Tony Buzan |
Many people have asked whether the year 2000 and the beginning of the 21st Century and the next Millennium is really a significant date in history, or simply another passing year.
For the brain, this moment in time is coincidentally and rather extraordinarily incredibly significant.
The significance can be seen by imagining Time, from the beginning of the universe, to the current moment, as a gigantic pyramid with the "beginning of time" as its base.
If we take the average scientific estimate of the age of the universe to be twelve billion years (12,000,000,000), this number forms the base of our pyramid.
As we move up the sloping sides, the next number on our pyramid is the age of the planet which is now celebrating this new age. Planet Earth is estimated to be five billion years old (5,000,000,000).
The next number concerns Life itself. Recent scientific estimates have pushed this barrier steadily backwards in time to a current estimation that life began in heated pools four and a half billion years ago (4,500,000,000).
We next leap up our time scale to estimate the appearance on Earth of humankind - the first homo sapiens. This is a staggeringly short and mere three million years (3,000,000).
Next we move forward to the evolutionary creation of the "modern" human brain. Surprisingly, this has existed for only fifty thousand years (50,000). Yes, you are communicating with us about the very topic of your own brain with the latest model!
Next we move forward to the formation of the first human civilizations. These are estimated to have come into existence (if you believe we are yet civilized!) only ten thousand years ago (10,000).
The next evolutionary step is nice to pose as a question: when do you think, as a global whole, the human race realised where their brain was located? (And I'm not referring here to where you may have been told where yours was located!) Surprisingly, the answer is not the average estimate of between ten and a hundred thousand years, but a tiny five hundred years (500).
Even great philosphical and scientific thinkers such as Aristotle believe that the functions of the brain were primarily located in the heart and solar plexus areas, which if you think about it, for their time, was a completely rational assumption - that area of the body is, after all, "the centre", does respond dramatically to mood, thought and action, and when it is severely damaged, terminates life.
Next we move onto another question. In what timespan (calculate in years) has the human race discovered 95 percent plus of what it has ever discovered about the internal workings of its own super bio-computer - that miraculous two-kilogram organ - its brain? An astonishing ten years (10)!!
Consider all the above in the context of our knowledge that everything we now know about the human brain is less than one percent of what there is to know about it and that our rate of knowledge increase in this area is accelerating in a logaritmic curve that is already approaching the vertical. Now look at the pyramid we have created and discover for yourselves how extraordinarily significant this moment in history (the very peak of our pyramid) is for the evolution of human intelligence, and for the evolution of humanity, the planet and its cargo of intelligence.
And now if we can build that pyramid numerically, let's now look at our numerical pyramid:
10
500
10,000
50,000
3,000,000
4,500,000,000
5,000,000,000
12,000,000,000
In our numerical Giza, the moment in time in which we now exist is like a funnel between two giant time-universes.
We are transitioning from the twelve billion year high pyramid into the mirror-pyramid that will radiate from the peak we have now reached.
Add, on this inverse figure, the same numerical steps of ten, five hundred, ten thousand, fifty thousand, three million, four and a half billion, five billion and twelve billion, bearing in mind that all the time the incredible acceleration of the speed at which we are discovering new knowledge about our cells and the universe around us, where do you think we will be at each one of those time-marks?
It is my firm conviction that humanity truly has reached a moment in time in which "all change", or to put it another way, a sudden leap to Warp Nine, will be both the key concept and the magnitude of our speed of travel into new galxies of awareness.
It is for these reasons that I and my colleagues truly do believe that this coming century will be above all, and deserves to be so named, the "Century Of The Brain" and that the coming millennium will similarly be and deserve to be named the Millennium Of The Mind. |
Tony Buzan |
1) Make their brains and bodies their prime hobby. Focus on the understanding and development of each in conjunction with the other and follow the principle of "Mens sana in corpore sano".
2) Learn memory skills, especially mnemonics.
3) Learn to mind map and to use mind maps for analytical, strategic, creative and all other forms of thinking.
4) Study, as da Vinci recommended, the "science of Art".
5) Continue to ask questions especially about your brain and assumptions.
6) Maintain, throughout life, a positive and "can do" attitude.
7) Learn to read and study faster and with better comprehension.
8) Start book and electronic libraries of their favourite Brain Books.
9) Learn to play mind sports such as chess, card games, mental skill games etc - they are like gymnasiums for your brain.
10) Make sure you have fun while you do all the above! |
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