Janus (3 page)
Authors: Arthur Koestler
Thus the brain explosion gave rise to a mentally unbalanced species
in which old brain and new brain, emotion and intellect, faith and reason,
were at loggerheads. On one side, the pale cast of rational thought,
of logic suspended on a thin thread all too easily broken; on the other,
the raging fury of passionately held irrational beliefs, reflected in
the holocausts of past and present history.
If neurophysiological evidence had not taught us the contrary, we would
have expected it to reveal an evolutionary process which gradually
transformed the primitive old brain into a more sophisticated instrument
-- as it transformed gill into lung, or the forelimb of the reptilian
ancestor into the bird's wing, the flipper of the whale, the hand of man.
But instead of transforming old brain into new, evolution superimposed a
new superior structure on an old one with partly overlapping functions,
and without providing the new brain with a clear-cut power of control
over the old.
To put it crudely: evolution has left a few screws loose between
the neocortex and the hypothalamus. MacLean has, coined the term
schizophysiology
for this endemic shortcoming in the human nervous
system. He defines it as
inheritance, built into the species as it were, could go a long way towards
explaining some of the pathological symptoms listed before. The chronic
conflict between rational thought and irrational beliefs, the resulting
paranoid streak in our history, the contrast between the growth-curves
of science and ethics, would at last become comprehensible and could be
expressed in physiological terms. And any condition which can be expressed
in physiological terms should ultimately be accessible to remedies --
as will be discussed later on. For the moment let us note that the origin
of the evolutionary blunder which gave rise to man's schizo-physiological
disposition appears to have been the rapid, quasi-brutal superimposition
(instead of transformation) of the neocortex on the ancestral structures
and the resulting insufficient coordination between the new brain and
the old, and inadequate control of the former over the latter.
In concluding this section, it should be emphasized once more that to the
student of evolution there is nothing improbable in the assumption that
man's native equipment, though superior to that of any animal species,
nevertheless contains some serious fault in the circuitry of that most
precious and delicate instrument, the nervous system. When the biologist
speaks of evolutionary 'blunders', he does not reproach evolution for
having failed to attain some theoretical ideal, but means something quite
simple and precise: some obvious deviation from Nature's own standards
of engineering efficiency, which deprives an organ of its effectiveness
-- like the monstrous antlers of the Irish elk, now defunct. Turtles
and beetles are well protected by their armour, but it makes them so
top-heavy that if in combat or by misadventure they fall on their back,
they cannot get up again, and starve to death -- a grotesque construction
fault which Kafka turned into a symbol of the human predicament.
But the greatest mistakes occurred in the evolution of the various types
of brain. Thus the invertebrates' brain evolved around the alimentary tube,
so that if the neural mass were to evolve and expand, the alimentary tube
would be more and more compressed (as happened to spiders and scorpions,
which can only pass liquids through their gullets and have become
blood-suckers). Gaskell, in
The Origin of Vertebrates
, commented:
of the vertebrates, the Australian marsupials (who, unlike us placentals,
carry their unfinished newborn in pouches) again landed themselves in
a cul-de-sac. Their brain is lacking a vital component, the
corpus
callosum
-- a conspicuous nerve tract which, in placentals, connects
the right and left cerebral hemispheres.* Now recent brain research has
discovered a fundamental division of functions in the two hemispheres
which complement each other rather like Yin and Yang. Obviously the
two hemispheres are required to work together if the animal (or man)
is to derive the full benefit of their potentials. The absence of a
corpus callosum
thus signifies
inadequate coordination
between the two halves of the brain -- a phrase which has an ominously
familiar ring. It may be the principal reason why the evolution of the
marsupials -- though it produced many species which bear a striking
resemblance to their placental cousins -- finally got stuck on the
evolutionary ladder at the level of the koala bear.
marsupials later on. In the present context they and the arthropoda,
as well as other examples, may serve as cautionary tales, which make
it easier to accept the possibility that homo sapiens, too, might be
a victim of faulty brain design. We, thank God, have a solid corpus
callosum which integrates the right and left halves, horizontally; but
in the vertical direction, from the seat of conceptual thought to the
spongy depths of instinct and passion, all is not so well. The evidence
from the physiological laboratory, the tragic record of history on the
grand scale, and the trivial anomalies in our everyday behaviour, all
point towards the same conclusion.
5
Another approach to man's predicament starts from the fact that the human
infant has to endure a longer period of helplessness and total dependence
on its parents than the young of any other species. The cradle is a stricter
confinement than the kangaroo's pouch; one might speculate that this early
experience of dependence leaves its life-long mark, and is at least partly
responsible for man's willingness to submit to authority wielded
by individuals or groups, and his suggestibility by doctrines and moral
imperatives. Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
The first suggestion the hypnotist imposes on his subject is that
he should be open to the hypnotizer's suggestions. The subject is
being conditioned to become susceptible to conditioning. The helpless
infant is subjected to a similar process. It is turned into a willing
recipient of ready-made beliefs.* For the vast majority of mankind
throughout history, the system of beliefs which they accepted, for which
they were prepared to live and to die, was not of their own making or
choice; it was shoved down their throats by the hazards of birth.
Pro
patria mori dulce et decorum est
, whichever the
patria
into which the
stork happens to drop you. Critical reasoning played, if any, only a
secondary part in the process of adopting a faith, a code of ethics,
a
Weltanschauung
; of becoming a fervent Christian crusader, a fervent
Moslem engaged in Holy War, a Roundhead or a Cavalier. The continuous
disasters in man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity
and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause,
and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its
tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental
to the claims of self-preservation.
our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for
fanatical devotion. Even a cursory glance at history should convince one
that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite
insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred
in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political
ideology, ad
majorem gloriam dei
. The emphasis is on unselfish.
Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are
not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king,
country or cause. Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical
rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons,
at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon in history.
At this point I must insert two brief polemical remarks:
Firstly, when Freud proclaimed
ex cathedra
that wars were caused by
pent-up aggressive instincts in search of an outlet, people tended to
believe him because it made them feel guilty, although he did not produce
a shred of historical or psychological evidence for his claim. Anybody who
has served in the ranks of an army can testify that aggressive feelings
towards the enemy hardly play a part in the dreary routines of waging war.
Soldiers do not hate. They are frightened, bored, sex-starved, homesick;
they fight with resignation, because they have no other choice, or with
enthusiasm for king and country, the true religion, the righteous cause --
moved not by hatred but by loyalty. To say it once more, man's tragedy
is not an excess of aggression, but an excess of devotion.
The second polemical remark concerns another theory which recently
became fashionable among anthropologists, purporting that the origin
of war is to be found in the instinctive urge of some animal species to
defend at all costs their own stretch of land or water -- the so-called
'territorial imperative'. It seems to me no more convincing than Freud's
hypothesis. The wars of man, with rare exceptions, were not fought for
individual ownership of bits of space. The man who goes to war actually
leaves the home which he is supposed to defend, and does his shooting
far away from it; and what makes him do it is not the biological urge
to defend his personal acreage of farmland or meadows, but his devotion
to symbols derived from tribal lore, divine commandments and political
slogans. Wars are not fought for territory, but for words.
6
This brings us to the next item in our inventory of the possible causes
of the human predicament. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as
susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases.
And when there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over. It obeys its own
rules, which are different from the rules of conduct of individuals. When
a person identifies himself with a group, his reasoning faculties are
diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance or
positive feedback. The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and
by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer. This
is the infernal dialectic reflected in man's history of wars, persecution
and genocide. And the main catalyst of that transformation is the hypnotic
power of the word. The words of Adolf Hitler were the most powerful agents
of destruction at his time. Long before the printing press was invented,
the words of Allah's chosen Prophet unleashed an emotive chain-reaction
which shook the world from Central Asia to the Atlantic coast. Without
words there would be no poetry -- and no war. Language is the main factor
in our superiority over brother animal -- and, in view of its explosive
emotive potentials, a constant threat to survival.
This apparently paradoxical point is illustrated by recent field-observations
of Japanese monkey-societies which have revealed that different tribes of
a species may develop surprisingly different habits -- one might almost
say, different cultures. Some tribes have taken to washing potatoes in the
river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of
potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's
strange behaviour with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants
of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end
to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the
non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would
enable them to declare washing a divine commandment and eating unwashed
potatoes a deadly heresy.
Obviously the quickest way to abolish war would be to abolish language,
and Jesus seems to have been aware of this when he said: 'Let your
communication be Yea, yea, Nay, nay, for anything beyond that cometh from
the devil.' And in a sense mankind did renounce language long ago, if by
language we mean a method of communication for the whole species. The
Tower of Babel is a timeless symbol. Other species do possess a single
method of communication -- by signs, sounds or by secreting odours --
which is understood by all members of that species. When a St Bernard
meets a poodle they understand each other without needing an interpreter,
however different they look. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, is
split into some 3,000 language groups. Each language -- and each dialect
thereof -- acts as a cohesive force within the group and a divisive force
between groups. It is one of the reasons why the disruptive forces are
so much stronger than the cohesive forces in our history. Men show a
much greater variety in physical appearance and behaviour than any other
species (excepting the products of artificial breeding); and the gift
of language, instead of bridging over these differences, erects further
barriers and enhances the contrast. We have communication satellites
which can convey a message to the entire population of the planet, but
no lingua franca which would make it universally understood. It seems
odd that, except for a few valiant Esperantists, neither UNESCO nor any
international body has as yet discovered that the simplest way to promote
understanding would be to promote a language that is understood by all.
in which old brain and new brain, emotion and intellect, faith and reason,
were at loggerheads. On one side, the pale cast of rational thought,
of logic suspended on a thin thread all too easily broken; on the other,
the raging fury of passionately held irrational beliefs, reflected in
the holocausts of past and present history.
If neurophysiological evidence had not taught us the contrary, we would
have expected it to reveal an evolutionary process which gradually
transformed the primitive old brain into a more sophisticated instrument
-- as it transformed gill into lung, or the forelimb of the reptilian
ancestor into the bird's wing, the flipper of the whale, the hand of man.
But instead of transforming old brain into new, evolution superimposed a
new superior structure on an old one with partly overlapping functions,
and without providing the new brain with a clear-cut power of control
over the old.
To put it crudely: evolution has left a few screws loose between
the neocortex and the hypothalamus. MacLean has, coined the term
schizophysiology
for this endemic shortcoming in the human nervous
system. He defines it as
. . . a dichotomy in the function of the phylogenetically old andThe hypothesis that this type of schizophysiology is part of our genetic
new cortex that might account for differences between emotional
and intellectual behaviour. While our intellectual functions are
carried on in the newest and most highly developed part of the brain,
our affective behaviour continues to be dominated by a relatively
crude and primitive system, by archaic structures in the brain whose
fundamental pattern has undergone but little change in the whole
course of evolution from mouse to man. [6]
inheritance, built into the species as it were, could go a long way towards
explaining some of the pathological symptoms listed before. The chronic
conflict between rational thought and irrational beliefs, the resulting
paranoid streak in our history, the contrast between the growth-curves
of science and ethics, would at last become comprehensible and could be
expressed in physiological terms. And any condition which can be expressed
in physiological terms should ultimately be accessible to remedies --
as will be discussed later on. For the moment let us note that the origin
of the evolutionary blunder which gave rise to man's schizo-physiological
disposition appears to have been the rapid, quasi-brutal superimposition
(instead of transformation) of the neocortex on the ancestral structures
and the resulting insufficient coordination between the new brain and
the old, and inadequate control of the former over the latter.
In concluding this section, it should be emphasized once more that to the
student of evolution there is nothing improbable in the assumption that
man's native equipment, though superior to that of any animal species,
nevertheless contains some serious fault in the circuitry of that most
precious and delicate instrument, the nervous system. When the biologist
speaks of evolutionary 'blunders', he does not reproach evolution for
having failed to attain some theoretical ideal, but means something quite
simple and precise: some obvious deviation from Nature's own standards
of engineering efficiency, which deprives an organ of its effectiveness
-- like the monstrous antlers of the Irish elk, now defunct. Turtles
and beetles are well protected by their armour, but it makes them so
top-heavy that if in combat or by misadventure they fall on their back,
they cannot get up again, and starve to death -- a grotesque construction
fault which Kafka turned into a symbol of the human predicament.
But the greatest mistakes occurred in the evolution of the various types
of brain. Thus the invertebrates' brain evolved around the alimentary tube,
so that if the neural mass were to evolve and expand, the alimentary tube
would be more and more compressed (as happened to spiders and scorpions,
which can only pass liquids through their gullets and have become
blood-suckers). Gaskell, in
The Origin of Vertebrates
, commented:
At the time when vertebrates first appeared, the direction andAnd another great biologist, Wood Jones:
progress of variation in the Arthropoda was leading, owing to
the manner in which the brain was pierced by the oesophagus, to a
terrible dilemma -- either the capacity for taking in food without
sufficient intelligence to capture it, or intelligence sufficient
to capture food and no power to consume it. [7]
Here, then, is an end to the progress in brain building among theThe new start was made by the vertebrates. But one of the main divisions
invertebrates . . . The invertebrates made a fatal mistake when they
started to build their brains around the oesophagus. Their attempt to
develop big brains was a failure . . . Another start must be made. [8]
of the vertebrates, the Australian marsupials (who, unlike us placentals,
carry their unfinished newborn in pouches) again landed themselves in
a cul-de-sac. Their brain is lacking a vital component, the
corpus
callosum
-- a conspicuous nerve tract which, in placentals, connects
the right and left cerebral hemispheres.* Now recent brain research has
discovered a fundamental division of functions in the two hemispheres
which complement each other rather like Yin and Yang. Obviously the
two hemispheres are required to work together if the animal (or man)
is to derive the full benefit of their potentials. The absence of a
corpus callosum
thus signifies
inadequate coordination
between the two halves of the brain -- a phrase which has an ominously
familiar ring. It may be the principal reason why the evolution of the
marsupials -- though it produced many species which bear a striking
resemblance to their placental cousins -- finally got stuck on the
evolutionary ladder at the level of the koala bear.
* More precisely, the higher (non-olfactory) functional areas.I shall return to the fascinating and much neglected subject of the
marsupials later on. In the present context they and the arthropoda,
as well as other examples, may serve as cautionary tales, which make
it easier to accept the possibility that homo sapiens, too, might be
a victim of faulty brain design. We, thank God, have a solid corpus
callosum which integrates the right and left halves, horizontally; but
in the vertical direction, from the seat of conceptual thought to the
spongy depths of instinct and passion, all is not so well. The evidence
from the physiological laboratory, the tragic record of history on the
grand scale, and the trivial anomalies in our everyday behaviour, all
point towards the same conclusion.
5
Another approach to man's predicament starts from the fact that the human
infant has to endure a longer period of helplessness and total dependence
on its parents than the young of any other species. The cradle is a stricter
confinement than the kangaroo's pouch; one might speculate that this early
experience of dependence leaves its life-long mark, and is at least partly
responsible for man's willingness to submit to authority wielded
by individuals or groups, and his suggestibility by doctrines and moral
imperatives. Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
The first suggestion the hypnotist imposes on his subject is that
he should be open to the hypnotizer's suggestions. The subject is
being conditioned to become susceptible to conditioning. The helpless
infant is subjected to a similar process. It is turned into a willing
recipient of ready-made beliefs.* For the vast majority of mankind
throughout history, the system of beliefs which they accepted, for which
they were prepared to live and to die, was not of their own making or
choice; it was shoved down their throats by the hazards of birth.
Pro
patria mori dulce et decorum est
, whichever the
patria
into which the
stork happens to drop you. Critical reasoning played, if any, only a
secondary part in the process of adopting a faith, a code of ethics,
a
Weltanschauung
; of becoming a fervent Christian crusader, a fervent
Moslem engaged in Holy War, a Roundhead or a Cavalier. The continuous
disasters in man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity
and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause,
and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its
tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental
to the claims of self-preservation.
* Konrad Lorenz talks of 'imprinting', and puts the critical ageWe are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with
of receptivity just after puberty. [9] He does not seem to realize
that in man, unlike his geese, susceptibility for imprinting stretches
from the cradle to the grave.
our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for
fanatical devotion. Even a cursory glance at history should convince one
that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite
insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred
in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political
ideology, ad
majorem gloriam dei
. The emphasis is on unselfish.
Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are
not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king,
country or cause. Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical
rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons,
at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon in history.
At this point I must insert two brief polemical remarks:
Firstly, when Freud proclaimed
ex cathedra
that wars were caused by
pent-up aggressive instincts in search of an outlet, people tended to
believe him because it made them feel guilty, although he did not produce
a shred of historical or psychological evidence for his claim. Anybody who
has served in the ranks of an army can testify that aggressive feelings
towards the enemy hardly play a part in the dreary routines of waging war.
Soldiers do not hate. They are frightened, bored, sex-starved, homesick;
they fight with resignation, because they have no other choice, or with
enthusiasm for king and country, the true religion, the righteous cause --
moved not by hatred but by loyalty. To say it once more, man's tragedy
is not an excess of aggression, but an excess of devotion.
The second polemical remark concerns another theory which recently
became fashionable among anthropologists, purporting that the origin
of war is to be found in the instinctive urge of some animal species to
defend at all costs their own stretch of land or water -- the so-called
'territorial imperative'. It seems to me no more convincing than Freud's
hypothesis. The wars of man, with rare exceptions, were not fought for
individual ownership of bits of space. The man who goes to war actually
leaves the home which he is supposed to defend, and does his shooting
far away from it; and what makes him do it is not the biological urge
to defend his personal acreage of farmland or meadows, but his devotion
to symbols derived from tribal lore, divine commandments and political
slogans. Wars are not fought for territory, but for words.
6
This brings us to the next item in our inventory of the possible causes
of the human predicament. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as
susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases.
And when there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over. It obeys its own
rules, which are different from the rules of conduct of individuals. When
a person identifies himself with a group, his reasoning faculties are
diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance or
positive feedback. The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and
by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer. This
is the infernal dialectic reflected in man's history of wars, persecution
and genocide. And the main catalyst of that transformation is the hypnotic
power of the word. The words of Adolf Hitler were the most powerful agents
of destruction at his time. Long before the printing press was invented,
the words of Allah's chosen Prophet unleashed an emotive chain-reaction
which shook the world from Central Asia to the Atlantic coast. Without
words there would be no poetry -- and no war. Language is the main factor
in our superiority over brother animal -- and, in view of its explosive
emotive potentials, a constant threat to survival.
This apparently paradoxical point is illustrated by recent field-observations
of Japanese monkey-societies which have revealed that different tribes of
a species may develop surprisingly different habits -- one might almost
say, different cultures. Some tribes have taken to washing potatoes in the
river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of
potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's
strange behaviour with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants
of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end
to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the
non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would
enable them to declare washing a divine commandment and eating unwashed
potatoes a deadly heresy.
Obviously the quickest way to abolish war would be to abolish language,
and Jesus seems to have been aware of this when he said: 'Let your
communication be Yea, yea, Nay, nay, for anything beyond that cometh from
the devil.' And in a sense mankind did renounce language long ago, if by
language we mean a method of communication for the whole species. The
Tower of Babel is a timeless symbol. Other species do possess a single
method of communication -- by signs, sounds or by secreting odours --
which is understood by all members of that species. When a St Bernard
meets a poodle they understand each other without needing an interpreter,
however different they look. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, is
split into some 3,000 language groups. Each language -- and each dialect
thereof -- acts as a cohesive force within the group and a divisive force
between groups. It is one of the reasons why the disruptive forces are
so much stronger than the cohesive forces in our history. Men show a
much greater variety in physical appearance and behaviour than any other
species (excepting the products of artificial breeding); and the gift
of language, instead of bridging over these differences, erects further
barriers and enhances the contrast. We have communication satellites
which can convey a message to the entire population of the planet, but
no lingua franca which would make it universally understood. It seems
odd that, except for a few valiant Esperantists, neither UNESCO nor any
international body has as yet discovered that the simplest way to promote
understanding would be to promote a language that is understood by all.
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