You should learn to erase your brain from time to time.
Your brain is a vast collection of stored information—episodic and semantic memories that enable us to make quick assumptions about what we see, hear, touch, taste, and feel. Without access to memory, we would be stymied at every turn: “Remind me again what that red light means?” “What is this knob on the door for?”
Our storehouse of information allows us to perceive the world—correctly or incorrectly. Neuroscientist Anil Seth describes our perception as:
“a kind of waking dream—a controlled hallucination—that is both more than and less than whatever the real world really is.”
We feel that our senses take in information accurately and then relay them to the brain. But, in fact, the brain makes a sensory prediction first, the senses correct or confirm the prediction. The brain and the senses engage in a prediction/correction process. As Seth wrote in his book on consciousness, On Being You:
“Perceptions do not come from the bottom up or the outside in, they come primarily from the top down, or the inside out. What we experience is built from the brain’s predictions, or “best guesses,” about the causes of sensory signals.”
The brain is a “prediction machine.”
We experience vision as a smooth flow of incoming information. However, in addition to blinking, our eyes jump approximately three times per second. These eye movements are called saccades from the French word for jerk. We don’t sense these jumps because the brain fills in the gaps in the imagery, so we experience a steady stream of vision.
Our predictions allow quick, necessary interpretations, the assumptions that facilitate our daily lives. But, over reliance on quick assumptions impedes creativity. We often see only what we expect to see; we hear only what we expect to hear.
Try an experiment: after being in a room for a while, listen carefully. What do you now hear that you didn’t hear previously? Were you aware of the sounds of the heating or cooling system? Did you hear the soft hum of the fluorescent lights in the classroom? A refrigerator motor? A computer fan?
Those sounds are present and often continuous. But we don’t “hear” them, because we don’t directly listen for them. We don’t anticipate these environmental sounds. It’s as if we have a filter in our subconscious that doesn’t notify the conscious mind of the sound. The subconscious decides that the sounds are neither life-threatening nor relevant to our current thinking.
Similarly, we approach problems based on our expectations. We learn information because it confirms our biases. We listen selectively when others speak. One lecture to a class of 30 will generate 30 different comprehensions.
Imagine if you could enable 30 people to see the world anew… as if, like children, they are seeing a recycling truck, piano, or a lilac for the first time.
For years I worked with school children as an artist-in- residence. At first, I had no idea how to teach songwriting and the requisite creativity. One cold Iowa morning, I stalled for time by asking the students to rub their hands together and then place their hands, fingertip to fingertip, like a two-handed visor at the top of their foreheads. I did the same. We all looked silly.
I counted to three and we brought our hands down slowly over our foreheads to erase our brains, to clear out existing assumptions, to temporarily suppress the unthinking leap to predictions. (I always cautioned them not to erase the memory of their name or their route home from school.)
We began the practice of daily brain erasure to allow ideas to emerge from our minds free from assumptions.
You should try it. Put your hands on your forehead or you may move directly to the advanced inside-the- brain windshield washer technique. Clear out your assumptions about what you think you know, and what you expect to see, hear, and learn. Enjoy the world as if you’ve never seen it before.
***
Just off Pelham Road in Amherst, Massachusetts is a former colonial-era tavern converted into a law office (last time I drove by). In the 18th century, the keeper and his family lived above the tavern on the second floor. According to local legend, Daniel Shays and company met there to plan a rebellion.
With rebellion in the air and whiskey in the glass, the keeper needed a burglar alarm on the stairs to his quarters. He installed a burglar step. The stairway had twelve steps to the second floor, however, the ninth step—the burglar step—was one inch higher than the rest. The family gradually adjusted to the 9th step anomaly. However, an intruder, governed by expectation (and whiskey), would trip on the ninth step, alerting the family.
The burglar step is an ingenious trick based on our reliance on assumptions, the expectations learned through logic and experience that streamline our daily lives.
We “know” that steps are regular in height.
So, there’s no need to stop, scratch your head and ponder the stairs. You chug along unconcerned as long-term, implicit memory guides you, leaving you free to think consciously about all-star wrestling, bad rock lyrics, or why scrambled eggs are better than fried.
Observe your body walking upstairs. Though it takes no conscious effort, it is still a remarkable feat. The body calculates with precision how high to lift the foot, positions it for the next step while shifting body weight to enable the other foot to lift. Notice how much clearance procedural or implicit memory allows between the bottom of the foot and the step. It’s minimal—no more clearance than is necessary.
All of this is accomplished quickly, without diverting our attention, and with only a fleeting glance. This is the efficiency of procedural memory.
Consider how much we rely on procedural memory—all the things we do without conscious thinking. Procedural or muscle memory is the implicit or subconscious memory of how to do something, such as riding a bike, opening a door or walking up stairs. Once you learn these procedures or skills, you’re done learning and you’re stair walking with fervor—as long as the stairs have predictable regular dimensions.
Implicit memory is not prepared for irregularity. That’s why the burglar step snags the intruder.
The burglar is defeated by his assumption of regularity. Are we defeated by our assumptions? We may assume that something cannot be done—but is that true? How do we know?
Erase your brain. Question your assumptions until verified. Look for the burglar step lurking on the stairway.
Dan Hunter’s book, Learning and Teaching Creativity, is available from
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Teachers receive a 20% discount.
Audiobook is available at
https://www.audible.com/pd/Learning-and-Teaching-Creativity-Audiobook/B0CK4BQDJP