The Brain

So today I was having a pretty good discussion with a co-worker about consciousness, awarness of an afterlife, and reality perception in general. I came up with a little ditty that I have taken quite a liking to. Human beings were the first species on the planet to have such a large brain, with an enormous frontal lobe giving us the capacity to do what most other species cannot: think rationally. Of course, the speculation over the term "rational" need not apply; it is intended to encompass the ideas of self awareness, reality perception, and others. It is simply meant to describe the abilities that our higher brain gives us over other species.

[See the wrinkes? It evolved from being strictly involved with sensory information, to more powerful integration of sensation, and added all the storage space, and more.]

Anyways, having this powerful brain has allowed us to view things out of the typical biological scheme of things. We no longer just rely on instincts and sensory input. Our brains have wrapped these faithful old devices in a sheath of right and wrong, good and evil, etcetera etcetera. Wherein the animals below us simply get the food they need for survival, we have concocted a way for this to be difficult. We have developed into a species that has the ability to do anything imaginable by using the brain. We are able to lengthen life spans, create means of faster transportarion enabling easy global travel, we have even sent two space probes trillions of miles past the edge of the solar system to outer fucking space. It is unbelievable what humans have accomplished on Earth.

Yet, this same gift is the root of so many problems. Before the adaptation of the advanced brain there were no problems of this nature. Life and death ruled as a duet. There were no quandries over the death penalty, abortion, drug usage, cannabalism, serial murderers, genocide, money, and the like. The only competition between individuals was for food, mates, and in a few cases power, [which really had to do with mating anyways.] Also, the development of the social infrastructure spawned many new problems a purely biological species would never have to deal with, such as the things mentioned above, plus more.

Damnit, I was planning on adding a few aspects to this, but I have to be in physics lab in a few minutes. Essentially what I was after is that the human brain is just a contradictory machine here. Think of mental illnesses. A serial killer has something wrong with his/her brain. This is a problem found with the addition of volume to the thinking regions of the brain. Think about it - the more parts a machine has, the more likely something is going to break. Crap I thought this post was going to be more rounded out and have more of a point. But if you think about it you'll get it.