Compartmentalization

The human brain is infinitely intriguing and as complex as the cosmos. The question of what makes us tick is in good company along with “what is the meaning of life?” Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Neurosurgeons are making headway (apologies) into the mysterious realm of the mind, but are far from unlocking and fully understanding that odd three pounds of gray matter floating around in our skulls. I am humbly awed at how I can simply type these letters without any real intentional exertion beyond gently willing my fingers to hit the proper key in the proper order to create each word and sentence. Miraculous, really!

Our brains cooked up writing itself 5000 years ago and before that, speech and we haven’t looked back! Those are the two main ingredients of the recipe that allowed us to develop agricultural settlements and form organized cooperative civilizations that, in turn, allowed some in that society to pursue the less physical, more intellectual avenues of governance and organized religion, leaving the hunter/gatherer life to those “less fortunate” living in regions and climes not conducive to the farming culture. This agri-society also gave rise to the warrior class to protect the food producers and said governance.

But that isn’t what I want to write about today. I want to write about another amazing talent the human brain possesses. The brain’s ability to compartmentalize data that is either dramatically conflicting with other data we have already accepted as truth or data simply too horrific to process so that we can go about our lives without losing our minds. We are under a steady onslaught of information our brains have to digest, keep, ignore, believe or discard.

Speaking strictly for me, compartmentalization saves my bacon on a daily basis. I am told by some, for example, that the poor in our country are to blame for our economic woes even as I witness the super wealthy hoarding money in off shore back accounts, shipping blue collar jobs overseas, not paying taxes and at the same time receiving public money in the way of subsidies. What do I do with information like that? It is infuriating and frustrating to me others don’t recognize the glaring cognitive dissonance of such information and rise up and make a stink! Yet as an individual I am powerless. Enter compartmentalization! Voila! Put that insane bit of info in that drawer and forget about it for now. Ahhh…, happy again!

Compartmentalization allows me to enjoy the poetry of Hafiz and simultaneously have murderous thoughts about Dick Cheney. I am able to love and thank providence for our home and garden at the same time knowing both will be underwater in short order and my grandchildren will never know Key West. Compartmentalizing all the horror that is our post-Soviet Union unrestrained-money-is-the-only-thing-that-matters-uber-capitalist-Ayn Randian collective mental illness makes it possible for me to rise everyday and hit the streets and live and love my life instead of acknowledging all the horrors and eating a gun!

As if there isn’t enough bad news, we must contend with the intentional manipulation of data by professional liars, AKA propagandists. The word propaganda dredges up images of Soviet Union May Day displays of military firepower or Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Yes, those are good examples, but there is nothing new about lying to further one’s agenda.  At the precise moment the first human beings figured out how to communicate with their fellows lying was probably not far behind. The famous quote attributed to Goebbels points out the “value” of good propaganda. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Even this quote’s validity has been challenged, but having said that, it still does put into a nutshell the mechanics of quality propaganda.

Our own Republic and “The New World” in general have systematically been fed revisionist misinformation throughout our five hundred plus year history. As we all know history is not written by the vanquished, but the victors. I heartily recommend Howard Zinn’s book, “The People’s History of the United States” for an eye opening read. Zinn focuses on our history from the perspective of the aforementioned vanquished and the “traditionally oppressed”, i.e., women and minorities. Of course, we are free (so far) to believe anything we choose, however in our culture of adulation of mindless celebrity and state sanctioned mistrust of critical thought, the wise would err on the side of caution.

So much to compartmentalize, so little time.