[Reader-list] Fwd: We Are Neurologically Fucked By Tim Murray (Countercurrents.org)

[Venugopalan K M]

"..Confinement to a prison cell to read a long novel or write a long
hand-written letter would now be torture of the most excruciating kind. But
this pattern of living is set by the workplace. That is the first domino.
Workers come home exhausted and stressed out. They do not want mental
calisthenics. They want R and R. They don’t want to think for themselves,
they want release. The only news that can be imbibed is the junk food of
short snappy sound bites of pre-digested thought from trusted sources.."







We Are Neurologically Fucked

*By Tim Murray*

20 July, 2009
*Countercurrents.org*

*Less immediate threats are beyond human comprehension while immediate
gratification commands our attention*

Nicholas Kristof makes an cogent argument in “When Our Brains
Short-Circuit”. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/
oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

He maintains imminent threats grab our attention “while our brain circuitry
is often cavalier about the future”. It is a programming well suited to the
risks we encountered in the pre-historic age but woefully inept in meeting
more abstract or distant 21st century challenges that threaten to extinguish
our species.

“Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges
certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert
for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to
dangers that require forethought.

If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up
with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that
carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small
part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal
cortex — will glimmer.”

But I should like to complement Kristof’s analysis with a slightly broader
assessment of our cognitive impairment. I concur that we are congenitally
designed to focus on short-term threats, and would even make the blunt
assertion that as a species we are “wired’ to self-destruct. However the
inability to go beyond the immediate and the imminent is not simply a
failure to apprehend the future, but is the consequence of a deliberate
survival mechanism, if evolution could be credited with foresight. Both
individually and collectively we simply cannot take in all of the potential
dangers that lie in wait for us. To so would be too overwhelming .
Metaphorically speaking we have been installed with a “breaker switch” which
shuts down anxiety over-load by preventing paralytic fear from taking hold.
We cannot permit fear of death to overcome us. We need the nourishment of
mental comfort food, religion---not truth---to “get through the night” and
find meaning in an existence which denies it.

In short, we are programmed for delusional optimism---willful ignorance of
blatantly obvious facts, facts like our own mortality and the mortality of
the human race. We can’t face our own death or the death of humanity itself.
We need false hope to carry on. A life with meaning demands a belief in an
after-life, if not a place in a physical heaven or a posthumous
consciousness as disembodied spirits, then a belief that we will leave a
durable legacy. There is a fundamental human need to “believe” that cannot
be uprooted by reason or science. Hence the strong aversion people have to
negative thinking. Undermining morale with the truth is identified as the
most anti-social act imaginable. That is why atheism is universally regarded
as abhorrent. And we think that we can change that? Our enterprise is
perhaps as futile as trying to teach pythons to become vegetarian or cats to
love swimming.

People have a limited tolerance for bad news. Too much and we react with
black humour, displacement behaviour and/or denial. Certainly the media
promotes this mentality and blockades negativism, but in doing so it gives
the audience what it wants. Escape. Even “the news” must be presented in an
entertaining form. The need for mindless entertainment, for addictive
consumerism, is the flip side of the increasing absence of creativity in the
workplace, which Canadian labour historian Harry Braverman described as the
logical extension of specialization, or “Fordism”. Even white collar and
professional work is being stripped of creative elements in order that it
become more productive. “Speed up” and higher productivity---more
“efficiency”-- is the goal of industrial society—not job fulfillment.

And the factory system has been extended to all facets of life. Even leisure
activity must be structured. Children can no longer be left to find their
own fun, but be channeled and shepherded to organized team sports and a full
plate of “lessons” in dancing, skating, singing and the martial arts, to
name a few. Lets all make “efficient” use of our time. Downtime and
meditation is a crime. We must take “control” over our lives ironically by
surrendering to an unnatural tempo. “Power” yoga, “power” walking, “power”
naps. No time for idle conversation---time to talk must be arranged by
appointment only. And conversations too have been adapted to the factory
system. More and more people talk at 45 RPM, like chipmunks on speed. MSN
text language is now employed orally. More and more adults exhibit Type A
behaviour and begin to resemble the pimply salesman at Future Shop or the
Source or any electronics store. They speak like disc jockeys terrified to
leave more than a second of dead space between their rapid sentences. They
treat your measured responses with barely concealed irritation. Cultivated
impatience with any message that requires patient elaboration is the
requirement of a consumer economy that inculcates quick dissatisfaction and
a desire for immediate gratification. People even channel surf through
relationships and jobs.

The result of assembly-line living is both more stress and more boredom,
boredom that is never more than temporarily appeased by more thrills, more
variety, more novelty, . The need to overbook our time is best captured by
the popularity of the adjective “smart”, which reflects the hopeless
ambition to cram more and more into less and less. Smart growth. Smart
immigration. Smart cars. Smart buildings. There is never any need to set
limits when we can have it all by making it “smart”. Having it all but
savoring none of it.

Confinement to a prison cell to read a long novel or write a long
hand-written letter would now be torture of the most excruciating kind. But
this pattern of living is set by the workplace. That is the first domino.
Workers come home exhausted and stressed out. They do not want mental
calisthenics. They want R and R. They don’t want to think for themselves,
they want release. The only news that can be imbibed is the junk food of
short snappy sound bites of pre-digested thought from trusted sources. The
ones that never attempt to challenge comfortable core beliefs. Even grim
weather forecasts must be dressed up as passing annoyances by cheery bimbos
who wish you a “great” weekend ahead. So why would we expect that our sober
doomsday prognostications be given the time of day? Why would the harried
drones of the modern economy prefer to read about the demise of another
rainforest or the loss of tigers or polar bears? People’s magazine distracts
them while National Geographic weighs them down.

We are a flawed species with a limited shelf-life. Rigged to expire. We
haven’t the intelligence to transcend our immediate wants. Idiot-savants who
can perform heart transplants and design spacecraft but can’t see far enough
ahead to take evasive actions. We are neurologically handicapped and unfit
to reign over the planet. We’re fucked.




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