For the few of you who may not know, The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor that originated in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. Begun by Stanford neurobiologist Wendy Northcutt, they recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization as a result of their own actions.
Examples of recent Darwin Award winners include the gentleman who thought it was a good idea to try and take a selfie together with a bear in the wild. Or this young man who accidentally shot off his own sausage at the meat counter in an Arizona Walmart. Or these two guys who thought it would be a fun challenge to race up a drawbridge while it was opening in their little Chevy hybrid to see if they could fly on over to the other side. They succeeded in flying over to the “other side,” just not the one they were aiming for. R.I.P.
From a neuroscience perspective, all of these young men were doing their best thinking and taking the best actions the connections in their neural networks would allow in each of those moments. They were all doing their “situational best.” The unfortunate result for each of them turned out to be an “Oh Shit” moment. I’ve had a number of such moments myself over my seven-plus decades. Fortunately, none of them won me a Darwin Award. The primary reason? I believe I learned early on how chronic stress can literally unravel brain wiring.
Situational Best
To do your “situational best” means you realize that your brain contains 86 billion neurons making a thousand trillion (one quadrillion) constantly changing connections. The fact that such complexity is even a little bit manageable is something truly marvelous. Take into account all the out-of-your-control factors—the missed appointment, your partner’s whims, the oppressive humidity—and respond the best you can. In other words, all any of us can do at any time in our lives is our situational best.
To do your situational best is to deploy something neurobiologists call response flexibility or fluid intelligence. It often means realizing that when – in the immortal words of “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski – “new shit has come to light,” we have the wherewithal to change our thinking and acting in response to changing conditions. This is essentially an Executive Function. Not all of us have access to it all the time. Robust Executive Function results when lots of wiring from all around the brain somehow manages to congregate and connect together in the PFC (Prefrontal Cortex). Some of us never grow that wiring, which can be profoundly adversely impacted by elevated stress hormones. And some of us are simply delayed in its development (There are activities we can engage in that research suggests can positively impact prefrontal connectivity. Email me at FloweringBrain@gmail.com and ask for the PFC Paradox pdf and I’ll be happy to send it to you).
Your situational best means doing, to the best of your abilities based on what each given moment presents, whatever your in-the-moment neurobiology will allow. Recognizing the limitations of our brain wiring means that all of us are doing our situational best at all times in every instant. The good news is that in any subsequent instant, our situational best can be even better than the moment before.
When Our Situational Best Would Have Us Do Nothing
A number of years ago I wrote a blog about a chimney fire at my house a few days before Christmas. My immediate situational best upon discovering the blaze was to simply freeze. In the next moment, though, at the prompting of a Good Samaritan, my situational best became “get a hose, climb up on the roof and spray water on the flames.” That Samaritan’s prompting dynamically changed my brain wiring connectivity in an instant.
Which brings us to The Golden Rule of Social Neuroscience: “a more organized brain can help organize a less organized brain.” A corollary of the Golden Rule is that “all of us have the potential to be better and smarter than any one of us.” And any one of us can help any other one of us from ending up an unintended Darwin Award winner. Do your situational best! (As if we can do anything but).
Thanks for this, Mark.
I’m ever-grateful for the dude who was: 1. paying attention, and 2. took the time to knock on your door and tell you that your roof was on fire, and 3. that he stuck around long enough thereafter to see your response and 4. knew what to say to nudge you out of freeze mode. So many blessings, in that single experience.
When our best thinking and awareness takes us to the brink, we are fortunate that there are those kind souls who endeavor to keep us out of the drink.
Too bad those two men on the drawbridge didn’t have someone knocking on their door in timely fashion… goodness!
Joanna
Perhaps their work here was done this time around. Better wiring for them on the next go-round.
XOXOX Mark
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 4:00 PM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Love the new logo Mark!
And just amazing how you can make these big concepts bite sized and digestible!
Thank you!
Love the new logo Mark!
And just amazing how you can make these big concepts bite sized and digestible!
Thank you!
Especially for you, Ms Valerie! 🙂
XOXOX Mark
On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 5:57 AM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Thanks for this Mark – I do appreciate your ability to communicate complex subjects with such clarity! I recently had a conversation with my 12 year old daughter about this topic – ‘doing our (situational) best’, as her grade 6 class seeks to find a rhythm beyond chaos (maybe they are doing their “age appropriate, situational best”). Thanks again Mark, xx