The wisdom underlying
both the scientific retraction forced upon Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church
as well as the basic psychology underlying the parable of the Prodigal Son
has been entirely lost in translation by our culture

Galileo [b][i]had[/i][/b] to be rebuffed
not because he was disbelieved by the intelligentsia of his time
who were all educated members of the Roman Church
but because of far wider implications than simply under-mining the authority of the Pope
and refuting the religious teachings of the Holy Bible

Galileo's discoveries also challenged the credibility and investment
of a vast world-wide mission-based educational infrastructure
that had taken 1500 years to install
one that had sent out thousands of learned scribes
to educate tens of millions of illiterate peasants
graduated whole tribes out of an antiquated oral-based system of instruction
putting an end to an entire Bronze Age of contentiously conflicting totemic idiosyncrasies
and clannish feuding
replacing it with a formalized Iron Age standard of literate development
and religious disciplines
essential to formulation and government of national industries of thought and application

It is upon this primary school base of education
established by organized Religions
that the High School of Science
has evolved and flourished

Even now
five hundred years later
the Religious system of education is not yet quite finished
with literate goals it originally set out to achieve

The wisdom underlying the parable of the Prodigal Son
and rejection of an authoritarian Father
while gambling away his inheritance
refers to typical teenage rebellious demands for independence
reckless self determination
pseudo-intellectual political argumentation
and an eventual humble return to responsible ancestral estate management

We can see the biblical parable duplicated
in the scientific rejection of an authoritarian god
its scorn for religious dogma
its wars over political ideologies
its gamble with commodities on the global market
and its bankruptcy into a collapsing environment
forcing us into a humble return
to a religion of responsible stewardship

A Matured Society

An immature society needs a Bible in order to believe in God
Preachers to interpret it
Saviors to idolize
A written Constitution in order to behave lawfully
representatives in order to state their case
leaders to follow and bow before
printed money in order to be motivated to work
and text book instruction on how to raise and educate their children

A mature society graduates beyond all of those childish learning modes
leaves behind all the arguments of interpretation and policing they engender
acknowledges the collective responsibilities and cooperation of a matured society
trusts in the personal honor and integrity of each of their fellow citizens
and relies on its natural evolutionary abilities to navigate successfully
through the adult stages of a Nation's life

not a single person on this planet has ever arrived at adulthood
let alone an entire society
we are all in various stages of evolving maturity
the most advanced societies are teenage protesters
playing Russian roulette with nuclear bombs
and gambling on the market with natural resources
still hellbent on selfish aggrandizement
and to hell with the consequences

all I am espousing is the criteria needed
for us to grow up and become responsible adults
I do believe it must happen eventually
and the sooner the better
we are running out of resources
we may be immature
but we are not stupid

Dissenters are teenagers striving for a necessary transitional state of independent self-awareness
this is best done via self-aggrandizing (aka greedy) competition among their peer group

Adulthood is a state of self-awareness related to a profound understanding
that existence itself is meaningless without compassionate and constructive inter-dependence
that without responsible cooperation and mutual respect among peers
endless competition is no longer creatively productive but also destructive
This state of adult mind is clearly realized as a parent seeking future security for its children
where the welfare of the next generation
is more important than the present one

In an adult state of mind
anarchy is moot
all parents desire precisely the same sharing and caring family values
which are founded on equality of resources and of opportunity

In a society of adult peers
the mind of the parent and that of the State
are one and the same

Freedom. Fraternity and Equality
then become the existential democratic realities of a matured society
not merely the precocious idealistic slogans
of a prior rebellious, self-determinant teenage consciousness

The Failure of Mass Education

Quote:
Yes there is something wrong with the state school system but with both parents working how do you propose people get educated? A babysitter that will plop them in front af a TV for that same 6 hours a day watching soaps. Children do not sit at the side of their parents and learn how to get along in the world, second hand knowledge is better than no knowledge at all..

Maybe you should read my posts on the HeartStart Homeschool program

As stated there
I have eight kids of my own
all schooled via HeartStart
the lowest test score in any subject is B minus

The home environment
kitchen
workshop
home garden
back yard playground
and surrounding nature
is the most healthy school

Parents are natural teachers
the only ones who can give unvarnished personal attention
the only qualification needed
is genuine care in their children's future
encourage them to care
to share equally and meticulously
and insist on a good chore-based work ethic

Once the kids are secure in these basic family values
and home disciplines
and the encouragement by their parents to excel in life
all kids are then naturally smart enough
and caring enough
and motivated enough
to teach themselves academically
by puberty

Now with the internet at hand
professional teachers
and state sponsored indoctrination centers
designed to produce little more than mass production line workers
are redundant

If the state spent all the billions it now spends
on artificial school system
with such dismal results
and sponsors home teaching instead
parents can get on with their real vocation in life
which is looking after their kids
and stop fucking around in corporate offices
or dying of boredom on the production line
this would not only decrease the divorce rate
but also help to reestablish traditional home-based family values
that made America Great in the first place

The economic and political benefits are significant
Besides suddenly creating millions of jobs
for university graduates
by pulling millions of parents out of the job market
and getting rid of unemployment
stay at home parents
will produce a better class of self-policed citizen
with higher moral values
and far more intelligence to boot
which in turn
brings down our crippling law and order expenses

all of which is what Heartstart
and its duel brain system of creative encouragement
is all about

New Age Idealism and Business can work together

Yesterday we put together a large charcoal kiln out of scrap metal, packed it with 40lbs of raw alfalfa and made 10 lbs of biochar. We will mix the charcoal 50/50 with leaf mulch for the spring vegetable garden.

The ratio of biomass to charcoal is even better than I thought
about 4 to 1

In cash terms that means one ton of alfalfa selling at $200 per ton when turned to biochar is worth $1200. (BioChar sells at $70 for a 30 lb bag.) And since the conversion process chars itself with its own released gasses, it costs nothing to produce but a couple of hours of labor - the net profit is almost $1000.
That is more than just a cool deal!
That is as hot as it gets!

We will construct a much bigger kilm soon, also out of scrap but this one with an added compression chamber that can store and redirect the gas releases,

We are currently producing a short video for Utube, which we taped during the initial combustion process we first did in our kitchen. There are plenty of other demo videos out there that show how to make bio-char - but this is the first one that shows the amazing amounts of oil-laden steam, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen gasses trapped inside the raw bio mass - jetting out of the kiln under heat pressure. Enough fuel to char itsekf and then some.

This is probably the most productive way we will ever tap into stored solar energy!
It makes biochar, sequestrates the earth with replaced carbon, fertilizes the soil, grows better crops, and keeps the air and earth clean - all at the same time

The potential that our research foundation might be able at convert our entire valley ecosystem and its $200 million alfalfa agri-business into something far more sustainable
as well as five times more profitable makes the grant application to USDA almost a done deal as well as being a huge advert for the budding bioChar industry in general

There are billions of farm acres that need carbon sequestration as well as masses of excess energy for electricity

This win/win breakthrough on how to change the way we do business here in our own desert eco-system has made me realize more clearly how the whole environmental movement is stalled by the argument between business and idealism and how that can be solved.

In this experiment in Fish Lake Valley we will be showing that eco-management in a sustainable manner can be initiated without business disruption and even allow profits to soar to higher levels than previously imagined

I believe that sustainability without disruption may possibly be achieved in any and all industrialized ecosystems if idealists think more creatively and constructively about the motivational effect of bonuses and profits instead of asking for new taxes and sacrifices.

Idealists talking good business sense will shut up all the bull in Congress and get construction going faster than destruction

THAT, I believe, is the big New Age Deal!

How to Change the World without Sacrifices

I watched the debate on CNN last night re the Copenhagen summit on Global warming

Like always I ended up frustrated listening to the pros and cons

All the proposals for making a better world made obvious sense
The guy who was against it (and whom I was angry with) argued that we are asking poor nations and poor people in general to make sacrifices or pay extra taxes in order to do it - and therefore no matter how good the ideals and no matter how much economic sense it might make in the future, the existential poverty of the present means mass change can never happen.

I had spent the day with the kids doing a successful experiment in converting raw bio-mass (in this case alfalfa) into biochar in order to produce enough biochar to make soil-enrichment samples for planting in the spring. So I went to bed thinking both positively and negatively.

This whole New Age debate about mass change - politically and economically is a war between the hard realities of business as is at present and idealism as it should be - with time running out on all of us

I woke up this morning with the obvious and immediate solution to mass change staring me in the face.

The answer is to forget about taxes and sacrifices and think about bonuses and profits instead.

Pay people more money than they have at present to make significant changes in the way they do bui9sness, making them richer, happier and more motivated while doing it,

Sounds crazy right?
Not at all.

Example No 1.

Black students do more poorly in school than whites
and more end up in juvenile detention and jail

Solution

There is a guy running a private school in Harlem with over a thousand students. He has been paying his senior black students over a 100 bucks a month to keep up full attendance and high grades for the past five years.
He has been accused of bribery which he cheerfully acknowledges
but significantly not of corruption
Net result .he has lifted black scores in all grades in maths and English up to the same level as whites. Previously thought to be impossible. He has achieved 100% graduation results with every student off to college.
New York City is giving him the money and is happy to do so. It costs them $100,000 a year per child in juvenile detention and $60,000 a year for one in jail. The Harlem school has proved to be cheap at the price.

Example No 2
Fish Lake valley
Alfalfa farmers are planting a swamp plant in the desert. In the process they are draining a precious nartural aquifer of all its water The have huge energy needs required to pump the water for irrigation. And poisoning the soil with insecticides

Solution
We pay the farmers more for their alfalfa than they are currently getting ($200 per ton)

We then convert their crop into BioChar (worth $700, per ton)
on the condition that they use half the biochar ( we sell the other half to pay for it all) to improve their soil and gradually change crops to planting more sustainable corn and fruit orchards which require far less water and energy use.

If that kind of thinking is positive in those two entirely different examples of a mass change of consciousness
I am prepared to bet the farm it can be done so everywhere