WIRELESS BRAINS

Matthew Lieberman -- want him in your group?

One of the main premises of the book called “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect” by Matthew Lieberman is that physical pain and social pain (from rejection and attack) are the same somehow.  This comes from fMRI studies of people who play a game called “Cyberball” in which they are little surrogate figures playing three-cornered catch with a dot until the other two inexplicably stop throwing the ball to the guy in the fMRI tunnel.   It’s a conspiracy, but the left-out one doesn’t know that.  The same connectome systems lit up as the systems that show when when people physically hurt.  Indeed, people report that being rejected “hurts” in much the same way as trauma.  Of course, the point of pain is to make you stop doing things that don’t help your survival.  

But the point of science is that hypotheses are welcome but that they must be confirmed by other kinds of tests and by retesting.  Many times the original tests don’t pan out, but the pop media generally grabs them and runs with them into Fantasyland before there is any confirmation or before the raw results can be digested.  I’m afraid that this is true of “Social.”  Here’s an abstract from one of the other related studies.

Article: Physiological stress reactivity and empathy following social exclusion: A test of the defensive emotional analgesia hypothesis.

Ellyn Charlotte Bass, Sarah Josephine Stednitz, Kevin Simonson, Tori Shen, Ethan Gahtan

ABSTRACT: Experiences of social exclusion elicit social pain responses. The current study examined the ability of social exclusion to activate physiological stress responses and adaptively modulate affect and empathy consistent with "defensive emotional analgesia." Measures of affect and empathy, and saliva samples for cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA) analysis, were collected before and after subjects participated in a computer game ("Cyberball") designed to manipulate feelings of social exclusion. Contrary to our hypotheses, social exclusion was associated with a reduction in cortisol, and social inclusion with an increase in cortisol. Both Cyberball groups showed increases in sAA and decreases in both positive and negative affect, with the greatest drop in affect occurring after social exclusion. Empathy did not differ between the social exclusion and inclusion groups and was not correlated with cortisol or sAA levels. These results support the presence of a defensive response to social exclusion in which central stress pathways controlling cortisol release are inhibited. Cortisol and sAA were shown to have distinct patterns of responses to psychological stress, with sAA responding more rapidly. Related methodological concerns for the use of these physiological stress markers and of Cyberball in social neuroscience research are discussed.

I had never heard of alpha-amylase, but it turns out to be pretty interesting.  It’s an enzyme.  (unattributed from Wiki:   Enzymes are highly selective catalysts, greatly accelerating both the rate and specificity of metabolic chemical reactions, from the digestion of food to the synthesis of DNA. Most enzymes are proteins, although some catalytic RNA molecules have been identified.”)  People in hunting cultures have fewer genes for this stuff than people who eat starches, so it is thought to be a mutation associated with the development of agriculture.  It’s not tested by analyzing blood, but rather from spit which makes a test both cheaper and less painful.

Human beings seem to need to form groups, which is logical enough since it’s an excellent survival strategy for a species that is partly herd (prey) and partly hunting party (predator).  The forces that draw the boundaries are both those of ostracism because of people who make trouble, are contagious, or don’t seem to fit (stigma), and those of inclusion which may be because of affinity or merit, a shared goal or because no one else will have them so they band together.  Now and then I check back to some group where I was once included (even my family) and find I just don’t fit anymore.  Some -- not all -- are sorry to see me go.  Some are just astounded that anyone would care to leave.  Mostly the catalytic enzyme for departure has been education, but maybe lack of education would do the same thing.

By birth I belong to Portland, OR, by location I belong to Valier, by history I belong to Browning, by education I belong to Chicago in two ways:  south side university intellectuals (a group slow to change) and north side Method-based theatre (now pretty much dispersed).  The Portland where I grew up does not exist anymore.  There are other groups that are covert, either because I would have to invoke Thumper’s law (“if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”) and others because it would endanger them to be exposed.

The kind of groups I prefer are not inclined to huddle but more like nomads who need a point of return in order to regroup and go out again.  The groups I avoid are dangerous, either because they try to capture members through fear or reward or because they develop interior hierarchies that sacrifice the least powerful for the benefit of the most powerful.  Others are endangered because bigger and better armed groups target them and try to eliminate them.

Actually, though I probably “count” in the periphery of a hundred Venn diagrams and in the overlap of a few, I’m a satellite to most orbits because of conflicting sociology -- I move in terms of intellectual inquiry, while staying put in a high prairie village, one of the least known of all American contexts.  What difference does it make?  Mainly I can forget about publishing, my “home” denomination has already forgotten about me and anyway has changed away from my values, and though the internet has been a home and a joy, it is clearly about to be commodified to exclude me.  If I dress down, I am ignored and put down.  If I dress up, I am treated with respect.  Typical.  Predictable.

by Valentino Korokov

Since I write for myself as Ariadne’s thread of thought that I follow through the days, how I dress doesn’t really take the value out of what I do.  That day when the government tries to force me to get a “writer’s license” that dictates what and how I write (don’t be shocked -- it’s bound to come) I’ll just do it quietly at home as a guerrilla scribbler. Some are very experienced at this and can write in plain sight, because the authorities are not smart enough to recognize the markers.  Inquire about South American magic realist novels.  Look into the deeply hidden underculture of dictator-ruled countries whether Soviet or African -- the message might be music or painting.  In fact, one of the uses of prudery in America is to criminalize defiance and transgression.  But oppression is always a catalyst.

Lieberman’s book insists that brains “are built to make sense of other brains and to understand everyone’s place in the pecking order.”  Hidden in his work is the need to categorize humans as “better” than animals and some humans as “better than others.”  He is fond of sci-fi and therefore closes with a paragraph about Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi novel called “Foundation.”  I haven’t read it but it’s supposed to describe “a new branch of mathematics called “psychohistory”, in which principles of psychology are used to predict how many psychopolitical events over the next several decades will materialize and be resolved.”  He’s talking algorithms.  He’s talking statistics.  He’s assuming that pecking orders are unchanging.

He’s prioritizing groups as defined by some survey -- NOT individual choice or self-description -- and ASSUMING that everyone else is just like him.  He speaks of “unprecedented quality of of life” as measured by the stock market.  It’s not that he doesn’t want to help the impoverished and suffering, it’s that they are not part of his consciousness.  He’s a pinhead playing catch with pixels.  He’s no more useful than the Netflix experts who can’t figure out what movie I want to watch.

THIS IS A BIT REPETITIOUS

A Jain text in images

An arguable review of thoughts about what I'm doing.

Art is the expression of a relationship between a human and the universe.  Liturgy is an intense affirmation of this definition that provides a meaningful guide within the specific parameters of survival for either an individual or a group.

"Religion" -- before it is frozen into theology, maybe called spirituality -- is an extension of identity, which is an active relationship between person and situation.  Too much thought about spirituality is just fuzz and custard -- pleasant, but with limited meaning.

Material culture, used to record memory and to create metaphor, is the vocabulary and instrument of arts, including liturgy.  It is useless to argue over whether the images painted long ago in the depths of caves are either "art" or "liturgy" because in those days there was no separation between the two.

The world needs some sort of way of thinking that will bring us together.  Since formal "named" religions are institutional -- ethnically and turf-based, we can't reach unanimity on that level.  But we can go to the universal human experience of spirituality (NOT just emotions of love and all that) which kindles the spark of all religions.  That is, instead of looking at the content, we can look at the structure, not the structure of the outer world but the structure of human experience of it, which has two parts -- cognizant or beneath reflective access -- in the mammalian and even reptilian sub-brains.

Spirituality is an experience of meaning in two ways: it confirms the identity of the person and validates participation in the group.

Spirituality is not verbal.  Therefore it cannot be approached primarily through words but rather through whole-body thinking which precedes, underlies, and expresses thought:  art, dance, music.  It has evolutionary value in that it promotes survival for the individual and the group.

Spirituality is emergent.  When conditions are right, it emerges from the brain/body, called forth by sensory cues, a connectome hippocampus function.

Human development depends first on safety and then on attachment to another human in order for the brain to stay in growth mode.  Otherwise it closes down in hiding and defense, which is a different and higher priority connectome pattern that prevents growth.  The liminality of Victor Turner, et al, provides this safety and attachment necessary for even adults to confirm, re-affirm, or convert their thinking.

Crucifixions

What I'm called "liturgy" is an art form.  It's closest relative in theatre in several ways.  Actors study the skills for managing internal consciousness, even in multiple (the character and the actor) and even in what are labeled dissociated states.  Actors learn to modulate emotional responses, to respond to others, to express emotion clearly, to manage their bodies, to use transferences through empathy, not to fear human extremes and excesses.

Liturgy can interact with what we call therapy in various ways.  Liturgy can be a kind of therapy, reducing stress and providing a context for insight.  Likewise, a therapy can become spiritual when people arrive at deep meaning with the support of the therapist or a group.  A therapy group can serve as a congregation, both a "holding community" and witnesses.

a holding community supports you

Liturgy can bind a community together and keep their attention centered on specific acts and events, often those recorded as print of some kind, though there can be great importance given to memorization and to reflection on the meaning of the words and stories.

Most books about liturgy are about institutional, print-based, prescribed events that may be repeated over and over.  The Catholic church is often seen like that, but reading Dom Gregory Dix’s book “The Shape of the Liturgy” taught me a number of things.  The first was that there WAS a shape and that it was not just historical but also evolved:  first came the invention of a “book,” which at that point was a scroll which rabbis gathered to study and reflect upon.  Since this was holy work, it was marked off not in space, but in time, by the saying of prayers.  So the liminal time was closed by another prayer.  So now we have four elements: the prayer of in-coming, the reading of the passage to be studied, the reflection on that passage, and then the outgoing prayer.  

When the Jewish tradition became the foundation of Christian community, the younger groups accepted that Jesus had prescribed to them the ceremony of Communion: the bread and the wine that were normally eaten by a group staying together through mealtime anyway.  These were brought from home and left at the door until the Communion, and that moment of going to get the bread and wine so it could be consecrated for significance, is now in the Mass.  

Togo -- the place, not food "to go"

When the Protestants broke off from Catholic Mass, they kept the basic pattern since it is so natural to humans (the picnic, the potluck, the tailgate party, the hunt breakfast, the pizza party).  Sometimes they simplified.  Then when the Unitarians broke off from the dissenting Protestants, they began to drop out the Communion, the most extreme of them calling it “cannibalism.”  

Part of what makes the Catholics so interesting is that there is always a breaking away but also always a reform from within.  So Schreiter’s book about the problem of explaining bread and wine to people who have never seen either one (Inuit, for instance) is one of the most valuable resources I know for understanding how the deep equivalent human dynamics at the level of the limbic system can be discovered and resolved into new acts that celebrate the same thing.  One must go to the paradoxes of the saints.  The landscape itself becomes the Bible.  The human family remains meaningful.  Death by torturing authorities that turns out to be a release into some kind of transcendence may also be meaningful.  But an institutional religion that formed in one environment will always have to be translated very carefully to keep it from being reduced to toys and magic.  What can the desert say to the jungle?  What can the shepherd say to the keyboard junkie?

I have come late to an appreciation of community, which is partly temperament, partly the times when I was growing up which emphasized individuality and “creativity,” and partly my birth family which was immigrant homesteaders who sequestered the family.   Mathew Lieberman adds to the other specialized cells in the prefrontal cortex the “mirror cells” that support empathy -- the ability to look at another human and understand how they must be feeling.    “We believe that pain and pleasure alone guide our actions.  Yet, new research using fMRI – including a great deal of original research conducted by Lieberman and his UCLA lab -- shows that our brains react to social pain and pleasure in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure.”  

The assertion is made that humans spend a lot of time thinking about their relationships to other people, particularly those towards whom one feels intimacy.  Balancing that, it also appears that we need “out-groups” -- people we disapprove of, whom we shun or even attack.  This mob xenophobia can become destructive, but isolation is equally destructive, and we begin to understand that using it for punishment creates insanity.

Praying for others might be the most common liturgical element for justice, but also imagining a higher power who understands beyond what humans can grasp is often expressed in prayers.  Still, FELT meaning may be different.  Consider ordination of clergy during which the ordained person is not just prayed over and advised, but also is actively leaned on by the hands of those already in ministry, so that the weightiness of the moment is physical and real.  This interaction between words and enacted images is what I’m trying to explore.  

SOME BASIC TEXTS:

"The Shape of the Mass" by Dom Gregory Dix

"Constructing Local Theologies" by Robert Schreiter

"Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect" by Matthew D. Lieberman

"The Ritual Process" by Victor Turner