Books like The Patterning Instinct, which I’m listening to on my morning walks, remove us beyond our usual patterns of thinking; instead of being preoccupied by more trivial concerns like the need to move Hubzilla to a new server, we get to thinking about how humans developed language, or the subversive meaning of the myth of Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu‘s domestication after being wooed by the harlot Shamhat.
And according to Lent, it is the restriction in our patterns of cognition that conditions our brains in the first place. Infants’ brains have enormous elasticity and the ability to learn multiple languages because their synapses have not yet begun to assemble themselves into established patterns; strengthening some, while weakening others. He compares this to humans finding their way through a savannah or cornfield. In the beginning we will stumble through the tall grass, seeking the easiest route through. The more often we or others cross the field, the more likely that established paths will begin to emerge and that we then automatically follow. It’s still possible to find new routes across, the field, but we will tend not to do so because it’s more troublesome to do so.
The lesson in the Enkidu myth is that in taming our wild ways in return for material comforts we gain something, but we also lose something. By guiding our synapses to favour one pattern of cognition, and falling into one pattern of behaviour, we facilitate our easy passage through life. We curb our wanton ways, get a good education, find a successful career, make friends and influence people, or whatever.
But, to the extent that we restrict ourselves to the established patterns, it becomes difficult to break out into new directions; or see things differently. Our brains begin to lose their elasticity and our beliefs become more rigid. It’s a little like the sign in my dentist’s office: “Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.” This is also why some old guys, who should know better, go out and buy sports cars, and why older people return to college for new degrees. They want to show they’ve still got a little spunk left in them.
But rather than battle nature and the process of aging, there may be wiser options than buying a Ferrari or adding new diplomas to the wall of a home office that no one will ever bother to look at.
While it may have been important to hone our skills and demonstrate our virtues while we were younger; to buy the clothes and acquire the values that determine that we belong to this group and not the other reviled group; or to have all the right gear and a beautiful lustworthy well-furnished home, after a certain point these become no longer necessary for our sense of well-being.
The process of enculturation that is characteristic of youth having run its course, there comes a time to ease up. When the old battles are no longer worth fighting, we can concentrate on what seems more important. Having grown aware that there are many different approaches to living, that people in one country do things quite differently to those in another, that the firm beliefs and closely guarded norms of one generation transition to completely other values and patterns in the next, we can look with amusement or equanimity on the many different ways we can run a country and live our lives.
The wildness that we lost by training our minds and behaviour into a cultural straitjacket can be regained, not through a struggle, but simply by shrugging off the mantle of care: we no longer need to worry about what the world thinks of us. Material comforts begin to seem like encumbrances; we wonder why we needed them in the first place and find ourselves to be happier with less. Like a child, or the Little Prince, we begin to marvel about the matters with which people around us obsess. The world becomes newly strange, when seen through eyes of one who is not caught up in the dramas and pageants that pass for quotidian reality. The emperor has no clothes.
I wonder what happens to the synapses of a brain that, having been molded by established patterns of thinking, begins to relinquish the filter of its pre-conceptions, mental formations, prejudices, biases and conditioning?