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Live Your Life

December 30, 2011

Clearly and obviously I am among the more dazed and confused. Can’t stay on topic. Short attention span. Where some, most it seems, see the path before them plain as day – even if it be one requisite of adroit maneuver – I usually can’t see my own fingers if arm’s at full extension.

Sometimes there’s something going on in my head that causes not a little distress. Though I’ve had florid (sober) hallucinations, I’ve have never heard voices and never lost a reality test (at least not one of which I was aware), but I have indeed felt the weighty presence of an uninvited emotional tone.

Makes me think of a couple of things. First the Russell Crowe/John Nash character in A Beautiful Mind. Like I said, I don’t have manifest imaginary friends but do occasionally have stuff I sometimes successfully banish to the periphery. A dismal succession of future events more often than a winning lottery ticket.

Secondly Julian Jaynes. I’ve previously mentioned his incredible book Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The chief premise is that human preconsciousness was characterized by auditory hallucinations – voices -“gods”. Of which such things occurring here and now are vestigial traces. From barely discernable rumblings all the way to schizophrenia. Hmmm.

Maurice Sendak. Listening to an interview with him yesterday on that wonderful NPR “Fresh Air” program I heard him tell Terri Gross: “…which is what the creative act is all about. Things come to you without you necessarily knowing what they mean… when I was younger I was afraid of something that didn’t make a lot of sense… [but now I know that] There’s nothing to worry about.”

Maybe there’s hope. I do indeed agree that it can help to write shit down.

GROSS: Well, I’m really glad we got the chance to speak because when I heard you had a book coming out I thought what a good excuse to call up Maurice Sendak and have a chat

SENDAK: Yes, that’s what we always do, isn’t it?

GROSS: Yeah, it is

SENDAK: Thank God we’re still around to do it.

GROSS: Yes

SENDAK: (Who’s 83) And almost certainly, I’ll go before you go, so I won’t have to miss you.

GROSS: Oh, God what a…

SENDAK: …It doesn’t matter. I’m a happy old man.

GROSS: I wish you all good things

SENDAK: And I wish you all good things… Live your life, live your life, live your life.

That’s going to be my New Year’s Resolution.

*If you haven’t ever listened to “Fresh Air” you are doing yourself a great disservice. Go to the website and listen to the podcast of this interview. It was played yesterday as an encore from September because it was the most commented upon interview of the 2011.

Posted in consciousness/psychology, Literature | 1 Comment »

I Need The Eggs

December 9, 2011

Interestingly, in his new book Who’s In Charge* cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga wrote: “…we are people, not brains” by which he means that, uh, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. That though an emergent property of the bit of grey matter up top, a meeting of minds can not be understood as can, say, theIndianapolis 500 by the mechanics of an internal combustion engine.

He holds that: “analyzing single brains in isolation cannot illuminate the capacity of responsibility”. Rather, it is “an interaction between people – a social contract”. One, crucially, able to be honored or broken. And it’s irreducible. A solitary test lap would be meaningless.

Makes me think of the Buddhist imperative to “forget the self”, because there’s not one really there to begin with. It’s (they say) a construct assembled by the brain from inputs internal and external to aid us in navigation through a daily routine. If some combination of influences doesn’t make you feel trustworthy or un-, you will have no ability to feel either.

Perhaps the example of feral children can provide a useful, if horrific, example. Romulusand Remus aside, there have indeed been cases of infants and children who survived early extreme neglect, sometimes actually with the nurturance of wild animals. If protracted, a child’s mental and psychological development ends at a prehensile stage.

Beyond hope and possibility of resurrection. Should a one not be exposed to language – in any form – by puberty, the potential for later acquisition would have thus been rendered forever lost. But, with luck and the agency of a “Good Enough Parent”**, a child grows to become part of a rich network with myriad relationships – some inchoate and fleeting some deep and long.

Of the latter sort, I like the way Woody Allen put it in his film Annie Hall. “I-I thought of that old joke, you know, this, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And uh, the doctor says ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says ‘I would but I need the eggs’. Well, I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd and…but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

I do.

*I read about this book in a review by Raymond Tallis in the 11/12-13 WSJ. Gazzaninga first gained prominence in the 50’s when he pioneered split brain research. That is, brains in which the tissue connecting the halves – the corpus callosum – had been severed. This lead to the knowledge of hemispherical specialization. Interesting to note that the corpus callosum is more substantial in females. I wonder what the ramifications of that are…

**I’ve heard this phrase a lot, but it’s capitalized in reference to the eponymous great book by Bruno Bettleheim.

***Perhaps the eggs come frequently to mind because Annie Hall came out – and won the Oscar – in 1977. The year I got my roommate.

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Wonder When The All Clear Will Come

November 25, 2011

Though it is not exactly the story he tells, in his new book The Bear History of a Fallen King, French cultural historian Michel Pastoureau shows how the coming of consciousness gave its bearers power which descendents have yet even now to effectively tame.

In prehistoric times bears were feared, perhaps deified as a result, and thus immortalized on cave walls. Common in Europe they were more than a match for dimwitted pre-humans. Once the light went on however, so was the hunt and the rest, well, history.

By the time of Charlemagne in the late eighth century it was mere sport. He led forays that were responsible for incredible ursine carnage – thousands upon thousands. By the 1200 sightings in the wild had become rare. Bears did however make trifling appearances in zoos, circuses, and traveling minstrel shows. They’re there now nearly extinct.

Reminds me of a roundtable discussion amongst nuclear weapon developers on NPR a decade or so ago. Moderator asked about what had led to a particular cold war multiple level of magnitude increase in throw-weight. Answer? “It was a sweet technological problem. Hee, hee, hee.”

Fortunately, we also are thus far this side of extinction. But cf the ongoing decimation of species, climate change, and pressure of well armed hungry thirsty populations, the all clear is not yet out.

Funny thing though is that, with luck, the significant expansion of North American breeding bear populations might be an indicator of a new coming to conscience. They are messy, destructive, and sometimes violent and deadly. Yet, “The people [in their range] look at these bears as members of the community”.*

If a friend was killed or your kitchen destroyed by Yogi or Boo Boo the incident would not be something of which to make light. However, yesterday was Thanksgiving and maybe we should look with favor upon the fact that these days the response to an initial minor incursion might not be to whack. That there’s maybe an incipient wonder about the cosmic distribution of sentience and consciousness.

*WSJ; 11/21/11; As Bears Multiply, Human Clashes Rise.

**Photo on top of Cro-Magnon painting in Chauvet cave from Smithsonian 12/10

Posted in consciousness/psychology, Evolution, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Don’t Light A Match

September 30, 2011

Well, news from CERN has it that there are particles moving faster than the speed of light. Sounds like a big deal given E=MC2 and all of that. However, reading through the blogs, it seems that Einstein’s theory already allowed for neutrinos of the “Tachyonic” sort to exist always at faster than light.

Dang complicated though and they’d not theretofore been detected. Guess we’ll have to wait for review of the evidence to see what, if anything, new was discovered. But don’t you wonder where this stuff comes from in the first place though? Scientific insights I mean? Here’s what erstwhile Princeton Psych Prof Julian Jaynes had to say about it:

“The picture of a scientist sitting down with his problems and using conscious induction and deductions is as mythical as the unicorn. The greatest insights of mankind have come more mysteriously. The literature is full of insights which have simply come from nowhere.*” Said Einstein of his theory: “Suddenly the happiest thought of my life came to me”. And “Why is it that I get my best ideas in the morning while I’m shaving?”

Insights come when you stop thinking about the problem. For example, years ago friends and I were encamped upon a glacier dreaming of first ascents up in the Interior Ranges of BC. A storm set in and held us down for days. One member of our party never left his tent and became more morose by the day. Seriously depressed after several.

“We’re gonna die” he’d wail from inside his tent. The situation wasn’t pleasant, but wasn’t that serious either. Finally I decided to stick my head in and try to assuage his fears only to be nearly overcome with horrible odor of freeze-dried frijoles begotten methane.

“Hey man” I said to him in recoil, “get the hell out of there and breathe some fresh air before you get really sick. You got something muy bad goin’ on in there. Don’t light a match. Seriously.” He moaned a bit, I persisted, and soon he emerged.

Five minutes later he was smiling. Storm hadn’t broken, but his head was clear and he offered a few suggestions for elegant new routes of which no one had yet thought and which ended up years later with multiple stars in a guidebook. Same here. My best ideas always come shazam while breathing outside air.

*From his Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – to which I’ve previously and frequently referred.

**Gotta be honest. I came up with some of this while perusing two books that’ll I’ll shortly wrap and give as birthday gifts:

The Courage to Create by Rollo May and Confronting the Quantum Enigma by David J. Kreiter. And dang if, since I just bought them yesterday, I’m not going to have to go out and buy again for myself.

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Think With Your Hands

September 9, 2011

OK, the other day I was near a bookstore in its final death throes, having been killed by the internet, Amazon, et al. Sign said “80% off” so I decided to go in and see if there was anything interesting left. There was! Edward Tufte’s Visual Explanations – Images and Quantities, Evidence, and Narrative.

The Boston Globe calls the book “A Visual Strunk and White”. The New York Times calls Tufte: “The Leonardo of Data”. No understatements. With wit, verve, and beauty the author convincingly shows how good design matters.

One of many cases in point. We learn that it was poor design that allowed the Space Shuttle Challenger to explode, and I’m not referring to the engineering of the Shuttle or its launch vehicle themselves, but rather that of charts engineers used the day before the launch in an unsuccessful attempt to convince NASA that an explosion was likely.

The physical problem was that the cold temperatures predicted for launch date would attenuate the resilience of critical rubber o-rings allowing propellant to escape and conflagrate. The chart below is but one of several holding data describing the danger. Of their many faults Tufte cites inadvertent visual dissembling: “Chartjunk”. In contrast “Good design brings absolute attention to data”.

Then he recounts the famous experiment undertaken by the Nobel Prizewinning Physicist Richard Feynman in front of the commission investigating the accident. Using a small c-clamp he’d brought with him, he squeezed an o-ring and put it in a glass of ice water for a few moments.

As he removed and released the bit of rubber, it became immediately apparent that the cold kept it from springing back. “I believe that has some significance for our problem”. The utter clarity of his presentation and his deadpan understatement blew the minds of the masses who saw it on TV or read about it in the printed press.

“Never have so many viewed a single physics experiment. As Freeman Dyson rhapsodized: “The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.”

So, now, my questions are first: Without shelves loaded with books in a store through which to meander, how will one be able to occasion such moments of serendipitous edification? Seriously. And more important (again) what will the internet do to the potential for the development of great minds that “think with their hands”?

Here’s a response to question #2. Reformed nerd Nick Carr has written a Pulitzer nominated book, The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains and penned an article for The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Slate called his work “Silent Spring for the literary mind”.

Carr believes that “…there’s legitimate reason to be fearful. I’m just suggesting that data technology is becoming so dominant that we’re losing the opportunity and the encouragement to engage in what I think is the highest form of thought.”*

I’m gonna get some sort of grip exerciser.

*”The Reluctant Luddite. Nicholas Carr is a Net user of the first order, but he believes his brain is paying for it.” Article by Dirk Olin in the Sept/Oct ’11 Dartmouth Alumni Review.

Posted in Art, consciousness/psychology, couch potato | Leave a Comment »

Joe, Joe, and Joe

August 26, 2011

Artist Hiroshi Sugimoto did a series of black and white photographs of Richard Serra’s Joe, a sculpture which sits in an outside courtyard at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. Sugimoto’s work is interesting for a variety of reasons not least because of Serra’s own surprise: “This is not about me”.

The several ton piece was Serra’s first torqued spiral and he was shocked that the Japanese photographer had not undertaken a documentary style project. Instead, Sugimoto used the opportunity to create a work of his own and with it a more effective conveyance of the sense of Serra’s ideals than a more literal interpretation ever could.

The images abstract and cerebrate the unexpectedly complex physical experience of the huge hot rolled steel spiral. The two dimensional representations are thus elemental forms manifested and manipulated by Serra and returned to the Platonic realm by Sugimoto.

Furthermore, fascinatingly, Sugimoto doesn’t see Joe as relating to its namesake, Joseph Pulitzer. “I see it as related to my seascape series as a metaphor of human memory.” He tells us that a seascape is likely the least changed vista since the rise of consciousness. A gaze upon one thus shares an ethereal resonance with those of our earliest ancestors as well as all those between.

An early product of this awareness was remembrance of the dead. The first proto-human efforts beyond feeding, fighting, fleeing, or f______ (making babies) were the creation of graves, tombs, and then cenotaphs. Sugimoto calls Joe a “metaphor and system of remembrance”. Seems to me that the relationship between Joe and Photographs of Joe is a metaphor for the evolution of consciousness.

*Quotes from the exhibition brochure “Hiroshi Sugimoto – Photographs of Joe; edited by Matthias Waschek; published by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts; 2006.

**cf “Conquistadors of the Useless” 1/21/08

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Meager Tools of Consciousness

August 12, 2011

Do you dream in black and white or color? Interesting that in the 50’s most respondents to that question would say b&w. Now most say color. What’s up with that? Humanoid brains have evolved and grown in size, but not that much that fast…

A philosopher* holds that the real answer is neither. Those choices just happen to have been the most convenient metaphors or analogies for a given place and time – conjured up by those exposed to black and white film in the case of the former and color TV of the latter.

“Dreams don’t have to be pictures of any kind at all. They could be simply thoughts – and thoughts, even thoughts about color, are neither colored nor noncolored in themselves.”

We struggle with the meager tools of conscious experience to interpret the relationship between our brains – by far the most complex things in the universe – and everything else. And to make it even (to me) less comprehensible, everything is relative.

Know how if a tree falls in an empty glade there can be no sound? Well, even should said tree remain upright, if there is no eye to look upon it, there is no color either. Sight and sound are by definition the result of the interaction of stimuli, organ, and cerebral processor.

At least to start with. Research has shown that, for example, some originally sighted folks gone blind retain the ability to think in color, remember shapes of letters and faces while some do not. Makes me wonder from time to time what one’s gray matter could cook up on its own. Like, could one completely and forever sensory deprived somehow engender a hallucination?

Obviously, such experimentation has not been done on humans. Unfortunately though. it has been on animals – monkeys. Makes ‘em stark raving mad. Would the far greater complexity of our neural networks make a difference? For me the question comes down to the nature of consciousness. Is it an emergent property dependent for its existence upon that meat pudding up there or does it exist independent of material origin? There are respected thinkers on both sides of that issue.

At any rate, the richness of our interior lives is directly related to that of our experience. Consider how different must be those of the two beings in the paragraph below: one an accomplished mountaineer on a ledge high of the side of a difficult and dangerous mountain and the other a peasant far below:

..We melt snow on our campstove. Constellations cast flickering stories of gods, heroes and animals against a coal-black sky. The earth spins, and for a few sleepless hours we linger far above the horizon. We hover between the bliss of the heavens and the chaotic life on earth. Time feels suspended: it’s as if we can view our planet from another, ephemeral world. Far below, in the tangled rhododendron forest, the villagers of Moxi and Xinxing enjoy a rare cloudless evening. With my headlamp, I signal our story to one resident, and he acknowledges our presence with his own flashing light…”**

*Perplexities of Consciousness by Eric Schwitzgebel reviewed by Nicholas Humphrey in the NYT BR 7/31/11.

**”Out of Darkness” by Kyle Dempster in Alpinist 35/Summer 2011 His and partner Bruce Normand’s route on Mt Edgar pictured above

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Short Circuit Enculturation?

July 29, 2011

In the 7/23/11 Economist there is an interesting article about the evolution of gender roles in societies across our planet. It cites convincing (to me) studies holding that the nature of agriculture in the land of one’s ancestors determines much about the economic roles of women in that society.

Up to the fifth millennium BC Mesopotamian women did the farming, tilling their fields with hoes. The invention of the plow somewhere around 5,000 BC changed things. Women didn’t have the requisite upper body strength and men took over.

“Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users.”

Things can change and have to some extent in the western world where much farming was done from behind plows, but it took the cataclysm of WWII. Rosie the Riveter et al moved into jobs vacated by soldiers and sailors headed toward the battlefield. Still, even now, sixteen per cent fewer adult women than men work outside the home in OEDC countries.

Makes one think of other long long term ramifications. Hmmm. In her book French Ways and Their Meaning Edith Wharton wrote: “…one may safely say that most things in a man’s view of life depend on how many thousand years ago his land was deforested. And…when…men…are plunged afresh into the wilderness of a new continent, it is natural that in many respects they should be still farther removed from those whose habits and opinions are threaded through and through with Mediterranean culture and the civic discipline of Rome.”

For example: “There are more people who can read in the United States; but what do they read? The whole point, as far as any real standard goes is there. If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets in hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture.”

I’ve recently been entertained by labor strife in France related to an attempt to raise the retirement age from sixty to sixty-two. But now in light of the likelihood that the leaders of the richest country in the world have squandered our credit rating, the concept of joie de vivre rings with new resonance. I’m thinking of short circuiting the slow evolution of enculturation by moving to the Cotes d’Azur.

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Mens Sano In Corpore Sano

July 24, 2011

I’d been wondering why my MD brother had no TV in his place (none!) till I began paging through another of his JAMAs (Journal of the American Medical Association). I figured it out when the following heart pounding sounding title caught my eye: “Television Viewing and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and All-Cause Mortality”.

Made me think of the phrase above from the first line of Juvenal’s Satire X which reads in full: “It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body”. It will come as no surprise that I’m in agreement and don’t think that either will be enhanced in front of a tube. (cf “couch potato category tab below right.) Still, it is fun to see actual peer reviewed evidence (for which I need a dictionary to understand!) in support.

The study “revealed a linear increase in risk with the number of hours per day of TV viewing for both type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease; the association with all cause mortality appeared stronger with TV viewing time of greater than three hours per day”.

Interestingly, the authors also relate that for a group of nine year olds, reduced time in front of the television slowed increases in body mass index even without change in physical activity. No thoughts of “free” Happy Meals and “Livin’ It”.

Or like Mason Williams* wrote in 1969, “Network television wants to keep you stupid so you’ll watch it”. And: “Television is not a salesman with his foot in your door, it’s a salesman with his foot in your head”.

*Mason Williams is an incredible creative force. He recorded his “Classical Gas” on twelve string guitar in 1968 and won two Grammys. He was a writer for the groundbreaking Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour the cancelation of which was in part the motivation for the book the cover of which you see above. He was briefly head writer for Saturday Night Live and could be said to have conceived of music videos and recorded the first one.

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Awake

July 10, 2011

Recently had the incredible privilege and good fortune to be the only dude in a camp for girls and young women. For a week and a half I was there to help (well, watch) wife orchestrate a ceramic mural commemorating the camp’s centennial.

The name of the camp is a Native American word which translates as the imperative “awake”. Perfect. Separated from all electronic devices for seven weeks and immersed in nature, the arts (studio and performing), and each other the campers must indeed emerge anew.

I greatly enjoyed watching and listening to what only could be described as reveille to taps ebullience. And very happily benefited by this most positive manifestation of emotional contagion. I felt my psyche reconstellate as neuroses disappeared. No foolin’.

Every meal time is characterized by singing. Songs in thanks, songs for dropping stuff, birthdays, introductions, goodbyes, everything. I sort of felt like I was missing a gear. Anyway, one evening after the meal was over, table cleared, and awaiting dessert, I was the only one who’d not retained a fork.

I asked the sweet young thing next to me what was up. She looked at me with something between mirth and pity and said “dessert”. I then asked how all but I knew that it was going to be something for which one needed a utensil.

“Mr. Budge, we sang the song!”

Sung to the tune of Frere Jacques:

Save your forks

For dessert

If they’re dirty lick them

Save your forks

It was a slap in the side of the head for which I’m grateful.

I was sad to leave though knew that I was at least as much of a distraction as would have been cell phones, computers, Ipods etc. Now back behind my desk at my office I understand how the similar experiences of wife and daughters leavened their lives and enhanced their sense of self.* Needy they’re not.

*cf Lucifer 7/30/10

**Couldn’t help but recall that Buddha means “Awakened One”.

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