by CHRIS NIEBAUER
The self enslaves us.
You probably started to read this article with the belief that it was something you decided to read and that you will decide when to quit reading or read till the end. It comes down to the idea that there is a “you” or a “self” similar to an inner CEO running the show and calling the shots. Most importantly, there is the assumption that this CEO possesses what philosophers (and now neuroscientists) call free will. The question of free will continues as a central question of what it means to be human because free will asks explicitly…Who is it that has free will?
For most ordinary people, it is assumed that “we” exist somewhere within the skull, and this self is free to make decisions. This self is the “captain” of the body, controlling our behaviors and making our life choices. The problem is that neither this inner self nor free will exists the way most think that it does. Research conclusively demonstrates that these are just stories that we humans make up. Michael Gazzaniga’s groundbreaking research eventually concludes that the self is just a fiction created by the brain. Humans make up such stories, believe in them, and rarely question their validity. However, this isn’t the bad news it may appear to be. It is good news, but it will take a while to grasp.
One of the most popular questions students asked me was the nature of my position on free will. Students would always have the strangest look when I would subsequently ask them, “Do you mean what I think of free will or an answer beyond thinking?” The greatest modern confusion regarding the human mind is to confuse thinking with consciousness, so it is important to make this distinction. Let’s first consider the thinking mind. In Western culture, human existence is defined by thinking. With Descartes’s famous statement, “I think therefore I am,” our existence became dependent on thought. Most thinking consists of a running inner narrative consistently trying to explain what’s happening or creating a theory to predict the future. Thinking is the inner voice you hear while trying to sleep as it speculates how the email you sent to your boss will likely get you into trouble the next day. While many may know that the left brain specializes in language, it is also responsible for this inner voice. It is this inner voice that creates all the stories we call thinking. Most of us overthink to the point that thoughts get in the way of a peaceful life, as many suffer from intrusive and unwanted thoughts. Let’s first consider what neuroscience has discovered about the story-telling, over-thinking left brain.
One of the most insightful findings on this topic is from split-brain patients. When Gazzaniga studied the isolated left brain after it had been surgically split from the right, it demonstrated the unique ability to create stories and then believe them. When a message was sent to the right brain like “stand up,” it complied, and the patient stood up. When the left brain was asked, “Why did you just stand up?” it invented a story that was believable but incorrect. The patient’s left brain replied, I was thirsty and needed to get a drink. The correct answer is “I don’t know,” as the left brain had no information about the initial request to the right brain, as the two sides were severed and could no longer communicate.
In a different set of patients studied by V.S. Ramachandran, the right brain was taken offline by injury. There was no end to the stories the left brain would generate and believe without question. In one case, regardless of the patient’s hand being paralyzed, the left brain of the patient claimed that they could pick up a table using their paralyzed hand if the patient “wanted to.”
Of all the stories the left brain tells, the story of the self is its greatest tale. Research strongly suggests there is no genuine CEO in command but only a narrative consisting of stories invented by the left brain. The brain creates the command to stand and only later is a story invented to explain this. These “decisions” were always after the fact and simply stories that fit the situation. If there is no self to control our thoughts, the thinking mind seems to lack free will and is as deterministic as any computer program.
Before we get to the good news, let’s really ponder what seems to be the bad news. Not only is there no CEO that controls your thoughts and decisions, but most of us spend half our time in this thought-generated fantasy rather than in the real world. Research shows that we spend half of our waking days lost in thought-generated stories about what isn’t happening rather than directly experiencing what is happening. More importantly, this mind-wandering actually makes us less happy. As the authors Killingsworth and Gilbert put it, “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
This could explain why mindfulness and meditation are so popular; they wake us up from the dream of involuntary thinking and get us back to the real world. In the real world, we find consciousness. In the real world, there is awareness of what is happening in the here and now, not what might happen in the future or what we think happened in the past.
It may not matter if our thoughts run like an inflexible computer program because our true existence extends far beyond thinking. This is the good news. Consider when you get up in the morning, take a sip of coffee, walk outside, and feel the sun on your face. These are direct conscious experiences without any contribution from the thinking mind. These experiences are without the categories of the thinking mind, including categories such as free will versus determinism. Zen masters such as Dogen taught that not thinking is the essence of the practice of Zen. This is mindfulness, and it is “beyond” dichotomies created by thinking. Free will simply has no meaning in a conscious state of no thought. We all experience the reality of consciousness, but when the thinking mind turns back on, it dismisses this as trivial or “being zoned out.”
Most modern humans live their lives dominated by thinking, with only brief lucid moments of being conscious in the real world. However, this is not true for all humans. Consider the Pirahã, a small, almost extinct indigenous people in the Amazon that live as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did. While they deal with physical hardships that few of us could ever imagine, they have been described as the happiest people on the planet. They do not even have a word for worry. There are good reasons to suggest they rely far more on right-brain processes. For example, their language is simple on the surface but relies on the intonation of speech and can even be whistled, suggesting far more right-brain involvement. They are not storytellers, have no creation myths, and do not tell their children stories.
IAI (The Institute of Art and Ideas) for more