It seems to be easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a comment or critique to enter our memory. It’s almost impossible for a human brain to take critique without demanding an explanation or justification. All brains bear a huge database of memorable events that deep inside ask themselves; am I good? Am I noble? Am I valuable? But the concept of oneself is malleable to our convenience and to our situations.

Of all events we have experienced in our lives, our memory remembers—in an edited fashion—those which are most convenient to visualize ourselves the way we want to. In fact, our rational arguments are another great defender of our self-deceiving reasoning, feeding that part of the brain that is sheltered by vanity. It is rather paradoxical that our reasoning, the gray matter of our intelligence, drives us in certain circumstances to move away from reality and truth.

Even Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or groups as the
Hutus or Nazis, looked at themselves as
beings with values that under the oath of
righteousness and virtuosity justified the
atrocities committed. In fact, what to some
is repentance is no more than some kind
of self-indulgence gimmick to assume that they now live in good, that they are indeed, after all, good. The problem is that our brain is not trustworthy, and dedicates itself to work like a personal attorney constantly on the lookout for evidence to exempt us from guilt, rather than to seek the truth as an unbiased jury.

It is quite astonishing that this personal attorney also has the ability to look for “witnesses” to legitimate our cases –identifying books and theories that backup principles and values, such as churches and people that self-proclaim our own language. In summary, our brain is not only entitled to have a tendency to make us believe ourselves superior than average, but that we have been “blessed” by some divine order, with qualities that make us special. The amazing fact is that we are all special, nonetheless. This also leads us to be surrounded by and to spend more time with people that flatter us, accept us and really feel that we are what we would like to see in ourselves.

As if this were not enough, our brain makes us feel that this special manner of being, makes us somehow invulnerable to “statistics” that reflect the “average” of vulnerabilities of “others in life.” For example, we perceive ourselves to be different, different from the rest: “cigarette smoking and alcohol will not hurt us;” “since we are exempted from disease we may undergo unsafe sex;” “our political party is the probable winner;” “Our God and our religion is the true one, therefore we are the chosen ones,” etc., etc., etc. In the end our brain is a great manipulator.

This presents us two morals to the story:
(1) don’t believe everything you think, and
(2) never trust your brain. However, don’t
get mad with your brain for manipulating
your worldview. Actually there are people
that have a better outlook of their place in the
world; people who are overall “more
balanced” about their perceptions. In
general, they are known as “pessimists” and
probably are not as happy. Even though our
self-manipulating brain makes us get sick
less, survive to diseases in an easier way, live
longer and smile more often about life.

The shameful, sad part is that our brain drives us to place responsibility (blame) regarding most of our errors on our fellows and/or the circumstances, like so we repeat the same errors and mistaken patterns intermittently –and sometimes- for life.

Published in Opinión y Análisis

El Universal

January 10^th, 2009