Choosing carefully how you'll be a fool

“We're all fools...all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

I gave a guest lecture last week for a class at Northwestern called "Music and the Mind." I presented some recent results suggesting that music may influence working memory, and I discussed these new data with the students.

More importantly to me, I also spent some time talking with the kids about the dangers of believing in the currently accepted scientific "truths." They had just read an article in which the author had stated that the effects of music on cognition were only interesting if they were specific to music and not generalized effects of sensory stimulation. The rest of the paper was based on this assumption, but I wanted the students to question the assumption. Why would it not be interesting if sensory stimulation generally helped improve cognition? Isn't music a convenient form of sensory stimulation to use in that case? They understood and a few even became involved in helping me question my own assumptions.

After the class I began thinking that if we're lucky to live long enough, we're all bound to look like fools for something we've said or done (probably both). The essential question is, how do you want to be a fool? Do you want to be a fool for being too conservative and never considering new ideas? Do you want to be a fool for being too liberal and never questioning new ideas? Or do you want to be a fool for trying to take a middle path, then becoming emotionally caught up in one idea or another and espousing it as if it's a rational, rather than an emotional or subconscious, choice?

It seemed to me that these three are the basic options, and I didn't want to be a fool in any of those ways.

BUT then I was able to remember the ways I want to be a fool.
1) I want to be a fool for allowing my emotion and my subconscious to present intuitive ideas to my conscious mind, and to follow these ideas wherever they lead with rigor and openness.
2) I want to be a fool for admitting that it feels to me that the universe and I are in a relationship.
3) Finally, I want to be a fool for trying to use my relationship with the universe to discover more about the way consciousness works.

So it's worth asking: how do you want to be a fool?

 

Letting your actions inform you about your nature

My boyfriend's new book came out today (Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect with Yourself and Others, New World Library). Although I helped edit the book and am intimately familiar with it, looking at the book in its final form was like seeing a newborn you've felt growing inside your partner's belly for the better part of a year.

Here's what compels me about Brooks's transformational philosophy: instead of trying to change who you are, he starts with what your actions tell him, and he uses that to inform all future decisions. As a clutter buster, he sees clients who are hoping to separate their crap from their treasures. A lot of them give themselves grief about buying things they never use (scrapbooks, crochet materials, even cars). His response is, essentially, "So you're not using that. Must not be that interesting to you after all. What do you like to do? I see your paints are well used. You must like painting. Let's make sure your paints have a place in your home."

Living with him, hearing his talks, and reading his books I've realized that there's so much pressure to try to make ourselves over but in fact we are usually just right the first time.

I have adopted his philosophy, and now I see that when I put off doing something it's because I don't really want to do it. I haven't put my photos in order for years. So what? I must not want to do that. There's plenty I don't put off: writing this blog, working on scientific papers, analyzing data, and taking care of my son. I must want to do those things.

By the Brooks Principle, my nature is NOT to be a person who enjoys putting photos in order. My nature IS to be someone who likes to write, do science, and be a mom.

Accepting where we are doesn't mean we can't stretch and change and grow, but it means we need to appreciate the messages that our actions (and inactions) are giving us. It means we can learn about ourselves, stop blaming ourselves for what we learn, and use that knowledge to continue to feed and nourish who we are.

Enjoying and Questioning the Consortium of Brains

I've spent the past few days at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting. I presented my data yesterday, and today I had the opportunity to hear talks and see poster presentations about things that interest me. But the best part of the conference has been the "chance" meetings in which I end up in conversations making connections between ideas I think I barely understand and those I'm sure I don't.

As frustrating as the world of science can be, one of the best things about it is that it's a group venture. The idealized view of a scientist as a smart person who thinks about stuff and does experiments and comes to conclusions...all alone in the lab...is a cultural hoax.

The reality is that even if a scientist physically works alone, s/he is always bouncing ideas off of other scientists, whether they're dead or alive. The community of scientists is really a community of ideas. A consortium of brains.

Today after having a bouncing-idea conversation with a new acquaintance at the conference, I found myself feeling grateful that I'm not working alone, and I never will. In a way, the output of the scientific community is like the processing of a big brain, with parts that specialize in certain areas and also communicate with other parts -- all so the giant beast in which this brain lives can go somewhere.

What is this giant beast? Where's the beast going? Good question. That's a question the scientific venture, thus far, has not been so great about answering. If I could predict the most important advance of science in the next century, I'd say it would be to understand where this venture is taking us, and why.