Brains

I came to an understanding of things the other day that on one hand makes me feel glad and on the other hand scares the heck out of me.

The thing Jesus gives us while we are alive is free will. That being said, it occurs to me that our free will is constrained by the way blood flows to our brain (something we can't exert control over despite our free will). So what we really have, I think, is the free will to operate within narrow ranges of options - ranges determined by our circulatory systems.

I was looking at these pictures of people's brains. They illustrated the areas of the brain where blood mainly flows for "regular" people, autistic people, gambling addicts, and some other kind of people that I can't remember right now. Anyway, different people have different regions of the brain that are most active, and that's what governs their decision making and behavior.

So here are my conclusions. First, for me to get mad when people act badly is folly! What I'm really mad about is the way blood flows to their brains. What use is it to get mad about that? This is the conclusion that makes me glad. I should be able to forgive anybody for anything, because the bottom line is that they couldn't help being mean to me! The other good part is that if I forget to forgive somebody, it's okay, on account of that's the way the blood comes to my brain. Don't hold it against me.

My second conclusion is kind of scary. I have come up with a way to rationalize anything bad that people do. I think the thing to get out of this conclusion is that the only suitable punishment to an offense is one that goes directly to the cause of the transgression - blood flow. The mind can be trained to think differently (i.e., blood can be trained to flow in a different way). That should be the focus of our system of criminal justice - to retrain the way blood flows.

So let me ask you how we can continue to use the death penalty? The fact is that we give the death penalty to people guilty of the same stuff as the rest of us. That is, we are guilty of not being able to control the way our brains work (at least without therapy and/or drugs). If one person deserves the death penalty it seems like we all do.

Maybe there are things people can do to optimize blood flow to the brain. Reading books, writing poems, singing, writing songs, skipping, cheese, doing miscellaneous? I guess thoughtful people should try to figure out what makes our blood flow best and then do it.

This has been about a very important discovery I made that affects all. Talk to me!