Um. This is a thing I wrote many moons ago. I deleted it from my blog - I forget why - but having re-read it tonight, I've decided to reintroduce it it to the webiverse. I've realised from stats that nobody reads this anyway, so it's sort of like casting it out into infinite darkness. Which, if nothing else, is sort of Pink-Floydy.
This
week, I have been mostly reading 'What Is Your Dangerous Idea?' (edited
by John Brockman). 'Leading Thinkers' - scientists, with some
associated beardy folk - wrote essays in response to the question. As
Steven Pinker explains in the introduction, the ideas sought were those
'which are felt to challenge the collective decency of an age': things
which are controversial.
It is the year 2009
(for today anyway, and tomorrow). We have genetic modification and
cloning, we have string theory, we have patenting of ideas with the
accompanying problems, we have opensource programming which is obviously
a Communist plot, we have an entire economic model which has proven
itself unsuitable, or possibly that was also a Communist plot. We have
lots of material for edgy debate.
But one
topic which recurs throughout the book is the soul. Not immortality, but
the question of whether our personalities are entirely material, a
function of the brain, or whether they have some floaty invisible bit.
The relevant essays in the book proposed the former.
I
was surprised to see this considered controversial among scientists.
What I find interesting is the way most of us recoil from this idea. At
first, anyway. Why is that? What is frightening about our minds' being
wholly accounted for by our brains?
I think
that the idea of the soul reassures us of our autonomy. It used to be
believed that the soul inhabited empty spaces called ventricles within
the brain. If we are inscrutable, inexplicable, ethereal minds, we do
what we like; we are not governed by cause and effect. But if we are
visible, examinable brains, with traceable mechanisms and genetically
determined structures, we might find our feeling of free will
threatened. And if our emotions can be explained as chemicals, we might
feel that cheapens them or makes them less 'real'.
It's
an interesting paradox that we wish to be less real (less tangible) in
order to feel more 'real' (in the Pinocchio sense). This extends to our
descriptions and explanations of our consciousness: we will tolerate
them only if they are not real.
Astrology
reduces your personality to the position of the planets at your birth.
Whatever intricacies may be added when you get a full chart read, quite a
lot of people are happy thinking there are twelve signs, and their own
firmly dictates their personality, who they are capable of loving, and
even what events will befall them that week. In contrast, the idea that
the personality is created by the endlessly complex and intricate brain,
itself a product of millions of years' evolutionary tinkering, is
insufficient, unsatisfying and alarming.
Joel L
Swerdlow, a senior writer for National Geographic, was expressing a
common reaction when he retorted that 'When I fell in love with my wife,
I gave her my heart, not my neuropeptides' (Quiet Miracles of the
Brain, June 2005). Of course, he didn't give her his actual heart. That
would be ... well, beyond Sid & Nancy. He gave her his imaginary
heart, which to him meant more than his real neuropeptides.
The
real mechanisms for love and thought aren't millenia-old cultural
symbols. Swerdlow was happy to use the term 'heart' because in ancient
times the heart, not the brain, was believed to be the seat of the soul
and since then it has been used as a metaphor for feeling. We are
culturally comfortable with it. The brain is slightly less tasty to look
at than the heart, it's true, but the heart's no hottie either. I
expect we can agree the choice of organ is not aesthetic - it's down to
tradition.
Swerdlow's
heart does mean something - but it doesn't mean something exact. It can
mean what he wants it to mean, and the meaning can shift. Likewise,
star-signers have the luxury of believing in something which is not
real, and the great thing about unreal stuff is you don't have to
believe it if it doesn't suit you. You can always conjure up a rising
sun sign or an unaspected ... asteroid, possibly ... to dispel anything
disturbing. A wisp of wot-not-of to augment your stubbornly physical
brain is indispensible when you are rearranging reality to suit
yourself. It is leeway.
I don't want to be
patronising here, and as a teenager I believed in star signs too. That's
one reason I find this whole area so interesting. I know I felt a little pang when I admitted to myself I
was an atheist, and from the perspective of someone who is extremely
happy being an atheist, I like to go back and poke that pang, and
dissect it. If you're a miserable atheist (Bob Geldof springs to mind)
you're just sitting on the pang.
Of course
accepting that we are our physical brains has some unsettling
repurcussions. For one, if our personalities are based purely on a
physical brain, and that brain is shaped by genetics and environment, where does that leave evil? Good old evil,
the comforting bin in which we throw those who disgust us. Can anything
be anyone's 'fault'? Bertrand Russell suggested that
people were not evil but broken. This is in itself an idea that annoys a
lot of people, but I can imagine society would be better off with this
attitude. The thing is though, if
we're not only physical, we still come up against the same problem.
Either God in his inscrutable way made people evil, in which case it is
most definitely not their fault, or the planets did, which is bad luck
and again, about the same situation genes landed us.
I
believe my mind is my brain. I don't believe I have a spirity bit. It
doesn't depress me. I experience firsthand what it is like to be me, and
if my brain is all there is to it, then my brain can do some pretty
spectacular stuff. I mean that in a general way (not in a
James-Wood-get-me-and-my-IQ-way): I think all brains do spectacular
stuff. The multiverse of physicists might and might not exist, but the
multiverse of people (and other organisms but leave that aside for now)
does exist. Each person carries around their own parallel universe. In
your universe, you are god. You create your universe with experiences
and learning - because if you don't know about, for example, the
eukaryotic cell*, in your universe it doesn't exist. Likewise all the
other excellent stuff you can put in there, and all the stuff you can
make up yourself. You know this about yourself. So the fear that an
explanation of how your brain works can in some way rob you of that or
make it less real, is ridiculous. Whatever is empirically proven about
the structure or action of the brain, it is, self-evidently,
sufficiently brilliant to generate your consciousness.
(*The
eukaryotic cell is about the most brilliant thing in my particular
universe and I recommend, if you don't have it already, that you procure
it. Okay, in case you don't - you are a eukaryote, which means you are
made of eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotic cells came about when various
free-living single-celled organisms moved in together to create a
symbiotic commune. So you are made up of the descendants of individuals
who once lived separately. This is the kind of thing I used to imagine
as a kid to wreck my own head - maybe I'm made up of lots of tiny
people? Maybe I'm part of a gigantic person? It's fantastic, and it
makes me smile every time I think of it.)
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Dinner at the Club
Two men.
Two old men.
Not so old, not so old.
Treadworn step, careful
coat?
Shrinking from the
splash
of noise from the road?
Wandering home
from the minute one
leaves it?
Two old men.
Two old men.
Fine deerskin gloves
and a wisp of cigar,
Claret and scandal
and chevron raised
brows,
Picking through friends
like gossip-spiked
toffees.
Not so old, not so old!
Two men
Two men
meeting for dinner
on a smoked afternoon.
The rain and their
years
Closet them up together,
Playing chess
without a board.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Bloody Soup Again
I'm cooking the carnage, the Beelzebub Soup -
the
unrinseable
red
of
the
claw,
of
the
tooth.
Drips
dry,
half-sticky,
in
the
heat
of
the
stove;
my
knife
sinks
uncleanly
through
gristle
and
bone.
And
now
brimming
bloody,
the
vapouring
pot
seems
set
on
by
ghosts
come
to
watch
themselves
clot
in
dark
sultry
spices,
in
blue
spectral
flame
and
I
ask
– 'Aren't
you
glad
that
I've
got
your
remains?
'I
won't
grill
you
dry
till
your
flanks
are
like
leather
-
like
artist
and
artwork
we'll
glory
together.'
In
the
dim,
in
the
candlelit
kitchen
before
me
the
spirits
reduce
to
just
one
scowling
genie
in
silken
red
robes
and
a
turban-shaped
head;
his
purpling
frown
seems
to
augur my
death.
I
shudder
and
hold
up
a
spoon
like
a
cross
'I'm
a
damned
vegetarian,'
cry
I,
'You
ass!
'This
around
me
is
beet,
nothing
more
than
mere
roots
-
I
pretend
I'm
carnivorous-beastish
for
hoots.'
He
glares
at
me,
eyes
red
as
beetroot-red
fire
He
opens
his
mouth
and
it
yawns
ever
wider
-
the
inside
I
see
is
the
velvety
hue
of
his
ruby-fleshed
worshippers
and
of
my
stew.
And
gulping
me
whole he
avenges
his
kind.
Then
he
washes
me
down
with
a
beetroot-red
wine.
*
(I wrote this one evening after
making
beetroot
soup while
listening
to
King
Crimson)
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