Charisma - Personal Myths

Chapt. 10 -- Page. 2
"PERSONAL MYTHS"

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Each of us lives within our own personal myth that is made up of the things that we believe and of our own view of ourselves. Some of it is derived from the myths that our parents lived with, and part of it is composed of the social myths of our time. An oft repeated myth is that we only use 10% of our brain. This is stated as though implying 10% of its physical cubic size. It is closer to reality if we accept that we use only 10% of its capabilities. In many cases there are examples of people who have far exceeded 'normal' expectations in single areas. It is though they have radically pushed back the boundaries of the normal.

I heard my young son's friend ask his father why it was that oil refineries often had a tall stack with flames pouring from the top. He was told that it was because the oil company had not made a sufficient number of barrels to hold the oil that had been pumped up, so the oil had to be burned as they could not stop the flow. ??? Almost 12 years later, I heard the then young man repeat the story to his peer group. Whatever the reason the father had for providing that piece of misinformation, is immaterial. It had become part of the lad's personal myth. A part that he was willing to defend because he wanted to believe, and believe in, his father.

Social myths are another barrier between us and truth. For some decades it has been accepted that a richly stimulating environment is beneficial to a child's development. Stimulus encourages the development of the brain, actually affecting its growth. A lively mobile hanging above the cradle, interaction with others, a healthy diet; all go towards setting the child on the path towards eventual maturation; and, hopefully, emotional stability. All quite true.

It is the other side of the coin where truth descends into social myth. The pattern of growth and decay are commonly seen as shown in the diagram, below.

Everybody knows that brain growth continues until the mid twenties then, after the age of thirty slides towards senility. Wrong!

The greatest loss of brain cells comes during the earliest years of development. The overabundance of neurones are culled in much the same way that a seedbed has to be pricked out to allow room for full growth of those that are left. Compared with this earlier weeding out, the loss of brain cells during later life is almost innocuous.

The rate at which an individual loses their mental capabilities after their thirtieth birthday is very much controlled by the individual. It is definitely a case of use it or lose it. People who continue to expand and deepen their interest in the world around them, maintain a large percentage of their brain power until the very end, brain death being coincidental to physical death.

Although [despite the claims of a BUPA advert] we cannot grow new brain cells, there is, in a normally healthy person, no reason why existing neurones cannot continue to put out new connections. The myth is that nobody can soak up new knowledge like a child, and tough luck if you are getting old. Rubbish.

There are several reasons why older people have difficulty with new ideas, new material, but increasing age does not have a lot to do with it. The true reasons are as follows :-

With age comes the problem of unlearning. The longer that we hold onto an idea, the harder it is to let go of it.
Older people are too often isolated from family and society alike. Cut off from social intercourse, they tend to close in on themselves.
Through being neglected, they come to feel unloved and therefore stop caring for themselves.
Because of lack of self-care, and/or diminished economic means, they eat less well than they did. Cheap cuts of meat and stale produce do not supply them with the enriched vitamins that a healthy brain requires to function well.
Because of failing physical health, they are frequently being fed large doses of medication that interfere with higher mental functions. This problem is deliberately accentuated in those rest homes where it is the policy to keep the victims well sedated to avoid the staff being bothered by questions or requests for access to the basic liberties that most of us take for granted.

The dangers of the myth are that, for older people it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; and the young, seeing the old as intellectual basket cases, will unwittingly bar themselves from many years of acquired knowledge, if not wisdom. The young have so much to learn and, to them, it can appear that they are the first persons to ever see these new things. Those sudden insights can be mistaken for a greater intelligence, although this is seldom the case. Knowledge is not the same as intelligence. Like parrots, we can all learn new things without an iota of understanding the meaning of what we have learned

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