In this Earthmate talk, Dan and Aaron discuss emotion, language and society.
- Dan: Aaron, how many brains do you think you have?
- Aaron: Last time I checked I had one but sometimes but my friends say I only have half a brain.
- D: Actually, you have more than that. You have three brains. We all have three brains.
- A: Are they all in your head?
- D: Yeah. The first brain is the ancient reptile brain- the brain that controls your heart, breathing, etc. The second brain controls your emotions. The third brain is your cortex- the source of logic and language.
- A: That's cool. I didn't know that. So the cortex is the most important part, right.
- D: Well, it depends. The second brain, the emotional brain, is actually more essential than the cortex, or the logic brain. Animals can survive and live well without language or too much logic-look at cats or dogs, right.
- A: Ok.
- D: However, if your emotional brain is damaged- even if your cortex is okay, you fail. People that have damaged emotional brains can't survive well. That's because we respond emotionally to situations first and then we respond logically.
- A: That's pretty interesting. Maybe that is why when I get emails from people I have trouble understanding them sometimes. I can't tell if a person is happy, sad or sarcastic, for example.
- D: Good point. We use a lot of happy faces and emoticons in our emails to try to communicate emotion but it's not that useful. If we don't have emotional information, it is hard for us to understand a situation.
- A: So how does this relate to society?
- D: Well, think about this. In the US, we value logic over emotion. The economy and money are more important than anything else. Therefore, we ignore what is actually more important to happiness and emotional success…our emotional or second brains. Our economy is interested in our cortex, our logical brain.
- A: Maybe in Japan it is the opposite. You know how Americans always say that Japanese people aren't logical.
- D: That's a good point. It is different over there. What is important to remember though is that if you are communicating in English and you want to succeed, you need to communicate with the emotional brain and the logical brain. When you ignore the emotional brain, you'll have trouble. At English Vitamin we teach you how to communicate with both parts of your brain. When you do that, you can really communicate well.
- A: Well, my three brains hurt from all this.
- D: Me too. Thanks for listening! Bye everyone.