Author: Elizabeth Gaucher

Proving It – The Soul of Science

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 8 Comments

A major personal challenge I’ve encountered in the past decade is the pressure to support the idea that positive thinking, or the “right” thinking, will create a person’s reality.  Any skepticism or even gentle questioning of true believers usually leads to vehement assertions that I just don’t want to be happy, or a winner (that’s a whole different post unto itself), or that I’m afraid to be successful (as if there is one way). 

The thing is, these assertions are often followed with opportunities to pay money to a cult figure via DVDs or books or speaking fees to become a happy, successful, wealthy winner.

The whole dynamic frustrates me to no end, but I usually don’t actually care enough to argue about it.  I also don’t argue because I don’t really know what to say beyond, “I disagree.”  But last week’s NYT essay Fight ‘The Power’ has freed me from my hesitancy. The essay breaks down the actual science behind why the human mind is so susceptible to believing that our thoughts control our reality. At last, even if I have to just read it to myself, I have in black and white why I can’t support books like The Secret and The Power.  I’m simply too much of a scientist in my soul.

Christopher Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College. Daniel Simons is a psychology professor at the University of Illinois.  Chabris and Simons, authors of the Fight ‘The Power’ essay, warn, “Whenever you hear someone appeal to impenetrable physics to explain the workings of the mind, run away — we already have disciplines called ‘psychology’ and ‘neuroscience’ to deal with those questions.”  They go on to explain what they see as the fundamental hook of the pseudoscience behind some of the most popular publications that use this line of thinking:

The message of “The Power” and “The Secret” might best be understood as an advanced meme — a sort of intellectual virus — whose structure has evolved throughout history to optimally exploit a suite of weaknesses in the design of the human mind.

It does seem that we are not too hard to fool, we humans; and a fool and his money are soon parted.  We tend to do things like assume sequential events are cause-and-effect; to think that the more people who say something the more likely it is to be true; and to assume we understand things that when pressed we can’t explain in even the simplest terms.   There is also a human susceptibility to voices of “authority” and what is called the “illusion of potential.”  Who doesn’t want to believe we could all do and have anything at any time, that we are just holding ourselves back?

All of this said, it is fine line for me to explain that ultimately I do think it is important to manage what one runs through his or her mind.  It’s not that I think we are creating “particles” of energy that are shaping the universe — poppycock.  I do think, however, that how things seem on a day-to-day basis has value that is real beyond what may actually be scientifically demonstrable.  I remember specifically talking with a physician once about symptoms that were bothering me from a chronic health condition.  I asked about a medicine and he said, “That won’t fix the underlying problem.  It will just make you feel better.”  Right, Dr. Genius. That is why I’m here, to feel better.  If I can’t get better, feeling better is an excellent second choice.  Feeling better is its own kind of reality.

It is important to keep what one thinks and believes about managing life as something that ultimately belongs to the individual.  In the movie Contact (based on Carl Sagan’s novel of the same name), Ellie (Jodie Foster) and Palmer (Matthew McConaughey) represent the ongoing debates of science and religion.  Ellie simply cannot comprehend Palmer’s way of thinking, with its relative nonchalance toward the hard proofs of science.  He is dialed in to a spiritual approach to life that is sometimes compatible with science but entirely independent of it.  Ellie likes Palmer, and does her best to not disrespect him in their conversations, but she finally conveys to him that she thinks he’s just not using his mind.

Palmer asks her one question.  “Did you love your father?”

“Wh….What?” Ellie responds, stunned and knocked off guard.

“Did you love your father?  Yes or no?”

“Yes,” she says softly.  “Very much.”

Palmer has one request.  “Prove it.”

Probably there will always be things that science can’t explain, and I would venture to say most of those things involve bursts of human greatness more than our frailties.  The sins, the crimes, the failures – these seem graph-able and biologically understandable.  But what of the redemptions, the victories, the forgiveness and yes the love that make no sense around the dinner table, much less the laboratory?

I’m just a scientist in my soul.  I can’t prove any of this.  But because I truly believe it, I will wake up tomorrow and be someone who does things that make the world a better place, and that is reality.

Photo credit: Warping History: Analytical Methods in Historical Cartography

Hashtag: Lincoln

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 4 Comments

Yesterday there was a thought-provoking post on The Miller Times.  I read it, tweeted it, marked it as a favorite post, and moved on; at least I thought I moved on.  I woke up at 2:40 a.m. and these lines were still roaming around my brain looking for a place to rest:

I can’t help but think massive political protests/rallies/marches/shindigs/soirees have become arbitrary. We’ve got social media now, and sadly, a hashtag on Twitter goes a lot farther than 1,000,000 people standing united at the Lincoln Memorial. I admire the dedication, but the whole process is kind of antiquated.

This idea lingers because in just three short sentences it did more to jar my thinking about the impact of the social media revolution than anything I’ve heard anyone else say, including Bill Gates, the Google boys, and the rest of their ilk.  It helps me process why, even though I’m on board and the train has left the station, I’m still not sure where the trip is taking us.

The massive cultural shift that came with our super-connections and constant availability must be something as seismic as the dawn of safe, affordable, socially accepted forms of contraception taking root in the United States in the 1960’s.  It is nearly impossible for me to imagine an America where couples didn’t sleep together whenever they felt like it out of  the fear of unwanted pregnancies, and yet I know it’s the world where my grandparents grew up.  The tentacles of social change are elaborate and far-reaching from this single event, and of course not everyone thinks it’s all good.  I think it’s fundamentally great, but would agree that there are new dynamics in people’s lives that are not as simple as “great.”

This is much like I feel about the changes to everything we do now, with such a huge portion of life lived online.  The communication and education opportunities are incredible.  The avenues for better understanding remote corners of the world are expanded.  Many aspects of life are safer and more secure.  Used well, social media tools allow for phenomenal new levels of productivity.  And yet….there’s that pesky Lincoln Memorial thing.   It woke me up before the crack of dawn, and I’m guessing this morning won’t be the last time.

I’m glad I don’t have to get on a bus and go to Washington, DC, to be heard.  To be perfectly frank, I don’t have the time, money, or energy to participate in a march of any kind right now.  But as the last Esse Diem post about Good Will Hunting explores, I know what it’s like to stand at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.  I’ve stood there more than once, and it is an experience unlike any other.  I expected to feel small, and yet I felt enormous. 

Many people joke that Abraham Lincoln was fortunate to live in an age without television.  He was quite an unusual and some say unattractive combination of proportions and physical features.  History suggests he was soft-spoken, humble, and concise.  The words of the Gettysburg address are some of the most well-known, beloved, and nationally signficant words every spoken in the United States’ history.  From that address (emphasis is mine):

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Our world of online political and social action is real, and it is here.  We are not going back.  But if you doubt that Americans standing — being physically present — at the Lincoln Memorial still means something, I would say go.  Go alone.  It’s not necessary to get caught up in a demonstration or event.  Go when you can, and stand there with the image and yes, the actual presence, of the man who saved the union. 

It may not change the world in that moment, and it can’t be meaningfully hashtagged or blogged.  It can only be lived, that feeling of being so big inside yourself at the feet of President Lincoln.  Promise you won’t miss it — in real life.

Photo credit: Library of Congress on Flickr.com