Oh Brain, From Whence Came Thee?

The human brain….

From whence came this magnificent fleshy processor and surveyor of itself, the earth, seas, skies, and outer space? What follows is the textbook origin narrative (in my own brusque form): First came a big bang where the universe expanded rapidly from a small but massive central point. Afterward, through various physical laws, still with us today, the sun and its planets in their orbits formed. As the Earth formed, various complex chemical reactions occurred (lightening might have played a part) with simple single-celled life resulting. Then, over millions of years, a formative force called natural selection took hold and shaped all the various forms of life currently upon the earth – including our own human form and its brain. That's it in a nutshell.

What is this “natural selection” that has accomplished so much – that has accomplished us? It is to a large degree an arbitrary process. With blind consistency it rewards or punishes certain biological traits based on how they function within a specific environment. Our human brain, according to its own calculations, has been formed by this quasi-arbitrary process over a slew of years: Our distant biological ancestors had small, less-developed brains. Our relatively recent -- more ape-like -- ancestors had larger, more complex brains, but even these were not as complex and developed as our current cranial endowment courtesy of natural selection.

So given this long chain of quasi-arbitrary biological events how should we view the reach and accuracy of our own thought processes? What of these biochemical emanations from the QUASAB (Quasi-arbitrary Super-ape Brain) we call thoughts?

The fact that the embodied quasab (pronounced like “quasar” but for the “b” sound at the end) has engineered such feats as landing spacecraft on comets and other planets is amazing given the putative blindness of natural selection. It is as though the seed of some kind of demigodhood was placed in our planet’s biological spawn. Yet this improbable quasab – despite its formidable achievements – would, by virtue of its accidental origins, be prone to a certain epistemological lopsidedness and any number of blind spots that could be augmented as well as mitigated by the use of technological enhancements. The purely agnostic reading of things, which has given us the incredible story of the quasab developing to the point where humans now speak confidently of their own biological origins (through analysis of the fossil record, comparative biology, DNA analysis, etc.) still leaves a great deal of room for respecting all that has not been perceived, known, and discovered by the empiricism of the quasab. After all, there is contradiction in humans speaking confidently of the origins of their quasab since the orderings, proofs, and reasons that form the basis of the origin story are only quasabic orderings, proofs, and reasons.

Given their own ideas of what the human brain is, devoted adherents to the Cult of ChuB (see definition in my previous post) show a surprising lack of sophistication when it comes to the simple skepticism they apply toward all that does not seem reasonable to the contemporary thought patterns of an organ in which they place an irrational degree of faith. Why so many of our learned minds never reach the second degree of skepticism -- where the arbitrary reach of contemporary doubt is itself placed in doubt and seen as an artificial limitation to the exploration of human existence -- is a sad mystery. When skepticism turns on itself, the mind and soul are free to open to the often wild and colorful range of possibility waiting on the other side of that vital threshold.

Cult of CHuB

Practitioners within the various branches of scientific endeavor have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to keep their assertions based on the empirical, tightly-woven argument, and rightly so – that’s the tedious and often fruitful task they have set themselves to. Orbiting the gravity of such arguments is a segment of society, particularly well-represented by the well-educated, that seeks to find whatever salvation is available within the realm of truth established by empirical fact separate from speculation. There is a nobility in their sincere efforts to circle hard evidence in their reasoning, but the bare facts are often confounded with the latest interpretation of facts and, despite their often formidable sophistication, they are not immune to the human propensity to preach – and preach they do. It can be heard in the authoritative tones of a PBS documentary, it is nested in the dialogues of TV dramas and motion pictures, and permeates much of the reporting done by our large news outlets. It can be recognized by its “as everyone in their right mind knows” quality.

This preaching would be better received if it weren’t for a spirit within us that instinctively knows to be more adventurous than the intellectual weight of our time and place. Yet the continuous suggestion that such adventurousness is ill founded – that there is but one truly sane way to see things – (as mentioned earlier) can trouble the soul.

Short of giving into the suggestion, is there a balm to relieve this chafing?

Humor, though it usually involves a degree of hyperbole and overgeneralization, is one thing that can help. In giving a name to this form of faith that presents itself as an alternative to faith, I choose to borrow in small measure from that nothing-is-sacred mind-set that many of its adherents should appreciate: It is the Cult of the Contemporary Human Brain or, for greater ease in reading and speech, the Cult of CHuB. For most in the Cult of CHuB, the mind is what the brain does and nothing more. Their tendency is to characterize themselves as being above the flightiness of faith yet their abiding faith is placed in what they believe can be measured and understood by the contemporary human brain. Their hard evidence and incontrovertible logic, by their own reasoning, can be no more than the hard evidence and incontrovertible logic of what they themselves have defined as a quasi-arbitrary biological formation.

Now, the next time that familiar tone of “as everyone knows” raises its head in print or over the airwaves – when you feel that chafing that comes from what are often tenets of faith being presented as accepted fact among clear-headed people– just say “Cult of CHuB” to yourself for a little relief and context.

Faith and Chafing

Floating in more questions than we can answer, we are inescapably creatures of faith and look to one another in deciding what to believe. Individuals seek clarity in their communications and crave the clearer meaning that the exchange of thought can give to a life. Particularly in the give and take of sincere, heartfelt messages the soul can glean a solace unlike any other and at times the turn of a phrase can resonate within as if conveyed by the tongue of angels. In our yearning for clarity and consensus, even when our exchanges are far less than heavenly, preaching comes naturally to the species and, deep down, we are keen to receive the sermon that saves us from chaos.

(Being human, I am not exempt from such inclinations. Writing is my fight for light and the thought of the battle’s chronicle resonating with another soul provides a unique satisfaction and a motive to share.)

Yet there is something distinctly discordant about a sermon masquerading as something other than the preaching of faith that it is. The false dichotomy of believer and non-believer is a detrimental construct that haunts the modern mind to this day. In truth, all are believers and exercisers of faith and, though certainly the foci of our various faiths differ, to posture in writing or in speech as if one has somehow escaped the ultimate necessity of faith disrupts the sense of authenticity that that makes communication meaningful. Being continuously exposed to such disingenuous sermons can result in a chafing that, I am confident, has been experienced by more than myself.

Introduction

Thank you, dear reader, for commencing the sequence of words I have prepared for your consideration within these pages. As a person who uses the English language to communicate thoughts in writing, I feel inclined to start with a few sentences containing words about words: The sense of our concatenated words and sentences can, no doubt -- when used in earnest pursuit of truth -- build toward a fuller comprehension of things. But the method is limited. We snake down pages to weave a pattern in the mind – to map portions of our infinitely-facetted existence. But no matter how subtle, intertwined, or extensive, our serpentine prose cannot escape its bounded nature.

Wind and wind as we may, and even with the interpolation of the powerful and fine-tuned languages of mathematics, unfathomed mystery still lies at the edges of the broadest maps and most complex patterns of the mind. With our words and our senses we measure with artificial beginnings and endings. Only in the eternity expanding out beyond the limits of our mortal musings and calculations is there the possibility of wholeness and true comprehension. Paradoxically, one of the highest callings of language is to define its own limitations and then point beyond itself (as only the poetic word can) to the frequencies of hope that ring in from the regions beyond the maps of our cumulative science and philosophy.

In many ways ours is an age of beguilement. Many of the brightest minds are wholly enamored with mastering and expanding the mental complexities we have built up and strung out to try to gather reality into the human brain. Every age is proud of its intellectual and scientific accomplishments but each succeeding age believes it sees the narrowness of its predecessors’ vision. This cycle will continue despite the headiness of our rapid advances and the perpetual temptation to preach contemporary knowledge as being, for all practical intents and purposes, comprehensive.

As I begin adding a string of words to the immense linguistic web already spread by others, I hope the cumulative effect will be in tune with those most generous frequencies of thought that resist subjection to the confines of our time’s expert-approved formulations and theories and (heaven help us) the grand designs of those in high places who devotedly adhere to such formulations and theories.