Orland Bishop appears to be on a fool’s errand – the kind of fool’s errand our next American president may feel she (or he) is on when trying to heal the terrible rift exposed by this election.
Bishop’s chosen patch to spread the word is Watts, a district in southern Los Angeles where the war between the main gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, has claimed five times as many lives as did all the years of the troubles in Northern Ireland.
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Tell your doctor that you have to search harder to recall the names of distant friends or remember where you last placed your keys, and he’s likely chalk it up to ‘mild cognitive decline’ and tell you to get used to the inevitable slippery slope of ageing.

He’d be resoundingly wrong. The latest brain evidence demonstrates the astonishing likelihood that the brain is far more malleable than originally thought, with the capacity to grow new brain cells and to make new neural connections throughout your life, even in your twilight years.

In fact, scientists are now discovering that the brain can not only stay sharp, but be enhanced at any point in life. So malleable are those little grey cells that you can increase the rate at which new cells grow by three to five times—even in old age.

The question is no longer whether it’s possible to regenerate your brain, but the best way to do so, for there is a wide variation in this capacity, called ‘neurogenesis’, depending on how you live your life.

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Imagine the following happening in America today: a group of women meeting regularly, half of the group pro-life and Trump supporters, and the other half pro-choice and Clinton supporters, each group respecting the other’s point of view and speaking together with compassion and understanding.

Impossible? That’s exactly what happened nearly 26 years ago.

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As I witness the great divisions in both Britain and America in the recent referendum and ongoing US election campaign, I’m reminded of Mark Gerzon, who, as a leadership facilitator with the Congress and the United Nations, once worked with the New Israel Fund, an organization whose membership, comprised of both Israelis and Palestinians, raises money for a number of joint causes.

 

When he asked the board how they were able to work together so effectively, one board member replied, “We are able to live with paradoxes.”

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