Who's in control now?

The other day I was sitting, watching TV, full of food and feeling like there was no way I could possibly get up to make my lunch let alone go outside and walk around the block with the dog. It got me thinking, I'm not quite sure how but I started to wonder whether the mind or the body is in more control.

Most people are aware of the effects the brain can have over the physical body. Stress can cause people to loose hair, stop eating, or even have a heart attack. The placebo effect, a now common practice scientifically, is when someone shows marked signs of improvement from an illness when given medication they believe will work, though the medication they are given might be nothing more than sugar pills. Because the patient believes that the treatment will be beneficial they end up showing signs of progress.

On the other hand when one is paralyzed no matter how much they believe they may be be able to walk again or fantasize and dream about running in the fields they generally cannot will themselves to no longer be paralyzed. When we are asleep and dreaming no matter how hard we scream in our dream, most of the time our body will not awake out of the dream until our REM cycle has completed and our body has gotten the rest it needs. When our bones are broken only inactivity and rest can heal the physical.

If our body is destroyed there is nothing the mind can do but sit there. Conversely if s our imaginative abilities, rational sensors and/or emotional systems are destroyed we are deemed less than human, a vegetable, which in most cases results in ending a life that is believed to no longer be true life.

In reading various blogs and websites there were large arguments made for the mind being the true controller of all things human. We decide that we want to stand up and in those few milliseconds our brain sends signals down our arms telling them to push on the chair to stand up on our legs that have also been told by our brain to get ready for the imminent activity. But if those legs don't work doesn't that make everything the mind tries to achieve futile: in other words useless?

I'm not really sure there is an answer but I found it curious nonetheless. In reading one website a gentleman makes a diplomatic case (if we were to believe the two entities as opposing sides of an argument) that the two are inextricably linked and neither can function without the other. It seems to me that there have been cases where a person is breathing but in a coma with no higher brain function. Are they still human? And people continue to survive without the use of their limbs, thinking, creating and rationalizing with the rest of us. Are they truly human? I see his point, that the mind and the body work so closely with one another that you can't discredit one or give more credit to the other. Our bodies react to our emotions causing us to feel sick to our stomach or full of excited energy. Our brains get tired when our bodies are causing us to drone out in front of the television not really watching or listening.

I guess it's true that one cannot be without the other but it still made me wonder how much control my brain had over my body when I was in that food coma on the couch.


The Gentleman's article I referred to above is: http://ezinearticles.com/?Conceive,-Believe-and-Achieve---Mind-Over-Body,-or-Body-Over-Mind?&id=123040