The Human Tapestry
What is a CPU chip "for"? What does it "do"? If we held one in our hands, or examine the circuitry, we could learn a lot about the instruction set, but perhaps the thing we'd notice first was all those little legs that are obviously intended to plug the CPU into something else. The CPU doesn't make a lot of sense on its own.
We can say the same of a biological cell - a skin cell or brain cell. They have all the machinery of stand-alone eukaryotic (nucleated) cells but they quite obviously are built to participate with their neighbors in some kind of "tissue", which, in turn, is part of an organ which plays its part in the life of an organism, such as you and me.
Suppose we look at the human brain the same way.
The obvious conclusion is that humans exist and function as a part of a social "fabric". If we want to think of the "self" as a property of a sole human being, we must ignore the function of over half of the evolutionary newest part of the human brain (neocortex) and imagine that the rest of the brain somehow operates without the need for constant awareness of those around us.
What about the rest of the brain-the non-social parts? It seems that they are directed primarily toward two different but overlapping functions: maintenance of the body and interfacing with the physical world. In defining what it is to be human, it is easy to neglect these functions as well. We are not, as medieval theologians would claim, disembodied spirits inhabiting a puppet body. Our bodies are an integral part of what we are. Our bodies intrude themselves into the most abstract of our imagining with pain, pleasure, panic, lust, disgust "gut feelings" and "intuition", limiting the "rational" decisions we make every day.
We constantly monitor and act on the "real world", with major brain components dedicated to seeing what is around us, moving and manipulating. We automatically locate and orient ourselves in the world. We cannot perceive or even imagine the world without "tagging" objects as "relevant" in some way (everything from dog poop on the sidewalk to the shapely legs of prospective mates). Only with greatest effort can we imagine the world without us, or us without the world.
Taken together, this is a view of the human being as embedded in society, his body and the physical world. In one way, it's an obvious view - hardly worth stating. Examined more closely, it stands in radical opposition to the answers we have been given for thousands of years to the question, What am I?
Bound as we are to a dangerous world, fragile relationships to mortal beings and to a body that will eventually fail us, we can sum this up as a tragic view of the human condition. Yet there is some consolation in the fact that, for the most part, what we value most about ourselves is not bound to our mortal frame. Most of us are at least dimly aware that the fabric is more important than the threads that make it up. More than that: we all share the same fate. We can at least imagine that, at some point in the future, our fellow human beings will come to understand what and who we are. The fabric can become dazzlingly beautiful and deeply wise, not ugly, shredded and stupid as it is has been for all of human history so far.
We can say the same of a biological cell - a skin cell or brain cell. They have all the machinery of stand-alone eukaryotic (nucleated) cells but they quite obviously are built to participate with their neighbors in some kind of "tissue", which, in turn, is part of an organ which plays its part in the life of an organism, such as you and me.
Suppose we look at the human brain the same way.
- 1/3 of cortex devoted to vision - massive tie-in to the universe, especially the electromagnetic spectrum
- Massive parts of the cortex are devoted to a wide range of special functions relating to our ability to function in groups of humans:
- Speech centers
- Face recognition
- "Theory of mind"
- Social emotions: lust, shame, love, care for offspring
- The prefrontal cortex: the "decider" - is where all that is brought together but again, parts of that seem to specialize in human interaction - deciding what to do in social situations. Our "rational" decisions are also heavily influenced by emotional feelings, without which our decisions become autistic or even sociopathic.
- Fully functional "engine room" in the midbrain, not so different from the midbrain of other mammals, but deeply connected to forebrain, which inhibits, modifies and tailors choices, actions to the needs of a human being in context of society
- Even the cerebellum, which helps us maintain a walking pace and rhythm without thinking about it is co-opted to make humans love rhythm and dance. We see this in all human societies and even in the perverse pleasure, we get from marching in step with 1,000 others.
The obvious conclusion is that humans exist and function as a part of a social "fabric". If we want to think of the "self" as a property of a sole human being, we must ignore the function of over half of the evolutionary newest part of the human brain (neocortex) and imagine that the rest of the brain somehow operates without the need for constant awareness of those around us.
What about the rest of the brain-the non-social parts? It seems that they are directed primarily toward two different but overlapping functions: maintenance of the body and interfacing with the physical world. In defining what it is to be human, it is easy to neglect these functions as well. We are not, as medieval theologians would claim, disembodied spirits inhabiting a puppet body. Our bodies are an integral part of what we are. Our bodies intrude themselves into the most abstract of our imagining with pain, pleasure, panic, lust, disgust "gut feelings" and "intuition", limiting the "rational" decisions we make every day.
We constantly monitor and act on the "real world", with major brain components dedicated to seeing what is around us, moving and manipulating. We automatically locate and orient ourselves in the world. We cannot perceive or even imagine the world without "tagging" objects as "relevant" in some way (everything from dog poop on the sidewalk to the shapely legs of prospective mates). Only with greatest effort can we imagine the world without us, or us without the world.
Taken together, this is a view of the human being as embedded in society, his body and the physical world. In one way, it's an obvious view - hardly worth stating. Examined more closely, it stands in radical opposition to the answers we have been given for thousands of years to the question, What am I?
Bound as we are to a dangerous world, fragile relationships to mortal beings and to a body that will eventually fail us, we can sum this up as a tragic view of the human condition. Yet there is some consolation in the fact that, for the most part, what we value most about ourselves is not bound to our mortal frame. Most of us are at least dimly aware that the fabric is more important than the threads that make it up. More than that: we all share the same fate. We can at least imagine that, at some point in the future, our fellow human beings will come to understand what and who we are. The fabric can become dazzlingly beautiful and deeply wise, not ugly, shredded and stupid as it is has been for all of human history so far.
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