simply diverted into ensuring that you live to fight another day.
This is not the same thing as saying that all stress is bad for
you. On the contrary, without the challenge on which your brain
also thrives, you simply would not grow and evolve. Nevertheless,
few people find it easy to think about complex issues when they are
staring disaster in the face. For effective learning to take place there
needs to be a balance between high challenge and low threat.
Think back over the last 24 hours. What have you consciously explored? What new
connections or conclusions have you made? How have you categorized the things that have
happened to you recently? What have you admired and who was doing it? Might you imitate
them? Think of all the ways in which you make sense of the world around you, the links you
make in your everyday life, the way you process and “file” experiences, and the capacity you
have for learning by copying others. Have you been under undue stress recently? Or was the
balance of threat and challenge such that you enjoyed the experience?
Brain or mind?
So far so good with respect to the brain. But is brain the same as
mind?
There has long been uncertainty about this. In the seven-
teenth century, René Descartes argued that the mind and body were
completely separate, joining in the pineal gland. Against the back-
ground of this kind of dogmatic view, it was hardly surprising that,
in the nineteenth century, Thomas Hewitt Key was able to puzzle:
“What is mind? No matter. What is matter? No mind.”
Most people would agree that, while brain and mind are
often used interchangeably, they do not mean exactly the same.
Isolated from its body, a brain is just that, not a mind. Yet, if we are
asked where our mind is, most of us point to our head. Does mind
describe the larger functions, while brain tends to be used to
describe the neural circuitry? Are our emotions and values part of
our mind? Where do our values and beliefs come in?
This sort of question does not have any simple answers. But
it seems clear that “mind” is somehow a more inclusive term than
“brain.” For me, the simplest way of describing a mind is:
Unpacking Your Mind 21
