The Marvellous School of Neurology

It turns out, as obviousness would have it, that our brains (especially those of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in this case) have been teaching us neurology through comic books and the movies that have come from them. The Incredible Hulk has been teaching us that when we are afraid we become our more primitive self and when we feel safe we are our better, more intelligent and loving self. This is accurate for the way we use the more primitive areas of the brain when in “survival mode” and the more highly evolved areas of the brain (empathy, logical analysis and self control) when feeling loved and safe. If we think to the movies where Black Widow uses her lullaby and loving connection with The Hulk to turn him back into Dr Banner, we can see how the story is teaching us the vital role love plays in how to become our better selves.

And more than this, it turns out that improving our neurological health as a means to improve societal health is the driving reason we humans are storytellers. We use characters to model how to make better choices and thus build a better brain, to role-model how to become more heroic and more self-honest. With our mirror neurones and our wonderful imaginations, it is a truly efficient and enjoyable way to learn.

Moreover, in our stories we humans use deep metaphors, similar to dreaming, to educate the deep brain (the subconscious brain where most of our thoughts happen in emotion and pictorial metaphor form). Added to this, the linguistically aware writer can neutralise bad terms that cause negative brain chemistry by shifting their meanings and thus rewiring the brain (ie “bad” coming to mean “great” and thus rewiring “bad” to positive emotions and brain chemistry).

The more we see that we evolved with stories, with our brains reaching out into the social world beyond the skull to teach other brains and enhance both individual and group survival, the more we can harness this important technology as part of our efforts to save our world. It is time for writers to become aware of these neurological factors that are easy to teach and learn. It is time we really took a look at the organic technology that storytelling is and used it to develop a future of societal health, peace and sustainability.