Behind the Scenes of The Brain Show

by Zeev Nitsan

  In the spirit of the submissive obedience of the genie from the stories of Aladdin, the obedience-to-authority tests that were carried out by psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961 showed that two-thirds of the people who participated in the study obeyed the instructions of an authoritative figure, to the point of causing severe damage to another person, even after distress signals appeared and the suffering of the other person was evident.[34] The fear of authority, which seems to derive from emotional motivation whose source is primarily the amygdala, blurs the image of the other in the mirror cells of our brain (which are in charge of reflecting the emotions of the other) and covers up the voice of our conscience from the prefrontal lobes.

  A possible claim deriving from Milgram’s experiment might be that the circumstantial context, the place, time, and social norms are very powerful factors that greatly affect human behavior.

  Opsimism

  Some claim, somewhat cynically, that sometimes the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist knows more.

  We are all optimist to some extent, with different mixes of optimism and pessimism (“opsimism”) that depend on our natural tendency and the different circumstances. The echoes in the cave of our thoughts move from bright to dark interpretations, and vice versa.

  A circular bias sometimes characterizes the pattern of the opsimism mix.

  For instance, from personal experience I know that during night sleep, dark sandbars sometimes sprout above the water during the low tide between three and four o’clock in the morning and fill up the cave of thoughts (skull cavity) with gloomy echoes. Afterward, by the time we wake up, a comforting wave of high tide appears, refines the contents, and reinforces our self-confidence as if preparing us for another day of coping with reality. In my view, this pattern has a personal component but, possibly, also a universal component.

  Thoughts About the Journey of our Life

  Our thoughts are the soundtrack that constantly accompanies the “movie of our life.” Some of them are claims regarding the movie itself (critique) within the movie. The music of life is mostly played at very low volume, but sometimes the volume suddenly soars upward and shakes the ears of our being.

  At any given moment of our existence, we send out the ship of our life toward the capricious waves of circumstances whose direction and height we are only partially able to know.

  This pattern of existence summons the painful understanding that the world is run according to its internal algorithms of probability and cause and effect, and human hope is not mentioned in its rule book.

  From time to time, life bestows upon us cruel skits; they offer us possibilities that enchant our heart but, at the same time, prevent us from reaching them—like meeting the person who seems the most appropriate to be “the love of our life” the day before we die.

  Friedrich Nietzsche once said that the night is deeper than the day could possibly imagine. this idea shares some similarities with Albert Einstein’s words. He said that the world is more bizarre than we can possibly imagine.

  We have to understand and come to terms with the fact that our ability to comprehend many phenomena in our world is rather limited. The complexity of many of the phenomena in our world is beyond man’s range of understanding. The insights his brain gathers throughout his lifetime do not allow a deep understanding of many of the phenomena in our life, but they provide a certain level of understanding of some of them. Accepting the concept that the level of complexity of numerous phenomena in our world, and the interaction between their various components, is beyond the scope of our understanding, even if we persist constantly in discovery’s journey during all our life, is a painful, yet sobering, insight. The scope of our life is limited, and the horizon of our understanding is limited, and we must match our expectations regarding our understanding of the world to this insight. All of these bring about acceptance regarding the built-in imperfection of life.

  Experiences in our life are sometimes similar to a Rorschach test, and they are a sequence of occurrences that are always suboptimal as far as man is concerned. We aspire to reach the kingdom of perfection, and sometimes we come very close to it, but it seems that we will never be able to actually enter its gates. Our brain is the means that might bring us closer to the essence of this aspiration, but we cannot achieve it entirely. And in a spirit of (too) gloomy and severe interpretation, some might claim that our life is a “dystopia that aspires to utopia.”

  The size of the straitjacket of the reality of our life derives from the fact that our time on this planet is too short, too much confusing information surrounds us, and the sources of our brain, as wondrous as it is, are, in this context, too limited. We must run our life within the limits of this straitjacket of the reality that surrounding us.

  Views in Life

  Life is a continuum of various dosages of suboptimal situations. Imperfection is built into them. Various situations in life are at different distances from the optimum point, and in extremely lucky circumstances they come closer to it in an asymptotic proximity.

  There is a Buddhist saying that when we are born, we receive a key that can open the gates of both heaven and hell. Some interpret this saying as emphasizing the importance of the hand that holds the key that determines which gate will be opened. Others see it as a metaphor for our world, which is both magnificent and horrible. It seems that most of the time we are somewhere in the middle—in a hellish heaven that contains a changing mix of the two components in accordance with the circumstances.

  Life as a parable: Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who fulfilled Plato’s vision of a philosopher king, said that life can be compared to a war journey in a foreign land. Using the same tone, we might even say that, sometimes, life seems like a survival journey across a hostile planet.

  Our mental life sometimes seems like an interplay of turning a blind eye between naivety and critical observation.

  The circumstances of our life require coping patterns that range between an ethos of macho audacity, on the one hand, to caution that might be perceived as hesitancy, on the other hand. Sometimes it seems that the circumstances of life require what is non-euphemistically called “King Kong balls.” In other circumstances, however, it seems that the best coping requires “ping-pong balls,” in the spirit of the hedgehog version of the Kama Sutra: make love “slowly and cautiously.”

  Sometimes we are both the prisoner and the jailer, with respect to the choices we make or choose not to make in our life.

  From the moment we are born we are doomed to freedom, as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once claimed. Hence the constant necessity to have doubts and make decisions, which grips our brain in virtual pincers and never lets go as long as we are alive. Some believe that the loosening of the grip of this tiring and sometimes-paralyzing necessity is the secret magic of the worldview according to which metaphysical entities beyond ourselves share the burden of responsibility for our destiny with us.

  All of us sometimes long to be “freed from the freedom of choice”—in the sense of minimizing the options, wishing to rely on consistent and arranged hooks of reality in the midst of the chaotic carousel on which life forces us to spin. An arranged set of life rules has worked magic on the human soul from time immemorial, and the psychological serenity that is involved in it is the reward for adhering to it, as among religious people.

  The processing processes in the brain, which involve the constant need to have doubts and make decisions with respect to daily matters (reflection of the freedom that was forced upon us), are probably the hungriest consumers of energy resources in the brain (each thought has an energy cost). Our brain, as a tough energy banker, aspires to minimize the thinning of its resources as much as possible; it prefers to rely on structured behavior protocols that ease the burden of contemplation and making decisions and that require lighter brain processing and, as a result, reduced energy consumption. It might explain the source of attraction to customs that are common in various c
ountries and outline arranged patterns of behavior that are more economical in terms of brain energy. The freedom that is forced upon us, according to Sartre, and the accompanying freedom of choice have a high energy price. Perhaps the wish to reduce brain energy consumption is at the basis of our desire to be “freed from freedom.”

  Thoughts in the Service of Survival

  From an evolutionary point of view, it seems that our brain is designed to improve our ability to survive and multiply and is not intended to serve as truth detector regarding our world. While pursuing the discovery of truths in the world of phenomena around us, we channel some of our capabilities’ resources toward the aspiration to discover the truth.

  On the dark side of the thoughts’ moon, there are thoughts that were intended to improve the survival chances of the individual at the expense of the survival chances of others.

  Reality is sometimes a “rain of falling knives.” Turning a blind eye to the sights of reality’s battlefields is like teasing the goddess Fortuna or taking a nap on a railway.

  It seems that our brain tends to make friends with the tangible and to avoid the abstract.

  Similarly, reality manifestations with a high relevancy coefficient are prioritized during processing: our brain prioritizes images that are perceived as more relevant to our existence; thus, we prefer to first cope with phenomena that are closer to us in terms of time and space. Our brain is recruited more vigorously to the processing of various phenomena that are perceived as more relevant to us. We come up, therefore, with mental scenarios of near-future events at a higher concrete level compared to remote-future events.

  A common belief is that “rolling about” in a language, by assimilation in the environment in which everybody talks the language on a daily basis, speeds its comprehension and improves our mastery of it. A common explanation for this is that, in such a situation, the individual “must” gain rapid mastery of the language in order to function in the environment, and this “selective pressure” is a very powerful mental catalyst. The relevance component of the new language is greatly intensified in such a situation, and the tendency of our brain to prefer information that has immediate practical and relevant implications is “taken advantage of” in order to gain mastery of the new language quickly. We are biased to act according to the relevancy principle with respect to social matters as well. Sometimes this tendency is unfolded in front of our eyes blatantly—when we feel, for example, that a certain person is taking advantage of another person in an “instrumental” manner in order to promote his agenda. We all commit this sin, but we must be aware of this tendency and refine it by constantly reminding ourselves that the rights of others are not inferior to ours.

  End Thoughts—in the Shadow of the Finality of Life

  Knowing the end is an insight that is both reinforcing and weakening. It derives from the “excess capabilities” of the human brain, which granted it possession of knowledge that is probably hidden from the rest of the residents of the animal kingdom.

  In our generation, many believe that the short period of time during which the flame of the candle of our life is burning is all the time we have.

  Time and death walk hand in hand and set the ultimate standard of 100-percent success in their intimate relationship.

  The moments of our life are like sand grains falling between spread-apart fingers; the finality of our life is the only certain gamble in the casino of life.

  Life sometimes seems like a short-term loan on which we pay the interest of constant fear of annihilation.

  An approach that is not pleasant to our palate claims that, as our materialism is doomed to go with the wind, our consciousness will evaporate along with it.

  Wondering about the final chord of the tune of our life always accompanies our thoughts about the future. Will the end be Shakespearean—the hero’s body appears on stage following a sudden stream of daringness in a fighting retreat against the capricious monsters of life? Or will it be Chekhov-like—the hero accepts his destiny in quiet despair until the end?

  At both ends of our life we are totally lonely; we enter the world and leave it in splendid isolation, even if other people are present at these events. Some may say that we are lonely, also, through most of the way between those ends.

  Acknowledging the temporal nature of our life might bring along an “awakening experience” that recalibrates our life values and changes our conduct. Sensing that the arms of the clock accelerate their running, and that time is pressing, is a common trigger for the formation of that experience.

  “The privilege of knowing the end” is a unique gift that was given to the human brain. We feel we know how our journey on the face of the earth will end, although the specific circumstances are hidden from us. Knowing the end provides an appropriate perspective to our plans and actions.

  The insights regarding our last day on planet Earth, our ending thoughts, just before the journey ends; imagining our final moments, looking with a summarizing glance at our life journey, at the good times and less good times… Did we win in bringing the good in us into expression?

  The wish of knowing the “knowledge of the end” in advance is reflected in a cartoon scene. Snoopy, the famous cartoon dog, exchanges toward evening philosophical thoughts with a fruit fly, whose life expectancy is a single day. The fly tells Snoopy candidly that it regrets only one thing: “I wish I knew at nine in the morning what I know now.” The lost wish of the fruit fly sometimes visits our mind as well.

  The insights accumulated by our brain throughout the years enable us to write more and more chapters (and to rewrite some of them) in our personal version of the guide “Life—A Brief Course for Beginners.” The possibility of endowing insights that are viewed from the proximity to the finish line by the elderly, to the youngsters who are far away from it, is rather comforting. This educational task is intended to improve the youngsters’ future coping with “universal life crises” that they will have to face by virtue of being human beings who sail on the river of life.

  Facing the End—Coping with Finality

  When dealing with the finality of our life, we often find ourselves in the midst of a cognitive-dissonance storm that destroys our rational arguments like a house of cards. The fear of human logic concerning the “end of logic,” which involves the finality of life, is understandable; thus we find it difficult to look straight at the abyss of our finality and tend to avert our gaze from it.

  This is the main reason human cultures are saturated in death-denying concepts intended to sweeten the horrible bitterness of finality. Believing in these concepts is like wearing metaphorical sunglasses—their aim is to ease a sober view on our finality, in the sense of a conceptual infrastructure that relieves the pain of meeting the gloomy reality.

  In many religions, personal immortality has turned into a sort of reward given to devout believers as a means of encouraging them to adhere to the dictates of the superior meme of the religion.

  The preservation of the soul after the destruction of the body is considered the longed-for reward for adhering to the way. The book of life ends with the tragedy of death, but the epilogue that follows allows for a happy end to the story.

  On the other hand, total extinction is, in the opinion of many others, the period at the end of the sentence of our life. In this spirit, once our brain dies, our spirit is gone and our thoughts vanish. In less-softened words, all of our insights and memories become worms’ food.

  François de La Rochefoucauld once said that “On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.”

  The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius gave us royal advice: “Do every act of your life as if it were your last.” This ethos is also reflected in the “carpe diem” advice: seize the day.

  In an earlier era, Epicurus, the philosopher, preached in favor of equanimity with respect to death since, in his opinion, we are never in a state of superposition with death: “… as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does com
e, we no longer exist.”

  Some people include in their daily schedule a courageous practice of meditation that focuses on death first thing in the morning, at the beginning of a new day. Some do so based on the view that death is the central marker of the coordinate system of life.

  Memes that were intended to ease the pain of finality are embedded in all human cultures as an attempt to protect us from the frost induced by total extinction.

  The comforting wings of imagination are able to carry us above the mountaintops of reality, as far as Shangri La—an earthy paradise where death has no hold (after the magical valley, hidden among the mountaintops of the Himalayas, that was described in James Hilton’s book Lost Horizon).

  Some feel as if they manage to partially escape from the tight grip of death through their offspring, in a pattern of genetic heredity, and perceive their children as chariots that carry part of themselves toward the future (and, assuming their children and the children of their children do not abuse the dictates of the genes, part of them will be carried forward toward the next generations).

  Others feel comforted by assuming that the memes that constitute the “list of the best,” produced by their brain while it existed, will continue to exist in the brains of the people who continue to live after they’re gone. In other words, the spirit’s footprints of their brain will continue to exist in the sense of endowing the world with ideas born in their brain, or with ideas that were upgraded in it, through bequeathing of the memes.

  Some have a gloomier, less romantic view, which they perceive as more realistic. According to their view, when our self eulogizes its destruction, it is actually an illusion eulogizing an illusion, since the self is nothing but an illusionary entity.

  Others come to terms with the finality of our consciousness and find comfort in the fact that the molecules that compose our body will return to Mother Nature, assimilate in the mixed multitude of molecules our world is composed of, and might be part of the founding of another living entity.