Wasted Resource

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It’s interesting how seminal research can have such far-reaching impact on society including its future decisions and beliefs. Unfortunately, these impacts are not always positive. This isn’t meant to discredit the work of early pioneers but rather to call into question our capacity to think critically when applying the conclusions of such research into practice.

Matthew Stewart’s book “Myth of Management” represents a full-frontal attack on many of the business management principles and tools emanating out of our Nation’s prestigious business schools. If these tools and principles have their fingerprints on the behaviors of our banking and equity sectors, these schools should lose their accreditation. Then there’s Alfred Binet’s Intelligence Quotient, the ugly metric that is used to separate the “special” people from the masses. Stephen Jay Gould’s book “The Mismeasure of Man” offers an effective critique of this metric, including the statistical science behind it, which was ignored by Gould and his disciples, yet effectively discredits the metric as a valid tool. Maybe there is more than one kind of intelligence? Who would have “thunk it”; maybe the rest of society who walks around with their eyes open?

This brings me to the topic of this post, and the underlying theme of this blog, the value of people living in their second adulthood. If you follow the work of Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson, you would be lead to believe that the brains of our mature population are on the decline, beginning from the age of mid-twenties onward. When discussing the mental health of our mature population, the discussion is couched in terms of decline and its connection with the various maladies of aging. Our older population needs to be taken care of as if it is de-evolving to its origin, helpless children. Maybe it’s because of my age, but the attitude and behavior of our society towards older people sickens me.

It appears that our beliefs about the aging brain are going through a complete rethinking. Gene Cohen, MD writes in his book “The Mature Mind” that research verifies that our brain continues to regenerate itself through our later years. Yes, that’s right! As we get older, research proves that our brains continue to generate new cells, neurons and synapses. In fact, brain scans show that the brains of older people are denser due to expanded dendrites, extensions to the branches of our nerve cells, which reach out and send information to other brain cells. Our brains are denser because we have experienced and learned more over our longer lives on this planet. The good news continues; various motor skills such as talking are relegated to the left brain of younger people yet are performed by both hemispheres of the brain by older people. Maybe because of our life experiences, we realize the importance of thinking with our right brain before we open our mouth with the left brain; interesting. Cohen refers to the higher development intelligence of older people including their Relativistic Thinking (situational based thinking), Dialectical Thinking (suspending judgment and simultaneously holding onto mutually exclusive views) and Systematic Thinking (seeing the forest for the trees).

So, here is what I think. As we enter our second adulthood, we need to work hard to nourish our regenerative brains. Sure, we can reinforce the opinions of the unenlightened by letting our brains and bodies decline due to poor eating and exercise habits (physical and mental). Or, we can thumb our noses at all who are prematurely writing our epitaphs by continuing to shine in our later lives, professionally, intellectually and socially. If you really think about it, our brains may not be able to process a mathematical problem as quickly as a younger brain, but we sure as Hell can think more deeply and broadly. In this world, this later skill is definitely needed.

#Brain #Intelligence