Heroes Not Zombies

Our brains are brilliant at spotting patterns. The psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dan Siegel, author of “Mindsight”, says our frontal lobes are responsible for creating three distinct types of map – “a you map, a me map, and a we map”. These maps are created from the patterns we spot, the shapes, events, habits, behaviours, feelings etc. They are how we recognise ourselves and others, how we know what to expect, and most importantly, how we make sense of life.

We are meaning seeking and meaning creating animals. We are driven to understand, to interpret our experiences and to classify and integrate them.

We weave our interpretations and understandings into the stories we tell others and ourselves.

But we have to remain a bit sceptical. We have to retain the ability to doubt, because sometimes that giant letter “A” in the forest is just three logs which landed precisely there.

That’s the problem with discerning cause and effect. We are complex adaptive organisms, open systems embedded in multiple layered and interconnected environments.

To say that “this” caused “that” is, at best, only a partial truth. There’s always more to know, there are always more factors playing a part. We never know it all.