In A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman says, “The brain is a good stagehand. It gets on with its work while we’re busy acting out our scenes. When we see an object, the whole peninsula of our senses wakes up to appraise the new sight. All the brain’s shopkeepers consider it from their point of view, all the civil servants, all the accountants, all the students, all the farmers, all the mechanics.” We could add the soldiers and guards to Ackerman’s list, for it is they who evaluate the context in which things occur, the appropriateness and significance of literally everything
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