Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life by Dr. Michael Merzenich Phd

Author:Dr. Michael Merzenich Phd [Merzenich, Michael Phd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780989432825
Amazon: 0989432823
Publisher: Parnassus Publishing
Published: 2013-10-13T21:00:00+00:00

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21

WHEN YOUR BRAIN CHANGES, YOU CHANGE

Older Should Be Wiser, Better, and More Balanced, but Alas…

My paternal grandfather William Theodore Merzenich immigrated to America from Germany at the age of nine. He had almost no further formal schooling in Fairfield, Minnesota, where his family first settled. It might be surprising for you to hear, then, that my Grandpa Bill was one of the best-informed and most intelligent men that I have ever known. For most of his life, he worked as a building contractor and architect. During World War II he worked as a U.S. government building inspector, then as an “Engineer of the Ways” at a shipyard. Grandpa was proud of the several patents he was awarded, and of all of the churches, school buildings, and civic buildings that he contributed to throughout the northwestern United States. He had mastered the basic principles of practical mathematics, so he didn’t need a structural engineer to tell him how to carry loads and construct buildings that he believed would last forever, and he could talk at length about the laws and principles of physical science. He had broad knowledge about literature, culture, philosophy, and the world in general. Everything he knew and every ability he had mastered had been acquired through determined self-education, or learned on the job. He seemed to work almost every day of his life on an organized program of intellectual self-improvement.

My grandfather had very high personal standards in his work, and his children, grandchildren, friends, and professional colleagues were expected to live up to them. In his view, there weren’t nearly enough other members of the human race that really measured up, a view that became stronger with every passing year. As he got older, Grandpa Bill became more and more certain that he knew the answer to almost everything that was worth knowing. By his 70th birthday, there were a lot of folks in Grandpa’s world who he felt had sloppy thinking and loose ethics that were leading them all down the path to ruin. Grandpa was dead certain that these negative human qualities contaminated those he saw as these weaker members of the human race. Lawyers, politicians, other automobile drivers, irresponsible and under-qualified practitioners in the building trades, and citizens who could not control their urges were at the top of his list.

But my Grandpa was not just your ordinary curmudgeon. He invited discussion and arguments from his grandchildren, family, and friends, then laced his side of the discussion with lots of wonderful parables and memorable stories on his way to dialectical victory. He was actually fun to lose an argument to, even when you had heard one of those stories ten times before. Of course he enjoyed arguing in part because making his point and declaring victory were richly rewarding for him. One can understand why people like Grandpa Bill might grow to look forward to such interactions, when

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