The cognitive enhancement fallacy

As the founder of a company who develops and sells Nootropics, it has been difficult to navigate a recent perspective shattering realisation that challenges a core belief I have around the concept of (supposed) ‘smart drugs’.

Background

For those new to this world, Nootropics, aka ‘smart drugs’ are compounds that can improve several cognitive functions in the brain, such as concentration, alertness, memory, motivation and executive functioning in general.

The word Nootropic is the sum of two Ancient Greek words: Nous (mind) and Trepein (to bend). This term was coined in 1972 by Romanian Psychologist Corneliu E. Giurega.

Put simply, the notion of cognitive enhancement is being able to improve ones cognitive abilities in order to perform better and more productively.

But what if, in reality, this fundamental notion is flawed?

A new perspective

In early 2016, a customer, our now medical advisor and good friend Dr. Jack reached out to me to talk about our product, which eventuated into a profound realisation. After meeting him in the courtyard at Melbourne University, it did not take long for him to challenge my belief system around our product.

In short, he stated that by virtue of making working professionals more productive at their jobs [who make up over 90% of our customer base], we are essentially ‘making society better slaves’.

The implication being that most people in society are living a lie, working a job they hate for a boss and company they despise, to pay off the debts they accumulated from the consumeristic beliefs they have been indoctrinated by, all to fulfil a false narrative of a life without meaning.

Not only does this effect people on a personal and micro level, but on a societal scale too, as the larger implication is that our company is perpetuating and supporting all of these large, soulless organisations out there (who employ our customers), that are not trying to make the world any better, and rather have financial gain as their prime directive.

We are essentially helping make society more productive robots, which is the opposite of what I started our company to do.

This was a perspective I never considered, nor an insight I was prepared to accept without extreme resistance given the nature of our company. After much debate, I blocked it out of my mind for the year that proceeded, as my mindset at the time was heavily invested in generating and raising capital.

Oh, the irony.

An awakening

After 18 months had passed, my conversation with Jack came up during a psychedelic experience — a new area of the mind I had been avidly exploring.

This was a time when I was battling severe and debilitating depression, with suicidal thoughts ruminating through my mind daily. A time when my prior feeling of meaning, passion and motivation was nebulous at best.

I was without hope. I just could not understand why I felt this way, until the answers came to me in a flood of aha moments that amounted to a dozen A4 pages of insights—back-to-back—as if I opened a portal into the land of answers, a channel into a deeper frequency of my mind.

I suppose ye olde expression of ‘Ask and you shall receive’ has some merit.

It was at this moment deep into the night, sitting at the end of a pier, listening to the ocean waves in an altered state of conciousness that I understood my situation with clarity… and it was shocking.

My realisation was that for quite some time I had not been following my ‘personal legend’, a concept from Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. More specifically, my personal legend was not being manifested through the company I had started, which was both making me extremely depressed and preventing any motivation whatsoever to be applied to the venture, as I was not in alignment with what we were doing anymore, or ever period.

The deeply disturbing and beyond ironic realisation that proceeded was the fact I had gotten myself into such a position by being a consumer of the very potion our company had created, a supposed cognitive enhancing supplement that resulted in the opposite.

At the time, I was such a heavy user of our product, several other Nootropics and harder stimulants such as Modafinil and Ritalin that I forced myself into a productive mode all the time, a mode with which I was able to get into deep states of flow and smash out work for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for seven years straight between 16 and 23 years of age, on a journey alongside several startups and now running my own company.

I was, in fact, the archetypal ‘slave of the system’ Jack spoke of, mindlessly pursuing outcomes that I was not aligned with, which led me down a path close to the edge of my own destruction.

I knew it in my heart that things had to change if I were to get back onto the right path… a path of authenticity that I truly believed in.

True cognitive enhancement

Through this personal and professional journey, I have arrived at a more holistic perspective on the topic of cognitive enhancement than I once had, by synthesising two core concepts.

My current understanding is that true cognitive enhancement is the symbiotic relationship between ones level of consciousness and ones executive functioning. That one ought to begin with the former before the latter and maintain a duality from there, otherwise negative consequences will ensue, which can only result in a null outcome.

The simplest way I could think of visualising this is with a venn diagram.

What also seems apparent is that this concept needs to be looked at from a different point of reference too—other than a simple symbiotic relationship—and additionally one that requires balance on a spectrum.

The reason being is that residing on the extreme ends of the spectrum perpetually will get one nowhere, hence why balance is so important.

If we dig a little deeper, we can see that each part of this overall system has unique characteristics that rely on one another to function.

Consciousness can be seen as the ‘software of the mind’, whilst executive functioning can be seen as the ‘hardware of the mind’.

Consciousness is all about awareness, creativity, intuition, openness, insight, meaning, self-actualisation, motivation, belief systems and generally speaking the ‘thinking’ side of our cognition.

Whereas executive functioning is all about the ‘doing’ side of our cognition, such as taking action, self-monitoring, memory recall, analytical and logical thought, alretness, concentration, attention and prioritisation, all of which drive forward and manifest the conscious side of things.

In a sense, we can draw a rough parallel between the concept of left vs right brain hemispheres being responsible for different modes of thinking—altered states of consciousness if you will—irrespective of the fact this concept is likely dated and far less accurate than once thought.

From my experience and observations in the literature, as far as I’m concerted issues arise when there’s an imbalance between these modes of cognition.

• When one is too focused on consciousness, they’re all theory and no action, never able to actually transform their thoughts into a tangible reality.
• When one is too focused on executive functioning, they’re all action and no purpose, able to get lots done (for a time, at least, until the depression kicks in) but unable to move in a meaningful direction.

However, true change comes when we harness the power of both modes simultaneously. When we seek a higher level of consciousness and self awareness that helps us understand the destinations we seek, whilst enhancing our executive functioning to the highest degree possible in order to accelerate and more effectively navigate the journey to said destinations.

So the next time you think about popping a mind altering substance, consider where you are on the spectrum and really question whether you’re balanced or not, and act accordingly from there.

Special thanks

Massive shout outs and thanks to Jack for inspiring this post and bringing about a new perspective, Adam for helping me understand the many cognitive concepts, Naomi for giving me a holistic understanding from several different reference points and Luke for helping me solidify and articulate it all (not to mention supporting me so much along this tough journey), as well as the many others who have contributed their thoughts many of times.

Peace out 😀

— John, Founder at Hapi.