Star Trek: J.J. Abrams Is a Neuroscientist - Charlie Warner - MediaBizBlogger

Star Trek The Future Begins conceived and stunningly directed by JJ Abrams and written by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman is an appropriate muchneeded myth for a new 21st century generation that brilliantly weaves the latest discoveries of neuroscience psychology and behavioral economics into the storyFor centuries Grimm39s fairy tales hid moral messages in simple stories that told children how to make decisions about life Twentieth century children needed the more engaging medium of film to hold their ever more diverted attention but the same messages were still being transmitted about how to make decisions amp8211 be kind to little people don39t kill animals don39t lie don39t be mean to your stepsiblings don39t fall for a wolf39s sweet talking etcEver since Plato the Greeks the Romans and Middle Age religious institutions the prevailing wisdom was that the mind was divided in two amp8211 the rational mind and the emotional mind amp8211 and that children had to be taught to use their reason to overcome their baser emotional instincts The message was stop and think before you act And oh by the way we39ll tell you how to thinkRational man was the ideal Descartes articulated it best with quotI think therefore I amquot The notion was that what made man superior to animals was his ability to reason The poet William Blake romanticized this concept by writing that man was the only animal who had the ability to laugh God gave man laughter as a consolation prize because man was the only animal with reason and could thus figure out he was eventually going to dieThe theory of rational man gave birth to the theory of economic man amp8211 a person who makes considered rational and selfinterested decisions The theory also gave birth to the notion of rational markets If people were rational then their economic decisions must be rational and selfinterested and therefore the markets they create must be rationalHowever over the last 30 years the extensive and groundbreaking research of neuroscientists psychologists and behavioral economists has shown that people do not make purely rational decisions that the theory of economic man is hogwash and that the freemarket system is totally irrational amp8211 influenced by randomness not rationalityWhat the body of neuroscientific psychological and behavioral economic research indicates is that people make decisions based on a highly complex interaction between the rational and emotional parts of the brain as superbly chronicled by Jonah Lehrer in How We Decide amp8211 a must read for anyone who liked Taleb39s The Black Swan or Fooled by Randomness and Lehrer39s dazzling Proust Was a NeuroscientistThe message of JJ Abrams Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman39s Star Trek is in perfect harmony with Lehrer39s How We Decide Near the beginning of the movie a young 9yearold James Kirk speeds down an Iowa dirt road in a vintage Mustang that he39s taken from his uncle and makes a miraculous recovery based on intuition before the car plummets into a deep canyon amp8211 he39s obviously a rash young risk taker who makes intuitive decisions We know who Kirk is We next see him as a handsome angry emotional fearless risktaking teenager who rashly gets into a fight We really know who Kirk isWe see Spock being trained as a child in pure reason amp8211 no emotion no risk taking amp8211 all math science and logic He has a touch of emotion because his mother is human not a Vulcan but he is taught to repress unwanted emotion and depend on reason and logicSpock becomes the captain of the Enterprise and has to make a crucial decision Kirk39s intuition tells him Spock39s decision is wrong and they fight after which Kirk is banished However in a dramatic whizbang climatic rescue scene Kirk and Spock work and fight together win the day and win the battle against the evil revengedriven NeroThe moral of the story The risktaking emotional intuitive Kirk and the logical rational conservative Spock need each other They are two integral parts of a complex effective decisionmaking system In the end the intuitive Kirk takes command of the Enterprise with Spock his rational second in command at his side to advise him The Enterprise and its crew boldly go off to fulfill man39s ultimate purpose amp8211 to exploreWhat is the engine for our evolution Curiosity exploration for without it we39d still be amoebas But to explore we need to take risks use our intuition and when appropriate think things out amp8211 use both sides of our brainsJJ Abrams along with Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman are neuroscientists and behavioral economists masquerading as filmmakers who make their point by telling a whopper of a story or visa versa But we learn an important lesson for the 21st century through their incredible magic box as defined in this JJ Abrams TED videoUntil he retired in 2002 Charlie Warner was Vice President of AOL39s Interactive Marketing division Before joining AOL he was the Goldenson Endowed Professor at the Missouri Journalism School where he taught media management and sales and he created and ran the annual Management Seminar for News Executives Charlie can be contacted at charleshwarnergmailcomRead all Charlieamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Charlie Warner MediaBizBlogger

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