Our bodies and Our thoughts
The Cartesian divide between mind and body should be one of those ideas that belong more to the trash heap, than in our minds. In the decades since Descartes wrote about “cogito ergo sum”, we have made tremendous discoveries about the human brain, the body and the connections in between.
We still hold very high regard for Descartes today for proposing that empiricism and reason should be the basis for our thinking — rational thinking. From there we can draw a direct line to the Enlightenment, and the idea that reason should triumph over emotion. Descartes also thought that the mind was apart from the body, although there was a part of the brain that interacted with it. From Descartes we get the mind-body dualism that still hangs around us and still directs our thinking.
In this area, we can say we do know better now. Even if we still can’t get at the resolution to consciousness, we know how the brain works, in terms of the brain structure, and also at the molecular level in terms of the neurotransmitters. There is still a lot we don’t know, and there will be a lot of work still in figuring out.
We know today that the brain is comprised of regions that specialise in particular activities, and that when those regions are damaged, other areas of the brain can compensate for that. Norman Doidge wrote about this in The Brain that Changes Itself. The process is called neuroplasticity. We know now that learning a new language helps with the growing new neurons, and is a way to reduce the chances of getting cognitive impairment.
We know more about the brain’s neurochemistry. We know about dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin and cortisol. They aren’t the only hormones, but Simon Sinek did write about them in Leaders Eat Last and related them to human social behaviour and to leadership. Oxytocin is for bonding; cortisol is released when people feel stressed. Leadership is about making the group feel safe so that they can be united when facing an external threat. When leadership fails, people feel vulnerable and release cortisol, which over time, creates poor health.
John Coates, a trader-turned-neuroscientist studied the effects of stress on the body, and notes how stress can be a good thing, but over a prolonged period is also stressed. I highly recommend Coates’s The Hour Between Dog and Wolf. Coates also writes about testosterone, the other hormone that seems to encourage overconfidence and leads to risk taking. All these hormones had their use in earlier times of humanity’s history — in our time these hormones can be out of whack with modernity.
Coates also wrote about something quite cool to me. Gut feeling is real. There is the enteric nervous system — like the central nervous system (the brain) and the spinal cord. The enteric nervous system is near the gut, and there is a nerve that goes straight from the gut to the brain. That nerve is the vagus nerve, and it also helps with regulating the heartbeat. The vagus nerve is activated during meditation. So when you meditate, you are also activating the vagus nerve, and controlling the heart rate.
We are creatures of embodied cognition. We think and feel and be at the same time. Rather than think of ourselves as disembodied brains in vats, we ought to celebrate our full visceral and emotional and our cognitive selves. Let’s deal with our messy selves, and start where we are, rather than flailing at the impossible visions we keep seeing.
