Café Philos: an internet café

When Bob Dylan sings the words, "He's not busy being born is busy dying", he offers us an important insight into human psychology. Namely, if we ever are so foolish as to refuse rebirth and renewal, then we are "busy dying". For the only way a human can stay alive spiritually, or psychologically, is to be reborn -- again and again and again.

I am often reminded of that truth these days because of a friend of mine. He has reached old age and, unfortunately, ceased being reborn.

Even on a relatively superficial level -- the level of one's opinions -- my friend has turned to stone. The opinions he has today are substantially no different than the opinions he held a decade ago. His intellectual curiosity has evaporated. He merely repeats himself.

Somewhat more profoundly, he has come to isolate himself as much as possible from new experiences. His routine is set. His day contains few challenges. He no longer wishes to be bothered with the new, the novel, the unexplored.

Old age can do that to us; it can be merciless. I do not point to him in order to blame him for what so many of us experience -- or will experience -- if we live long enough. Instead, I merely wish to illustrate how "He's not busy being born is busy dying".

Yet, we need not look to old age alone to illustrate in what ways Dylan's observation might be true. Society in many ways puts a great deal of pressure on all of us to be as unchanging, as constant, as ossified, as possible. Nor does one have to look far to see great and small examples of that pressure. Didn't society teach you the only valuable love is unchanging? Didn't it teach you any love which comes and goes is "mere infatuation"?

Or, look at class distinctions in so many societies -- the social sanctions that are leveled like canon against anyone who dares to break out of the social class they were born into.

Again, take even the most trivial example: How often have you heard someone called a "flip-flopper", a "waffler"? How often have you heard it said changing your opinions shows a lack of firmness and character? Demanding that someone never change their opinions is tantamount to demanding they learn nothing from one day to the next. Yet, society generally values the person who learns nothing during the course of a day over the person who learns something new.

I cannot begin to cover here the myriad ways society tries to pressure people into remaining constant. Yet, remaining constant is not at all the same thing as being true to ourselves.

"He's not busy being born is busy dying". How else can you stay genuinely true to yourself without being reborn -- again and again and again? For the self is always changing.

I think that becomes obvious once you give up trying to be a self and instead just observe yourself day to day. When you have learned to observe yourself like a scientist would observe a fruit fly -- as dispassionately as that -- you see how much you change. But to clearly observe yourself, I think you must neither condemn nor praise what you observe. A dispassionate scientist would neither condemn nor praise a fruit fly -- why should we think we need to condemn or praise ourselves? Condemnation and praise seem to be mere ways of escaping from clear observation.

I do not believe it is necessary -- and I believe it can even be detrimental -- to set for ourselves a goal of change or renewal.

Instead, once we learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves, we will understand ourselves -- and with that understanding comes change. But if we set a goal of renewal, we will only achieve a little change -- far short of a rebirth -- and then backslide. Everyone has seen that happen to those people who pray fervently to become better people, go for two weeks or two months, and then backslide. It's even true some people spend their whole lives doing that without ever catching on to how worthless it is. Yet, merely learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves and the rest will come naturally.

D. H. Lawrence somewhere writes beautifully of another reason we should avoid setting a predetermined goal for how we want to change. Speaking to young people, he reminds them they have often been told that the challenge of youth is to throw off the chains that oppress them. He then explains how they have been misled by that, and how throwing off the chains that oppress them is by no means the primary challenge of youth. Instead, he tells them their job is to "discover the unexpected door" to their lives. Why is that true?

I think it is true because, as Heraclitus long ago said, "No man steps into the same river twice, because either the river has changed, or the man has changed, or both." Now, if that's a simple fact, then how can anyone stay true to themselves without being reborn -- without "discovering the unexpected door"? Perhaps when we set a predetermined goal to how we want to change, we close off that unexpected door, and with it, our chance for genuine rebirth.

If one thinks of creation stories as containing psychological truths, rather than physical truths, then perhaps those stories in which the world was created out some pre-existing substance are more psychologically true than those stories in which the world was created out of nothing.

I've tried to point out in the post that follows this one how our awareness of the world is limited. That is, we are not aware of the world as is, but only as interpreted. This psychological truth seems to imply, however, that our interpretation is derived from some kind of information we get from the world. Our eyes detect photons. The photons are of the world and pre-exist our interpretation of the world. We then interpret those photons. That act of interpretation can be seen as an act of creation in which we make the world -- not out of nothing -- but out of something (photons).

Yet, if all that is true, and if one wants to look at creation stories as psychological truths, then those creation stories which state the world was created out of pre-existing matter would seem to be more psychologically accurate than those creation stories which state the world was created out of nothing.

My senses tell me I'm sitting in a solid chair. On the other hand, physics tells me the chair I'm sitting in is mostly empty space. How can it be there is a difference between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair?

The short answer is that my brain and nervous system (very much including my senses) do not reconstruct reality as it is. My eyes do not, for instance, see the atoms of my chair, nor the empty space between the atoms. Instead, my eyes take in photons that have bounced off the atoms of the chair. My eyes and brain then process and interpret that information. In the end, what I see bears little resemblance to what is actually there according to physics.

One way to understand the relation between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair is to consider the analogy of a pilot landing an aircraft on instruments. Although the plane's instruments give the pilot very little information about the world -- and even though what information they give him is highly processed and interpreted -- the information he gets is sufficient for him to navigate. Just so, our brains and nervous systems give us very little information about the world and the information they do give us is highly processed and interpreted -- yet it's usually sufficient for us to cope with the world.

We are all like that pilot -- we must cope with the world on instruments alone. That's the position our brains and nervous systems leave us in.

"Satan is the one who plants wicked thoughts in our minds." I read those words on a site yesterday and they stopped me for a while as I wondered what kind of fearful struggle their author must experience to believe that each time he has a wicked thought it comes from Satan. Can you imagine?

Suppose he thinks, as it seems so many religious people do, that even his sexual desires are wicked? Well, according to some psychologists, one thinks of sex every few minutes. Does he feel he's wrestling with Satan every few minutes?

How can one cope with such a monstrous notion -- the notion one's mind is wrestling with Satan? How could one ever be at peace with oneself?

I'm certain I have thoughts he would consider wicked, and therefore from Satan. But I don't see my thoughts the way he does. I'm not in a struggle against any of my thoughts -- to struggle against an unpleasant thought just prolongs it in consciousness. To be frightened of a thought reinforces it, makes it stronger. To condemn a thought just fixes it in memory.

As best I can, I watch my thoughts. I'm attentive to them. But I don't struggle with them. I don't condemn them. I just idly watch them come and go.

I think that poor man must go around in circles, like a puppy chasing his own tail. Perhaps he's struggled so hard against his wicked thoughts that he's committed all of them to memory, where they ever lie in wait to pop up again and again. Perhaps he's reinforced the neural pathways of those wicked thoughts so much they are extremely robust and crowd out most other thoughts.

It would be ironic if I had more wicked thoughts than he did with the difference being I forget my many while he never forgets his few.

When you put two arches side by side each other, you create a triangular space between them called a "spandrel" (see photo).

Now, a spandrel is not something intended, but is rather the side-effect of placing arches adjacent to each other. Whenever you place arches side by side each other, you get a spandrel -- whether you want one or not. That fact inspired the biologist Stephen J. Gould to borrow the term from architecture in order to describe any feature of an organism that did not itself evolve for an evolutionary reason, but was instead a side-effect of some other feature's evolution.

Suppose, for instance, that natural selection results in a wolf's snout getting longer and longer. Further suppose that, as a side-effect of the snout getting longer, the wolf's face just happens to get narrower (Maybe by accident the wolves with genes for long snouts also had genes for narrow faces). So, unlike the snout, the narrow face is not caused by natural selection. If that were to happen, the narrow face would be a spandrel.

Recently, Scott Atran and others have been arguing that human religiosity is at least to some extent a spandrel. Specifically, Atran has argued that belief in supernatural agents -- gods, demons, spirits, and so forth -- is a spandrel. (Belief in supernatural agents is not the sum of human religiosity, but it's a very large chunk of the sum.) So, if Atran is right, the fact every known culture and society has contained one belief or another in supernatural agents is merely an accident of human evolution. There was no natural selection for such beliefs. It merely happened as the by-product of selection for other things.

By product of natural selection or not, the belief in supernatural agents is now part of our genetic make-up. Thus, it is very unlikely we will eliminate religion so long as humans are human. And that is a radically different view than the notion religion will die out as science progresses. If anything, only the forms are likely to change. People might give up their belief in the Christian God, for instance, only to adopt a belief in other supernatural agents, such as seems to be happening in parts of Europe.

Yet, how does Atran explain the various expressions of religiosity that do not seem to involve any belief in supernatural agency? Atheistic Buddhism, for instance. From what I can gather, he doesn't have an explanation for those forms of human religiosity. That is, Atran does not argue that such things as the notion of enlightenment are spandrels in the way that such things as the notion of gods are spandrels.

I tend to think Atran is largely correct in saying the human tendency to ascribe supernatural agency to things is a by-product of the evolution of other human traits. On the other hand, I think some religious notions, such as the notion of enlightenment, have come about, not because we are genetically predisposed to create them, but as a result of experience. So, while I accept that Atran has gone far to explain the origins of some aspects of human religiosity, I don't think he has explained the origins of all aspects of human religiosity.


Reference:

Darwin's God

Some political bloggers are having fun with a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The study finds evidence the brains of liberals and conservatives function differently. It appears liberals have brains that adapt to sudden changes a bit more readily than do the brains of conservatives. Naturally, liberal bloggers are spinning the study one way while conservatives are spinning it the other. Each side wants to show how the study "proves" folks on their side of the fence are superior thinkers. But neither the liberal nor the conservative bloggers that I read are discussing one of the most interesting implications of the study -- that humans may have evolved innate perspectives or prejudices.

The study was conducted by political scientist David Amodio and his colleagues at New York University. They recruited 43 subjects for the experiment and began by asking each subject to rank his or herself on a scale for political views. One end of the scale was "extremely liberal" while the other end was "extremely conservative".

After the recruits ranked themselves, they were directed to sit before a computer screen and press one of two buttons depending on whether they saw an "M" or a "W". Each time they saw a letter, they had only half a second in which to respond -- nothing like a little pressure to think fast.

Eighty percent of the time (400 out of 500 instances) they saw the same letter. This was to encourage them to expect that letter. "You keep seeing the same stimulus over and over, so when the opposite stimulus comes on it's always a surprise," said Amodio.

When the less common letter appeared on the screen, the people who identified themselves in the conservative half of the scale pressed the "usual" button 47% of the time instead of switching to the correct button. In comparison, the "liberals" achieved the slightly lower error rate of 37%.

Up until this point, nothing about the study was surprising: There have been dozens of studies showing a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits. "Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances (Source)." But Amodio's study is unique because he performed electroencephalogram (EEG) scans on the brains of his subjects while they were performing their task -- thus discovering significant differences in the way the brains of liberals and conservatives were operating.

Liberals had slightly over twice as much activity as conservatives in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Some scientists think that area of the brain acts as a mental brake by helping the mind recognize "no-go" situations where it must refrain from the usual course of action. They refer to that function of the anterior cingulate cortex as "conflict monitoring".

According to Amodio, "The neural mechanisms for conflict monitoring are formed early in childhood," and are probably rooted in part in our genetic heritage. "But even if genes may provide a blueprint for more liberal or conservative orientations, they are shaped substantially by one's environment over the course of development."

It seems to me Amodio's overall take on his experiment is in line with what most other scientists are saying these days: Genes may predispose us to certain thoughts and behaviors, but environment still plays a major role in how we think and act. But if genes predispose us to certain inclinations, then how and why did those genes evolve?

As luck would have it, Ed Yong has a post on the evolution of personality differences over at Not Exactly Rocket Science that sheds considerable light on the question of how and why personality differences (and by extension, political preferences) might have evolved in us. Basically, it turns out that certain personality traits most likely evolved as ways of answering the age-old question, "Should I have kids now or later?" At first blush, there might not seem to be much of a relationship between reproduction, personality differences, and political preferences, but do check out Ed's article for insight into how those things might be linked.

I think the important thing to realize here is that "liberal" and "conservative" tendencies evolved in us because both tendencies increase our biological fitness -- depending on the circumstances. If one or the other were inherently superior, then natural selection, working over millions of years, would have resulted in that one particular tendency being the only tendency humans have. Either we would all be "liberals" or we would all be "conservatives". But that didn't happen because both liberal and conservative personalities have advantages.


UPDATE: Cognitive Daily has an illuminating critique of the study here. I think it should be read in conjunction with Ed's article, however, because I don't think Cognitive Daily's critique of the "Left-wing/Right-wing" study amounts to an refutation of the notion there may be significant and inherent differences in the way liberal and conservative brains operate.


References:

Homo Politicus: Brain Function of Liberals, Conservatives Differ

Political Affiliation Could All be in the Brain (New Scientist)

Study Finds Left-Wing Brain, Right Wing Brain (L.A. Times)

"Research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and -- to top it all off -- a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic."

- Bob Altemeyer


Authoritarian thinkers are not limited to any one ideology. Lately, in America, the most prominent authoritarian thinkers have tended to be right wingers, but that is only an accident of history. Not too long ago, the most prominent authoritarian thinkers in the States were left wingers. So, it is a mistake to associate authoritarian thinking with just one ideology.

I propose we regard authoritarian thinking as a pathology. It is in so many ways highly dysfunctional, as the quote from Altemeyer points out. Perhaps someday it can be treated, as one would treat any other debilitating disease.

It bugs me that many people just don't get science. In my weaker moments, when I want the world to be radically other than it is, I want everyone to understand science. Not just to know scientific fact, but to understand scientific reasoning. But what bugs me more -- much more -- than the simple fact not everyone understands science is the horrible fact some people will consider you stupid if you don't understand science.

Thirty or so years ago when I was in college, I tutored logic for the Philosophy Department. It was while tutoring students in logic that I began to suspect there was more to "intelligence" than I had been taught.

At that time, thirty years ago, Howard Gardner had not yet invented the theory of multiple intelligences, and no one else was seriously entertaining the notion that intelligence might have more than one axis. The IQ test ruled the day: intelligence, everyone thought, could be summed up as a single thing.

Yet, when tutoring logic, I discovered people who were amazingly bright in some ways, but who just could not for the life of them grasp logic. It perplexed me no end. Until I actually sat down to work with such people, I had always assumed anyone who was bright was bright in everything. And anyone who was dull was dull in everything. But now I was confronted with people who needed exceptional help just to pass an introductory course in logic, but who excelled in other ways -- I could not deny they were in those ways bright people.

The question never went away. Over the following years, I was always alert to noticing how people could be bright in some ways and not so bright in others. Eventually, I came to think, "There are many different kinds of human intelligence", and I tried to categorize the different kinds based on my own experience of people. Then one day, after several years thinking I was alone in my heresy, it occurred to me others too might be thinking along the same lines as I was. So, I Googled several search terms until I hit the key one, "multiple intelligences". Up popped Howard Gardner's work, and I became as excited as a boy who has just discovered his first real friend.

Today, there is a movement among people to label themselves "Brights". The people who like to do that largely seem frustrated with the fact not everyone gets science as well as they do. I find the movement unsettling. "Bright" is not a term that should be reserved only for people who get science. There are at least eight distinct kinds of intelligence, according to Gardner, and so there are at least eight distinct ways to be bright. Moreover, even if one is not especially bright in any of those eight ways, perhaps one has a mix of intelligences that allows one to see certain things more surefooted than other people see those things.

Of course, the temptation to see our own kinds of intelligence as superior to any other kind is not limited to people who like to call themselves "Brights". It's done all the time -- even by people who are not "Brights". For instance: Many people who have a great deal of interpersonal intelligence tend to see others who lack such "people smarts" as inferior to them. And many people who are exceptional athletes.... I could go on, but every example is at heart the same: Many people think their own brand of intelligence makes them decisively superior to everyone else. That, my friends, is not too smart.

It is also arrogant. I do not mean to mean to imply any moral condemnation of arrogance here. I mean only to be descriptive -- not prescriptive. The essence of arrogance is a lack of realism or proper perspective about how our own talents, abilities and skills compare to the talents, abilities and skills of others. To be arrogant, you must be to some extent deluded.

Life presents us with many challenges and not one of us is equally adept at meeting each and everyone of those challenges. Humans have the great advantage, though, of being able to communicate exceptionally well with each other (when compared to other species). In practice, that means we can seek advice on how to handle challenges that play to our weaknesses, rather than our strengths. Suppose I don't understand politics as well as you do. If that's the case, then it would be wise of me to ask for your advice about politics when I have need to -- so long as you yourself are honest in giving advice. In that way, I combine your strengths with mine.

On the other hand, if I am arrogant, I believe that your knowledge of politics is inferior to my own because -- at least in part because -- I have no real grasp of my own limits. Most likely, I see myself as intelligent in every way that really matters. Why then should I seek out anyone else? Why should I look for opinions that are fundamentally different from my own? In my delusion of across the board superiority, I merely consider any fundamental difference in opinion to be the proof you are wrong and I am right. Worse, I probably don't even understand your point of view.

When we are too arrogant to consider any views but our own, we cease to take advantage of one of our species greatest strengths -- the ability to draw on the strengths of others to meet the many challenges of life that play to our own weaknesses. That strength is nowhere more highly developed than in humans. It's almost inhuman not to use it.

Last night and this morning, I have been engaged in arguing about premarital sex with a friend on an internet forum. My friend is: (1) idealistic, (2) idealistic, and (3) idealistic. Apart from those three things, she's idealistic. But it's not entirely her doing, for she has been raised to be idealistic.

She's a bright, articulate, and humanely decent young person who has had the misfortune of having been sheltered from many of the realities of life by her parents.

Her parents even went so far as to home school her -- both in order to give her a superior education in some things and an indoctrination in other things. For instance: They did not think it was advantageous to her to know too much about the theory of evolution, other than why they considered it wrong. So now she's well educated about certain things and poorly educated about others.

I suspect her parents did a very good job indoctrinating her on the subject of sex and relationships. Added to that, she has never had a boyfriend. That is, she has had insufficient experience to contradict her ideals. She believes in Prince Charming. She really does! He is as real to her as the theory of evolution is wrong and she is holding out for him in more ways than one. Most obviously, she is holding out for him sexually. She wants to be a virgin on her wedding day. But more subtly, she is holding out for him emotionally. She does not want to date anyone who she thinks is not the Prince.

It has never really occurred to her that everything has a learning curve, and even love is no exception to that. In a vital way, we must learn how to love. And we can only learn so much about love from words, just as we can only learn so much about playing tennis from listening to words. At some point, if we are going to love well, then we must practice loving, just as we must practice tennis to play tennis well.

Ideally, in tennis, you hit the ball over the net, return each volley, and all goes well. But unless you have actually practiced doing that -- and practiced it and practiced it and practiced it -- you will be unable to do it well.

Of course, she would say she only wants to practice love with one special person, her Prince Charming. I think that's fine, if that's the way she wants to do it. I am not actually opposed to anyone holding out for their prince or princess. But I do object that she doesn't truly realize there will be a learning curve when she finally meets the Prince.

How do you keep your ideals when life smashes them down? In some cases, you simply don't. During the Korean War, the Americans attempted at first to conquer North Korea. Then the Chinese entered the war and the Americans had to change their goal or ideal from the conquest of North Korea to the defense of South Korea. They managed to accomplish this second goal or ideal, but had they not in time changed from the attack of the North to the defense of the South, they would have lost both goals, rather than just one. To accomplish anything in life you must sometimes be flexible about your ideals. And, somehow, I don't think my friend is flexible about her sexual and relationship ideals. She may very well end up loosing everything.

I wrestle with what to think about idealism. That's to say, I don't feel I understand it. And I don't feel I understand it because, for the most part, all I see are its follies and excesses. If you really understand something, then you tend to have a balanced view of it. But I do not have a balanced view of idealism: I see it's weaknesses, but not its strengths. So there is a large part of me that hopes she will find exactly what she wants in life. Even though I doubt that will be the likely outcome of her stubborn idealism.

When I think of dating, I think of courtship. Every few years, one or another of the big magazines is sure to run a cover story asking, "Is Courtship Dead?". The magazine will claim that's a serious question and to prove it's a serious question, they will point to some recent poll in which 67% of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 adamantly declare courtship means nothing to them. It's something their grandparents might have done in their day, but today's hip 18 - 24 year old has no use for it, etc. etc. etc.

You might recall from your studies of social history that "radical thinkers" in every generation within the last 150 years have declared courtship dead. Courtship is always being declared dead by people. Yet, every generation courts. Why is that?

"Why is that?" would have been a hard question to answer accurately back in the good old days. In this case, the good old days are the 1970's when everyone in academia seemed to believe that humans were born with a "blank slate". That is, the predominant paradigm in nearly every field back then was that humans were born with no innate behaviors -- nor even any predispositions to behaviors -- and that all significant human behavior could be explained as learned behavior.

On the other hand, today, it's very well known that humans are genetically predisposed to some behaviors. Contra the old 1970's paradigm, not everything humans do is entirely learned (although learning does play a role in most everything). Most likely, courtship has never died out -- despite all its obituaries -- primarily because we humans are genetically predisposed to court.

More specifically, it seems courtships follow a certain general pattern, and that pattern is what we're genetically predisposed to follow. For instance, a graduate student in anthropology discovered that women are more likely than men to initiate successful courtships -- at least in bars. One of his methods was to attend campus town bars where he could record the exchanges between mostly undergraduate men and women. He found that women initiate courtships nonverbally, with their eyes. In other words, they offer "come on looks" to men who interest them. The grad student noticed that courtships initiated by women were more successful than those initiated by men. Success in this case was measured by whether the people engaged in the courtship left the bar in each other's company. What the graduate student discovered was part of the general pattern of human courtship.

A while back, I read of two psychologists who had concluded that dysfunctional courtships -- courtships that do not follow, or that slight, the general pattern of human courting -- almost invariably result in dysfunctional relationships and marriages. If that's true, the importance of courtship in humans is clear.

I have a strong hunch, but based only on anecdotal evidence, that when dysfunctional courtships result in sex, one, the other, or both partners is very apt to feel exploited, abused and even humiliated by the sex. From what I've seen, it seems courtships prepare us emotionally and psychologically for sexual intimacy. Without a good courtship, we are not prepared for that level of intimacy, and our feelings afterwards often show it.

So far as I know, there is nothing in our genes that prescribe we must be married to have a healthy sex life. But if the anthropologists, biologists and psychologists are right, then our genes might indeed prescribe we must have a healthy courtship to have a healthy sex life.

Last, I think courses taught in the public schools on human sexuality should include a section on courtship. If dysfunctional courtships lead to dysfunctional relationships and marriages, it might be wise to teach kids what the value of courting is and something about how to go about it.

Ed Diener is America's foremost psychologist researching human happiness. In a 2003 study, he and Shigehiro Oishi discovered that European and Asian Americans behaved differently when choosing tasks to perform.

The European Americans typically picked tasks they were good at, while the Asian Americans were significantly more likely to ignore whether they were good at something when choosing whether to do it. Diener and Oishi further discovered that over time the European Americans expressed greater happiness with their tasks than the Asian Americans. That is, both groups were given a choice what tasks to perform, but only the European Americans picked tasks that made them happy.

Given a choice, why would anyone not choose to do what makes them happy?

Unfortunately, not everyone in this strange world has the option of fully playing to their strengths. It seems in many cases the reasons for that are economic. I would guess the need to earn a living, combined with a lack of opportunities for doing so, has probably forced more people into jobs and lives that play to their weaknesses than perhaps any other single factor. Just imagine how many immensely talented people in the long course of human history have been street beggars because the society and economy they lived in provided them with little or no opportunity to do anything else! Yet, even in wealthy nations today many people find themselves going into jobs where they cannot make full use of their talents and skills, but must to one great extent or another play to their weaknesses.

Besides economics, many social and cultural factors can pressure people into opting for a job or life that does not play to their strengths and leaves them less happy than they would otherwise be. The classic example of that is the social and cultural oppression of women. Until recently, most societies allowed women very few choices in life. And minorities within a society often face similar restrictions.

A third set of factors are probably psychological. A few years ago, the Surgeon General of the United States released a startling report that concluded one in five Americans was mentally or emotionally ill. A symptom of many disorders is anhedonism -- that is, an aversion to pleasure. People who suffer anhedonism are more likely to seek things that make them unhappy than things that make them happy. Although I don't know what percentage of the population suffers from anhedonism, it seems likely enough that it could be a few million of us.

While playing to our strengths is a significant source of happiness, not all of us do so for many and various reasons -- some of which I've touched on.

Being true to oneself is a skill. It might even be the single most important skill we can acquire. A Zen poem beautifully expresses the emotional import of being true to oneself while expressing the art of it in the simplest terms possible:

I eat when I'm hungry.
I drink when I'm thirsty.
I sleep when I'm tired.
How wonderful!

For many people, the very closest they will come to being true to themselves happens during the earliest days of their lives when they cried when they felt like crying, puked when they had to puke, slept when they were tired. Yet, those days soon ended. As they grew, they were increasingly taught to ignore themselves and their own wants and needs. To sit still when they wanted to move about. To be quiet when they wanted to yell. To learn subjects they did not want to study. To pass exams they did not want to take. To hold jobs they did not want to hold. Much of what they learned about denying themselves was necessary, of course, for them to live and function in this strange world.

Yet, it's surprising at times to reflect on how much we unnecessarily deny ourselves. And if that is surprising, then it is absolutely astonishing to ponder all the ways we unnecessarily deny ourselves.

Sometimes those ways are obvious. I'm reminded of a friend whose father was a senior executive of an auto company. Early on, the father decided his son would become the Chief Executive Officer of a large corporation -- hopefully, General Motors. From that moment forward he pressured his son to conform to the ways of an executive in training. Nothing his son wanted or did was innocent: Everything must have a purpose and that purpose must be to produce an executive. Consequently, my friend grew up deeply confused about who he was and what he wanted for himself. How could he not have grown up confused? He was never taught how to find out who he was.

Yet, many times the ways in which we learn to deny ourselves are not quite as obvious. Today, consumerism is the prime example of that. Corporations, their advertising agencies and public relations firms are constantly teaching people in consumer societies that being true to yourself means little more than buying a brand. While that is a shallow, artificial and ultimately misleading way of expressing yourself, it is the primary way in which millions -- and soon billions -- of humans will simultaneously "express themselves" and deny their true selves. Consumerism merely promotes narcissism, and substitutes it for self-realization and accomplishment. In that respect, it is just another way of denying your true self. And how can you be true to yourself if you deny your true self?

So, broadly speaking, we have so far discussed only one way in which being true to yourself is skillful. That is, there is skill involved in avoiding the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves.

Besides the many and various ways in which we deny ourselves, there are other challenges to being true to oneself. For instance: To be true to yourself, you must, of course, know yourself. That is an ongoing process without end. We never complete the task of knowing ourselves: We merely get better at it. Because we never complete the task, there is always some uncertainty about who we are.

Yet, many of us avoid knowing ourselves precisely because knowing ourselves involves uncertainty, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. Instead of maintaining the open mindedness to genuinely learn about ourselves as we go along in life, many of us try to fashion personal myths about ourselves that we can cling to in order to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. "I am such and such a person", we tell ourselves -- even though we do not act that way, or at least haven't acted that way in years. Paradoxically, to know yourself, you must be willing to live with the uncertainty of not knowing yourself.

There are many ways to learn about oneself, but perhaps the best way is to watch what one does as dispassionately as one would watch someone else's child at play, or a stranger on the street. That requires considerable skill because it is not at all easy to dispassionately watch ourselves. Yet, that might well be the best way to learn about oneself.

Being true to oneself is not effortless. It is instead a skill that requires development. To be skillful at it, one must combine the insight to give up the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves with the will to learn about ourselves. I believe, however, that it is impossible to be genuinely happy in this life without being true to oneself. Thus, being true to oneself might indeed be the most personally valuable skill we can acquire, for it leads to genuine happiness.

If you have been paying attention to the attack on the theory of evolution, the debate over abstinence only sex education, the attempt to characterize America as a Christian Nation, or any of several other topics, then you have almost certainly seen willful ignorance in action. Willful ignorance, of course, is not actually limited to the people on any one side of a debate, but in the case of those particular debates you could be forgiven for forgetting that.

Nearly everyone who opposes the theory of evolution, it seems, exercises some degree of willful ignorance. So too, nearly everyone who supports abstinence only sex education, or asserts America was founded as a Christian nation, or denies global warming, or believes gay marriage will undermine the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, or -- or ... on and on and on! -- nearly everyone who takes any of those positions exercises more than a little willful ignorance. So, it's pretty fair to ask, "Why are so many people so stubbornly opposed to learning about those things?'

To put that question in a context: How is it possible that an animal whose survival presumably has always depended on its ability to think clearly about the world evolve such a huge capacity for self-deceit? For willful ignorance is nothing if not self-deceit.

You would think, wouldn't you, that people prone to ignore rock solid evidence for something would have been weeded out of our gene pool sometime during the paleolithic era. Obviously, that is not the case. In fact, given how prevalent willful ignorance is -- not just in American culture, but around the world -- it could even be true to speculate that humans evolved a capacity for willful ignorance. That willful ignorance is not merely a flaw of some sort, but actually something that nature selected for. But why? Why would a lack of realism be of any benefit at all to an animal that in very large part survived the challenges of nature by its wits?

I am frankly stumped to explain how our species could so often be willfully ignorant. Do you have any ideas about it? I'd like to hear them.

Many people -- perhaps even most people -- hold the naive belief that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality. That's an especially dangerous assumption which can, and does, cause all sorts of emotional and logical problems. For one thing, when we assume our thoughts mirror reality, we become much more inclined to narrow-mindedness. For another thing, we are much more prone to becoming attached to our thoughts and to believing our thoughts are just as important as the things they "mirror". Both of those mistakes are quite common, and they can both be traced back to the naive assumption that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality.

Instead of saying that normal, everyday consciousness mirrors reality, it would be far more accurate to say that it maps reality. That is, the relationship of consciousness to reality is basically the same as the relationship of a map to its terrain.

The differences between a map and a mirror are many and subtle. Yet, if you spend enough time comparing and contrasting those two metaphors, you will gain for yourself the practical insights of an introductory college course in epistemology -- and all without ever having to learn how to spell "epistemology"! Deals like that don't grow on trees.

From time to time, I will post articles here on the many and various implications of the notion that consciousness is to reality as a map is to its terrain. But in this article, I only wish to discuss one of those implications: A mirror reflects reality, but a map merely symbolizes it.

To illustrate, suppose I take out an indispensable map I recently bought which shows the locations of all the erotic dance clubs in Colorado. Looking at the map, I first notice that it does not reflect Colorado and its dance clubs like a mirror would, but instead it symbolizes Colorado and its dance clubs. For instance, the location of each dance club is symbolized by two tiny figures -- the first of a dancer, and the second of an enthusiastic patron trying to take the dancer's g-string off with his teeth. The two tiny figures do not reflect or mirror what the dance clubs look like, but they do symbolize the dance clubs.

Again looking at the map, the second thing I notice is that the map's usefulness to me in no way depends on its mirroring reality. I am able to use the map to find the dance clubs despite the fact the symbol for the dance clubs in no way reflects or mirrors the actual clubs.

Consciousness is remarkably similar to a map.

In my room is a floor lamp with a rich green shaft. According to the naive view that consciousness mirrors reality, when I look at that shaft, I am seeing "what's really there". But is that so? Physics, for one, tells me differently. When I look at that shaft, I am not seeing "what's really there", but am instead seeing photons of certain wavelengths that have bounced off the shaft. Moreover, the shaft, which appears solid to me, really is not. Instead, it is made up of atoms that are themselves mostly empty space. Yet, the notion that I am conscious of "what's really there" gets even more problematic when we turn from physics to psychology. For then I learn that as my brain processes the information coming to me from the lamp shaft, it repeatedly steps down and deletes information, so that, in the end, the information I have to think about is less than one hundredth the information that entered my eye when I looked at the shaft. In short, what I might naively think is "really there" is actually more like a symbol of what's really there. The lamp shaft I see is not the lamp shaft that exists, but rather a construct of my brain -- a symbol of what exists.

Yet, even though I can only be conscious of a symbol of what exists, that symbol is useful to me. What I see when I look at that lamp shaft is just as useful to me as what I see when I look my indispensable map of Colorado's erotic dance clubs. In both cases I can use the symbol to negotiate and cope with reality.

Both physics and psychology reveal that all consciousness is symbolic. Therefore, when discussing consciousness, it is more appropriate to think of its relationship to reality as like a map to its terrain, than it is to think of its relationship to reality as like a mirror to what the mirror reflects.

"Asking, 'Why am I here?' is a psychological problem, not a spiritual problem."

- Rob Cooper (a.k.a. Celerman) Source.


Near as I understand it, the solution to the question, "Why am I here?", is ultimately psychological, rather than spiritual. And since the solution is ultimately psychological, the problem itself must be psychological. But that point might not make much sense to us at first, because we have been taught from the cradle that meaning of life questions are spiritual questions. We must first overcome that prejudice to see the question for what it is, and then the solution before us.

Let's assume Howard Gardner is correct in asserting there are eight kinds of human intelligence and that no one person excels in all eight. What would that say about us as social animals?

The old adage, "Two heads are better than one", comes to mind. Or, rather, eight heads are better than one -- provided the eight each represents a different kind of human intelligence. I recall something a graduate student in anthropology said about his experiences living with a Southwestern (US) tribe that might illustrate the point here.

Soon after student had begun living with them, the tribe faced a crisis over who controlled the legal rights to much of the water that fed their reservation. An elder went from family to family and explained to them what the situation was. Then, over the course of six months, he returned to each family to ask for advice, after giving the families time to discuss the crisis among themselves.

Finally, the entire tribe gathered in one village to vote on what to do about the water. The elder was the first to speak. He began by once again laying out what the problem was. He then described his efforts to get everyone's advice. At last, he came to the point of the meeting by describing the only three options the tribe had come up with after discussing the issue for six months. And then he did something that shocked the graduate student.

The elder apologized for being unable to think up more options.

Why did that shock the graduate student? Because he himself came from mainstream American culture where publicly debated decisions are made in precisely the opposite way. In America, the goal of public debate is usually to narrow down the choices until only two choices remain. Then a vote is taken to decide between them. But here was a society of Native Americans who thought even three options too few. Instead of wanting to narrow down their choices, they wanted more choices than they had. Furthermore, after inquiring, the graduate student discovered that the tribal leaders typically strove to present the tribe with six or eight choices -- and sometimes as many as twenty!

That tribe knew how to take advantage of the apparent fact humans have multiple kinds of intelligence. They made an effort to get as many perspectives as possible by drawing everyone into the decision making process. Then they laid out all the options they had come up with as a group, leaving out none. Last, they voted on the available options -- which is another way of insuring that everyone's unique mix of intelligences is heard from and represented in the final decision. In doing things that way, the tribe tapped into the fullest ability of humans to come up with creative solutions to the challenges they faced.

It is commonplace to point out that humans are a social animal. Yet, we are only recently beginning to understand what that means. Millions of years of evolution created an animal who functions best in a society. Even the apparent fact we have eight kinds of intelligence seems to reflect that truth. As the graduate student's story illustrates, we come up with the largest variety of options when we work together as a group. It is mere common sense that the more options you can come up with when meeting a challenge, the more likely you will have at least one that helps you survive that challenge. For doing that, eight kinds of intelligence are better than one.

Last year, scientists at the National Institutes of Health discovered that altruistic actions activate the same pleasure centers in the brain as are associated with food and sex. It therefore appears the brain is hard wired for altruism in the same way it is hard wired for eating and procreation.

Besides the National Institutes of Health study, researchers elsewhere are compiling large bodies of data on human moral behavior -- all of which seems to suggest the day when morality can be exclusively attributed to learned behavior is rapidly ending.

Of course, that doesn't mean human morality is rigid and inflexible. Look at procreation! While sexual desire is hard-wired, the range of human sexual expression is huge. So, too, is the range of human altruistic behaviors. Certainly, morality has an innate component. But it is at the same time learned behavior.

If Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is substantially true, then it is a myth that some people are in all possible ways smarter than most people.

Instead, someone might be more intelligent than most people in, say, one, two, or three kinds of intelligence, and average or even less intelligent than most people in the remaining kinds. And that would be about the best humans might do when it comes to being smarter than most of their fellows.

Yet, the simple notion that no one is smart in all the possible ways of being smart is far from simple to incorporate into how we see the world. That's because our culture is absolutely steeped in the competing notion that human intelligence is unitary (i.e. there is only one kind of human intelligence). For instance: The most popular measure of intelligence -- the IQ test -- is based on the assumption that intelligence is unitary. But so are many other ideas.

Indeed, when someone says to us, "Fricklethorp is smart", we do not typically ask, "In what way is Fricklethorp smart?" Rather, we assume that intelligence is unitary, that Fricklethorp is smart in the way anyone who is smart is smart. If we are to understand the theory of multiple intelligences, though, we must consider the possibility that Fricklethorp -- like everyone else -- is smarter in some ways than in other ways.

On a forum I frequent, one of the members has a post signature that states, "You have a moral duty to be intelligent". That statement makes little or no sense in light of the theory of multiple intelligences. It is, according to Gardner, quite unlikely that anyone is -- or even can be -- smart in all eight ways it is possible to be smart. To assert that people should be smart in all eight intelligences is therefore to hold people to an impossible standard. The signature is yet another example of how we simply assume in our culture that human intelligence is unitary.

One could list a thousand such examples. The point is, it is difficult to incorporate the theory of multiple intelligences into how we see people because we live in a world that almost universally assumes human intelligence is unitary. That assumption is made in everything from casual conversations to research papers. Yet, if the theory of multiple intelligences is true, that assumption is one of the most pervasive myths of our time.

Some time ago, the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identified what he considers to be eight distinct kinds of human intelligence. His theory of multiple intelligences has taken root in the education community, where it is increasingly used to form various models for teaching. Yet, it's a fascinating theory in it's own right and I believe it has some predictive values which are largely unexplored. I intend to get into those predictions in some future posts. Here, I will simply offer one admittedly simplified list of Gardner's eight different kinds of intelligence:

From:

http://www.multi-intell.com/whatismiq.htm

PeopleSmart (interpersonal intelligence) involves the ability to work cooperatively in a group as well as the ability to communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with other people. It builds on the capacity to notice distinctions among others, for example, contrasts in moods, temperament, motivations, and intentions. In the more advanced forms of this intelligence one can literally “pass over” into another person's life context (that is, stand in their shoes, so to speak) and experience their intentions and desires. One can have genuine empathy for another’s feelings, fears, anticipations, and beliefs.

SelfSmart (intrapersonal intelligence) involves knowledge of the internal aspects of the self such as knowledge of feelings, the range of emotional responses, thinking processes, self-reflection, and a sense of or intuition about spiritual realities. Intrapersonal intelligence allows us to be conscious of our consciousness; that is, to step back from ourselves and watch ourselves as an outside observer does. Our self-identity and the ability to transcend the self are part of the functioning of this intelligence. SelfSmart is the most private and requires all other intelligence forms to express itself, such as language, art, music, dance, symbols, and interpersonal communication with others.

WordSmart(verbal-linguistic intelligence) is responsible for the production of language and all the complex possibilities that follow, including poetry, humor, grammar, metaphors, similes, abstract reasoning, symbolic thinking, and of course, the written word. Verbal-linguistic intelligence is awakened by the spoken word; by reading someone's ideas or poetry; and by writing one's own ideas, thoughts, or poetry

BodySmart (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) is the ability to use the body to express emotion, to play a game, to communicate with others using "body language", or to create a new product. Our bodies are very wise. They know things our conscious minds don't and can't know in any other way. For example, if you had to lay out the keyboard of a computer on a piece of paper without moving your fingers, could you do it? Probably not. But your fingers know the keyboard without even pausing.

NatureSmart (NatureSmart (naturalist intelligence) is related to our recognition, appreciation, and understanding of the natural world around us. It involves such capacities as species discernment, the ability to recognize and classify various flora and fauna, and our knowledge of and communion with the natural world. You can see the naturalist intelligence when you find yourself drawn to and fascinated by animals and their behaviors. You see it when you notice the effect on your mood and sense of well-being when someone brings plants and-or cut flowers into an otherwise sterile, humanly-created environment. Think how often we head for nature when we want to relax, “unwind” or find inner renewal!

ImageSmart (visual-spatial intelligence) involves such activities as painting, drawing, and sculpture; navigation, mapmaking and architecture, and games such as chess (which requires the ability to visualize objects from different perspectives and angles). The key sensory base of this intelligence is the sense of sight, but it also involves the ability to form images and pictures in the mind. Our childhood daydreaming, when we pretended we could fly or that we were magical beings, or maybe that we were heroes-heroines in fabulous adventure stories used this intelligence to the hilt!

SoundSmart (musical-rhythmic intelligence) includes such capacities as the recognition and use of rhythmic and tonal patterns, and sensitivity to sounds from the environment, the human voice, and musical instruments. Many of us learned the alphabet through this intelligence and the “A-B-C song.” Of all forms of intelligence identified, the “consciousness altering” effect of music and rhythm on the brain is the greatest. Just think of how music can calm you when you are stressed, stimulate you when you're bored, and help you attain a steady rhythm in such things as typing and exercising. It has been used to inspire our religious beliefs, intensify national loyalties, and to express great loss or intense joy.

LogicSmart (logical-mathematical intelligence) is most often associated with what we call “scientific thinking.” Logical-mathematical intelligence is activated in situations requiring problem-solving or meeting a new challenge. This intelligence likewise involves the capacity to recognize patterns, to work with abstract symbols such as numbers and geometric shapes, and to discern relationships and-or see connections between separate and distinct pieces of information.

Different people have different mixes of those basic intelligences. Few people are exactly alike in their mix of intelligences. Gardner's model explains why people are often smart in some ways and not so smart in other ways.

To create his model, Gardner looked at a variety of evidence that people have multiple intelligences. But the most important evidence came from brain damaged people. Such people sometimes completely lack abilities in one kind of intelligence, but retain their full abilities in other kinds of intelligence. Gardner hypothesized that if human intelligence was unitary (i.e. if there was only one kind of human intelligence) that would not be the case. Instead, damage to the brain would lower overall intelligence, rather than leave some abilities intact while destroying others.

Since the beginning of time we have shut out the people we really should have been listening to. The unhinged. Those with screws loose. The people who have lost somehow their barriers between real and imagined. People who have not forgotten how to see.

We shut them out and then we spend the rest of our lives straining to understand. Looking for a logical explanation.
We shouldn't go to church. We should go to psych wards once a week and find out once and for all that before they were drugged and shocked and locked away, these people in glass bubbles talking to themselves really were trying to say something.

Maybe not a whole lot of what they spout off is valid, but some of it might be.
Paranoia and incoherence are sometimes justified, is my point.

They sound like gibbering idiots to the closed mind, but anyone who is completely ready to take in reality is well on their way to being a gibbering idiot themselves.
If we were all like them, there would be no serious problems.

"How terrible to go through life just thinking about water contaminants and life after death!" My mother once exclaimed tearfully, and wrapped her arms around me.
"No," I thought to myself, "How terrible to live amongst war and pedophiles and terrorism and people with awful intentions for you, and to not even see it."

How terrible for everyone, to be blind to the bubbles in the water jug forming in beautiful chaos.
How terrible to not have a dead tree on top of your plasma screen TV, or your latest-model computer, or on the dash of your Subaru.
How terrible to wake up in the morning and need the proof of your consumption to make you feel alive in the least.
How terrible to desire anything more than a blanket and a window to pass your time with.

I hope that I am never so old, or poisoned, or abused to notice the shape my cigarette folds into in the ashtray. Or to relish in the beauty of unpleasant emotions. Or to dream while I'm awake.

And if I have to be crazy to hold onto that, then I'll be crazy, won't I?