Recently I’ve accumulated a little stash of quotes about identity, consciousness, reality, and our drive to understand what goes on in minds. Some will be quite disconcerted by these suggestions and others will sigh with recognition.
This is a quote from Timothy J. O’Neill who posts on “Medium” which is an author venue, something like “Blogger.” It’s a pretty good summary of a breakthrough in how we understand identity that might be summed up by the phrase, “Compose yourself.” This comes from considering the atypical minds of persons around us. It will offend those who define human thought as unified, consciously intelligent, produced by learning and interaction with a physical environment, demonstrated by language, and demanded by culture.
Doctor: “Our minds shape every aspect of our reality and, in turn, every aspect of our reality has the potential to influence and shape our minds. And not just our minds, but our brains, our material physiology. But the brain even has the amazing capacity to somehow alter itself. Neuroscience has proven your thoughts can physically restructure the organic matter of your brain. It’s as if a hologram could turn around and start tinkering with the projector producing it in order to change the color or clarity of its own image. Think about that for a moment, and then open yourself up to the idea that the power of past events to shape your present identity PALES in comparison to the power of your present thoughts. So what do you really want to focus on now?”
Another more radical effort to understand minds that are not necessarily human (aside from aliens in outer space) comes from the study of octopuses. As it happens, there’s recently been a flurry of thought about octopuses because of the release of the complete genome that has taken several years to complete at the U of Chicago. It appears that our brain are more like the the brain of an octopus than we might guess, but also radically different: the brain of an octopus is partly in its tentacles, whose suckers are both able to taste and to feel.
This article by Sy Montgomery in Orion magazine is called “Deep Intellect.” https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ It’s an attempt to understand an octopus from the outside, actively interacting with several, but also noting the information we have about them. Octopus eyes are seemingly just like ours in terms of anatomy, but what do their nerves in their retinas pick up? And what do their main brain configure the information? They are sensitive enough to mimic other animals or just a piece of coral, but is that conscious thinking? There’s a wide variation in temperament from one animal to the next.
This is from a piece in New Scientist. “THERE is no denying the reality of consciousness. For most of us, it is so self-evident that it requires no explanation. Your conscious self is the owner of your private reality, and your actions stem from conscious choice.
However, the more that is discovered about consciousness, the less obvious its role appears to be. For example, measurements of brain activity reveal that muscles and brain areas prepare for an action, such as a reaching out for an object, before we are even aware of our intention to make that movement. As noted by the psychologist Jeffrey Grey and others, consciousness simply occurs too late to affect the outcomes of the mental processes apparently linked to it.”
How much of ourselves is the result of our body structure? (What a relief it would be to those who suffer from extremely painful avascular necrosis, bone death, to manage a body with no bones! But how does one de-centralize a brain trapped in a skull?) How do people become “unhinged?”
How much is learned? How much is voluntary? The answers are radically different depending on the method used to define and sort the problem. This is one of the central issues of the U of Chicago Divinity School, because it is so relevant to comparative religion. The confrontive, dominating, logic-dependent practice of Christian theology, its method, is a key element in the Pauline version of Catholicism. Many have pointed out it is quite different from Jesus’ message of tolerance.
Using consciousness-altering drugs has not taught us much about method, though it IS one, but their exploration of inner space has certainly confirmed that the molecular alternatives in cell tissues can profoundly alter the way we see the world. We already knew that from experience as far back as pre-hominids, but we’ve changed the way we think ABOUT them. In this age of control some see using them as stepping away from the intolerable burden of being oneself in a world that despises who you are, and others who locate themselves by controlling whomever is different, and becoming lethal.
The octopus is a pluralistic animal in the sense that each tentacle has its own perceptions and decisions. If a tentacle is severed and then offered a fish that its original task would have beem to convey to its mouth, it will try to convey the fish to where it thinks the mouth should be. In our pluralistic policy we call democracy, many tentacles have been separated from the central mouth. It’s an interesting and possibly useful metaphor.
The other startling thing octopuses do is cram themselves into impossibly small spaces. Consider this quote from a paper in “Synapse,” (Volume 69, Issue 8, August 2015). Unless you have the vocabulary, you will find it hard going, but the point of it is that what seems to be as personal as withdrawal to their room, like an octopus looking for a defensible space, can be associated with certain brain molecules, and might be predictive of trouble.
“Adolescent social isolation (SI) results in numerous behavioral alterations associated with increased risk of alcoholism. Notably, many of these changes involve the basolateral amygdala (BLA), including increased alcohol seeking. The BLA sends a strong glutamatergic projection to the nucleus accumbens and activation of this pathway potentiates reward-seeking behavior. Dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE) exert powerful excitatory and inhibitory effects on BLA activity and chronic stress can disrupt the excitation-inhibition balance maintained by these catecholamines.”
Some people will deduce that technical chemical diagnosis should be applied to all “withdrawn” adolescents and Big Pharma will set about inventing a med that affects BLA activity. Others will try to eliminate all stress, assuming that emotional “gliding” is healthy. They try to create a “no-trouble bubble.” A few will want to sit down and talk. And nowadays, with the fortification of genealogy, some will want to investigate the ancestral stories of the individual to look for patterns. For a person who has been convincingly told that any disclosure will result in punishment amounting to death, this is nearly impossible.
We keep seeing stories about teens being held in solitary confinement, framing the adolescent in terms of radical social isolation, his own head trip which can end in suicide. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html]
But some will think about what a supporting social setting will do and what kind of tribe would welcome and understand the individual. One could call it “embracing the octopus.” To get an idea what that might be like, try the Orion article.
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