"(As the comedian Emo Philips has remarked: 'I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.')"

I lol'ed at this line. At least my brain thought it was funny. Honestly, my brain has been relieved to read about it not being THE thing.

This quote comes right after the author explains how our commonly used analogies of brain = computer and brain = muscle, have failed to fully grasp how interactive our thinking is with our body and our environment.

"Magpies may pose a headache for power companies, but their activity supplies an analogy for the way the mind works. Our brains, it might be said, are like magpies, fashioning their finished products from the materials around them, weaving the bits and pieces they find into their trains of thought."

This bit really resonated with me. I've worked in behavioral health for over 5 years now and everyone I work with are empathetic caring people, constantly on the verge of burnout. In an industry focused on improving mental health, we struggle to care for ourselves.

"But when we reach outside it with intention and skill, our thinking can be tranformed. It can become as dynamic as our bodies, as airy as our spaces, as rich as our relationships -- as capacious as the whole wide world."

"I've come to believe that such difficulties result in large part from a fundamental misunderstanding of how -- and where -- thinking happens. As long as we settle for thinking inside the brain, we'll remain bound by the limits of that organ."

"Truly original ideas and innovations seem scarce; engagement levels at schools and in companies are low; teams and groups struggle to work together in an effective and satisfying way."

"The brainbound paradigm now so dominant is clearly inadequate to the task; everywhere we look we see problems with attention and memory, with motivation and persistence, with logical reasoning and abstract thinking."

Just finished the prologue and these bits really stood out to me:

"Our society is facing unprecedented challenges, and we'll need to think well in order to solve them."

This was published in 2021, so new enough to speak to post-covid research and trends.