In last month’s installment I mentioned that The Jesus Conundrum is now available for purchase from the Internet (www.trafford.com; www.amazon.com; www.barnesandnoble.com ). Readers of this site who are personally acquainted with me, however, need not buy the book because I shall send them an autographed copy gratis. In case they have mislaid the e-mail address it is erodin@pol.net. Since the address is haunted by spam I would recommend that you list the subject as “Jesus Conundrum book” so that I do not accidentally delete your message. I shall also welcome your comments, questions and critiques of the book as well as aspects of the Hot Issues. They will be answered promptly unless I am out of town.

The title of this month’s installment comes actually from the Conclusions of the Jesus book where it was used in the context of the difficult commandment to “love” ones enemies. In addition, it follows on last month’s discussion of “The Humpty Dumpty Society” where I pointed out how words can be arrogated by someone without regard to the meaning as it is commonly understood. Since this is an important problem not only in the political-religious but even scientific sphere, I shall discuss it here in some more detail.

Let me start with science first because the misuse of language in that arena of “objective truth,” may not be obvious.  Yet, as mentioned on previous occasions, objective truth does not exist and since scientists are human beings, subjected to all their foibles, it should not be surprising that faulty thinking can arise even in the hallowed halls of academia. The one I am most familiar with in my professional work is in the field of epilepsy and I published a paper on it last year in the international literature. Although everybody knows the word “epilepsy,” it may come as a surprise that my colleagues cannot agree on its meaning and have, therefore, practically abolished it. There are several reasons for this state of affairs. In the 1950’s it was felt that the stigma which has characterized the illness is best removed by renaming the disease. Instead of “epilepsy” the words “convulsive disorders” became the scientific politically correct term. This change was not based on science, but on the assumption that the general public cannot stomach the truth.

Yet, “convulsive disorders” was a poor choice of words for two reasons. One was that not all patients who suffer from epileptic seizures “convulse.” The other reason was that epilepsy was then no longer regarded as a disease sui generis for which one can give a prognosis, but merely a symptom of a whole host of other brain disorders. Under these circumstances it is, of course, futile to look for a common underlying mechanism which might pertain to the great variety of most epileptic seizures. In view of the fact that a “convulsion” is not necessary for a diagnosis of epilepsy the term “convulsive disorders” has subsequently been dropped and replaced by “The Epilepsies” and/or “Epilepsy Syndromes.”

Although this is currently the official terminology in scientific circles it suffers from the same defect of mistaking the symptom–the epileptic seizure– for the underlying disease, the cause of which is in most instances unknown. This has very practical consequences as I have already pointed out in the 1960s in my book on The Prognosis of Patients with Epilepsy. If epilepsy is just a symptom of a whole host of other diseases, such as a cough, it would make no sense to look for a prognosis let alone search for a cause. This view was, however, the proverbial voice in the wilderness; the book was first criticized and then ignored. Last year was the 100^th anniversary of the International League Against Epilepsy, and this prompted me to review the world-wide progress that has been made in the understanding of the illness since 1909. The result was dismal. Although we know a great deal more about the electromagnetic mechanisms which are the concomitants of overt behavioral seizures, as well as their trigger, we still don’t know why these events occur in the brains of some people and not others; what leads to their episodic recurrence; why our anticonvulsant drugs are not more effective and why even surgery, where the supposed offending region of the brain is removed, frequently does not result in a complete cure. In these fundamental aspects we are still as ignorant as our colleagues were in 1909, when they first gathered in Budapest for their exchange of views.

By changing terminology from the singular of the word, epilepsy, to its plural we have imprisoned our minds, concentrated on the differences, instead of potential commonality, and thereby prevented progress in the understanding of fundamental aspects of the illness to the detriment of our patients. Fortunately, at long last, there are some epilepsy specialists who have again realized that a longitudinal approach, which looks at a given patient over a period of decades, is needed rather than the current cross-sectional one which labels a patient according to the prevalent seizure type at the time of the visit to the physician. “Epileptogenesis,” the process in brain structure and metabolism that underlies the propensity to recurrent seizures, is now pursued in a number of basic science laboratories. The term is correct and one can hope that genuine insights will be gained.

But what took us so long to see the obvious? We allowed ourselves to be misled by inappropriate terminology and suffered the consequences. This is a fact of life which pervades all areas of our society and I have used the scientific example first because it is least expected by the general public. This brings us to the next question: why do words, and subsequently language, have such a powerful influence on us? Since words are only symbols, which stand for thoughts, we need to be clear how thoughts are generated, translated into words and what we know in regard to their neurophysiologic concomitants. In the discussion of these questions I shall refer to the work of my friend and colleague emeritus Professor of Neurophysiology and former Director of the Neurophysiologic Institute of the University of Vienna, Professor Hellmuth Petsche, whom I have mentioned on past occasions and whose help I have acknowledged in some of my books.

But before doing so a few words of explanation are needed. Although Petsche and I have closely worked together only for somewhat over six months at the start of my training in neurology and psychiatry, because I came to the USA thereafter, I have always respected his integrity and carefulness. This is why we have stayed in contact ever since January of 1950 when we first met at what was then popularly called the Wagner Jauregg Klinik; the University Hospital for Psychiatric and Neurologic Diseases. The eponym was applied to honor its former director, Julius Ritter von Wagner Jauregg (1857-1940), who had received the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery that “general paresis of the insane,” also called “dementia paralytica,” a late stage of syphilis infection, which was highly prevalent and incurable at the time, could be successfully treated by inoculating the patient with malaria.

Petsche’s and my scientific interests, EEG and epilepsy, paralleled each other and I was able to prove in the late 1980s and 1990s, with improved technology, the validity of some of his early work of the 1960s, on what used to be called Petit Mal and has been renamed to absence seizures. In contrast to myself, who likes music but cannot play an instrument, he is a gifted cellist and pianist, which led him during the later years of his scientific career to investigate the electrical concomitants in the brain when an individual listens to music and how these processes differ in musicians from people like myself. His work was responsible for the “Mozart effect,” which had aroused considerable interest in the general public during the 1990s. This in turn brought up the problem of, “what is thinking” and the overlap of science with philosophy. It was in this area where our interests converged again and while I had stayed on the philosophical side, Petsche added his neurophysiological experimental work. With his colleagues Prof. Peter Rappelsberger and Prof. Helmut Pockberger he published a series of papers on the EEG concomitants of thinking, language, and differences beween gifted artists versus laypeople in the appreciation of music and the visual arts.

Before discussing Petsche’s and co-workers scientific conclusions let me start with some general aspects of thinking which differ markedly between people and depend on brain function and anatomy. These are intimately related because they are influenced not just by heredity. Early childhood experiences can also shape anatomy. Petsche and I can be used as examples of different types of thinking and how this might have come about, because we freely share our thoughts on this topic. His interest in philosophy and science resulted from a loving father who nurtured these aspects in him already at an early age, while his mother was a pianist and in his childhood they played Haydn symphonies together four handed. Anyone who has read War & Mayhem is aware that this was not the case in my situation. Music was absorbed by osmosis rather than practice and the interest in science and philosophy had a very practical grounding in the desire to find out why people do what they do, and at times treat each other in such a callous egotistical manner. Although we came from different routes and arrived at similar conclusions, our mode of thinking still differs. Mine is essentially verbal, while his is more inclined to pictures and musical elements. In addition, since his interests were aroused as part of childhood play he enjoys what one may call academic-theoretical philosophy as exemplified by Parmenides, Heraclites, Plato, Plotinus, Cusanus, Leibniz, Spinoza all the way up to Wittgenstein, Jaspers, Cassirer and Whitehead. My favorite philosophers on the other hand were Confucius, the Stoics, especially Epictetus, and the one whom I regard as their spiritual father: the Buddha. They appeal to my practical nature which had to adapt to adverse circumstances and provided rules of conduct that not only made sense to me but could be enacted. The connection between these two different types of thinking was, however, facilitated by our mutual admiration for Goethe who truly was a polymath and had the gift to express the most profound truths in poetic language. 

One can ascertain one’s own type of thinking by just closing one’s eyes in a quiet room and watching how a thought develops. This is an exceedingly healthy effort because it is the only way to get to know oneself, which aught to be one of the goals of our lives. When I do so in a relatively dark environment there is at first darkness with some inchoate shapes akin to fireflies. Thereafter comes some kind of a stirring and a snatch of a syllable or even a word, then comes the thought of a complete word which is, however, not yet spoken and eventually an inner spoken sentence. It is clear, therefore that on “automatic pilot” there is no will; there are just happenings, which can be observed. These verbal thoughts can be quite intrusive and prevent me at times from falling asleep. The cure is to force myself to dismiss a word as soon as it arrives and instead concentrate on a picture, sequences of pictures, which then lead to day-dreaming and sleep. This, however, requires effort and is voluntary rather than letting nature take its course. As Petsche wrote to me his initial shreds of thoughts (Gedankenfetzen) are picture fragments with some musical underpinnings, rather than words.  

These undertakings are not just idle musings. On the one hand, since they are play they are fun, and we can use all the fun we can get out of life, and on the other they can lead to an understanding how our individual mind works and how we can improve on its function. Let us stay with mind for a moment. If we are observant of what goes on inside of us, one notices that our thinking, unless directed towards immediate problem solving, is far from “logical” in the sense where one thought dictates the next one in a sequence which leads to the desired goal. There are always “cross associations” namely unwanted intrusions which deflect from the intent and it needs “will power” to return to one’s task.  This is, of course most obvious when we just let our brains have their way and under those circumstances thinking resembles a swarm of gnats (Mueckenschwarm) in sunlight, as Fritz Mauthner (German philosopher, 1849-1923, of whom I knew nothing until Petsche pointed me to him) has expressed it, or an anthill as is written  in Buddhist literature. Actually I prefer the anthill analogy because it carries the additional adjective of “burning anthill” to signify the passions of the human mind which frequently distract us from our goal. 

Another reason why I like the anthill picture is because one can observe the behavior of some members of this species in detail. When I am in the backyard in the summer ever so often an ant will appear from nowhere and crawl around. But it doesn’t just go steadily in a straight line. It does so for a little while then zigs to one side, zags to the other, goes backwards, forwards, subsequently revisits the same spot it had been before. This goes on until either I get tired of watching or it vanishes from sight. It then dawned on me that this is actually how my own thoughts zig-zag around, although there is also some thread that eventually pulls them back to what is supposed to be accomplished. This thread which brings order to chaos is, however, heavily influenced by emotional components, which remain unconscious and are not subject to the will. Nevertheless, they reflect themselves in how a given person perceives the world and reacts to it. A point to which I shall return later.  

For the question why we can’t do better in regard to the control of our minds we need first of all to look at our brains and their individuality. I shall now provide some aspects of Petsche’s scientific work which he has summarized in a book EEG and Thinking (H. Petsche and S.C. Etlinger. Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1998). The first fact we need to be aware of is that no two brains are alike in the external appearance of their folds (gyri and sulci) and these differ even more than facial features. The cortical folds are due to the fact that our nerve cells (neurons), their connections (fibers), and supporting structures (glia) require more room than can be accommodated within the fixed size of the skull. At birth the gyri and sulci are present in a somewhat rudimentary form while the mature appearance tends to occur during late puberty and early adulthood. During maturation our different life experiences find their reflection in the structure of the brain and in this manner: heredity, structure and function become interlinked to lead to the thinking patterns and their verbal as well as behavioral expressions of individuals

It has been estimated that the cortex (surface layers of the brain) contains about 10 billion neurons but obviously nobody has counted all of them and surprisingly enough even the word “billion” is ambiguous. The American “billion” is the European “milliard” which follows linguistically after millions and only a thousand milliards make a billion. The ten year projected trillion dollar deficit for the proposed health-care reform would amount to a billion in Europe. This is another example where we are using the same word for completely different concepts and expect to be understood.

Be that as it may; the next important aspect in regard to brain structure and function are the connections between all of these neurons, their fibers. These are vast and communication between widely separated areas not only of the cortex, but also its deeper structures (nuclei) and the cerebellum occurs within milliseconds. This is a fact which is not fully appreciated by the general public. We are currently seduced by pretty color pictures derived from functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) which promise us to find the precise location of various brain functions and emotions. We are even told that fMRI pictures can be used to detect lying. Our capitalist system immediately smelled money and special machines are already on the market to sniff out lies. What these people deliberately ignore is that fMRI measures only changes in blood flow rather than direct neuronal activity. It is true that increased neuronal activity leads to increased blood flow, which is measurable, but there are two problems. One is that for blood flow to increase takes time, usually 1-5 seconds. The other is that the blood flow changes are so small that they need to be amplified by several repetitions of the test procedure, which is not how ordinary thinking, including lying, proceeds. The time element is especially crucial because as mentioned above initial neuronal connections occur within 1-2 milliseconds and their complete elaboration (secondary and tertiary responses) usually takes no longer than up to 300 ms. While we can find what might be called centers of gravity for some specific brain functions it is erroneous to think that we, therefore, can find specific areas in the brain which underlie a given thought process.

Petsche and co-workers have established quite unequivocally by their EEG work in the 1980s (prior to the discovery of fMRI) that these “centers of gravity,” or to use another analogy “airline hubs,” exist for certain mental functions such as music or picture appreciation as well as reading and memorizing. It is these “hubs” which fMRI is able to demonstrate. But it cannot establish their degree of connectivity to other brain areas because that occurs in the millisecond domain. The EEG, and now also the magnetoencephalogram (MEG), can do so and with appropriate software, as well as financial support, is likely to supplant fMRI in the future. What Petsche and co-workers have already shown, is that when one looks not only at the “hubs” but at the degree and extent with which they connect to other brain areas one can not only distinguish between the previously mentioned mental functions but also show how the brains of artists, be they musicians or painters, behave differently from non-artists when they are confronted with the same piece of music or painting. Even aptitude for a given talent could be ascertained to some degree by statistically assessing increase and decrease of connectivity (coherence in specific frequency bands) and so can differences in the processing of language by skilled professional interpreters during translations.  

When one keeps all of these aspects in mind it is obvious there has to be a tremendous variety in individual thinking which is the reason why we never really will “know” another person. Our “knowledge” is based on observed conduct over a period of time and we assume that this will not vary appreciably in the future. If the person then were to commit an act which appears to have been “out of character,” but was really an expression of his inner self, we are astonished, disappointed or even hurt because our judgment had been proven wrong. The point is that we want others to conform to our notions as for instance an exasperated Prof. Higgins exclaimed in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a woman be like me!” It can’t happen; their brains are different from those of males as has also been demonstrated electroencephalographically. The answer to the problem is, therefore, first of all the recognition of these inherent differences and thereafter the development of respect and tolerance. These functions are not innate and even go to some extent against human nature which is for the most part egotistical. They need to be learned. These statements may be doubted, but just look at America’s conduct around the world. We want everybody to be like us and governed as a “liberal democracy” or at least by pliable dictators who take orders from Uncle Sam. 

What could or should be done about this state of affairs and how can tolerance be fostered? To answer this question we have to go back to words, their meaning and how they are put to together in a grammatical sequence to form language. We regard language as the highest achievement of the human race, which puts us above the world of the animals, but we forget one crucial fact of life. For every gain there has to be a loss. For us spoken and written language is our main means of communication, although “body language” may give us away when we are dissembling or lying. Animals communicate perfectly well among themselves and to some extent with us, without language apart from rudimentary sounds. Furthermore, we have forgotten, as mentioned above, that words are not things per se but only symbols which stand for either a concrete object or an abstract thought. The latter situation is even worse because we are piling one symbol on top of another. We completely disregard that abstract nouns, such as: truth, justice, democracy, as well as all the -isms are merely symbols sitting on top of other symbols created by our minds and Humpty Dumpty, my favorite example, can provide any meaning he likes to those. Yet, absurdly enough, these are the ostensible reasons over which wars are fought, including the current one on “terrorism.”  

When mankind developed language it opened the door to lies and they have haunted us ever since. In the December 1, 2009 installment I mentioned the 18^th century scientist Swedenborg and that I shall return to him at some other point. The reason why I do so now is that according to him angels, with whom he conversed on a daily basis during later years of his life, are inherently incapable of lying. Communication between themselves as well as us consists, according to Swedenborg, of direct thought transfer, telepathy. We may not believe Swedenborg’s writings because seeing angels and communicating with them is not a common experience of the human race, but if we could develop telepathy we might even get rid of wars because they require secrecy and dissembling words for their initiation.

Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if all our thoughts were immediately accessible to everybody else. At first there would be massive consternation but thereafter, if I am right, there might be hilarious laughter and relief with an amazed, “what you too?” I had an inkling of this sentiment right after the demise of the Nazi regime. A Jewish parent or grandparent had stamped one, literally on official papers, as a Mischling. This had serious adverse consequences and was, therefore, kept very quiet as long as possible by the person who carried that label. Since Mischlinge looked and behaved like everybody else and were not required to wear a distinctive mark they could blend into society at large simply by keeping their mouths shut and their thoughts to themselves. But when the war was over and Nazi rule was gone it was absolutely amazing how large this “silent minority” had actually been and the, “what you too?” led to a round of laughter.   

With the obvious disadvantage of words, as consequences of and symbols for thoughts, is there a way to escape from their constraints on our thinking or are we destined to remain their “prisoners?” Since we don’t have telepathy, we have to use words because even if we were to think in pictures or in music we would still have to express our feelings about them to others, verbally. What matters, therefore, is to understand what our words originally meant and subsequently use them wisely. For the first part looking at the etymology of a given word has been a considerable help for me because originally the word held meaning, even if it came from a different language, which may have become lost over the ages. This method was very useful in writing the Jesus book. Precision in expression is essential; otherwise we shall reside for ever in Humpty Land where we talk to ourselves rather than each other.

The wise use of words is our greatest challenge but my favorite philosopher, Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, has shown the way. He did not set out to found a religion that has to be believed in and he did not rely on miracles or supernatural intervention. He recognized that the mind, as expressed in words and deeds, is the reason for the misery human beings inflict upon each other and developed a method for controlling it which can be used by anyone who makes the effort. The noble path towards that goal starts with “right view.” I don’t know as yet the Sanskrit, or better yet the original Pali word, which has been translated into English not only as “view,” but also as “decision” and if a reader were to know it I would be grateful for the information. The German word is “rechte Erkenntnis [correct realization]” and by another author “rechter Glaube [correct belief, faith]. It is obvious that all of these translations have inadequacies but they also point to the difficulty inherent in all translations. Personally I prefer to think that the Enlightened One intended to advise the proper use of that deep stirring which precedes thought and is the groundswell from which all else arises: thought, speech, action, etc.. We cannot see this groundswell even in ourselves but only infer it from introspection and when it comes to others we have to rely on their words and conduct. Nevertheless we can infer it and I shall give a couple of examples.

During the years while I prepared and subsequently wrote The Moses Legacy I subscribed to Commentary which is the foremost conservative Jewish magazine in this country. I did so because I wanted to obtain authentic Jewish viewpoints rather than getting second-hand information. Two sentences from different authors, in different years, remained in memory. The first one was, “If I am not for myself, who is?” The context was in essence that the personal self and its needs should trump everything else. This struck me as the opposite of right view. As stated on another occasion I believe that: whatever you do for yourself, dies with yourself; what you do for others, lives in others. The second sentence was a headline, “The Virtue of Hate.” The author used it in defense of the policies of the State of Israel and was very eloquent in support of his thesis but hate hardly seems to be the proper vehicle to resolve serious international conflicts.

Thus, right view would consist of an outreach to others and provide help where help is needed. Right speech should then not only consist from abstention of gossip, lying and slander. It should also be precise, using words in their correct meaning and conform to the purpose of speech, namely, to effectively communicate ones thoughts to others without, however, insisting on having the last word. Communication has to be a two way street to be effective. Unfortunately this is rarely the case in today’s politicized environment as last week’s attempt at President Obama’s health-care summit has shown.

Finally, for the recognition of the prison we have built ourselves with words it is essential to keep in the forefront of our thoughts the differences between: dogma, opinion and truth. All of human “knowledge” falls somewhere on this spectrum and within it we either find our freedom or perpetuate our prison. This will be further discussed with contemporary examples in a subsequent issue.