Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren’t good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.
Peter Gabriel & Anne Sexton: Mercy Street - All My Pretty Ones
It’s in our animal heritage to size each other up – the guy down the street with the new BMW; the co-worker who just received the promotion. Then, there’s your friend who’s wife suddenly up and left. What’s up with that?
We watch. We listen. We exchange stories. Then, we spin it inside our heads. Morning, noon, and night our thoughts are abuzz with people. What will he do if I don’t get my report in on time? How could they pass me over for that ditz, Sara? What did Michael mean by that remark about me? The storyline behind it all – how do I measure up? And why?
We are endowed with a craving for status. It shows itself in our need to be seen as attractive, successful, well-connected, and smart. And if we fall short — what’s gone wrong and how do we get there.
Cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga observed, “When you get up in the morning, you do not think about triangles and squares…You think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers. You’re thinking about your spouse, about your kids, about your boss. Ninety-nine percent of your time is spent thinking about other people’s thoughts about you, their intentions…” (1)
In his play No Exit, Sartre wrote, “hell is other people.” No. Hell is our continual need to compare ourselves with other people. Compare down, we feel better. (Poor Joe. Three kids. Lost his job.) Compare up, we feel worse. (Lakefront property, a new girlfriend half his age, AND a new boat?!) And unfortunately, most of the time, we compare up.
Animals raise their status by exaggerating their size. They balloon, bristle, bellow, ruff, and rear. We have symbols of status. Cars. Jewelry. Clothing. Name-dropping. Suntans. Tell the right story, you improve your reputation, or tear down that of a rival. “Try to look like the people above you; if your at the top, try to look different from the people below you.” (Quenton Bell, On Human finery.) Our versions of ruffs, balloons, and bellows. (2)
“Look at me! Not only is mine bigger, but I’m just plain better!”
There’s a cost, however. Think of the peacock’s tail. It may impresses the peahen, yes. But, that great fan consumes nutrients, hinders movements, and attracts predators. Some theorists propose that the display evolved precisely because of its cost. Only the healthiest animals can afford them. Like the peacock, our drive for status and reputation consumes energy – emotional energy, financial energy, and psychological energy.
For we humans, just because something’s part of some biological heritage doesn’t mean we have to play the game. Just because Jack down the hall is expending precious energy bellowing, doesn’t mean I have to. We can ask ourselves is that big truck really worth it? Does that story the guy is telling about himself have any real meaning to my life? Look around. Most of our worry about status happens between our ears inside our own heads. We can often choose not to play certain games that are part of our evolutionary heritage. As psychologists Richard Gregory and Vilayanur Ramachandran have pointed out, “our conscious mind may not have free will, but it does certainly have free won’t.”
“…the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” Leo Tolstoy.
Life besets us with gambles. Do I invest in stocks or stash my money under the mattress? Do I leave my job for more money now, or wait it out for that promotion? Is it Obama, or McCain? Yet, choose we must. And, it always feels better coming to the table knowing that our choice is absolutely the right one.
Our feeling of certainty is seldom the result of logical analysis. In reality, it’s an involuntary mental sensation firing off deeply in our brain’s circuitry. First, we think a thought. Then, we make an involuntary assessment of the accuracy of that thought. When that assessment lights up our reward circuitry, we glow beneath that hot, intoxicating feeling “I am right!”
Archimedes shouting, "Eureka!"
Our perceptual circuitry has evolved to reinforce our conclusions, whether or not the information we receive is convincing. During elections, how many of us actually go seek out information against our pet candidate, party, or issue. In fact, if you’re honest with yourself, you might have to agree that any thought of doing just that is met inside your head with a resounding “No!”
Research has shown that we determine whether something is good or bad within a quarter of a second. The rest is mental fine tuning. Once that evaluation is made, we are primed to seek out evidence upholding that initial evaluation and avoid, or spin, information that contradicts it. First impressions are highly weighted in our perceptual system, and thus powerful cues to the formation and sustaining of our beliefs.
Ask a subject to evaluate a person’s happiness, or sociability, or likeability on the basis of a list of adjectives describing him. Envious. Stubborn. Critical. Industrious. Talkative. Intelligent. If the list is given in the above order, the subjects will rate the person negatively. Reverse the order — same words, same person — the subjects will rate the person positively (Myers, 2007).
Our brains have evolved in favor of rapid evaluation about the world around us. First impressions bring us to certainty most quickly. In low complexity, high danger situation, it’s highly adaptive to go with “gut instinct.” We give up accuracy, yet gain in our capacity to leap quickly into action. In more complex situations, especially ones where we have more time to think, this mental tendency leaves us vulnerable to prejudice, premature judgment, and possibly costly error.
If you want to be truly fair in your evaluation of a circumstance and you’re not running from a saber-tooth tiger: question your initial perceptions; spend time looking for evidence that you are wrong; in forming an impression of a person (or object) try to break your judgment down into his (or its) separate qualities without letting any strikingly good or bad first impression influence your opinion about the remainder; and, practice suspending judgment, especially in light of that great feeling of “I know I’m right!”
Finally, beware of people who claim absolute certainty on matters where certainty is impossible. As neurologist and “certainty” researcher Robert Burton suggests, “Intuitions, gut feelings and hunches are neither right nor wrong but tentative ideas that must then be submitted to testing. If such testing isn’t possible (such as in deciding whether or not to pull out of Iraq), then we must accept that any absolute stance is merely a personal vision, not a statement of fact.”
Tarot. Astrology. Mind-reading. Channeling. Make these claims to a magician, and be prepared to dodge his bite. In the magician’s world, psychics are at worst liars, cheats, and swindlers who prey on people’s pain. At best, they are self-deceived charlatans — highly intuitive, perhaps –but gullible to their own trickery. (Watch accompanying videos as much for their entertainment value.)
Illusionist Chriss Angel takes on paranormalist James Callahan. (See James Callahan’s full performance by pressing here.)
The fight is as bitter as that between mongoose and cobra. If you’re a psychic in the company of a magician be prepared for the challenge – “dare to show me your psychic gift and I’ll dare to expose the man behind your curtain.” From Houdini’s challenge to famed spiritualist Mina Crandon, to the Amazing Randi dogging psychic healer Doris Collins. Through misdirection, switching, hypnosis, cold reading, and other forms of trickery, contemporary magicians and illusionists such as Penn & Teller, Chriss Angel, David Blaine, and Derren Brown can make a skeptic out of the most die-hard believer.
We are most vulnerable when we are in pain. We will turn anywhere for comfort. Sometimes in spite of ourselves, we will choose to believe the comforting wish, over a crueler truth. The shadow side to our capacity to imagine is that we are prey to illusions and unsubstantiated beliefs. A case can be made, albeit an arguable one, that it’s these very illusions that help us endure through troubled, uncertain times, and sometimes to keep us pushing forward when the odds are clearly against us.
David Blaine turns coffee to money. Better than water to wine?
What we perceive about the world doesn’t have to be accurate, only “good enough.” Good enough so we can feed ourselves, protect ourselves, and mate. Throughout two million years of evolutionary history, survival depended on quick judgments. We sacrificed accuracy for reactions that increased the odds we’d not only save our own skins, but also feel better inside our skins when times were hard, cold, and cruel. It’s better to be wrong and safe, mated, fed, certain, and un-alone, than to strive for accuracy and end up dead.
rotating snake illusion
Sight is powerful to belief, even if what we see isn’t exactly what’s before us. (See some interesting optical illusions.) We don’t always see what’s there, but what we expect to see. Or, we tell ourselves a good story that confirms what we most hope, or most fear.
Moreover, we are not prone to being skeptics about our own beliefs. We are given to snap judgments. We are bad at estimating probabilities. We fail to understand that mysterious coincidences are far more likely than we want to believe. (Did you know that in a room or office of 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance that two of those people will share the same birthday?) We look only to confirm that which we want to believe, not seek the evidence against. One of the hardest things in the world for our minds to do is to look for information that disproves the stories and beliefs from which we draw comfort and strength.
James Randi and psychic Maureen Flynn
The psychic upholds our need for comfort in the thought that there’s a place beyond this world and, indeed, we are not alone. The magician will bring doubt to our beliefs in ghosts, spirits, reading the future in the stars, and then show you the trick — “Anything they can do, I can do and better.” Theirs is a complex, illusory reality filled with trickery, misdirection, and disguises. “Face it,” they seem to say, “you are on your own.”
Penn & Teller’s 7 basic principles of magic
The magician’s challenge is as much toward you and me. Be skeptical of what you see. Look for the man behind the curtain. If you see hoof prints think first of horses, even if you’ve come to believe that unicorns do, in fact, exist. (1)
Astrology? Watch at your own risk. (Click twice for youtube video)
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1) Cognitive scientists and visual neuroscientists are now utilizing magicians and their tricks to study such phenomena as visual tracking, attention, and awareness. Stephen Macknik, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, and Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience, are working with magicians James Randi (The Amazing Randi), Teller (of Penn & Teller), Apollo Robbins, Mac King and John Thomson (The Great Tomsoni).
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction
For all of life is a dream
And dreams? dreams are dreams
(Calderón de la Barca)
“Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes…” writes Isabel Allende. Before that first morsel hits our taste buds, they’re primed by what we see. (Doesn’t your mouth start to pucker when staring at the photograph above?) In turn, what we see sets up a cascade of thought, belief, and memory. Our cognition frames our sensations. We taste not only that little morsel rolling across our tongue, but everything we’ve come to expect from that first bite. As the great chef Auguste Escoffier said, “Even horsemeat can be delicious when one is in the right circumstances to appreciate it.”
Fredéréc Brochet of the University of Bordeaux took two middling Bordeaux wines and served it to over 50 wine experts in two different bottles. One bottle was labeled Grand Cru — one of the highest levels of wine classification. The other bottle was labeled as an ordinary table wine. Although the wines were the exact same, 40 of the experts rated the wine designated Grand Cru as highly favorable, calling it “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded.” The other? “Weak, short, flat, faulty.” Only 12 of the experts said the wine designated as an ordinary table wine was worth drinking at all.
Studies of this kind are numerous. A little sprig of parsley added to a food company’s logo (Hormel Foods), the shape of a bottle (Christian Brothers Brandy), adding yellow die to change a margarine from white to yellow and adding a crown to it’s logo (Imperial Margarine), have all been shown to have powerful effects on how those tastes hit our taste buds. When Seven-up added 15% yellow to the green on its can (without changing the flavor a drop), there was a public uproar that the company added more lemon to their favorite drink!
In a recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association subjects were told they would be testing out a brand new pain killer. They were first given a small electric shock, and then given a placebo pill that they were told would ease the discomfort.Half were told the little sugar pill cost $2.50 a pill, the other half that the same pill cost 10¢. 85% of the $2.50 group said the pill reduced the pain, while only 61% of the 10¢ group said so. (Of course, the fact that so many found relief in the first place is startling in and of itself!) In essence, not only do we come to value more those things we perceive to be more expensive, we actually experience them as better.
Our entire library of memories, beliefs, expectations, and desires guide how and what our senses pick up from the world. Is it that our senses are fooled, or are they actually shaped by what our experience brings? To most, a seared steak seems juicier and more flavorful, even though the searing actually dries out the meat. What we in fact are experiencing is the saliva from our own mouths triggered in expectation of that juicy piece of meat hitting our tongues!
Our brain has been wired by the forces of natural selection to believe and trust its own impressions, often even in spite of information to the contrary. Biases feel like facts, expectations are indistinguishable from sensations. For better and for worse, we are wired to experience what we expect, and then believe it without question. The philosopher Donald Davidson wrote, “Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing about which to be subjective.”
In the simpler, yet more dangerous, black and white world of our evolutionary ancestors, the strategy of “trust your senses” worked good enough to get us through. The shadow side is that what we sense, and often act upon, far too easily fall prey to illusions set in play, and often outside of our conscious awareness, by our very own hopes, fears, wants, and expectations. (Watch subliminal advertisement demonstration by mentalist and magician Derren Brown below!)
…if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,–
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
Our bodies delight in movement. Our movement is expressive. How we move communicates intention, state of mind, and our perceived station in the pecking order of our lives. We can be graceful, poised, fluid, slouching, crouching, steady. We convey submission, respect, fear, dominance. Watch a lion stalk an open savanna. He owns his space. Imagine yourself striding as fearlessly as that lion. You, too, will be struck by the sensation of owning the space around you.
Our brain and body are in constant communication. Every muscle, joint, and organ send signals to the brain via the peripheral nerves or through the bloodstream. Nearly all of the neural activity is funneled through the cerebellum (from the Latin for “little brain”). Of the 100 billion neurons in the human brain, half are packed into that “little brain” inside the brain. Our cerebellum helps set timing, equilibrium, posture, and coordinates all our skilled motor movements from threading a needle, to firing a jump shot, or dancing a tango.
Not only does the cerebellum coordinate movement, but also thought itself. It’s not just that movement helps us think. Movement and thought are intricately entwined. Neuroscientists have found movement to be crucial to memory, emotion, language, attention, and learning. The same motor cortex circuits that light up when we are in motion light up when we set to solving a problem.(1) How many times has a solution to some problem come to you while taking a walk or brushing your teeth? Our body and brain work together in an ensemble of continuous interaction. In fact, only organisms that move from place to place require brains. Movement and the brain are fundamental to each other’s existence.(2)
Pay attention to how you move. If you walk afraid, you will feel and think afraid. If you rush, you increase your heart rate, pump blood to your extremities, and literally trigger danger signals to your brain even when there is no danger present.(3) On the other hand, if you calmly stroll your neighborhood, or cheerfully throw a Frisbee you will give that “all clear” signal and thus open up the possibility that those wonderful endorphins will release and light up your brain’s pleasure centers. Even in simply watching others joyfully dance, your own brain-body ensemble will light up and respond as if you, too, were dancing right along with them. (4)
If at any moment you want to change your state of mind, get up and like that lion, or that dancer, move.
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1) The steps we employ in decision making – sequencing, adding, testing consequences, directing – are all grounded in our motor functions.
2) (Ratey, John J. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. New York: First Vintage Books, 2002. “A tiny marine creature known as the sea squirt swims about like a tadpole in the early part of its live. It has a brain and a nerve cord to control its movements. When it matures, it attaches itself permanently to a rock. From that moment on the brain and the nerve cord are gradually absorbed and digested.” In essence, its body consumes its own brain for it’s no longer needed. (Ratey, p. 156)
3) Inhibiting the “rush response” is one of the first practical steps you can take if you suffer from anxiety. Rushing engages the sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight/flight emotional setting.
4) See Mirror Neurons if you want to follow up more on this.
How do most people die when lost in the wilds? They die of shame. (1) These are the thoughts spoken by Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) in the movie The Edge. He and Robert Green (Alec Baldwin) are lost in the Alaskan wilderness – on their tracks, a man-eating bear. (For scene from the movie, see video below.)
Charles: Yeah, see, they die of shame. “What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?” And so they sit there and they…die…because they didn’t do the one thing that would save their lives.
Robert: And what is that, Charles?
Charles: Thinking.
Silvan Tomkins writes, “… shame strikes deepest into the heart of man…. shame is felt as inner torment, a sickness of the soul…the humiliated one feels himself naked, defeated, alienated, lacking in dignity and worth.”(2) Shame interferes with our capacity to think. Shame keeps us from acting decisively on our own behalf.
Shame is embedded in what can seem an uncontrollable physiological response, possibly akin to gestures of submission we see throughout the animal world. Lowered gaze. Cowering. Playing dead. Hiding. Making one’s body smaller and less threatening. (3) For human’s, shaming is arguably one of the oldest forms of social control.
Humans evolved in a mosaic of hostile environments. Group living was crucial to our survival. Greater numbers brought safety, but also a need for greater cooperation and social organization. We hunted in groups. We collected food in groups. Social cohesion radically changed humans from scavengers and opportunistic hunters into super-predators that could hunt almost any animal on earth.
Shaming was one way of ensuring cooperation. It could protect scarce resources from cheaters and non-cooperators by making them pay dearly through evoking feeling alone. (4) To be shamed, one has to be able to feel shame. This feeling is rooted deeply in our neurophysiology as well as in our own evolutionary history.
When shamed we are struck by an urge to withdraw toward life’s margins. We go into hiding. Today, we’re less likely to be shunned to the outskirts of a village or tribe. Instead, we hide into ourselves. We don’t speak. We don’t show up. We hide our faces inside masks and disguises.
Often, we are ashamed of shame itself. We deny carrying such a feeling. Shame? Me? Still, denial or not, it chases us into dozens of daily little deaths. We fail to go to the doctor – our symptoms shame us. We fail to go to the gym – our bodies shame us. We fail to raise our hand and ask that question – our lack of knowing that one thing shames us. We avoid that crucial discussion with partner or spouse. We fail to take that next step. We give in; stop trying. Shame stops thought. It diverts action. It absorbs us into an unsettling vortex. When shamed we don’t ask, “what do I need to do now?” or “what does this situation require of me?”, but instead, “where do I hide?”
Shame is an emotion always in hiding from itself.
We all get lost in the wilds of our own lives — however small or large those wilds be. Refuse to slink off because of some little whisper of shame. Face the bear that stalks you. Step up. Step out. Think. Then, go get it.
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1) Survival expert John Wiseman wrote, “When facing a disaster it is easy to let yourself go, to collapse and be consumed in self-pity,” he writes. “But it is no use giving up or burying your head in the sand and hoping that this is a bad dream that will soon pass.”
2) Nathanson, D. ed. The Many Faces of Shame. New York: The Guildford Press, 1987.
3) When a male lion is defeated by an intruding male lion, he is forced out of the territory. In essence, he must “leave his pride.”
4) Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & C., Inc, 1997. (p. 404)
How many times do we lament, “I need balance in my life”? Balance so we can get to the gym, or practice yoga. Balance to quiet the naggings of work, play, love, obligation — that yearned for state of equilibrium where our footing seems secure.
Balance is static. Predictable. Sustained. Like weights on a scale. But, weights are dead weight. Inert. Unless an outside force pushes, they will remain in that balance, indefinitely. To weights on a scale, life doesn’t happen.
Life is not inert. Life is a flux of continuous motion. In life, there is no balance, only balancing.
“The dog needs her walk. The deadline is due. I haven’t been to the gym. When’s my daughter’s soccer game? Sex. What’s that?” If these forces aren’t bad enough, in our brain there is the firing of several billion neurons with their several trillion synapses. At any given moment, several hundred thousand brain circuits are bound to be lit up. Forget the boss, or the sudden deadline — it only takes one of those circuits to trigger a thought, a fear, or a desire that can, in itself, knock us off center. The tightrope sways. The threat of falling is dizzying. Only then do we become conscious of our footing.
Balance is a snapshot in time. A split second where by chance, or by effort, we hit that moment where nothing moves. Imagine a busy urban street. Pedestrians, cars, delivery trucks, sidewalk preachers, honking horns, an ambulance racing through traffic. Snap a photograph. We freeze the frame. Voila. Balance! Look away from the frame, the scene has shifted. Balance, like that moment, slips from our grasp. If we are fortunate to find it again, to take another snapshot, inevitably balance will have a different composition.
Our struggle for balance is cousin to a struggle for order. Unwavering. Predictable. Time is harmonized. Energy is held in reserve. Chores done. Deadlines met. Exercise accomplished. We set schedules, make lists, buy closet organizers, tap elaborate technological gadgets. Still, the tightrope sways underfoot.
Nathanael West wrote, “Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature…the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction.” (2)
The word “balance” is a noun – a state of being, an object that is and will always be. “Balancing” is a present participle — an active present verb tense, current in time, stepping mindfully, and forever seeking itself.
“Balancing” anticipates that inevitably the wind blows, fear grips, obligation calls, people demand, muscles twitch, and desire tweaks. The best we can do is stay conscious of our footing. Continue to separate our keys from our change. I may not find balance, but I can always keep balancing. Karl Wallenda, of the famous Flying Wallenda’s, once said, “Being on a tightrope is living, everything else is waiting.”
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(1) The photo “Balancing” is by mexxik whose work can be found at photoshoptalent.
