(total) recall

I find that increasingly often I'll pass someone by on my way to work or class, recognize his face, but not be able to remember where I might have seen him before. It's odd to do that double-take and to feel some sort of bond with a person who may as well be a stranger (that is, if my reluctant memory has any say in the matter). I wonder why I can't muster the ability to recall a name to go along with that face, particularly if that face is significant enough - for whatever reason - for me to retain and retrieve some kind of emotional association for that "anonymous" person. Where is the filter? Why does certain information stick, while other bits fall away indefinitely?

phrenology

A couple of centuries back, Franz Joseph Gall developed the theory and practice of phrenology. Essentially, he claimed that he could read an individual's mind by carefully observing that person's unique head shape. According to Gall, bumps and indentations on a patient's skull, depending on their specific location, provided a wealth of information about one's character. This belief became popularized enough that it was embraced (for a time) as an accurate background check for those applying for jobs, and even as a helpful tool to predict a child's future.

Now, it could easily be argued that Gall should perhaps have checked his own head for odd dents or prominent bulges and inflations (if I may be so bold), however one cannot entirely overlook the shallow appeal of this idea - "forget wearing your heart on your sleeve people; you really wear your destiny on your scalp!" All you would need to do is feel around for it, you see...(and maybe shave your head beforehand, just to be thorough).

Just think: No longer would any pre-adults suffer, painfully self-indulgent and fraught with angst, while struggling to "define" themselves. No longer would any twenty-something justify his or her own stalling or irresponsibility by emphatically saying something like "I just need time to focus on me right now." That "focus" - that search - would be needless (really, nonexistent) if phrenology governed humanity.

I won't lie - anything this deterministic causes me to imagine something along the lines of the World State envisioned by Aldous Huxley. But I still wake up some mornings wishing I knew what the heck to do with myself.

Earlier today, I was inspired to take one of those career assessment quizzes - you know, the ones that place you into one of four or so predetermined categories (with complementary employment suggestions) based on your answers to a handful of situational workplace-related "either/or" questions? Today, I was defined as a GREEN, apparently meaning that I am "communicating," which is nice I guess.

Then I thought again of Gall's theory about phrenology, and I realized that if that little quiz was the single determining factor for what I would be prescribed and expected to spend the rest of my life doing...well, I'd really rather wallow for just a bit more in my own angst. What if I had to go around wearing a green dot permanently affixed to my forehead? Or spend the length of my existence clad in some standard-issue verdant uniform so that others would be able to size me up from afar?

(Though I guess if I did live in that soma-drenched World State - the one held in place by indoctrinated conformity - I guess that'd make me a gleefully green-clad Gamma, right?)

the parasympathetic

par·a·sym·pa·thet·ic (păr'ə-sĭm'pə-thĕt'ĭk)
adj.

Of, relating to, or affecting the parasympathetic nervous system: parasympathetic activity; parasympathetic agents.

...the parasympathetic nervous system has one meaning:

[It] originates in the brain stem and lower part of the spinal cord; opposes physiological effects of the sympathetic nervous system: stimulates digestive secretions; slows the heart; constricts the pupils; dilates blood vessels