How to Make a Lazy Brain Solve Creative Problems in Chaos and Uncertainty
As we know, over the years people tend to acquire various ailments. High on the list of age-related drawbacks is the growing laziness of the brain, which can cause a multitude of problems — including for a businessperson.
Can you force your mental mechanisms to work at full speed and serve as a reliable source of productive thinking?
Of course!
So, let’s get started. And we’ll begin with the scariest thing — the mechanism of dulling. Initially, all people are “equipped” with the right hemisphere, meaning they are inherently talented and possess productive thinking. Namely, a sharp mind and the ability to produce a maximum of solutions that meet all given conditions in minimal time. But over time, some people lose this productivity. And not necessarily in middle or old age.
Childhood
Let’s look at two scenarios — the ideal development of a child and the conditions that lead to dulling even in the first years of a person’s life.
In a normal child, the right hemisphere dominates from birth, and then left-hemisphere logical patterns are gradually added. This is the result of absorbing human experience under the guidance of parents and the older generation as a whole. This forms a set of “smart templates” that a person will use in standard situations. However, they do not lose their ability to be creative.
Parents help the child in two ways. First of all, they talk to them “as if they were grown up,” appealing to the adult who is born simultaneously with every person (the brain has no concept of “infancy”). On the other hand, artificial techniques that are no less important for raising a thinking person are also applied. Most often, this is a fairly standard set that includes teaching the child to read, write, and count simultaneously in all languages available in the family, and at an early age.
Good kindergartens pick up the baton (we’re talking about the ideal case!) with a strong development program. Then comes school, where higher sciences are introduced to a person’s development, pulling them forward. And then university studies begin. Preferably with specializations like physics, mathematics, chemistry, and the natural sciences in general (the so-called non-humanities type).
Why specifically non-humanities? Unfortunately, teaching the humanities here is built on a “cognitive” rather than a thinking foundation. It’s more about passing on a certain set of knowledge, rather than the skills to comprehend it (which ultimately fails to teach a person how to think).
Let me give you a simple example. There is a radical difference between linguistics, philology, and semantics, even though all these disciplines, at first glance, “revolve” around words. However, the first two deal with language, and only the last one deals with meaning. It would be wonderful if our younger generation were “given” deeply humanitarian disciplines, which in previous centuries gave birth to great thinkers. But, unfortunately, nowadays such cases are rare. We can only hope for technical and medical universities, where science as such forces a person to think. Even if they don’t want to.
This is how, in fact, a normal person grows up, developing their left hemisphere while maintaining a significant capacity in the right (its productivity is within the norm). All that remains is to train your creativity and awaken your talents.
So what is a “dull child”? This is, it must be said, an unhappy person. They are terrorized by the older generation, which demands mindless adherence to clichés instead of helping them absorb the surrounding world in all its diversity. Moreover, these “educators” extract these clichés from their own practice — not participating in games or roughly cutting them short, not allowing the child’s abilities to unfold. In this way, the elders do everything in their power to encourage the impoverishment of developmental opportunities.
To no small extent, toys contribute to this. If parents of the first type buy their child educational games, simple blocks without inscriptions, and clearly identifiable elements (which gives the child the opportunity to fantasize and create their own worlds), then in the second case, “formal-logical” toys are purchased, which presuppose clichés and predetermined forms. At the same time, obedience and behavior within a rigid format dominate the system of requirements.
In such conditions, children often begin to rebel. This is a “war for oneself.” Alas, the war is most often lost: it all ends with a tightening of the suppression system in the family and sports sections that complete the process of crushing creativity. From the same series are “fashionable” kindergartens with a simplified development program. Having overcome this part of life, the child is frankly unable to meet the level of a preparatory gymnasium. After all, the parents, at an early stage, deprived them of an important thing — mental training, and moreover, “weighted” training, which the brain needs just as much as all other muscle groups.
So, for a long time, the child was in the position of “fattened cattle.” At a certain point, the parents have an epiphany and realize: they need to be “specially prepared.” But this happens quite rarely: much more often, the child is “neglected,” meaning they are doomed to serious suffering in the future.
Another common “path of least resistance”: a child is sent to a simple school without any extra features or options, guided by rather absurd arguments (which I personally cannot understand either as a mother or as a specialist). The phrasing is usually something like: “Children should have a childhood,” or “There’s no need to teach a child everything ahead of time, otherwise they’ll be bored in school.” Singaporean children at six years old are already developing globally recognized programs for gadgets. Meanwhile, our kids at the same age still can’t read or write. This is considered “normal.” Yet we seem to be striving for some “new level of development,” for “mastering” some new disciplines. It’s not funny anymore.
In “elite schools,” which are usually an extension of the pseudo-development system, the “fattening up” continues. So, by gradually abandoning their creative spark, which has no outlet, a child, firstly, turns into an absolute consumer; secondly, unlearns how to work and create; and thirdly, develops a taste for it. They start to like it! They have abandoned their former self and are “behaving well,” turning into a recording device that is pleasing to the adults around them. If such a child has a powerful will to survive, they become either a troublemaker or a straight-A student. Another option is the straight-A troublemaker. These children later have a chance to develop normally. The remaining mass of “recording devices” falls into the range of “C student,” “B student,” and “A-minus” (the lower layer of straight-A students who “get it” by grinding it out, not through intellect). Later on, such a “device” can no longer independently get into a university: it can’t handle the workload. And, to avoid becoming a loser, it once again takes the path of least resistance. Most often, that means a for-profit university.
Adolescence
The result of such a “development” program is a certain creature with a left-to-right brain hemisphere ratio of 2:1, or even more. But it should be at least 1:2!
What happens to a person with a suppressed right hemisphere?
Firstly, all tasks seem standard to them. They simply don’t see the difference between a routine task and a non-standard one, because they are fundamentally incapable of perceiving any nuances or distinctions in the world. The accompanying qualities of such a person are superficiality, laziness, inattentiveness, bluntness, and narrow-mindedness in their judgments. A characteristic symptom is a constant urge to recite platitudes with a smart look (the same old clichés).
Over time, under the influence of society, the lazy brain begins to sharply increase the number of clichés. The person becomes convinced that a “stamped” life is easier than a creative one. And in some places, it’s even paved with a red carpet. Thus, our now noticeably grown-up child begins to greedily model and absorb stereotypes—instead of trying to answer questions for themselves. Swallowing every ready-made answer in a row, they finally become overloaded with them. The left (logical) hemisphere rapidly gains power…
Further steps only solidify these processes. In the third stage, the left hemisphere begins to ruthlessly cut off any information that doesn’t fit into the Procrustean bed of clichés. And, even worse, it starts to distort the data without the person even noticing. This manifests in sophistry, demagoguery, graphomania… Everything essential gets discarded. Everything misunderstood is forgotten or skipped over.
The fourth stage of turning a normal person into a dull one (not stupid, but inflexible!) leads to an inability to solve a single meaningful problem. Despite having a collection of accumulated clichés. Tasks start getting labeled as “impossible” and “unnecessary.” This reaction to what’s happening constantly reveals a reluctance to exert effort and do anything using one’s head. The latter, as it were, loses its original functions and is perceived not as a thinking apparatus, but as a little shovel that a child was forced to dig sand with. Thus, a person, a being defined by thought, rejects their own nature!
The label “impossible” appeals to reliability and cuts off any tasks that differ even slightly from what is stored in the consciousness. Otherwise, a stupor sets in. Up to the point of hysteria, bitterness, and other destructive reactions like “No, and that’s it!”, “Don’t touch me!!!”
And soon the lazy brain, tired of working with a wide range of clichés it has itself collected, begins to shrink them. The culmination of the dulling process approaches: a person systematizes the clichés and sorts them “into folders.” Moreover, each one gets compressed down to a single cliché! Thus, even the clichés themselves start to noticeably “optimize,” and by the age of thirty-five to thirty-seven, on average, only about five primitive, entrenched patterns remain, at the level of “Cash conquers evil.”
In the final stage of forming a lazy brain, a person is practically unable to shake themselves up on their own. Psychosomatic reactions begin to kick in: when the load increases, the head hurts, blood pressure rises, sometimes the nose bleeds (which I have witnessed many times). The person is physically unable to solve complex intellectual tasks.
Over time, the boundary between thinking mechanisms shifts even further. The space for creative problem-solving closes. At this stage, a person is no longer able to reach themselves. And in conditions of chaotic changes in the external environment, they become defenseless and completely ineffective.
It is a huge tragedy if such a person is the head of a company. Such a business system simply has no chance of survival.
Now a few comments on the above.
A person who knows many languages is often called “smart.” I’d like to remind you that this has nothing to do with thinking. Such an ability comes from the realm of “random-access memory,” short-term memory. It’s one thing to have a knack for memorization, and quite another when a person can actually create something in another language.
The same can be said about broad erudition, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with thinking abilities. Perhaps it’s only about the scale of an accumulated collection of clichés.
It also often happens like this: a person is able to assess a situation but cannot make a decision. That is, their analysis works well, but their synthesis is turned off. Like a dog. “They understand everything, but just can’t say anything.”
At the same time, two caveats should be made.
First of all, under no circumstances should you engage in excessive self-examination and look for signs of a dulled mind in yourself! Furthermore, I want to remind you: the term “left hemisphere” is by no means a curse word. It’s exclusively about the right proportion. In a certain sense, it’s about balance (in favor, of course, of the right hemisphere, 1:2!), which deserves attention.
Published in the magazine «Business Journal»
About the author: Alexandra Kochetkova — Professor at the Department of Business and Business Administration of the Institute of Business and Business Administration of the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation.