The Purpose of Hair

I read a strange article on hair this week, and while I haven't gotten a chance to verify if any part of it is actually true, it has triggered some interesting thoughts.  The basic premise was that hair, as part of the nervous system, is responsible for more of our sensory input than we are conscious of.  It claimed that tests had established a correlation between people growing longer hair, and having a stronger intuitive "sixth sense" of what was going on around them.  The proposed reasoning being that hair was a highly sensitive extension of the central nervous system, and provided the brain with a wealth of subconsciously processed information.

I am not convinced it is true, but it is certainly possible.  And if it is true, it would provide reasoning behind a couple of interesting phenomenon.  One is that in general females are stereotypically associated with having a stronger sense of intuition, and have stronger "feelings" (which aren't necessarily limited to emotions) than males who traditionally lean more heavily on logic and reason.  Females also usually have longer hair than guys, so that at least in general lines up with the idea.

As a random personal anecdote, I got my hair cut a few weeks ago, although it wasn't particularly long anyway.  And while I didn't recognize the change at the time, upon re-examining the timeline of recent events, that day represented a strong shift in my intuitive understanding of what my girlfriend was thinking.  Prior to that point, I had been uncharacteristically good at figuring out what she was thinking and feeling, even when she wasn't ready to share that directly.  That is usually an area that I struggle greatly with, and recognizing that pattern was a significant part of the "connection" I felt between us.  From that evening I got a haircut onward, I ceased being able to relate to what she was thinking and doing, although I was very consciously trying to better figure that out.  The idea is a little far fetched, and I am sure there were other factors at play, but the timing does cause one to wonder if that had any effect on the relationship.

The possibility of that being true also brings up some interesting questions about what God was trying to tell us in the seemingly random requirements of the Old Testament Nazarite vow.  Was the prohibition against cutting one's hair to better enable them to sense what God was trying to show and tell them during that time.  And the story of Samson and Delilah becomes an extreme illustration of what happens in general, as opposed to a unique one-off tale.

Now I am not going to grow my hair out super long as a reaction to discovering this possibility, but I will consciously observe the effect that haircuts have in the future.  And who knows, maybe that will lead me to wait a little longer between trims, or discourage me from taking it back quite so far.  And where does facial hair or other body hair fit into the equation?  I can see how body hair can extend the range that one's skin can feel, but to the degree discussed in that article?  Or maybe the whole article was a crazy prank, and the human mind is conditioned to "find" examples of things it believes to be true.  Who knows what information you can trust these days?