SORRY, BUT YOUR BRAIN IS NOT A SLAVE TO YOUR WHIMS AND YOU’RE NOT AS INFLUENTIAL AS YOU THINK
"…it means we can still pull off the greatest heist of all time. The biggest, shiniest jewel in all of science—why do people do what they do?—is still sitting in Nature’s vault...". Adam Mastroianni.
"Given the choice between living and examining, I’ll choose living any day. I eschew the malady of explanation and urge you to do likewise. The drive to explain is an epidemic in modern thought and its major carriers are contemporary therapists: every shrink I have ever seen suffers from this malady, and it is addictive and contagious. Explanation is an illusion, a mirage, a construct, a soothing lullaby. Explanation has no existence. Let’s call it by its proper name, a coward’s defense against the white-knuckled, knee-knocking terror of the precariousness, indifference and capriciousness of sheer existence."
*Paul Andrews – ‘The Crooked Cure’
Are you what you think or you think what you are?
It is very common to hear such clichés as "you're what you do" or read or hear or see or wear or, in the most extreme form, what you think (are you what you think or you think what you are?). This would seem to imply that people become more of what they desire as they either do, read, see, imagine, or believe it more. And this is indeed what most people who traffic in this idea mean whenever they deploy it for self-help or motivational purposes. At a surface level, this is a claim about success and how it is achieved. But at a deeper level, it is also a claim about identity and how it is shaped. According to this view, if you desire something, say to be better at making pancakes, and you didn't become better at it, then it must be because you didn't bake pancakes enough (though it says nothing about why the hell, of all things desirable, it’s pancake that catches your fancy). And if we accept that this is true, then, we must equally accept that if you are a bad politician or parent or spouse, it is simply because you did do enough of what the good versions of those identities do to become that good. Again, this says nothing about why the hell didn’t those bad versions do enough of those things that would make them turn into the good version.
Well, there's no doubt that this thinking moderately applies in some cases some of the times to some extent. People do get better as they do (but, for chrissake, not as they think or imagine or wish) something more frequently. I think this thinking is what has been conceptualized in scientific literature as the growth mindset. But I also think it reflects a relatively harmless form of magical thinking – equating or reducing imagination to reality.
But you're born with nothing; and all is acquired property!
Most people would probably protest with the above screamer. And this would at least be a debatable protest as long as they don’t go as far as making the claim that this incremental acquisition of characteristic traits is (1) from ground zero (2) under the full direction of our conscious will. The belief, that the formation and organization of our characteristic traits as well as its subsequent evolution is a product of intentional self-direction and necessarily preceded by some sort of consciously or semi-consciously selected activity preferences, totally subverts empirical and observational understanding of how interest, persistence, and performance actually come about and operate in real time, across contexts. We know that a thing like individual interest (and its consistency) is notoriously random, unstable, and often unpredictable. But by the folk logic described above, we ARE who we are BECAUSE of what we do and how often we do it. This makes a couple of assumptions: (1) that we know who we are or can be? (2) that this knowledge is subject to our control, and (3) that this control has a high ceiling.
If you read, you'd be brilliant. If you cook you'd be a good cook. If you exercise, you'd be fit. If you eat you'd be fat. These, of course, are fat fallacies, but that's nearly besides the point. It is very easy to think that “I’m brilliant because I read” or that “I am likable because I help people”, until you meet someone who reads but isn’t brilliant or who is brilliant but detests reading or someone who is likable in spite of being unkind. Of course, these critical exceptions don’t make re-examine our assumptions or change our explanations. If we can find one example of someone being likable in spite of not being altruistic, then the fundamental cause(s) of likability cannot just be such things as how generous you are. But because this feels true in our immediate experience, we generalize to others.
The main point here is not really about WHAT we do and whether the things we do affect us or not. It is about WHY we do those things and whether we have any measure of control over the things we ‘choose’ to do. Like Mastrioanni put it, the ‘why’ question is the “biggest, shiniest jewel in all of science”, and we are nowhere near being close to unraveling it. The most common life trope is that of people doing seemingly unimportant things and having no idea why they’re doing it; but also that of people not doing things that are important and having no idea why they aren't doing those things. In reality, what interests us tend to fluctuate treacherously across time, space, situation, and people. I’m in class with Vanessa and I’m suddenly thinking of sex and having vivid karma sutra visions. Then Prof. walks in and the sultry vision turns into monochromatic intellectual picture. Hence, interest, and by necessary implication, outcome, is so often unstable and unpredictable as it is determined not by a single but by multiple factors most of which we're not even aware of, let alone in control of.
I want to pray but I have to swear!
Why should I read a book or bake a cake or run the gamut or shoot birds or chase women? Because....blah blah blah. There unfailingly follows a nicely cooked up tale about how having sex "makes me feel powerful" or "makes me a better person" or "makes me happy". Well, until it doesn't. And then, what? But it really doesn't matter because the story really sounds to us like the real deal - the capital reason for living. This makes us feel not only like we know what we're doing but why we're doing it to booth. Our nice little tale also convinces and reassures others that yes, indeed, we know what we're doing and why we're doing it, though in reality, what we often take as "the reason" for our behaviour and preferences is, at best, merely a “conscious motive" which says nothing about the psychophysical motive that is actually behind the behaviour. Besides, the number of possible “conscious motives” are endless, and which motive makes it to consciousness per time is a function of idiosyncratic elements ranging from the trivial like whether you’re sitting beside Vanessa, to the complex like neuronal firings. But there are limited number of possible neurochemical fundamentals underlying same behaviour. And even though the psychological explanations are anything but economical and stable, we prefer them because they are easily constructed and accessible to our consciousness.
This tendency to elevate an unstable and shifting psychophysical motivational sources of behaviour to the purely narrative level of explanation often leads to self-surprises when our reasons inexplicably collapse into flimsy nothingness. Suddenly, the all-consuming Vanessa is no longer “the most interesting girl”. Vanessa, often seamlessly, becomes replaced with Patricia. What then happens to our previous explanation for our interest in the former object? Discarded and banished from conscious memory, but readily replaced by another judicious memo-to-self to properly idealize whatever has again caught our fancy. Every choice, behaviour, and action must have their own self-promoted ideological backing. Indeed, an ideological narrative is a necessary soft infrastructure to building a constructive and sustainable set of self-fulfilling (or self-destructive) habits. But it is a mistake to think that these spontaneously generated behavioural ideologies (or narratives) makes the behaviour or action tendencies stronger or durable. The reverse is actually the case: the action potential or behavioural tendencies determine the properties of the emergent psychonarrative. The belief does not make the behaviour, the behaviour makes the belief. In other words, how strong, passionate, extreme, pure, stable the ideology we formulate, adopt, and promote to support our behaviour is a function of our action/thought potentials – what Karl Popper referred to as “propensities”.
You think you’re a feminist? Think again
Some persons think they are 'feminists' because they believe in feminist ideology. But I’ll be damned if most self-styled feminists can properly articulate the philosophy behind feminism. You are a feminist (or think you are one) because certain cognitive orientations ((like not believing biology/genealogy necessarily confers superiority), behavioural tendencies (like being confrontational and opinionated), and experiential acquirements (like the value of equity and egalitarianism) coincide with the sort of things that feminism appears to advocate for. Even then, this still says nothing about why or how we come to have these cognitive orientations, behavioural tendencies, and experiential slants.
Another example is people thinking they're morally good because they're "good Christians or Muslims or humanists" (by the way, "a good Christian/Muslim/Humanist" is a tautology"). They think their religious/philosophical commitment makes them a good person, until they meet someone with no religious/ideological affiliation who is still good or even better than them (by whatever moral standard they happen to be using). Being a worshipper of some imaginary deity or being a feminist or an animist or a vegetarian are not the cause of who you are but the outward effects. These ideological professions are merely coincidental because your identification with feminism or christianity or socialism or empiricism may suddenly change tomorrow, but the underlying individual tendencies remain relatively stable; and it almost always find another ideological system through which it can find expression and affirmation.
The best storyteller always wins
There's no doubt that this sort of ongoing rationalization and forced Narrative alignment between professed values and behaviour is more often than not positive, healthy, and necessary in our attempt to construct a psychologically meaningful life. Those who have the best narrative alignment, no doubt, are also the ones with the most satisfying life experiences. But as it has its usefulness, it also entails a dark side. It is easier to construct a pseudo-justification for actions and attractions that are generally regarded as positive or pro-social. For instance, "why do you always give random strangers a lift?" is easier to rationalize than "why do you always fart in public?" In fact, the explanation for the first behaviour has a low acceptability bar (that is, any explanation would often do, even if your explanation is "I don't know"). But the latter behaviour has a high acceptability bar due to its social disapproval. It would indeed require a justification that clearly transcends the individual's volitional control for such behaviour to get a social pass. And such explanations often have to be rooted in biology or metaphysics which tend to signal to us that the operative forces are beyond the person's control. For a habitual public fart-er to offer a psychological or social level explanation like "I enjoy the look of horror or amusement in people's faces" is to risk attracting irredeemable opprobrium and ostracism.
Yet, this explanatory bias is fundamentally flawed though socially and psychologically effective. Explanations that transcend the individual should not be reserved only for negative actions, they also necessarily apply to positive behaviours. But as per the law of attribution, we are wired to expand our egocentric space when explaining something others approve of or admire, and to shrink our ego into insignificance when explaining something others disapprove of.
You just don’t know; and that’s okay
Nobody ever really knows WHY (the multiple causal undercurrent) they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing even though they may know WHAT (in the most superficial sense of the word) they’re doing. Nobody really knows why the hell they’re itching to do THIS and not THAT. It may at first seem pretty obvious and immediately apparent why you are doing something until you ask yourself: why this? Why not that? Why now? Why not later? Why am I choosing to hangout with friends at this point in time rather than staying indoors? Let’s say you tell yourself it’s because you don’t really like being by yourself or that you’re easily bored by yourself or that you’ve been indoor for the last 2 days, so you needed a time out. But it is immediately clear that any of those explanations is not necessarily valid or fixed. Take the last one for example; you are itching to go out because you’ve been indoors for two days, but why after 2 days? Why not after 1 week or 1 hour, because you can bet there are people who only itch to go out after say a month of being indoor or a minute. It is often easier for us to pass the first-level why question, but very much difficult to pass the second-level why or the third-level (and you can bet that it’s possible to ask the why question ad infinitum) – the whys behind the why, so to speak. Why do you love to read so much? Because I enjoy reading. But why do you enjoy reading? Because I ... enjoy reading? You get the point. Because you enjoy reading is not really the cause of your reading behaviour, it is just one of its many effects. And almost all the time, we take the effect of a behaviour or habit for the cause of it.
The why question can also quickly collapse into circular logic. Why do you look so fit and healthy? Because I eat healthy and exercise. Why do you eat healthy and exercise? So as to keep fit and healthy. But why do you want to keep fit and healthy? The circular infinity.
Come on, even the mind knows it’s not that smart!
Our ‘why’ explanations are often almost always errors of attribution of motivation. We are very good at psychological reduction and I think our cognitive resources is optimized for this function. We are creatures who can’t do without explanations – we’re explanation freaks and we’d manufacture one where none is needed or necessary. Many people would rather prefer a poor or scary explanation than no explanation – it is the same reason a Christian would rather team up with a Muslim (even if he’s a jerk) than take the side of an atheist when talking about morality. This makes absolute sense when we consider it from the view point that explanations give the illusion of safety and control, and especially, of meaningfulness of our day to day experiences. Hence, those who are bad at this function, either in the sense of always coming up with toxic explanations or having what we may term ‘poverty of explanation’, are more likely to struggle both existentially and psychologically. But it still doesn’t change the fact that our explanations are often spectacular errors of attribution of motivation. A good example to better illustrate this error of motivational attribution is reading.
I have heard, more often than I can count, people advising others to read more if they want to be successful or brilliant or original in thinking or just to simply have good grades. I myself have many times offered such advice and I'm still often tempted to do so. I see a playful and academically lazy young chap and I instinctively begin to talk about how he cannot succeed in the future if he fails to read. It is deeply ingrained in our thinking to associate our actions with some desired outcome or to extend our desires into a specific realm of action. So, if we want to succeed academically we have to study or if we study we will succeed academically. This, as explained earlier, assumes that we read BECAUSE we want something, in this case, success. And indeed, for many this is perhaps true at a strictly instrumental level: reading is purely a means to an end or a specific-goal-directed undertaking. But then we have to confront the puzzle of those who don't like to read at all and those who continue reading when there's no reason for them to. Both a common enough phenomena and defying the primary logic of instrumental thinking. It is as if they’re saying “I read therefore I am” (sorry, Descartes). Those who don't read or don't like to read, don't they want to also succeed? How about those who overread, what are they looking for? Is there something beyond success? Of course, these are only puzzles in as much as one subscribes to the notion that we know why we do what we do or that we actively and continuously choose what we do in strict accordance to our consciously set goals. There are some seemingly meaningless and wasteful, even counter-useful, habits that immediately become inexplicable if we hold on to the theory of purposeful or rational action. The utilitarian perspective of behaviour exaggerates and perpetuates the comforting myth of existential duality, the separation of body and mind, which in this case would mean disconnecting action from the body and attaching it to the mind. That is, the mind, being aware of what it wants, is not subject to the will and direction of the body independently of itself. Come on, even the mind knows it’s not that smart. Or does it?
But this, as modern neuroscience has shown, is as fallacious as fallacies go. But it is a useful fallacy, hence its persistence. It has a survival value. It gives us a sense of control in the absence of real control and makes us feel responsible for our waking actions as well as hold others responsible for theirs. It is the springsource of all human innovations.
If it can be taken too far, then we’d take it too far.
But it can go too far when we are faced with people in whom the body, the machine, exerts a greater control over the mind, and the mind only capable of a weak countercontrol. This necessarily means that the mind would be less effective in its experience-seeking and myth-making functions, and hence more subject to every dictate of the body that constitutes it. This is most apparent in persons with exaggerated or defective bodily processes or mechanisms like in autism spectrum or intellectual disability spectrum or ADHD spectrum/type or emotional dysregulation or dyslexia. Our "you can do whatever you set your mind to do" mantra suddenly meets a brick wall of an agnostic body - a body that neither believes in nor is responsive to your theory of action. This is exactly the region where prejudice and stigma are given birth to in all their colorful silliness. Prejudice and stigma are borne of the feeling of being better than others and this feeling is in turn borne of the belief that we're solely or chiefly responsible for how our life turns out. We reason that if we hold ourselves to such a high standard of conduct and achievement, why the hell shouldn't others be equally held responsible? Look how I struggled very hard to make something out of my life in spite of my father’s wealth and my 6ft tall athletic frame. That poor never-do-well dimwit has no excuse whatsoever!
In addition, we hold a narrow range of ideas about the proper way a life should or could turn out, a range of ideas largely constructed on the outcomes observed in the species’ majority, leaving the numerous minorities out of the equation of life. And in spite of the fundamental injustice of this reality, I'm not so sure that it doesn't hold some vital species level benefits, especially for the efficient organization and management of the chaos always inherent in diversity. It is simply an elegantly simple solution to outsource ultimate responsibility to the individual.
So, how dare you tell me to read!
So, when a senior colleague once advised me to read more and wide if I want to be as fluent and informed as him, I asked him if that was the reason why he first started reading. Because he was self-aware enough, he couldn't honestly answer in the affirmative. It would be giving himself too much credit for something he knew he would probably continue to do even if the incentive of being fluent and informed is removed. Hence, we read not so much as to develop our brain power as much as we are compelled by our brain to: “I am, therefore, I read”. Monsieur Descartes, my thinking (or my reading) does not justify my existence, my existence justifies my thinking or my reading or my farting or any other thing I freaking do as a human being. I, therefore, declare with Miguel de Unamuno that “I am a man, nothing human is strange to me!”
Not every brain compels its owner to read or to run or to watch TV or to act violently. What stimulates each brain-body duplex differs and each duplex would compel its owner to seek and retain whatever it needs to feel stimulated and in equilibrium. This perspective removes the need to continuously fabricate explanations for why we do what we do or to take overly outsized credit for our success or outsized blame for our failure.
*Paul Andrews is a character in Irvin Yalom’s book: Creatures of The Night