Descartes' Error

This piece below is something I wrote yesterday for my book project but in retrospect doesn’t seem to fit neatly. So at least I can share it here.

 

In Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes Error, he provides compelling evidence from his work as a neurologist that the rational mind we celebrate actually depends upon emotional intelligence. That the absence of sophisticated feeling and emotion can break down rationality and make wise decision making almost impossible. 

 

The evolution of the human brain begins with layering over previous ones. What is called the Triune Brain begins with what some called the Reptilian Brain (brain stem), that instinctive part in the brain that is wholly programmed for survival. When confronted with danger, it releases stress hormones, changes the heart rate and breathing to prepare the body to either attack (fight), run (flight) or hide (freeze). When the danger has passed, the hormones subside and the heart rate and breathing return to normal. 

 

Because human beings have other layers of the brain, we have the capacity to imagine danger where none exists or to remember previous dangers and feel triggered by certain reminders of them. This is exceedingly wearing on the system as the perceived, rightly or wrongly, dangers that manifest as fear, stress and anxiety release some degree of hormones, change heart rate and breathing and keep us in a fight, flight or freeze mode over longer periods of time. The fight instinct manifests as chronic anger and abuse of others, the flight manifests as escaping into addiction, be it drugs, alcohol or video games, the freeze manifests as depression. None of this is healthy for our system and not only blocks all paths to our humanitarian possibilities but is dangerous in the political world where we are incapable of rational thought, of wise-decision making, of understanding the difference between fantasy and fact. In these reduced states of brain functioning, we are vulnerable to the manipulations of despots, dictators and media pundits, all of whom profit from our ignorance and inability to think.

 

The Mammalian Brain (limbic cortex) is layered over the Reptilian one and is what sets us apart from snakes and lizards. Reptiles lay eggs and don’t need to care for their young (indeed, there are stories of male alligators eating their children), but mammals who nurse their young instinctively learn how to nurture and protect. This feeling of connection and caring and tenderness with their babies moves mammals up higher on the evolutionary scale as we humans conceive of it. We feel kinship with these animals as we cuddle with our dogs, groom our horses, swim with the dolphins. Stories abound of mammals feeling emotions towards each other—chimpanzees grooming each other, otters playing together, elephants grieving over the loss of the deceased. Alongside jostling for the alpha male slot, jealousy, aloofness (cats!) and other nuanced feelings on the emotional scale.

 

As human mammals, this limbic cortex is where our feelings live and the neural connections can be developed through positive experiences of nurturing, affection, love, connection, happiness, joy, beauty or negative experiences of abandonment, abuse, disdain, betrayal, dislike, hatred, shame, sadness, anger and more. We are all of us combinations of different doses of these positive and negative experiences and all without exception are living records of what Faulkner calls “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

 

Just at the brain stem is programmed for survival and to steer us away from danger, so is the limbic cortex designed to steer us toward the positive emotions essential to the caring of the young and the flourishing of the species. It’s where we can find the idea of community, of caring for the common good, of compassion. To get there, in the words of the old jazz song, we’ve got to “accent-uate the positive (emotions), e- lim-inate the negative (emotions) and don’t mess with Mister in-between" (the shutting down of the heart, the incapacity to feel either pleasure or pain). Since music is designed to open the heart, to strum the strings of pleasure and beauty and love and belonging, it is wholly necessary to our higher evolution. Again, another point for our humanitarian promise.

 

The third, and most recent layer in the brain, is called the neo-cortex and that’s where logic and rational thought lie. This is where the great abstractions like Democracy, Existentialism, Spirituality and such reside. It is the home of all our various “isms” and "ologies" Our capacity to understand and put into practice whole systems of thought is what makes us unique in the hierarchy of species. 

 

René Descartes, that 17^th century French scientist, mathematician and philosopher, became the self-appointed spokesperson for the neo-cortex when he declared, “I think, therefore I am.” He associated our capacity for abstract thought with the core of our identity as a species. His error, as noted by Damasio in his book, was to assume that the rational part of our brain was independent of our emotional part and our body. His Cartesian system of the disembodied mind paved the way for the separation of all that really belongs together and are essential to each other, creating our distinct subjects in schools and the divisions within the subjects (as in the way the wholistic Play, Sing and Dance in music was reduced to Play, Sing or Dance). Damasio’s critique comes from the findings of neuroscience (a field of study ironically made possible by Descartes' Cartesian ideas) as he shows how emotion is entirely present in the workings of the rational mind. Indeed, it will often take it over so that people make decisions that work against their best logical interest. (As in the way working class people in America with genuine grievances get fooled into thinking that billionaires care about them and will take care of them.)

 

In the world of education, Howard Gardner tried to repair some of the damage by suggesting that there are multiple intelligences and each are necessary to the others to fully develop our capacities. Daniel Goleman then wrote about emotional intelligences, suggesting that emotions are more than the random weather within us knocking us about, but can be cultivated more consciously as intelligences. He and others acknowledge emotion’s capricious and unpredictable nature but suggest that it is within our power to learn how to react to them when they appear and that’s where our social-emotional intelligence lies. In other words, we can’t wholly control what we feel, but we can gain some measure of control over how we re-act to those feelings and how we act from those feelings. 

 

Now many schools have times in the day for SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) lessons. Such programs hope to help students in the area of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, enhanced social-emotional development, increase sense of well-being and community building. This feels like a positive development in our understanding of what constitutes a more wholistic and effective education. 

 

And yet. America loves to make a noun of something, package it, market it, set it on the shelves for consumers to buy pre-cooked and ready-made, make a check-list for teachers to tick off the boxes and make a “Finished!” brushing their hands up and down gesture that means—“There you go! Took care of that!”

 

Meanwhile, music programs throughout the country are either in a constant threat of being cut or actually cut. And where they do exist, far too many are just making sure kids can play the notes for the football half-time show or win the competition or play everything correctly with no attention to how they actually feel about the music. Read that SEL list again and note how it describes everything that happens naturally and organically in my music class. Not only do the kids experience is all in a natural and fun-loving way, but we also name these qualities, discuss them and reflect on them so we can do it all yet more consciously. In so doing, it can help shape a lifelong commitment to humanitarian values. 

 

And so I suggest that music, that faculty that indeed integrates every layer of the brain and chamber in the heart and part of the body and all of the above together is something we would to well to pay attention to. It’s power to fulfill the full measure of our capacity to feel beauty, to feel nuanced emotion, to feel empathy and compassion with fellow humans is no pie-in-the-sky “world peace” fantasy, but a necessary tool to help build our humanitarian house of belonging. It alone cannot do so but when properly considered it can contribute significantly. That’s a start.  

Letter from God

God wrote to me recently and told me to share the message on Facebook  (apparently God’s password disappeared) and on this blog. Here’s a rough transcript.

 

Dear Doug,

 

This is just to inform you that we have changed our accommodation procedures to gain entrance in Heaven and Hell. As of today:

 

• No longer will the “true believers” who obey without question get first choice of rooms in our heavenly rooms. In fact, it’s likely they won’t get rooms at all given our new criteria for entrance in the heavenly realm. 

 

• Those who use the intelligence I gifted to them to question, to critically think, to distinguish between actual fact and fantasy get first dibs in the deluxe Heavenly suite.

 

• Those who take my Son’s teachings seriously—“Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Throw out the moneylenders,” “Turn the other cheek,” “Blessed are the merciful” and more will likewise get free admission, provided they provide proof that they actually lived these values. 

 

• I gave my human creations Free Will in expectation they would make good choices. Those who purposefully choose deceit, greed, spreading lies and misinformation, hurting and harming others and then gleefully rejoicing when they do so while collecting their next ten million dollars are first in line for the other place.

 

• When they get there, they will be gathered in the Bikram Yoga room, be forced to say Namaste to each other and sing Kumbaya holding hands, read every banned book and be tested on the knowledge (with the heat turned up 10 degrees for every wrong answer). 

 

• In their new accommodations, there will be no health care, no protections against tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes except paper towels, no laws about assault rifles so they might die again and again, no garbage pick-up so all will have to wallow in their own filth, no lawyers that can arrange exemptions or better accommodations. 

 

• Those who eventually rise to the most minimal standard of human decency will be reborn as a mosquito and have to work their way up.

 

All of the above is effective immediately.

 

Yours truly, 

 

God

 

PS I’ve cc’ed St. Peter and he has been informed that there are no exceptions, regardless of how much money you slip him.

Please Explain

For so many years, the news of the death of someone I knew came in long intervals and always brought with it a world-shattering shock. Now it seems most every day, Facebook announces yet another passing of someone I knew, some casually, some more closely. The sheer speed and number of them makes each one feel smaller and to my shame, my day often goes on with just a moment’s pause and then it’s back to business as usual. 

 

“It's that time of life,” my peer group would say when our parents began passing away and it was. Now it’s another “that time of life,” as friends and colleagues and siblings and other peers are permanently changing their address to the Other World.

Perhaps part of it is the ease of finding out from Facebook replacing the effort (which I rarely took except for school alum newsletters) of reading obituary columns. Some is the sheer number of people I’ve grown to know through my 45 years at school and 50 years of teaching workshops near, far and wide. 

I now keep a folder on my computer titled “Honoring the Departed” and there are 190 people on that list— family, friends, neighbors, school alum parents and alums, Orff teachers and more. All of whom I had a personal and memorable relationship with. 

 

Of course, this is simply the grand cycle of life and death and no one escapes it. But what I’ve been feeling lately is how good these people that I know are. Yes, flawed human beings like us all and I’ve probably bad-mouthed some of them at different times and they’ve bad-mouthed me. But as I read about the next one to fly away, I mostly remember how they kept their innate goodness alive and offered something beautiful to the world. 

 

And then I read about the next despicable act by the next despicable politician using their precious incarnation to hurt and harm others and can’t help but think, “Why are they still alive?!!” If there is a just God sending the Grim Reaper out on his rounds, why is he skipping their doors and knocking instead at the homes of these lovely people who have used their time to serve life and love?

 

Can somebody please explain?

Interesting Times

                            “May you live in interesting times.”

 

According on my online sources, this quote is said to be an English version of an ancient Chinese curse: 

 

"Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos."

 

Whether it was intended to also be a curse or a suggestion that “interesting times” have their own hidden gifts is anybody’s guess. But it is certainly relevant to our times, especially here in the United States where we seem to be on the verge of dismantling our experiment in Democracy, brought down not by invasion or revolution or natural disaster, but from the extraordinary ignorance and uncaring choice of some 80 millions voters and people who represent the American dream of unlimited wealth using their power to inflict a nightmare on the rest of us. The dogs seem oblivious but we humans are reeling in the turbulent chaos.

 

But then there’s Emerson:

 

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

 

Indeed. This is the time when we can step up to our promise that often is dormant in the workaday world, awaken it from its slumber and rise up into the larger versions of ourselves. And I see this happening all around me. Certainly in the presence of the five million people nationwide and worldwide who took to the streets last Saturday. (Please notice how even the “liberal” media failed to report those numbers. They are NOT stepping up and we should hold their feet to the fire.). People who normally stay quiet about things “political” are speaking up and in their own words. Not waiting for a savior, but trusting their own humanitarian instincts and doing the thinking and feeling and caring that helps grow our soul and connect it to the soul of the world.

 

Hard times can also make people grow smaller and meaner, double down in fear and give their power over to a despot who promises to save them. Shut down their thinking, harden their hearts, disdain caring as weakness and sell their souls to the Devils in power. As one clever sign in the march put it, “Two paths diverged in the wood and America took the Psychopath.”

 

But not all of America. How this will all end is anybody’s guess but as long as people meet the challenge by thinking deeper, caring further, acting more courageously, hope lives on. Every morning, I can feel the two voices in my head wrestling with each other— “Hope!” “No, Despair!” “We’re going to be all right.” “We’re doomed!” I have to decide how much news I can handle or where I go for the news— including to the park to hear what the birds and trees have to say. Or to the piano to see what Bach’s point of view is.

 

This all leads to the best quote of all about the times we live in, from that wise humanist Charles Dickens. Read it in the light of where we are now.

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

 

That pretty much says it all and helps me lean towards hope. Still I wonder if it would have been better to be born a dog. 

Letter to My Blog

Dear Blog,

Deep into writing my new book, I feel like I owe you an explanation. 

First off, I hate your name! Sounds like “bleh!” And after writing one for 14 years now, I confess that I really didn’t know why you're called that. Just now looked up and saw that it’s short for “Weblog,” like a private ship’s log chronicling each day made public on the Web. Makes sense, but still sounds terrible. 

 

Be that as it may, I miss you a bit, but I’m loving the continuity of working on my new book. Whether night-dreaming or daydreaming or walking in the park or seated at my computer, the next sentence appears as a gift from the Muses, moving the work along with a grander design that simply reporting what happened today. If these blogposts are a way for me to gather in a net of words the day’s happenings, to report the events sprinkled with my thoughts and feelings about them, book writing is an event in itself, shaping the day. 

 

Of course, life moves on and there’s more to my day than writing. But according to my April calendar, not much more and happily so. Yes, there’s a few more marches and a visit to the grandkids and a dinner with friends here and there. But mostly the day lies open and free before me and I find myself eager to sit down and set down the next sentence. From May through August, many adventures await— traveling, biking, teaching and more on four continents. There will be plenty to report then from this traveling music teacher, but for now, don’t be surprised if there’s some space between posts. Just to let you know.

 

Now back to Chapter 3. 

  

The Humanitarian _______________

Below is a first-draft preface to the new book I’m working on— The Humanitarian Musician. Just to give a taste and to jump-start the dream of every profession taught, practiced and lived with the preface “Humanitarian” before it. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So why not try something new? What do you think?

 

My cousin’s son had completed a 4-year MA in Business and I asked him whether any of his courses dealt with ethical issues or the responsibility of business to the community. He thought for a long time and then recalled one day when they did a little volunteer project. It was clear that the entire thrust of his training was simply about the details of making a profit. 

 

My niece was describing her grueling training in Med School as a series of abusive remarks by small-hearted interns and inhuman hours assigned by unfeeling and often downright cruel teachers. This was in a healing profession designed help young doctors develop empathy and compassion for their patients. To serve life with a millennium-old mission statement: “First do no harm.” 

 

And don’t get me started on the music teacher in the movie Whiplash. A disgrace to my profession.

 

Have we learned nothing about how to bring up, educate and help people rise to their better selves, with care for each other and attention to the common good? Apparently not. Naturally, there is little hope for more humanitarian attitudes with drug dealers, arms dealers, human traffickers, military schools and such. But might we at least expect something better in the helping professions of doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, ministry and the like? Might we suggest that all businesses, corporations, media outlets, journalists, the entertainment industry, the tech industry, scientists, pharmacists and such consider holding their own feet to the fire to see whether their work is helping or harming? At the very least, if they’re not going to take responsibility for the Common Good, can we at least put up some guard rails (or protect those that exist) that keep them from careening into innocent pedestrians on the sidewalks?

 

Imagine with me here if every profession put the word “humanitarian” before their title as a constant reminder to work in service of something larger and kinder and fairer than the mere details of their craft. The humanitarian carpenter, the humanitarian truck driver, the humanitarian street sweeper, all of which indeed are offering services that sustain and improve our quality of life. But can we go further? The humanitarian corporate CEO, the humanitarian politician, the humanitarian movie star, the humanitarian billionaire? Organize our culture around such expectations and hold each other accountable for both our successes and transgressions? Imagine at each meeting where a decision is to be made, the question is spoken out loud: “Who does this help? Who does this hurt? “ With the expectation of a universal Hippocratic (not Hypocritical) Oath: “First do no harm.”

 

That’s a big dream. But it can begin with a small dream like the one spoken aloud in these pages. To start from my own esoteric profession as a music teacher to give a model about what that might look and feel like and how it might not only bend the moral art toward justice but lift our spiritual promise to the heavens and nourish our soulful engagement with beauty and build the bridges of connection between all peoples that we so urgently need. 

Unfinished Books

I have three unfinished books on my bedside table. The bookmarks are still in them, each about halfway through. Which is my way of saying, “This really isn’t working for me anymore. But before I sign the divorce papers, let’s keep the window of possibility open.”

 

One is The Idiot by Doesteyovsky. His writing is compelling enough that I stuck with it, but the story is just so non-compelling. People in closed rooms having endless conversations, mostly about the dance of courting without ever connecting. I just found myself bored by the talk and craving an open window or an interesting event. 

 

The second is The Three Musketeers  by Alexander Dumas. Again, good writing and much more action than The Idiot while sharing the constant pursuit of the woman by the man with some rivalry between Church and State thrown into the mix. But the whole premise of the culture where somebody looks at you cross-eyed and that justifies challenging them to a duel, and yes, killing them for the transgression. Come on, folks, get a life! Enough of this macho crap!

 

Then there’s On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Sometimes I re-read these kind of iconic classics and feel that they hold up. But not this one! How much dysfunctional behavior and drinking can one take? No real character development and where there’s some, not a character you want to hang out with. No plot beyond getting one place to another and getting rip-roaring drunk. What was touted as an anthem of liberation from the square 50’s mentality comes across as just plain hedonistic indulgence. I did relate to the hitchhiking experiences having traveled cross-country some 4 different times in the early 70’s. But hell, my book about it would be so much more interesting. I never once got drunk and instead, could wax poetic about the breathtaking beauty of the American landscape, some intriguing people who picked me up and a couple of situations I found myself in and that feeling of freedom underneath the open skies and utter dependence on the kindness of strangers. 

 

Meanwhile, I’m listening to James, the re-telling of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of Jim and there’s a compelling story. The adventure of rafting on the Mississippi, the deep insight into white supremacy told from the other side, the deep shame about what my country has done and deeper shame that it’s doubling down today to keep that horror going, the compelling relationship between Huck and Jim. Here’s a book worth my time.

 

Meanwhile, anyone want to buy three used books?