Janus (16 page)

soma
pills of
Brave New World
, but a state
of dynamic equilibrium in which the divided house of faith and reason
is reunited and hierarchic order restored.
3
I first published these hopeful speculations -- as the only alternative to
despair that I could (and can) see -- in the concluding chapter of
The Ghost
in the Machine
. Among the many negative criticisms which it brought
in its wake, the one most frequently voiced accused me of proposing the
manufacture of a little pill which would suppress all feeling and emotion
and reduce us to the equanimity of cabbages. This charge, sometimes
uttered with great vehemence, was based on a complete misreading of the
text. What I proposed was not the castration of emotion, but reconciling
emotion and reason which through most of man's schizophrenic history have
been at loggerheads. Not an amputation, but a process of harmonization
which assigns each level of the mind, from visceral impulses to abstract
thought, its appropriate place in the hierarchy. This implies reinforcing
the new brain's power of veto against that type of emotive behaviour --
and that type only
-- which cannot be reconciled with reason, such as
the 'blind' passions of the group-mind. If these could be eradicated,
our species would be safe.
There are blind emotions and visionary emotions. Who in his senses would
advocate doing away with the emotions aroused while listening to Mozart
or looking at a rainbow?
4
Any individual living today who asserted that he had made a pact with the
devil and had intercourse with succubi would be promptly dispatched to
a mental home. Yet not so long ago, belief in such things was taken for
granted and approved by common sense -- i.e., the consensus of opinion,
i.e., the group-mind. Psychopharmacology is playing an increasing part
in the treatment of mental disorders in the clinical sense, such as
individual delusions which affect the critical faculties and are not
sanctioned by the group-mind. But we are concerned with a cure for
the paranoid streak in what we call 'normal people', which is revealed
when they become victims of group-mentality. As we already have drugs to
increase man's suggestibility, it will soon be within our reach to do the
opposite: to reinforce man's critical faculties, counteract misplaced
devotion and that militant enthusiasm, both murderous and suicidal,
which is reflected in history books and the pages of the daily paper.
But who is to decide which brand of devotion is misplaced, and which
beneficial to mankind? The answer seems obvious: a society composed of
autonomous individuals, once they are immunized against the hypnotic
effects of propaganda and thought-control, and protected against their
own suggestibility as 'belief-accepting animals'. But this protection
cannot be provided by counter-propaganda or drop-out attitudes; they
are self-defeating. It can only be done by 'tampering' with human nature
itself to correct its endemic schizophysiological disposition. History
tells us that nothing less will do.
5
Assuming that the laboratories succeed in producing an immunizing
substance conferring mental stability -- how are we to propagate its
global use? Are we to ram it down people's throats, whether they like
it or not?
Again the answer seems obvious. Analgesics, pep pills, tranquillizers,
contraceptives have, for better or worse, swept across the world with
a minimum of publicity or official encouragement. They spread because
people welcomed their effects. The use of a mental stabilizer would
spread not by coercion but by enlightened self-interest; from then on,
developments are as unpredictable as the consequences of any revolutionary
discovery. A Swiss canton may decide, after a public referendum, to add
the new substance to the iodine in the table salt, or the chlorine in the
water supply, for a trial period, and other countries may imitate their
example. There might be an international fashion among the young. In one
way or the other, the simulated mutation would get under way. It is possible
that totalitarian countries would try to resist it. But today even Iron
Curtains have become porous; fashions are spreading irresistibly. And
should there be a transitional period during which one side alone went
ahead, it would gain a decisive advantage because it would be more rational
in its long-term policies, less frightened and less hysterical.
In conclusion, let me quote from
The Ghost in the Machine
:

Every writer has a favourite type of imaginary reader, a friendly
phantom but highly critical, with whom he is engaged in a continuous,
exhausting dialogue. I feel sure that my friendly phantom-reader has
sufficient imagination to extrapolate from the recent breath-taking
advances of biology into the future, and to concede that the solution
outlined here is in the realm of the possible. What worries me is
that he might be repelled and disgusted by the idea that we should
rely for our salvation on molecular chemistry instead of a spiritual
rebirth. I share his distress, but I see no alternative. I hear him
explain: 'By trying to sell us your Pills, you are adopting that
crudely materialistic attitude and naive scientific hubris which you
pretend to oppose.' I still oppose it.  But I do not believe that
it is 'materialistic' to take a realistic view of the condition
of man; nor is it hubris to feed thyroid extracts to children who
would otherwise grow into cretins . . . Like the reader, I would
prefer to set my hopes on moral persuasion by word and example. But
we are a mentally sick race, and as such deaf to persuasion. It
has been tried from the age of the prophets to Albert Schweitzer;
and Swift's anguished cry: 'Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned
rat in a hole,' has acquired an urgency as never before.
Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the
hook, and time is running out. To hope for salvation to be synthesised
in the laboratory may seem materialistic, crankish or naive; it
reflects the ancient alchemist's dream to concoct the elixir
vitae. What we expect from it, however, is not eternal life,
but the transformation of homo maniacus into homo sapiens. [2]

This is the only alternative to despair which I can read into the shape
of things to come.
We can now move to more cheerful horizons.
PART TWO
The Creative Mind
VI
HUMOUR AND WIT
I
The theory of human creativity which I developed in earlier books
^[1]
endeavours to show that all creative activities --
the conscious and unconscious processes underlying the three domains
of artistic originality, scientific discovery and comic inspiration
-- have a basic pattern in common, and to describe that pattern. The
three panels of the triptych on page 110 indicate these three domains,
which shade into each other without sharp boundaries. The meaning of
the diagram will become apparent as the argument unfolds.

 

 

The three domains of creativity

 

 

The creative process is, oddly enough, most clearly revealed in humour
and wit. But this will appear less odd if we remember that 'wit is
an ambiguous term, relating to both witticism and to ingenuity or
inventiveness.* The jester and the explorer both live on their wits,
and we shall see that the jester's riddles provide a convenient back-door
entry, as it were, into the inner sanctum of creative originality. Hence
this inquiry will start with an analysis of the comic.** It may
be thought that I have allowed a disproportionate amount of space to
humour, but it is meant to serve, as I said, as a back-door approach to
the creative process in science and art. Besides, it can also be read
as a self-contained essay -- and it may provide the reader with some
light relief.

 

* 'Wit' stems from witan, understanding, whose roots go back to
the Sanskrit veda, knowledge. The German Witz
means both joke and acumen; it comes from wissen, to know;
Wissenschaft, science, is a close kin to Furwitz and
Aberwitz -- presumption, cheek, and jest. French teaches the
same lesson. Spirituel may either mean witty or spiritually
profound; 'to amuse' comes from to muse' (a-muser), and a
witty remark is a jeu d'esprit -- a playful, mischievous
form of discovery.
** This chapter is based on the summary of the theory which I contributed
to the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. [2]

 

 

2

 

 

Humour, in all its many-splendour'd varieties, can be simply defined as a
type of stimulation which tends to elicit the laughter reflex. Spontaneous
laughter is a motor reflex, produced by the coordinated contraction
of fifteen facial muscles in a stereotyped pattern and accompanied
by altered breathing. Electrical stimulation of the
zygomatic
major
, the main lifting muscle of the upper lip with currents of
varying intensity, produces facial expressions ranging from the faint
smile through the broad grin, to the contortions typical of explosive
laughter.
^[3]
(The laughter and smile of civilized man is
of course often of a conventional kind where voluntary effort deputizes
for, or interferes with, spontaneous reflex activity; we are concerned,
however, only with the latter.)

 

 

Once we realize that laughter is a humble reflex, we are immediately
faced with several paradoxes. Motor reflexes, such as the contraction of
the pupil of the eye in dazzling light, are simple responses to simple
stimuli, whose value in the service of survival is obvious. But the
involuntary contraction -- of fifteen facial muscles associated with
certain irrepressible noises strikes one as an activity without any
practical value, quite unrelated to the struggle for survival.
Laughter
is a reflex, but unique in that it has no apparent biological utility.
One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only purpose seems to be to
provide temporary relief from the stress of purposeful activities.

 

 

The second, related paradox is a striking discrepancy between the nature
of the stimulus and that of the response in humorous transactions. When
a blow beneath the knee-cap causes an automatic upward kick, both
'stimulus' and 'response' function on the same primitive physiological
level, without requiring the intervention of higher mental functions. But
that such a complex mental activity as reading a story by James Thurber
should cause a specific reflex-contraction of the facial musculature
is a phenomenon which has puzzled philosophers since Plato. There is no
clear-cut, predictable response which would tell a lecturer whether he
has succeeded in convincing his listeners; but when he is telling a joke,
laughter serves as an experimental test.
Humour is the only form of
communication in which a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces
a stereotyped, predictable response on the physiological reflex level.
This enables us to use the response as an indicator for the presence of
that elusive quality that we call humour -- as we use the click of the
Geiger counter to indicate the presence of radioactivity. Such a procedure
is not possible in any other form of art; and since the step from the
sublime to the ridiculous is reversible, the study of humour provides the
psychologist with important clues for the study of creativity in general.

 

 

 

3

 

 

The range of laughter-provoking experiences is enormous, from physical
tickling to mental titillations of the most varied and sophisticated
kinds. I shall attempt to demonstrate that there is unity in this variety,
a common denominator of a specific and specifiable pattern which reflects
the 'logic' or 'grammar' of humour. A few examples will help to unravel
that pattern.

 

(a) A masochist is a person who likes a cold shower in the morning,
so he takes a hot one.
(b) An English lady, on being asked by a friend what she thought of
her departed husband's whereabouts: 'Well, I suppose the poor soul
is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such
unpleasant subjects.'*
* This is a variant of Russell's anecdote
in the Prologue.
(c) A doctor comforts his patient: 'You have a very serious disease.
Of ten persons who catch it only one survives. It is lucky you
came to me, for I have recently had nine patients with this disease
and they all died of it.'
(d) Dialogue in a film by Claude Bern:
'Sir, I would like to ask for your daughter's hand.'
'Why not? You have akeady had the rest.'
(e) A marquis at the court of Louis XV unexpectedly returned from a
journey and, on entering his wife's boudoir, found her in the arms
of a bishop. After a moment's hesitation the marquis walked calmly
to the window, leaned out and began going through the motions of
blessing the people in the Street.
'What are you doing?' cried the anguished wife.
'Monseigneur is performing my functions, so I am performing his.'

 

Is there a common pattern underlying these five stories? Starting with
the last, we discover after a little reflection that the marquis's
behaviour is both unexpected and perfectly logical -- but of a logic
not usually applied to this type of situation. It is the logic of the
division of labour, governed by rules as old as human civilization. But
we expected that his reactions would be governed by a different set of
rules -- the code of sexual morality. It is the sudden clash between
these two mutually exclusive codes of rules -- or associative contexts,
or cognitive holons -- which produces the comic effect. It compels us to
perceive the situation in two self-consistent but incompatible frames of
reference at the same time; it makes us function simultaneously on two
different wave-lengths. While this unusual condition lasts, the event is
not, as is normally the case, associated with a single frame of reference,
but