Look down. What do you see? Your hands, your desks, the floor, maybe a cup of coffee,
or a laptop computer or a newspaper. What do they have in common? These are things you
can touch. What you see when you look down are things within your reach, things you can
control right now, things you can move and manipulate with no planning, effort, or thought.
Whether it's a result of your work, the kindness of others, or simple good fortune,
much of what you see when you look down is yours. They're things in your possession.
Now look up. What do you see? The ceiling, perhaps pictures on a wall, or things out
the window: trees, houses, buildings, clouds in the sky - whatever is in the distance.
What do they have in common? To reach them, you need to plan, think, calculate. Even if
it's only a little, it stills requires some coordinated effort. Unlike what we see when
we look down the realm of up shows us things that we have to think about and work for in
order to get.
Sounds simple because it is. Yet to the brain the distinction is the gateway between two
wildly different ways of thinking - two utterly different ways of dealing with the world.
In your brain the down world is managed by a handful of chemicals - neuraltransmitters,
they're called - that let you experience satisfaction and enjoy whatever you here in the
here and now. But when you turn your attention to the world of up, your brain relies on a
different chemical - a single molecule - that not only allows you to move beyond the realm
of what's at your fingertips, but also motivates you to pursue, to control and to possess
the world beyond your immediate grasp. It drives you to seek out those things far away,
both physical things and things you cannot use, such as knowledge, love and power. Whether
it's reaching across the table for the salt shaker, flying to the moon in a spaceship, or
worshipping a god beyond space and time, this chemical gives us command over every distance,
whether geographical or intellectual.