Three Brains are No Better Than One

So as you know, everyone has three brains. What? You didn't know this? It's true. Apparently evolution thought it was best to do a series of add-ons onto the brain as circumstances dictated, rather than scrap a whole brain and start from scratch. And so it is that we, as humans, have had at least two Extreme Brain Makeovers in our journey from the primordial mud til now.

The result is three levels of brain:
1. The primitive reptile brain that controls very base mechanical things like breathing, self-preservational impulses, like hunger, and rudimentary desires like killing.

2. The layer over this, the cortex, is our animal or mammal brain. Basically, anything your cat can feel, you can feel too.

3. The final layer stretched over the cortex are your frontal lobes, or neo-mammalian brain. These lobes are why you see the world the way you do, and not like your cat does. Apparently our human brain has evolved so that we can take in all the vast visual information that the world is constantly shooting out at us, send it to our frontal lobes which then decide which aspects of what we are seeing are important and interprets what they mean, and then send that information back up to our conscious self. It's the reason humans have such things as "inattentional blindness," which is the ability not to see something that's right in front of us, merely because our subconscious mind has decided that it's not important enough to bug our conscious mind with. That's the reason why early South Americans never saw the Spanish galleons on the ocean's horizon - there was no reason to. Face it, there's enough going on without having to know exactly how many toothpicks hit the floor. Life gets too confusing without a filter. At least that's how evolution sees it.

Also, our human brain, while taking away some of the individual trees, gives us instead an ability to see the whole forest. We have built-in Big Picture thinking. This is also why we are at liberty to have so many more neuroses than animals do. Our big lobes are obsessed with ordering the world and finding patterns in things, which all amount to a sense of Meaning. Or not. Which is our source of frustration and neurosis. How much easier would life be, if we only had our animal brain still.

So maybe you're not conscious of these divisions of mind. Or maybe, like me, you are, and it's making life even more confusing for you. This has all been the preface to my current crisis, which I will outline here.

CRISIS OUTLINED BELOW
Okay, so I'm seeing This Guy. Yes, apparently he is my boyfriend. This is what he has been telling his friends, and so this is what I am starting to tell my friends too. Now don't ask what all these labels mean - "boyfriend," "girlfriend," "relationship," etc. I don't have a clue, and neither does he, and whenever we talk about it, it just gets even more confusing. Apparently you can put two really smart people together in a room to talk about the obvious, and nothing but chaos emerges out of the ruins of semantics. Whatever. For the sake of argument, we'll pretend that everyone has a definition of "boyfriend," "girlfriend," relationship," and "love," that is more or less consistent.*

* Footnote: This is a big problem with big human brains, by the way. Animal brains don't give a crap about definitions; things just are what they are and so why obsess about it. Does my cat care whether I am biologically his "mother" or whether I am more of a best friend, or a caretaker, or what any of those things mean or imply about our relationship, present or future? No. My cat just likes it when I'm around and he can sit on my lap. It makes him Happy. And what's wrong with that?

With that in mind, let's say that I have a boyfriend, and that it's This Guy. Let's even say I love him, and he loves me. Whatever that means. Again, let's not get hung up too much on semantics, cause then we wind up with forty seven different words for snow, and it's all just the same semi-frozen water anyway.

Sounds good so far, doesn't it?

Yes. Well. It does. It feels good too. Except for the times it feels scary. See, I'm at an age now where my animal brain (remember that from the top of the page?) is coming into open conflict with my human brain, and I don't know who to trust anymore.

What's the source of this conflict?

To be blunt: I'm afraid of kids.

Well, my human brain is afraid of kids. My animal brain has been more or less silent on the subject for the last 35-odd years. But now, the animal brain rears its ugly head. Somewhere buried under my carefully tended and cultivated Identity and Ego, are these strange foreign impulses. My human self is terrified of children, terrified of what they would mean to my identity, my future, my bankbook, my carefree lifestyle, my ambition, my life-work, my sex drive, my body, my soul. But also just terrified of them in general, as tiny people whose impulses I don't understand, and whose fragility and dependence are frightening. You know. No biggie.

My animal brain, on the other hand, doesn't think these things through. Doesn't see The Big Picture, like my human brain does. My animal brain just knows it feels good when The Guy is around. Particularly when he is around naked. Animal brain reeeeally likes the way he smells. Animal brain feels things in ways that seem completely foreign to Human brain, and because Animal brain is becoming so loud about it lately, I can actually sense Animal brain responding to chemical signals in The Guy.

This becomes a problem only because here's Human Brain, making its Big Picture calculations, and doing what it does - obsessing over things like, "how will this relationship ever really work out?" and "maybe I should just give him up now, while I still feel happy," and "maybe he's too young/neurotic/unreliable/unfeeling cylon for me, and maybe I need somebody different in my life," - and then there's Animal Brain, who is simply and powerfully attracted to something in him, something invisibly underneath the surface.

A friend once described hearing her future husband's voice for the first time. She said the sound, "vibrated her ovaries." Now that's pure Animal Brain response.

I can't help noticing how my own Animal Brain is responding primally to something chemical in The Guy. Something about him vibrates my ovaries (and has, co-incidentally enough, since the first time I heard his voice. Truthfully, it still happens EVERY time I hear his voice). And that's a very disturbing realization for Human Brain to make.

Is that all that Lust is? Just a manifestation of Animal Brain, and therefore an uncomfortable intrusion into our Big Picture Human Brain world? Is Animal Brain therefore stupider - or smarter - than Human Brain?

Even worse - is what I perceive to be my intellectual (and therefore very human) attraction to The Guy all just an illusion? Is it all just smoke and mirrors created by chemical signals sent out to confuse my Human Brain long enough for my Animal Self to curl up under his ribcage and nest there long enough to make a genetic match?

Is my Animal Self out to destroy my Human Self? And who will win? Can they ever just get along? Is Human Desire and Aspiration futile against Animal Lust?

These and other questions to be continued...after my reptile brain stops panic mode. Fight or flight! Fight or flight! I can't decide! Help, other Humans! Help!

Chasing her own tail,

- Falcon

Suicidal Comedy

Once again, I can't claim this as my own, although I'd like to. This is straight from The Guy's mouth.

He says, "I've been thinking of writing a song that starts with, 'whenever I want to kill myself...' or uh, 'when I need a reason not to kill myself, I uh...' well, that's as far as I've got."

Well, when you think of a reason not to kill yourself, Guy, let me know. We really do like having you around.

Woof woof.
- Falcon

Painful Past

So he says to me the other day, he says, "I was talking to a friend of mine about the upside of relationships, and the thing is, I can't find one. As far as I can see, there is no upside to being in a relationship."

"Really." I say, and continue as if I'm speaking to a bright kid who is new to this country. "Hmmm... that's funny, cause for me, I find there are a lot of benefits to us spending time together. For me the upside is a) companionship, b) affection, c) sex, d) emotional support, e) a reason to make a fruit salad from scratch in the morning, f) someone to cozy up to while watching Battlestar Galactica, g) a reason to learn something new, like what the hell basketball is all about, etc. etc. For me, there are a great many upsides to a relationship."

"Hmmm..." he says. "That's the funny thing. I mean, those are all upsides, definitely. And really, there is no downside to hanging out with you. But that's why it's not like a real relationship."

What the hell happened to that boy? That's what I wonder.
- Falcon