“Present-day mental health practitioners have their heads firmly inserted in their asses
and generally need more help than they provide.”
— Kary Mullis (2022), Nobel chemist and inventor
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Where Intellect Shows
Bias, prejudice, beliefs, and preconceptions describe ideas that color our thoughts and resist alteration. It is the definition of structure that it provides a way to fit things together, and by adopting some structure we’re inclined to resist change for two reasons. One is that thinking takes work, not just energy but effort. And the other is that the ideas we stick to are the ideas we like, encourage, or that define us. We display these ideas in public and repeat them to ourselves. We develop our prejudices intentionally.
I play dual roles as a creative and as an engineer. I say “engineer” even though I’m not one because engineering is a paradigm for creating structures using existing rules. There are creative engineers but we don’t call them engineers because professional engineers are legally responsible for the integrity of their creations. To escape liability and criticism the creative engineer presents themself as an artist, and artists are allowed to do almost anything.
I have some experience with architecture, which is an endeavor that allows artistry in careful amounts. Some architects are creative either because they’re famous or foolish. The history of architecture is full of structures that fell down.
In the past, the creative architect appeared as an extreme personality willing to sacrifice structural integrity and their client’s resources. Computer aided design has made it easier to specify novel structures, while computer aided engineering has made it safer to build them. Consequently, creative architects now appear less crazy.
The Downside of Too Little Emotion
I’m experienced in theoretical physics which, as a field, is a paradigm of bias and preconceptions built on precedent. Its foundations are hard to follow and take a long time to learn. Physicists approach a new idea like stone masons approach a cantilever: with suspicion and disbelief. Over one hundred years ago Max Planck said, “science advances one funeral at a time.” Research has shown this to be correct (Chawla 2019).
Planck’s comment came during a period of greater revolution in physics than is occurring today, but physics remains rooted in structure. There’s little room for wild conjecture and emotion won’t get you far. Successful ideas are like fast-setting glue, and subsequent ideas rarely affect the foundation. Instead, new ideas and experiments are tied to old ideas, like body parts harvested from old graves.
Frankensteinian is an appropriate adjective to describe many modern theories, also called “semi-classical” or approximate. The challenge of physics is to accommodate new observations in old theories, thinking the old way with some refinements. In the foundations of quantum mechanics, where I work, many assertions are nonsense.
Peer review is meant to ensure quality but it also ensures conformity. It is expected that good ideas will prevail over objections, but new ideas lack foundation. New ideas are accepted only when they encourage the many and offend the few. Either that, or they make money.
What Are The Alternatives?
The obvious alternative is to have an open mind, which means applying the appropriate standards. But the simple act of questioning one’s beliefs is disconcerting. Violence in one form or another is often a defense against reconsideration. To have an open mind you must be attracted to something greater than what’s in your mind.
When compelled to think about something you don’t want to think about, you won’t want to do it. Your mind creates a kind of deafness that derails your focus and distracts your thoughts. This emotional force prevents overly intellectual people from thinking effectively. Those people who have trouble managing their emotions can’t think clearly when annoyed.
Some scientists accept religion using a double standard: one standard applies to the objects of science and the other applies to personal and social life. Those standards are sufficiently far apart to allow both to coexist, but when your double standard involves conflicts on the same basis, then there is struggle.
Fundamental conflicts can be resolved with a new standard or a new method—such as accepting new ideas and alternative opinions. The trouble comes when nonsense becomes doctrine enshrined in books, repeated by luminaries, sold by marketeers, and excused by confusing jargon. Scientists are not the only ones who do not like their doctrines threatened.
Humor and Disrespect
Artists like revolution, dramatists love conflict, and humorists will make a joke out of anything. Scientists are famously lacking in drama and humor but, because of this, appreciate these as long as no one is offended. It’s like congregationalists who encourage humor but discourage dirty jokes.
Richard Feynman was a performer. Steve Weinberg amused his audience by singing an equation to the tune of a nursery rhyme. My friend gave a physics lecture on twister theory in which a dancer tied the audience in yarn. I recall a lecture on lattice gauge theory where Ted drew pictures of vegetables, called it lettuce gauge theory, and everybody thought it was funny. This was childish humor for fragile egos.
I sat in the front row of a lecture next to the most senior physicist in the department—a crime in itself—wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m with stupid” with a picture of a finger pointing at him. No one said anything, but he later voted to have me thrown out of the department. That was the funniest thing I ever did, and we hated each other.
You might object that my behavior was inappropriate, but that is my point. If alternative behavior is inappropriate, than how likely are you to accept change? In situations that are resistant to change, things change in the way described by punctuated equilibrium. In rigid fields like physics it might be better described by catastrophe theory.
The esteemed physicist John Wheeler, the “stupid” to whom my T-shirt pointed, is credited with motivating decades of exploration of what he called “the delayed choice double-slit experiment.” This has developed into what are now called quantum eraser experiments which test the limits of how particles behave like waves and vice versa.
My work bears on this phenomena so, in a sense, I’m standing on Wheeler’s shoulders. I prefer to think of myself as stepping on his head, but no matter. He could have been more helpful to me, but if he had helped me become a physicist I wouldn’t be doing this work. Hardly anyone works on these problems because they aren’t profitable, and I’m unusual in that I don’t care.
Wheeler was a politician. He took powerful institutional roles such as being Richard Nixon’s science advisor. His real contribution was the work he encouraged other people to do.
Group Think and Community Support
I work on these problems without anyone’s encouragement and, as a result, I’m not attached to what others believe. I’m not influenced by others because I’m not affiliated with any institution. This is an asset in some regard but, on the other hand, as a therapist I’m not sure physics problems are important. Important or not, these problems require a lot of effort to make any progress.
A person questioning the purpose of their life might be dealing with depression, not creatively looking for alternatives. I do question the point of pursuing problems of this sort, but I cannot take physics too seriously. If you hope to help other people resolve their conflicts, just how motivated are you?
Being creative has always been a Devil’s Bargain: discover new ideas with little support, or engage community and produce what pleases them. My ex-wife only found community when she started singing about the Bible. She found she could sustain a community, but not a relationship. An aspiring physicist who works on problems the community does not support will quickly lose both their community and their job. Few people in any field are supported to do what they think is important. The danger of thinking too independently is having no community.
Can You Remain Committed If You’re Alone?
This applies to you too. Your attitudes about love, relationship, value, purpose, and even sanity are not really yours. You have been subtly trained throughout your life to think and act in ways that are consistent with the attitudes of others and the rhythms of social behavior. If you’re like most of us, you believe that the answers to your questions are to be found within the realm of accepted thinking.
The purpose of socialization is to create community cohesion and support, and psychology as a funded profession, survives on supporting this. I think that’s why the uber-creative Kerry Mullis deprecated modern mental health care.
People who step out of line are easy to identify by their actions as they don’t share common thoughts or feelings. This is a free and creative state of mind, but it’s also risky in every regard: economically, intellectually, and emotionally. Even free thinkers need to build a community for themselves, and they risk sacrificing their free thinking in doing so.
The greater purpose of counseling is not to restore clients to normalcy, it’s to support them in finding their creative selves. The whole purpose of normative psychotherapy is to restore clients to normal thought and behavior, to act and think in properly socialized ways. This is anti-growth and works against mental evolution. It creates the antithesis of mental health.
“Selectively pick a teacher… who has the personal power to bring you into altered states of awareness.” — Frederick Lenz, author and software designer
Illness and Opportunity
There are mental illnesses, although even they may best be seen as opportunities to be explored rather than problems to be removed. Underneath all the pomp and presentation there is the question of whether you love yourself.
Do you love who you are and all that you do? If you don’t, then you’ll need a crutch or coping strategy. You’ll need a community to endorse your ideas and tell you that you’re valuable. You see these communities all around us, growing out of every social activity. And while some value money, community service, or moral doctrine, all provide moral justifications for their members.
What you need, what we all need, is support for not belonging, for not needing hollow endorsement. What will it take for you to break out of your support group? Might that be depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, or illness? Real change requires a fundamental change of mind; it requires an altered state that is not intellectual.
When something starts blinking yellow on the dashboard of your life are you going to pull over, fix the problem, and continue onward, or are you going to realize that the warning is not about your vehicle but your mind?
“(Human beings) stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere — a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big empty hole which they’ll find at the end.” — Lame Deer (1973), Lakota Shaman
References
Chawla, D. S. (2019 Sep 12). “Science Really Does Advance One Funeral at a Time, Study Suggests.” Chemistry World. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time-study-suggests/3010961.article
Deer, L. (1973). Lame Deer, Seeker Of Visions: The Life Of A Sioux Medicine Man, Touchstone.
Mullis, K. (2000). Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, Vintage.
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