Brain-Chemistry is Lame, pt II - an anecdote

As an example of how much better it is to not have the language of brain-chemistry littered in our conversation or understanding, compare this Orwell passage on a cup of tea (1946), with how people these days brashly talk about "caffeine":

First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.

(Taken from this excellent essay)

Damn you, Neuroscience!

This will be a brief rant, i promise.

I am just so bloody annoyed at how the claims and lingo of neuroscience have invaded both common speech and journalistic writing!

I feel incensed the way Blake was at the rationalists of his own day: How dare they demean happiness by calling it just dopamine! Do they really think that bliss is explained by seratonin?

I am of course not doubting the observations of the neuroscientists—of course, when we observe someone who is happy we also are able to observe an increase in dopamine. But observing the fact that they happen at the same time does not mean that we have found a sufficient explanation for happiness! Here again, scientists, and the masses who assimilate their ideas, have confused the question of 'how?' (as in, ''how does the brain work?") which is the quest of science, with the existential and spiritual question of 'why?'

I am not very dextrous with Aristotelian terminology, but to rephrase it as such: Science has partially described the material cause of human workings, but it does not—indeed, structurally cannot—touch the other three causes that make up the being of a thing! That is, what it's aim is, what it's orignal source is, etc. (see here for a primer on what I am talking about)

And yet—so many claim (more often tacitly than explicitly) that it does explain the human condition fully.

And I am torn with both pity and anger for all those who speak in such a way. That they think the depths of a human's heart can be encompassed with the names of a few chemicals. And anger - because they seek to demean my own being-in-this-world.

Ok, if i let the anger subside for a moment, I think I can see how this came about. In part because of an ever-increasing materialist outlook which has been devloping since Darwin. In part because of the proliferation of psycho-tropic medication which only imparts a chemical, and yet does effect an emotional change, but both of these things are understood too simply! Regarding meds, they do effect a degree of change in the taker, but unless the taker supplements this temporary boost (for they all of them wear off over time) with the hard-work of an existential quest to find meaning and happiness - they will remain despondent!

(I bet there are studies out there to back me up on this, but i don't know of them off-hand)

Also, I am stunned that people think the observations of neuroscientists are profound! We see some headline of 'when x people experienced y phenomenon, we noticed a difference in z part of their brain!'

Oh, really! you mean there is somthing mechanical happening as a result of actions taken by the will? Ok, that's kind of cool that we can see it, but when people think that the material happening is the explainer of the experience, they are just putting the bloody cart before the horse!

Mock on, mock on, MRI and CT scans.

On Belief

The latest thing that keeps coming up in my mind when I am feeling ponderous is this idea of Scripture being our "norming norm". I have tried to read some stuff on this (Grenz, et al.) and most of it is in pretty abstract theological terms. As in – scripture should be the primary informer of our (the Church's) theology. I.e. the truest theology is biblical theology.

But I am interested in a further application: the world the scriptures inhabit should be a norming world for our own.

Here's one example, that in thinking about I am struck by: The words of Jesus and the letters of Paul are unequivocal in the idea that what is necessary for salvation is belief. Just believe that Jesus is Lord and redeemer, and you are saved! now, evangelicals & fundamentalists have latched on to this and emphasized it (and rightly so, as I am about to argue), but it sounds outrageous to most modern ears. How could laying claim to something in my mind have any bearing on my eternal destination? Taking for granted the johannine theme that all belief should exemplify itself in works, I am thinking of situations like death-bed conversions, the impetus for street-evangelism, etc.

It just doesn't really register. What happens in my mind—witnessed only on a neural level*—surely cannot have consequences in the physical and meta-physical realms.

I think this idea is foundationally present in much of the multi-faith/religious-inclusivity/universalist dialogue—that what counts is what is visible (charitable works, peaceful demeanors, etc), not what is in our brains.

And yet, the bible seems to say clearly otherwise, and so I want to allow this world of the bible—where personal belief; intellectual assent is paramount—to correct the worldview that exists within our culture, and which is my own go-to paradigm.

So, contra "common"-sense, I choose to believe that personal belief is crucially significant.

Moreover, this move then further reforms my understanding of what a self is, in that it places much more weight on what one believes. That is, it opens up a philosophical discussion on the relationship between self and mind, and between what is in us, and what is of consequence in the world of the tangible. In our culture's eyes, the connection is slim, if existent at all (and here of course I can point to the over-travelled road of discourse about the false claims of an isolated cartesian self, etc, etc.); but through the lens of the world as we have it in scripture – what is in your head matters, has substance.

And I like it!

*i am speaking here in the language our culture uses - language I think is deeply problematic; see my next post.

Baring-Gould, pt. II

I just have to share this awesomeness.
I feel I have found in Sabine a real kindred spirit in history:

An account of the Eucharist in the first three centuries
A collection of Fairy Tales
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets
An old English Home and its dependencies [a collection of origin-stories of elements of village life]
Strange Surivials [a collection of origin-stories of the basic elements of survival]
A collection of folk-ballads in the English oral tadition

I'll say it again: What. A. Man.
Also - Thank you, book digitizing projects! (Google, Gutenberg, et al.)

Two W.H.'s on Indian Spirituality

"I think there should be holy war against yoga classes. It detours us from real thinking. It's just this kind of...feeling and floating and meditation and whatever. It's as tourism in religions. People all of a sudden becoming Buddhist here in Los Angeles" --Werner Herzog (in a great GQ interview)

"[the] deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India." --Wystan Hugh Auden (on Yeats' poetry)

Even as one who has enjoyed the relaxing effects of yoga, I am inclined to agree!

also, for the definitive scholarly take-down of the "ancient yoga" mythos:

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/living/not-as-old-as-you-think

This is the first, and last post about Aliens

So, I was talking with this dude the other day, and he played the familiar card of, 'The universe is so big, there has got to be life on other planets.'

Man, I hate this one!

and I think it can totally be taken down by placing it in a larger crypto-zoological discussion.

What i mean is: Aliens fall into the same category as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and also their antecedants: abundant human-killing wolves, etc.

In this way: Whenever we humans encounter big, dark, abyssal spaces, they evoke a primal terror in us. In such spaces—forests, the ocean, mountain ranges—there is just an overwhelming quantity of opaque 'unknown-ness'. The foe that evokes this fear is too large and faceless to be wrestled with, and so we mythologize and create (often anthropomorphic) monsters that embody and represent the fear of the unknown. Giving it a face allows it to be a foe that can be faced down, and also then provides the fodder for folk tales. And so: Mountains::Yeti, Oceans::Sea-Monsters (except there actually are sea-monsters, so void that one), Forests::Wolves, Caves::trolls, etc.

In like manner, with the gargantuan blackness of space, we have constructed humanoid aliens. done! case-closed! there are no such thing as aliens! it's just modern man's version of the big-bad-wolf.

***

In thinking about this, I realized there is one other area where a similiar psychological 'face-making' takes place: Computers! And the myth is the Terminator! (as in - the films). Computers present us with a complexity and quantity of data that i think we register it in the same emotional category as a dark forest. I mean, think about why a film like 'Terminator' was made? what is it's source? I mean - self-aware, impossibly tough techno-monsters? not a feasible reality - it's mythic!

***

Lastly - regarding the form aliens so often 'have' - I just came across the most mind-blowing idea! that an 'alien face' is actually similiar to the way a mother's face looks when one is just an infant and cannot focus one's eyes properly, and is developing a visual memory. I.e. the most profound image we can imagine! for a proper explanation see this article (although, their take is that the mothers-face is an image 'pre-wired' into an infants brain, a la evolutionary psychology—also feasible):
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/close-encounters-of-the-facial-kind/


Insane! Blows my mind!

also - for the record - that alien image scares the shit out of me.

ok. never again will i post on such garbage.

This is the best blog on the Internet—

or at least, what grips him almost always grips me, and he draws from awesome wells.

http://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/

A G.K. quote sent to me by Giles (a professed agnostic):

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

- G.K. Chesterton

"I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them. The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time."

Zac reminded me of this line the other day, one of many inspirations to be found in this interview with Jack Gilbert.

Also, this line summarizes some of the sadness and discontent I have sometimes felt at my chaplaincy internship - how few are those who have taken matters of the heart seriously.

'Tis a pity.

A note to our Readers—

So, the readership of this blog has expanded a little bit since we first began.

I have gathered that among our regulars here are the other members of Harcout-Brace-JovanaBitch: Rachel Thompson, & Zac; then there's also Tim Davis, my Dad and brother Tim, and Steph Lee (who ps. did I hear you became Orthodox?); and then a little while back upon request I opened the space up to Lisbeth, Tony, Brian, Decort, and Travis K. who may take a gander, and then Trent, Rachel Primrose and my Mom know of it, but i don't know if they ever peruse. Mark– I know that you have brought Dayna into the circle, and Kevin Walker, and Bondy, too? Feel free to share with others.

Anyways, just because Internet anonymity is no fun, I figured i'd put that out there, and also:

Dear readers! guests in this digital living-room of armchair philosophico-theologizing, Feel free to chime in! Either with comments on posts, or, if you have some ideas of your own that you'd love to share in just such a setting - email them to me and I would love to post them!
Some dialogue would be fun, no?
well, if 'no', no problem, Mark and I shall continue to blab unprompted :)

—Ben

ps. any regulars that I forgot?

Anecdote from the Radio—

Driving home from a wonderful weekend in the Chi/Wheaton, I was listening to RadioLab on the radio, and heard this story:

So, apparantly, Xenophon was set for battle against the Persians (who greatly outnumbered them), and the day before battle he was speaking with the Captain of the army about where they should fight—where would give them the greatest tactical advantage, etc. Xenophon said that they must take their stand on the very edge of the cliff. That is, the Greeks would have their backs to the cliff's drop-off, and fight forwards. The Captain objected: "But then there is no way for a retreat if we begin to lose!", "Exactly" replied Xenophon, who foresaw that if his fellow soldiers had no other option than to fight to the death, then it would charge them all the more to make sure it was their enemies' death and not their own. Furthermore, the Persians would see this situation, and the steeled resolve of the Greeks would no doubt be a source of intimidation. "Embrace the Cliff." was Xenophon's conclusion.

I think they won the fight.

Man does this story stir my courage! and the RadioLab producers didn't overlook its potency. Indeed, it introduced the episode's topic:

Commitment. Arranging it so that you cannot compromise.

mmmMMMmm!

I dub this guy the patron saint of this blog and our collective interests

Sabine Baring-Gould. What a man!
A priest who:
-Collected one of the most impressive anthologies of English folk music
-Wrote a 16-volume 'Lives of the Saints'
AND -Has a book titled 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'!

What work! What a man!

addenda:

- nothing more fun than victorian 'scholarship'

- I just ordered a copy of 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'

Some Influential Lines —

Whenever anyone comments on Nature, these lines of Henry Sutton always come to mind:

'Man'

Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face,
Never yet thine eyes behold a tree;
‘Tis no sea thou seést in the sea,
‘Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests a man, is man.

Wheaton never mentioned this about C.S. Lewis!!

apparantly he smoked 60 cigarettes a day! between pipes! hahahahhaa. This tops even the Bonhoeffer habit we have harped on on this here blog.
from the ever-interesting Writer's Alamanac, Mar 29th:
On this day in 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country to completely ban cigarette smoking from the workplace. Great Britain soon followed, instituting a ban to be phased in gradually over the next four years, which prompted author and columnist A.N. Wilson to remark in the Telegraph: "Sitting with my drink in such now-empty bars, my mind has turned to the great smokers of the past — to C.S. Lewis, who smoked 60 cigarettes a day between pipes with his friends Charles Williams (cigarette smoker) and Tolkien (pipe-smoker); to Thomas Carlyle, whose wife made him smoke in the kitchen of their house in Cheyne Row, but who is unimaginable without tobacco, to Robert Browning, who quickly adapted to the new cigarette craze, to the great John Cowper Powys, who continued to smoke cigarettes, and to produce fascinating novels, into his nineties ... This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature."
Although I think A.N. Wilson might be slightly over-stating the case, and the public health-benefits to smoking bans are unquestionable, there is a little something that has been lost...

Magic?

In 2011 I wrote a post about being anti-sacraments. How ashamed I am of those words now. To speak so callously of my Lord and His Church, and his sacred body and blood.

I have erased the post as a formal revocare, just in case at some time in the future anyone dug this up.

For the record:

it IS his body -- because HE said so.

Ben+

7.18.19