I have a question for you: what is the most illogical organ in your body? Some of you probably said tonsils – appendages that seem to serve no purpose than to have to be removed at the most inconvenient times. Others will probably say the appendix, that little nubbin near the right side of your belly. No one, even doctors, know what it does. We can live without it. And when it gets inflamed there’s another operation that happens at the most inconvenient of times.
In my humble opinion, though, both answers would probably be wrong. While the tonsils and the appendix do nothing that anyone can think of, they’re not by definition illogical. Useless, maybe, but illogical? Explain to me how that’s the case.
No, I think the most illogical part of the human body is the brain. Whoa, you say, how can that be? Isn’t the brain the center of thinking? Doesn’t that make it logical? Does it? Think about this for a moment. Every other organ has a job to do and unless it stops working, it does what it’s designed to do—period. The brain, though, is a whole other matter. The human brain, not the heart, is the organ in our bodies that is driven not by logic but feelings and emotions.
This so-called center of logic, this thinking machine, sometimes comes up with the strangest things. What makes us avoid having a thirteenth floor in a building? Superstition, which is a system of belief created by the human brain. The number 13, which was created by a human brain, was then given bad luck status by another human brain because of some combination of circumstances that really had nothing to do with the number. Same thing with black cats, breaking mirrors, and a bunch of other things. All of these wild and wacky beliefs are the product of the human brain.
The brain is the organ that gets us into wars and political crises. It causes marital discord. It’s the thinking part of our bodies that gets us into most of the troubles we experience in life.
People associate the heart with feelings, but the heart does nothing but pump blood throughout our bodies. The lungs take in air to provide oxygen to that blood. The eyes pick up light waves to enable us to see, but it’s the brain that interprets what the eyes see, and which sometimes tell us that we see something that the eyes really don’t see—mirages, optical illusions, etc.
A little story to show you just how illogical the brain is, a true story by the way. Years ago, I served as the American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. One of the customs I particularly loved as a diplomat was celebrating the Fourth of July every year because it’s the day before my birthday, and I always celebrated a day early. Nice to have your birthday almost fall on a national holiday. Anyway, we always had a big bash for the American community, and one year the entertainment was a famous magician performing for the crowd. The draw was he would make me magically appear from an apparently empty box to make my welcome speech. Without totally giving the trick away, it involved me crouching behind a box with a false bottom as it was taken onto the stage and then breaking out of it on cue when it was flipped over me. Now, as we were coming out, two young boys at the side of the stage were staring right at me. I figured the trick would be a real disappointment for them but when I busted out of that box and looked over I saw that they were jumping around and cheering as much as the crowd in front who hadn’t seen me. Their brains had convinced their eyes that they hadn’t seen me. Go figure.
The brain is a strange thing—I think. – NWI
