The other morning I was enjoying a hot shower. I had my Waterpik shower head on pulsate. I was daydreaming about possible plans for my retirement (roam the countryside in an RV perhaps), which may never materialize given current economic conditions. All was well until I jumped back in response to the water going momentarily cold because (I had forgotten) the clothes washer was running a load. Now jarred back to the present moment I began asking myself, “Did I shampoo my hair yet?” I glance over at the bottle and notice streaks of shampoo running down the sides. Yup, I did shampoo my hair, but for the life of me I did not remember doing so. I asked myself, “How is it I can shampoo my hair only moments ago and not remember it? I was, after all, here wasn’t I?”
I start part II of my blog series Repent for the Cosmic Castration Is Upon Us by telling you this rather mundane and innocuous story for one simple reason: it’s an example of how easily we can vitalistically live out and experience what neurobiologist Antonio Damasio describes in scientific detail in the first ten chapters of his 2010 book Self Comes to Mind—Constructing the Conscious Brain: the brain as orchestra playing the symphony we know as mind. I mention Self Comes to Mind in part I and will continue that discussion in this installment.
Allow me to reduce the first ten chapters of Self Comes to Mind to the point of libel by expanding my morning shower experience a bit:
1) Jumping back in response to the cold water is a reflex controlled mostly by the primitive brainstem region of the brain. These reflexes are designed to protect the body from bodily harm.
2) Shampooing the hair is typically accomplished by what cognitive scientists call procedural memory. The middle portions of the brain are centrally involved in storing and playing back procedural memories. Procedures are typically body-oriented, that is to say, what procedures the body can actually engage in (like shampooing one’s hair, or mindlessly driving a car).
3) What if scenarios (like what if I retire) typically involve the upper brain regions. Cognitive research shows us that such cognitive abilities as planning, what if thinking, perspective taking, empathy or mind-in-mind operations, imagining possible worlds other than one’s own, focusing and appropriately shifting attention, etc., are associated with the upper brain. These functions also go by the name executive functions (EF). (For more on EF, see my summary of neurologist Elkhonon Goldberg’s Book entitled The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World, which starts with my December 6th, 2011, post.) As Damasio makes clear, culture and all of its associated cultural artifacts (language being chief among them) come out of the upper brain regions.
So, my shower experience demonstrates all of the above:
1) I jump back in response to the cold water—automatic primitive brain
2) I shampoo my hair—procedural middle brain
3) I daydream about the future—imaginative upper brain
Essentially Damasio explains in great detail how these various brain systems developed over the millennia and for what reason. It’s really very Darwinian—survival of the species. Each level affords the organism greater survival potential. As Damasio points out, consciousness is a survival strategy, and a darn good one. But there’s a huge caveat: with more systems there’s increasing pressure to keep all of the systems working together, for them to be, well, orchestrated. Damasio makes a point that I find fascinating: evolution (or maybe it was God—who’s to say) did not recreate the lower systems within the upper systems as the upper systems developed. In other words, you cannot remove the primitive and middle brain systems and run solely on the upper system (at least not yet—more on this below). Interestingly, Damasio points out that the reverse is not true. Using Alzheimer’s as an example, Damasio shows that the upper, and then the middle brain can erode away leaving essentially the primitive brain functions and, in the process, not bring death to the organism.
There’s one more very important point that Damasio brings out in the first ten chapters of his book: it’s images that allow the various brain systems to stay coordinated, coherent, orchestrated and in communication with each other. And Damasio defines images rather broadly including emotions as primitive images, feelings as images of the middle brain, and explicit mental models as images of the upper brain. Recall (using your upper brain now) from part I this Bowlbian mantra:
Early safe and secure attachment relationships (if all goes well) often lead to the formation of open and flexible Inner Working Models that, in turn, form the foundation upon which an autonomous self is built.
If I can reframe things a bit here, I think what Bowlby recognized (and Damasio talks about at length) is the following: It is safe and secure early attachment relationships that allow for consistent, coherent and orchestrated images to arise from all levels of the brain such that an autonomous self is able to emerge, “come to mind” as Damasio puts it. Again, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is specifically designed to trigger the attachment behavioral system and, as a result, elicit images from the various brain levels at the same time. The researcher is then able to code the interview based on how well the various images “play well with each other” so-to-speak. In essence, professor Krieger (mentioned in part I) tried to tell us that most people meet and marry using only upper brain images and that true marriage therapy can only happen when all of the various images from all of the various brain systems come out to play at the same time. (For more on this theme, see Harville Hendrix’s book entitled Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples.) No one seems to know why exactly but it is some type of societally sanctioned commitment ceremony that allows “image play time” to begin. (As an aside, professor Krieger told us that as a result of his attachment issues, he stays away from commitment and any possibility of image play time.) As promised in part I, lets dig into the final chapter of Damsio’s book, chapter 11, entitled Living with Consciousness. By doing so, hopefully the above will become more clear.
Once we develop upper brain consciousness, the benefits are “related largely to planning and deliberation” (quoting Damasio). Ideally, all of education should have as its focus getting kids and adults to the upper brain regions (where we find the executive functions) so that they (and society) can enjoy the benefits of planning and deliberation. I just read a Truthout.org article that talks about how higher education is largely failing to bring students to the upper brian regions of critical thinking. If you wish to create students who just process data, then keep them in the middle brain regions by focusing on testing and assessment. You do not need to be a critical thinker to process data (i.e., surf the Internet, run Google searches, click on hyperlinks, etc.). Actually, critical thinking will slow you down.
Damasio frames the upper brain regions thus: “The advantages here are legion. It becomes possible to survey the possible future [like my daydreaming about retirement above] and to either delay or inhibit automatic responses [unless the shower water goes suddenly cold].” Damasio essentially suggests that we need access to the upper brain regions if we wish to bring about what he calls “sociocultural homeostasis.” We need access to the upper brain regions for there to be a coherent and orderly society. But what if you do not wish for a coherent and orderly society? Answer: block access to the upper brain regions. One way to do this is to feed kids mass quantities of behavioral drugs, but that’s a story I have talked about in detail in earlier blog posts. Damasio gives us this “bottom line”: “In humans [as compared to higher order animals] thanks to expanded memory, reasoning, and language [all being eroded by the Internet according to Nicholas Carr], consciousness has reached its current peak.”
Here’s a “showstopper” statement by Damasio: “Human childhood and adolescence take the inordinate amount of time that they do because it takes a long, long time to educate the nonconscious processes of our [middle] brain and to create, within that nonconscious brain space, a form of control that can, more or less faithfully, operate according to conscious intentions and goals.” Now, I know what you are thinking. This sounds like Damasio supports the idea that the conscious brain should tame and lord over the unconscious brain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Damasio doesn’t see it as the conscious brain taming the unconscious brain; he sees it as the conscious brain enlisting the help of the nonconscious brain. Again, if you “teach to the test” or feed kids copious amounts of behavioral drugs, you effectively cutoff communication between the two brain systems. In these cases the two brain centers have no choice but to operate independently of one another. “The relationship between conscious and nonconscious processes,” writes Damasio, “is one … example of the odd functional partnerships that emerge [a key naturalistic systems concept] as a result of coevolving processes [my emphasis].” The point to keep in mind here is that the brain is comprised of at least two central coevolving process systems—conscious and nonconscious. These systems must learn to work together, that is if one wishes for a Bowlbian autonomous self. But what if you do not wish for a Bowlbian autonomous self? Then simply do the following:
1) Encourage widespread use of behavioral drugs
2) Encourage behaviorism with its focus on “just say no” (an attitude that Damasio disses)
3) Don’t parent or greatly reduce the parenting process
4) Teach to the test
5) Get kids and adults addicted to the Internet (actually, any addiction will do)
6) Discourage coherent and consistent societal stories and narratives
7) Place almost exclusive focus on the self (e.g., self esteem)
8) Discourage any connection to history and place
Here’s Damasio’s “bottom line”: “The conscious-unconscious cooperative interplay … applies in full to moral behaviors.” In essence, brain orchestration, if you will, is key to moral behavior. “Moral behaviors,” Damasio tells us, “are a skill set, acquired over repeated practice sessions and over a long period of time, informed by consciously articulated principles and reasons but otherwise ‘second-natured’ into the cognitive unconscious.” It is cultural cognitive models—passed on from generation to generation—that greatly help us to “second nature” moral behavior. But, again, what if you do not wish to attach to the moral patterns from the past? Again, do any of the things on the list above. But why would a person or group wish to break not only the conscious-nonconscious connection but also the transgenerational transmission of culture and moral codes? Simply, to castrate the body from the upper brain processes so that these brain processes can be placed in a new host, in all likelihood, a mechanical host. The desire here is to remove the primitive and middle brain systems from the upper system and to run solely on the upper system. The desire here is to discard or greatly reduce body. This is the cosmic castration. This is the wish of posthumanism. It is also the wish of postmodernism. I’ll end this installment with a quote from economist Jeremy Rifkin’s 2000 book entitled The Age of Access:
They [postmodernists] will glorify the notion that each person’s own story is the most important reality, and create simulated worlds that every individual can buy his or her way into. There are millions of personal dramas that need to be scripted and acted out. Each represents a lifelong market with vast commercial potential. In these new worlds, the only vestige of personal property likely to remain are the props that provide context for the performances that take place [e.g., there will be no true cultural artifacts or edifices]. For the thespian men and women of the new [postmodern] era, purchasing continuous access to the scripts, stages [i.e., Facebook and Twitter], other actors, and audiences provided by the commercial sphere will be critical to the nourishing of their multiple personas [and avatars]. Being able to perform and be transformed, in turn, will become the sine qua non of their existence. (p. 217)
We’ll pick up looking at Damasio’s book chapter entitled Living with Consciousness in my next installment.
