Your Mind as a Muscle

We have probably learned more about the brain in the past 20 years than in all of recorded history. -Alan Leshner

Two years ago I completed the popular P90X workout/diet program. The physical results were astounding. After 90 grueling days, I managed to transform a completely average body into a muscular, chiseled, flexible, and highly-efficient one.  The before and after photos alone were enough to motivate friends, family, and coworkers to begin the program themselves. However, the program involves no groundbreaking exercises, no secret weight-loss pills, and no high-tech exercise equipment. The only secret of the program lies in consistency. You workout 7 days a week and the diet is followed every hour of the day. P90X simply leverages the human body's ability to change through consistency. Anything you practice for 1 hour a day for 90 days will produce results. That's the secret - and it's a powerful one.

What we have difficulty realizing however, is that our brain works in the same way as our body. The only significant difference between the processes of physical adaptation and psychological adaptation is that the results of one are largely visible while the results of the other are largely invisible. We can confidently state that in our society, greater value is placed on visible results.

Our environment literally rewires our brains

The weaving of new neural connections and unweaving of old connections is termed "neuroplasticity" and it defines our brain's ability to change. From the moment of conception until the moment of our last breath, the brain is physically molded by external stimuli (relationships, nutrition, career, advertising, etc.) as well as internal stimuli (thoughts and emotions). The longer we expose ourselves to the same stimuli (consistency), the stronger the consequential connection becomes. And since our brain "doesn't care" whether the stimuli is good or bad (i.e. smiling at a baby as opposed to committing murder), the neural connections are formed independent of your desire or moral judgment. In short, the more a certain stimuli pervades your life, the more your brain seeks it out. You don't even have to do anything for these connections to form - simply thinking or feeling is enough to lay building blocks in the mind.

A brain that is constantly exposed to negative stimuli will become conditioned to it. Feeling guilty and pessimistic day in and day out will eventually become the "new" normal thanks to the adaptive nature of the brain. This is how most well-marked psychological traits - including optimism, trust, depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolarity, and even cultural traits - develop. The typical Japanese, for example, tends to think of him/her self as part of a group while the typical American has been conditioned to individualism. The foundations for these states are mapped out in the brain through the physical restructuring of neural pathways. Once formed, they are very difficult to change and impossible to change quickly.  This can be positive if the environment promotes positive attributes such as empathy, appreciation, and generosity... but what if the promoted attributes are negative? What if the environment lays the wiring for selfishness, inadequacy, materialism, superiority, and narcissism? 

Is it then the individual's fault if they freefall into the bowels of depression even in affluence? Are they solely responsible for developing a disastrous self-image and a distorted perception of beauty? Are they to blame if they commit murder due to a suppressed sense of esteem and respect for others? Who's to blame? Their parents? And if the parents were subjected to the same neural conditioning? Hmmm.

Raise your Consciousness

We see new things in terms of things we already understand. - Jon Haidt

Changing your mind about whether you should watch Black Swan or True Grit tonight is easy. Changing your mind about complex established beliefs is extremely difficult (imagine a devout Evangelical creationist trying to accept evolution). And typically, the longer the prior belief is held and accepted to be true, the more difficult changing your mind becomes. These tremendous changes in psychological perception by exploring the nature of our beliefs are sometimes referred to as "consciousness raisers," and tend to require extraordinary effort.

Flatland

You are a two-dimensional square that lives in Flatland. Your family members, friends, neighbors, are and have always been 2D geometric shapes. Your home, the bank, the post office, the cars, and everything else in Flatland is also 2D, measurable only by length and width. There is left, right, front, and back, but there is no up or down. A spaceship from another planet enters Flatland's atmosphere. One of the ship's passengers, a three-dimensional sphere, descends to Flatland. The 2D inhabitants see the Sphere only when he (or she) touches the ground, but even then he's seen only as a 2D circle. The Sphere approaches you:

"Hello" he says. 

     "Hi Circle" you respond. 

"Circle? But I'm a Sphere, I have three-dimensions, can't you see?" 

     "A Sphere? 3D? Are you mad? There is nothing other than two dimensions, everyone knows that!"

"So you really can't see? Here, allow me to show you." 

The Sphere grabs you by the hand and flies you up to the skies above. You look down for the first time in your life, stupefied and in utter shock, as you witness Flatland from the third dimension. You know that your consciousness has been raised and that nothing will ever be the same. The Sphere brings you back down and you attempt to convince your loved ones of the third dimension only to be met with confusion and pity. To your great dismay, you realize that words are meaningless to describe your experience.

This story is adapted from the book "Flatland," written in 1884 by Edwin Abbott.

The Truman Show

"We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented," is perhaps the most psychologically profound line from The Truman Show. Jim Carrey's character, Truman Burbank, begins to question his longest held beliefs about life and his place in the world. This requires a raise in consciousness. Towards the end of the film, Truman feels the need to physically depart from his reality by sailing away on a boat to the end of the ocean in order to understand it. Check out the following 2 minute clip of Truman's initial attempt at raising his own consciousness:

The Matrix
This film also highlights the importance of questioning the nature of your reality. In the clip below, the line to look out for is stated by Morpheus, "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." This is important. We cannot convince our brains with words and explanations of what's true and false. The brain must experience it, there is no other way. Even if you do get intuitive "nudges" to question the the nature of numerous beliefs you have been told about (such as the nature of happiness), you will not be able to truly understand, feel, and live that belief or other beliefs unless you experience them personally first. You have to pay to play. Or in the words of Morpheus, "I can only show you the door. You are the one that has to walk through it."

Departure

The previous 3 examples do not presume to deal with reality. It may be a mistake to assume that they do. They are simply metaphors for consciousness-raising. And what better way to convey the invisible workings of the mind than through metaphors we can tangibly relate to? One common theme in these metaphors is that the main character had to depart his current reality in order to raise his consciousness.

This provides us with insight into our own lives. If we find the need to question a long-held belief, we must depart from it and observe it objectively. The result will either be to embrace the belief more fully because you find it to be true, or to abandon it because you find it to be false. Though books, friends, movies, my posts, and even your own thoughts may help you grasp certain beliefs conceptually, they will not allow you to raise your consciousness - or, put even more intuitively, to "feel" those beliefs.

To raise your consciousness about (Western) society, pack your bag and travel to Asia, Africa, or South America. To raise your consciousness about human thought and emotion, start meditating. To raise your consciousness about what truly matters in life, let everything go. You can't just read about it. To truly understand it, you have to do it. Keep in mind however, that being conditioned to expect fast and tangible results does not facilitate these undertakings.

It's difficult, no doubt about it. But as the saying goes, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Take it Easy!

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves. - Victor Frankl

All paths lead back to the origin. Back to the root. Back to control. From the halls of Abdeen Palace in Egypt on this very day, to the moment your ex-significant other cut the relationship ties, to the rejection letter from your dream college, to the passing of a loved one, to being fired from your job for arriving late. Our most painful memories, as well as all of our problems, converge on the loss of control in the midst of addiction to... well, control. Things should work and do work as we expect them to - but only in the fantastical world of the mind. Reality works through different forces.

We weave the sense of control into existence through an autonomous development of expectations. Like a faceless and shapeless structural engineer of the mind, our frontal lobe lays down the imaginary steel tracks for the train of expectations to travel through. But in reality, the tracks aren't made of steel. They are as void of substance as the engineer who laid them. But we live our lives as if the opposite were true. And each and every time that the train of expectations derails from these illusory tracks, it crashes into the sensitive and vulnerable regions of our minds. When our expectations are not met, we hurt, we lose confidence, and we lose trust. The problem is that our brains have evolved to become hyperactive, relentless, merciless, and seemingly unstoppable creators of expectations. I believe that here, exactly here, lies the key to our unresolved potential for lasting happiness. We gotta take it easy.

The instinct to control our environment is extremely primitive. Our bipedal hominid ancestors established very basic measures of control such as hoarding food and protecting territorial boundaries for the simple and straightforward purpose of prolonging their existence. "Me save deer leg for cold day." I would assume they spent the rest of the day sitting on their ass in a cave, chillin, and maybe drawing elephants and bushes on rare occasions. In this setting, the instinct to control served them well, precisely because it had very few applications, but all critical to their existence. The instinct to control has prevailed in the gene pool until the present day, where its purpose as a mechanism for self-preservation has, for the most part, completely vanished. It inundates our lives to the point we vehemently attempt to control every thought, every want, and every whim our minds can produce. But to what end? It's not about the deer leg anymore.

It's about controlling everything we think we need. And what exactly do we need? If you ask your parents, it's to get a degree. If you ask your wife, it's to get a [better] job. If you ask your history professor, it's to study history.  If you watch FOX, it's to buy gas masks for the impending biological terrorist attacks. If you watch Lifetime, it's to find a knight in shining armor. If you watch commercials, it might be a million and one different things, from plastic surgery to the Twilight Eclipse Blu-ray. Our control sensor twitches with each "need" input, urging us to acquire, or rather, attempt to control our external environment in some way. But again, this control sensor was meant to prolong our existence, not to drive us crazy. We won't face impending doom without a Twilight Blu-ray, college degree, gas mask, or breast implants, but we may very well feel like we will.

A recent psychology study confirmed that the effect of increased or decreased income levels on happiness is almost negligible. Controlling our environment through acquisition, consumption, and wealth accumulation does shit for our levels of happiness apart from perhaps a 10-second head rush. Instead the constant mental rumination and mind wandering about what we want/need to control actually makes us less happy. And we do this a lot without realizing it. For this reason, I say we are conditioned to take our present 21st century lives too seriously, thus taking ourselves too seriously. Our needs, our wants, our pursuits, our material goods, our relationships... we would live much happier lives by not exerting our junkie-like addiction to control everything and everyone around us. Let them happen as they do happen. Let the pieces fall where they may. Let it be.

Eastern philosophies are popular in the west because they provide a method of doing exactly this, while western societies promote more worry, more stress, and more vain attempts to control. Armani, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, BMW, Patek Philippe, and countless others will try to convince you that their products hold the same or even greater value than the deer leg. Our brains will believe it and alter our moods, behaviors, and thoughts as if these things truly mattered to some nebulous aspect of our existence. That's fucked up. But we don't just do this with material goods. Our addiction to control spreads to every single aspect of our lives, providing intermittent spurts of happiness at the very best, and disastrous plunges into the bowels of depression and anxiety at the worst. Life is not so complicated, but we make it so. "Take it easy" may then be the most worthwhile piece of advice ever uttered by a rational being.