A Different World

There is a very interesting scientific principle that can help to explain this social phenomena. It is called mirror neurons. As BrainFacts.org explains it:

In the early 1990s, Italian researchers made an astonishing and quite unexpected discovery. They had implanted electrodes in the brains of several macaque monkeys to study the animals’ brain activity during different motor actions, including the clutching of food. One day, as a researcher reached for his own food, he noticed neurons begin to fire in the monkeys’ premotor cortex—the same area that showed activity when the animals made a similar hand movement. How could this be happening when the monkeys were sitting still and merely watching him?

During the ensuing two decades, this serendipitous discovery of mirror neurons—a special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else make the same movement—has radically altered the way we think about our brains and ourselves, particularly our social selves.

The true source of all knowledge impressed a fellow human to write the following words, “It is a law of the human mind that by beholding we become changed. Man will rise no higher than his conceptions of truth, purity, and holiness. If the mind is never exalted above the level of humanity, if it is not uplifted by faith to contemplate infinite wisdom and love, the man will be constantly sinking lower and lower.” (Patriarchs and Prophets, page 91, paragraph 3, by Ellen G. White) . What have you been beholding, reading, watching and how has it been changing you? Are you even aware that you are changing? Because at the end of the day, we are truly what we eat. Our minds transformed by images from a different world.

— YorkAli Walters