Category Archives: science

Glen Beck and Neurophysiology

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Glenn Beck is one of the arch villains for we American liberals, a daily font of conservative blather of the darkest vein. But two days ago on his tv show he tearfully acknowledged that he has been battling for years a serious neurological illness that will shut him down in only a few years.

I guess in the deepest recesses of the fatally ill “literallew” there was a want to go “tee-hee” and I fear there will be a lot of that brutal, heartless immaturity from other of my liberal brothers and cisterns….I mean sisters. But I’m deeply sorry for this brother of ours….for we are all brothers and sisters regardless of our different perspectives on life—we are all made from the same “stuff,” we are all the “quintessence of dust” as Shakespeare understood so well.

However, I do think that the vitriolic blather of Glen Beck and others does have a neurological sub-strata. But, alas and alack, I also feel strongly that this “enlightened” perspective you are now reading has a “neurological sub-strata” and coming to understand this years ago has helped me to take myself less seriously than I have done for most of my life. Modern neurological science has taught us so much about ourselves that if we would humble ourselves and pay attention we eventually find ourselves overwhelmed with the simple but profound mystery of life, including the mystery of our very being.

In the past three years plus some of your have witnessed my “tippy-toeing” into this mystery as my awareness of it began to blossom. Awareness of this mystery…cognitively and emotionally…always evokes a feeling of finitude and frailty and at times is overwhelming. It is an humbling experience. It always brings to my mind the image that Shakespeare offered with King Lear, out on the heath of the kingdom he had forfeited, “pelted by a pitiless storm,” bereft of all the accouterments of his power, “naked as a jay-bird”, noting of an animal nearby, “we are all but poor, bare forked creatures as thou art.”

This “nakedness” that Shakespeare so eloquently grasped in his plays is what Glenn Beck is now feeling. It is what I am now feeling. And according to the teachings of Jesus…and countless other spiritual teachers over the eons…this nakedness is something we can experience any time in our life and can therein find redemption. This nakedness is “death” and out of it can come “life.” This nakedness is death of the ego, a relaxing of its tenacious grip on our consciousness allowing us to see that our life and the whole of life is much more than we can comprehend, an incomprehensible mystery before which we can only “glory, bow, and tremble.” (Poet, Edgar Simmons)

 

Time and Space Don’t Make Sense!

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I finally found someone who could make sense out of time and space for me. It is Brian Greene in his wonderful PBS series from a few years back, “Fabric of the Universe” which I am able to stream on Amazon.com. Now I should explain that the “sense” he makes is almost “non”-sense as time and space is something that is elusive to the finite mind and that is the only kind of mind that any of us have! But, if one has intuitive capability, Greene’s delightful four-part series can provide a fleeting grasp of a very complex phenomena.

Now, you have noticed that I speak often of “time and space” or the “time and space continuum.” I must issue a caveat–Beware of those who appear to be focused excessively on “time and space” for he is betraying an intrinsic alienation as “time and space” are to be lived in, not to be discussed or thought about. Asking someone to reflect on time and space is like asking a fish to see water.

But, such is life! Some of us have to do it! And I kind of like to toy with those who can’t, displaying a childish delight in creating mischief or being a royal pain in the butt! I think I identify with a character in an old Arthur Koestler novel who described his life story as one who has not been invited to the party so he climbs up in a tree outside the entrance to the party and casts stones at those who had been invited!

 

Neuroscience and God…Again!

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Adam Gopnik, in the current edition of The New Yorker magazine, offers a review of a spate of recent books on neuroscience many of which appear to be having second thoughts on the notion of “matter over mind”, i.e. the idea that neurochemistry is the source of all thought and that any ideas such as a “god” might need some attention after all.

I am glad to see the discussion of the subject thought my strong impression is that “science” still holds sway as being the prevailing myth of the day. Of course, given my stubborn and unenlightened habitual way of thinking, I still childishly hold onto the notion of God. I can’t help it! “My neurochemistry makes me do it!” which is some version of “the devil made me do it” as I could never in a million years just declare that I choose to.

But facetiousness aside, I am certain that we are here and that we have carved out a “reality” fictitious thought it might be. And, sociologically and anthropologically, it is fictitious. Just ask Peter Berger. But we are here! It is easy for some people to get consumed with their explanation of how we got here and get so carried away with their pet theories that they actually have ill-will at those who feel differently. When I meet someone like this, I admit I toss them into the “ideologue” category and try to give them a wide berth, regardless of how noble and well-reasoned their argument is.

And, given the fact that we are here….or the “fantasy” that we are here if you want to get really far out…I feel it is very important what we do with our brief time “strutting and fretting” on this beautiful stage. Personally, I deem it important to speculate about questions such as the above but it is also important to live my life responsibly and meaningfully in my social context. And, how I go about this does have an impact on the world though, admittedly in my case, the extent is infinitesimal and what it is I will never really know.

For example, this verbal “stuff” that I’m going to toss out into the void in a moment with the punch of a button is important. The importance might be that I feel it was important. It might be that someone will appreciate it. It might be that second later I will read over it and suddenly in horror, tell myself, “Lewis, get a life!” and quit wasting my time. It might be that suddenly the whole world will happen to check in to “Literarylew” and as a result the Millenium will come tomorrow and suddenly I’ll be rich and famous, no longer merely a small clod of cholesterol in the mainstream of life! My point is that life is made up of little insignificant events and gestures and we have no idea what their result will be. Memories of my life are replete with nameless individuals whose small and insignificant gestures has made my life much more rewarding.

But it is important that each day we show up and report for duty. Or, given the approach of fall and the baseball playoffs, let me put it this way, “It is important that we step to the plate each day, bat in hand, look for a good pitch to hit, and then hammer it into the outfield hole. Oh, heck, let me get grandiose and conjecture, “It’s out of here. A homerun…”

Who knows? You never know.

Steven Pinker and Human Opportunity in Science

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Steven Pinker is a psychologist and linguist who I feel is one of the best thinkers present in American culture today. In a recent edition of The New Republic, he argues that science has given us an opportunity to totally change the world for the better and that in spite of how it often appears, great strides are being taken toward that end.

But, in this article (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities), he commits the sin of irreligion, that being the sin of approaching reality with a perspective other than that of “literarylew.”! He argues that science is creating opportunities for us, opportunities that are often gravely hampered by childish, self-serving obscurantism often voiced most vehemently by the religious. He argues that this “dishonesty” is often present even in science itself when scientists are unwilling to be self-critical about their own pet theories. Here is one paragraph in which he makes this point:

The second ideal is that the acquisition of knowledge is hard. The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings, and even if it did, our minds are prone to illusions, fallacies, and super- stitions. Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, the invigorating glow of subjective certainty—are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge. To understand the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity. Any movement that calls itself “scientific” but fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs (most obviously when it murders or imprisons the people who disagree with it) is not a scientific movement.

The acquisition of knowledge is “hard.” I would attribute this to the phenomena of resistance, that tendency to not want to see things other than we see them already. And he clearly sees the relevance of this to science, the tendency for scientists to succumb to “subjective certainty” and fail to look critically at their own perspective.

And though he does not spell this out as pointedly as he could, the same could be said of religion and faith. Yes, spirituality also usually falls victim to this human need for “subjective certainty” and we end up believing only what we want to believe, not daring to consider what is obvious to everyone else—our faith is only a form of self-indulgence. And when faith devolves into that narcissistic morass, it fails to offer a redemptive influence in the culture. One writer, George Marsden, described this as the “cultural captivity” of religion. And, if one reads the gospels critically, one can see that Jesus saw this clearly about the religion of the day, calling them “hypocrites” which actually means “actors.” Those whose faith is wholly in the grip of contemporary culture can only be “actors”, having a “form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” Thus I close again with the pithy observation of Shakespeare on this note, “When love (or religion) begins to sicken and decay/It useth an enforced ceremony/There are no tricks in plain and simple faith/But hollow men, like horses hot at hand/Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

The “Packaging” of Women and Sex

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Loving words, and loving to play with them, I’ve always been taken by the turn-of-phrase, “I often turn my objects into women” as opposed to the lamentation of “turning women into objects.” But my focus today is on the objectification of women, an offense of which I am guilty as charged…I admit. For, I was raised in a culture where women were a mere commodity and this is still the case today, though there is much greater awareness of the problem. Fortunately, though still “cursed” with the “male gaze” that objectifies women, I have another dimension in my heart where I can see that women have value other than in gratifying my sexual urges.

Sex, like the rest of life, will never be “done” perfectly. Our sexuality always has a flavor that is determined by the time and place of our birth and upraising and it often takes decades to slough-off the unnecessary and unwholesome dimensions of “sex.” We must always remember that a primary function of sex is “making babies” and to carry out this primary need of the species, the human imagination is left to its own devices, including some that are immature and even “nasty” or brutal.

Sex, like everything else, comes to us as a packaged product. (Yes, even religion and spirituality does!) It takes a while to determine what parts of the package we wish to keep and maintain. And, we must remember, most people on this earth will never have the luxury of distinguishing between the “packaging” of any cultural contrivance and the “thing-in-itself.” I’m fortunate to be living in a culture, in an era where distinctions can be made…if one dares.

I’m in love with Maureen Down, a columnist for the New York Times. Merely look at her picture and you will see why! But it is more than her physical beauty that I enjoy. She is acid-tongued, brilliant, erudite, and adept at cutting to the core on issues in our culture. In today’s NYT, she addresses the aforementioned “packaging” of women through the ages.

Here is the link to Dowd’s column: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/opinion/sunday/dowd-the-tortured-mechanics-of-eroticism.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

And I close with my favorite line from Woody Allen, “Of course sex is dirty…if you do it right!”

 

Neuroscience Trying to be God!

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Neuroscientist, Kathleen Taylor, argues that religious fundamentalism is an illness for which there will eventually be a cure as it can be explained neurologically. Well, that is fine with me because “they” are “them” and I love it anytime I can “them” anyone! But, alas and alack, I happen to know that Taylor and her ilk also argue that spirituality itself can be explained in terms of neurology and the mythical “god spot” in the brain and therefore she has me in her sights also. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/kathleen-taylor-religious-fundamentalism-mental-illness_n_3365896.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular)

However, I thoroughly appreciate the neurological research and find that it actually deepens my faith. Yes, I do feel that my spiritual imagery and even the impulse itself has a neurological component. Everything that I “know” and “feel” has a neurological component and even these very words that I write, even the motivation to write them, even this “meta-cognition” being employed has a neurological dimension. This knowledge keeps me from retreating to the perspective of my youth when I felt that objectivity was possible and leaves me with the simple mystery of life and of my own human experience. And it leaves me with the conviction, foolish perhaps, that what I feel and think are important are worth “tossing out there.” Now what happens when they are “tossed out there” is beyond me and is not even my business. As T.S. Eliot said, “We offer our deeds to oblivion” in that we do not know what their outcome will be.

The dilemma for neuroscience research is that it often fails to overlook the obvious—beneath the realm of neurochemistry and “science” lays absolutely nothing. I like to use the philosopher’s term “nothingness” or a primordial void that lies at the root of our existence. I like to call it “Nothingness” or even better, “No-thingness.” And when anyone deigns to venture into that domain of human experience, he/she is pretty close to entering the realm of the “spiritual” for there is where we meet “Otherness” to which some of us assign the term “God,” or “Source” or “Ground of Being” or “I am that I am”, the latter also translated as “the Being One.” But, when we get there…if ever…the only thing we get for the “effort” is the simple knowledge of our being which I like to term “Being.” We have “am-ness” and that is it. And Eliot termed this experience “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.” And, it has been my experience that awareness of this “simplicity” grants me a tad more humility than I was born with, allowing me to seek for inclusiveness with others, including those that disagree with me. “Where is our common interest?” I like to ask and it is always there in some finite respect and Ultimately there in that we are all simple Be-ings, “strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage” and prone to taking ourselves too seriously.

This nebulous approach to spirituality is strangely akin to quantum physics. And, in the realm of scientific research, there are individuals who do seek to find common ground between science, religion, and other approaches to life. For, they realize that “science”, like religion, is merely one approach to the incredible Mystery of life that we are all caught up in from which we cannot escape. We can attempt to “explain it” and therefore have the smug belief that it “makes sense” but history teaches us that the “absolute truth” of any particular era….the “god”…always ends up in the dustbin. Science, religion, literature are only a means to an end and not an end in themselves. Or as the Buddhists like to say, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

 

The Mystery of Godliness

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Too late loved I thee, O Thou beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee, deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou were with me but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst and shoutedst, and burstedst my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scattered my blindness. Though breathedst odors, and I drew I n breath and pant for Thee. I tasted, and hunger hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me and I burned for Thy peace. When I shall with my whole soul cleave to Thee, I shall nowhere have sorrow or labor, and my life shall live as wholly full of Thee.

This beautiful prayer of St. Augustine is merely the long version of “my soul followeth hard after thee, O Lord” from the Psalmist.   I’ve always had this longing in my heart and, though it was definitely a learned emphasis…my role in my family and community was to be a “man of the cloth”…I think it also revealed a sensitivity in my soul that has not dissipated after six decades. Yes, there are many ways of looking at it, including neurology and certainly neurosis! Perhaps there is that “god spot” in some of our brains that was merely over heated with St. Augustine and with the rest of us who “pine” after the Ultimate. I can’t help but speculate about whether or not we’d ever have heard of St. Augustine if he’d have been prozac’d!

As has been said, “it takes call kinds” and we “piners’ are therefore part of the picture that is being painted. St. Augustine and his ilk were highly attuned to the mystery that lies at the heart of life. This mystery can be overwhelming and so God has kindly offered fig leaves to hide those intense feelings for most people.

Here is wisdom from Ranier Rilke re this mystery, shared with us this morning on the blog by Blue Eyed Ennis on WP:

And yet, Though We Strain
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

And yet though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

“Discerning Spirit” Meets “Mindfulness”

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For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  (Hebrews ch. 12)

I have always loved this verse. In my youth it was one of my favorite verses and I frequently used it as a text for my sermons as I was intoxicated with the ego-ridden notion of wielding the “word of God.” And even then I grasped the significance of the notion of “discerning” the “thoughts and intents of the heart.” I still believe in the Judeo-Christian notion of the “Word” of God having been spoken, that the whole of creation is His “Word” reverberating throughout this void that we live in. Of course, at this point in my life, I am wont to ask, “Now, just what does that mean? which leads me into this complicated, ambiguity-filled world of “literarylew.” (I’ve tried medication but it just won’t go away!)

Yes, I do believe that I speak “the Word” today but not in any special sense, any more than do you, or even those people who believe differently than myself. And, even more so, “the Word” technically speaks “me” just as it does “you” as it is a basic, guiding energy which lies at the heart of life. For, science and mythology tells us that the whole of this universe is merely energy…including ourselves…even though I still prefer to refer to that “energy” as a “Person.”

But back to that “discerning business.” This “Word” that I believe in is indeed “personal” and therefore is essentially dynamic; it is alive. When we come into the presence of life that is static, I argue that we are face to face with death. This is very much related to the scriptural observation that “the letter of the law killeth but the spirit maketh alive.” Those who live only in the “letter of the law” (those who are literalists, for example) live in a static world and according to the Bible, they are in an important sense, “dead.” And when this Word is allowed to live within us, to be dynamic, it does offer us a “discerning spirit” which often comes through the feedback from other people. This “discerning spirit” is closely akin to the Buddhist notion of “mindfulness.”

I have friends and a wife who frequently facilitate this “discernment” process in my heart; they give me feedback. And the blog-o-sphere also provides valuable feedback re my “literarylew” ramblings which, as a body, are very reflective of what is going on in my heart. Two of my readers are very well blessed with this gift of “discernment” though both of them would be given pause for me to assign to them this “gift” as they are hardly Christian. But the Spirit that I believe in, that spoke this world into existence and continues to allow it to cohere, supersedes all religious creeds and belief systems, including those who avow that they have none. These two individuals often cut directly to the “heart” regarding my musings and their blogs themselves approach the heart issues on basic life issues that we all face. These two people have the gift of “assessing” or “judging” (in a good sense) and providing critique of what is being said and of what is going on in their world. This is a “discerning spirit” which is often missing in our world.

 

Multi-lingualism Shaping Worldview

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Time magazine recently had an article by Jeffrey Kluger which explained why bi-lingualism has a profound impact on the development of the brain. (See http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/bilingualism/) Kluger noted that the child is a “crude linguist from the moment of birth—and perhaps even in the womb—as he/she can begin to recognize sound patterns and to make sense out of them producing what we first hear as ‘babble.’” This “babble” is gradually refined into a language depending on what parts of the “babble” are reinforced by the parents and others in his social world. Kluger used the example of “dog-chien” for children born into one bi-lingual family, as a child in that family will discover that two different terms from what will come to be learned as two different languages are available to refer to the same object. The child can learn to “toggle” between the two different words to describe the same object and in so doing learn nimbleness in reference to language. And this “nimbleness” will be learned at a time when “neurological plasticity” is present, meaning that it is a skill that can be learned and can stay with the child for his/her lifetime. This is significant because the child can learn to apply this “nimbleness” to the whole of his/her world and see things in less rigid ways.

Kluger also cites research by Sean Lynch that multilingual kids may exhibit social empathy sooner than children who have been exposed to only one language. Lynch noted, “The theory of mind—understanding that what’s in your head is not the same as what’s in other people’s heads–does not emerge in children until they are about three years old. Prior to that, they assume that if, say, they know a secret you probably do too. There is a kind of primal narcissism in this—a belief that their worldview is the universal one.” Lynch argues that being exposed to more than one language is very helpful in facilitating a child’s ability to forego that initial self-centeredness and learn that there are other ways of looking at the world.

I found his observation about “primal narcissism” describing the belief that your world view is the universal world view very interesting in light of our own culture. For example, even the stalemate between liberals and conservatives reflects this “primal narcissism” when elements of both belief-systems fail to understand that the other side can have a viewpoint which is worthy of respect.

I’d like to conclude with my own story of discovering a second language and how novel the experience was. When I was only six or seven years of age “French” came to the public schools in “Smallville”, Arkansas in the early ‘60’s. I found it so interesting to learn that somewhere else in the world a dog was called a “chien” or a boy a “garcon” that a father was “pere” or that an apple was a “pom.” This created in my heart even then a rudimentary notion of “difference” which continues to be a compelling interest of mine five decades later. And then one day I learned a particular expression which really nailed the phenomena down for me when I learned that when the French refer to having “goose-bumps”, they say, “I have the skin of a chicken. (avoir la chaire de poule) My little mind was at first puzzled, asking, “Well, why don’t they just use the term “goose-bumps”? “Difference” then sunk in on in some rudimentary fashion, though it would be decades before the true significance of “difference” overcome the rigid conservatism of my upbringing.

In my present employment as an occasional substitute teacher with younger elementary children, I am pleased to note that even in the conservative region of Northwest Arkansas the schools give daily attention to the prevalence of Hispanic and Marshallese children, frequently using terms and even little ditties from each of these languages. This must have a positive impact on the development of these little minds. One caveat should be noted, however. This multi-lingualism helps but it alone will not overcome other pressures in local culture, or in any culture, to maintain that “primal narcissism”.