Days 3 and 4: Why I wrote this book

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

-- Maya Angelou

A few days before New Years 2015, I was nonchalantly walking in Kota Kinabalu when I was suddenly struck by a random but very intense thought. "I don't belong anywhere." I remember that after this very intense and disturbing flash of absurdity, I went back to my backpacker hostel dorm room needing something to read. I don't quite recall why I chose to search for it, but I found online a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, and proceeded to devour it almost immediately. I saw myself in the protagonist, having travelled extensively, met many people, and experienced a large variety of intense existential experiences. But throughout this time, I had never really had a ground, felt fulfilled, or was able to decide where I was going, or who I was. Was I destined to become a boatman as well?

At the time, I was a term away from completing my civil engineering undergraduate degree, which I had pledged to be the thing that I would finally commit to. In my first undergraduate degree, in mathematics, I recall a professor who I had casually inquired of in terms of the expectations of a Masters degree telling me "your goal in a Masters should be to learn something about everything and everything about something." This statement has stuck with me ever since as the way I seem to approach life. Civil engineering was going to be that everything about something. I had been inspired to take it during my time living in Cape Town and taking in the realities of impoverished areas of Southern Africa. I was turning thirty years old. I had no money. I had no job. I had no plan. And yet my experiences since coming to South Africa and travelling first to India and back and then to neighbouring countries made me feel like I had delved into the "something about everything" part that it was time to move on.

I decided that in order to begin a career while also having the potential to give back, I could choose between law, civil engineering, or education. Regarding law, although my philosophy minor and Masters would give me a good foundation, I would have to wait at least another year to begin my studies because I would have to take the LSAT, get my results, and then apply. I didn't have that kind of time. Education didn't seem particularly interesting. I knew a number of teachers and the demands on them were ever-increasing, and not in a good way. Civil engineering allowed me to put my mathematics degree to good use while providing me with an interesting and creative career. I envisioned myself coming back a number of years later installing sewer systems and building houses in African slums and improving the quality of life for those who did not have.

And yet, it would turn out that I could not hold myself to that pledge. I had completed my civil engineering degree in three years and got a mention for doing so at convocation, passing up a PhD offer because I had no context for what actual engineering consisted of (I needed to finish as soon as possible, so I passed on the internship year) and felt I really needed to make some money. But there was also another factor. Anomie. The "disease of the infinite", according to Emile Durkheim. I had Ariadne's thread wrapped around my neck. If I committed everything to civil engineering, then I would not know what I would find by continuing to search. For reasons that I could not explain, I believed that settling and consolidating would preclude me from a future that was waiting just for me. And I had to see what that future consisted of.

Through a series of adventitious events, I got a job working for the northern regional government on an engineering mega project, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it paid me quite well. While in the job, I would think "if I could have a thousand different lives, it would be hard to top this one". And then disaster struck, though I didn't know it at the time. I met someone who made me an offer. And I took that offer, not because it was in my best interest, but because the events leading up to it was such a strange coincidence that I surmised "this is what I'm supposed to do next". Anomie strikes again.

My brain is not normal. Although a precise causal relationship to experiences in my life would be difficult to prove, the main culprit would appear to be the juvenile myoclonic epilepsy that I had experienced between the ages of about five (the first time I could recall the petit mal seizures) and twenty-two (the end of my grand mal seizures). Eventually, I gained enough self-awareness of my personality idiosyncrasies to wonder if there was not some correlation to these seizures. Although I had originally thought of my seizures as "just something that happened" and I grew out of, it stands to reason that experiencing a series of massive abnormal electrical surges in specific parts of one's brain may have a lasting effect.

And indeed, I came across the work of Norman Geschwind, who characterized a series of personality traits that seemed to be observed in a number of temporal lobe epilepsy patients. These traits consisted of i) hypergraphia (increased compulsion to write), ii) hyperreligiosity (a keen interest in religion, philosophy, and the 'big questions'), iii) atypical sexuality (substantially reduced or increased desire), iv) circumstantiality (the tendency to go on long tangents during conversations before returning to the main point, and v) an intense mental life (deepened cognitive emotional responses and the potential for long solitary pursuits). This was definitely me. More recently, I have come across an expanded set of eighteen characteristics referred to as the Bear-Fedio inventory, which expands on Norman Geschwind's work. Although all eighteen of those characteristics seemed to fit me at one time or another, I was particularly interested in two of them, namely a "sense of personal destiny" (those anomic decisions), and hypermoralism (the intense calculations of global right and wrong that seemed to guide who I wanted to be and how I was going to get there).

The original personality traits became even more significant when, a few years after completing my civil engineering degree, I had my first of several ecstatic seizures. In his article, "Ecstatic epilepsy: How seizures can be bliss", popular science journalist Anil Anansthaswamy speaks of the ecstatic seizures that Dostoevsky wrote about in his various works, including his personal diaries and letters, and The Idiot. Indeed, in some cases, Geschwind Syndrome and Dostoevsky Syndrome are used interchangeably. Thus, I not only had the personality traits, I also had the sudden euphoric manifestations. Ananthaswamy goes on to describe that researchers have suggested a central role that the insular cortex—a lobe in the cerebral cortex connecting the neocortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, and limbic system—plays in these ecstatic seizures, and how there is renewed interest in them due to a possible deeper connection to consciousness. Although this form of ecstatic epilepsy is rare, there is some speculation that it could have affected other historical figures such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent Van Gogh in addition to Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky himself speculated that similar episodes would explain the visions that Mohammed had of the angel on Mt. Hira at the age of forty.

Recently, I came across the work of neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, who argues that the two hemispheres actually represents two separate brains that make up our minds. He suggests that the left side is linear, methodical, and manipulative, and focused on immediate gratification and control. The right side, on the other hand, is responsible for our understanding of the bigger picture, including the social and historical relationships that contextualize our place in a complex and highly non-linear world. McGilchrist argues that the recurring emphasis on increasing competition and commodification and the chasing of individual wealth and power has resulted in an increasingly reductionist and mechanistic approach to reality and life, impoverishing our relationships to each other and the physical environment, our feelings of empathy, and our social acceptance of one another. Further delving into similar work on hemispheric lateralization by Elkhonon Goldberg suggested that the left hemisphere was associated with the familiar and existing, while the right was associated with what was new and novel. Although I understand that the brain is highly complex, this division of the subject not only seemed to describe so precisely the idiosyncratic nature of my behaviour and approach to the world, it also strongly reflected the behavioural distinctions of Geschwind Syndrome and implicated temporal lobe epilepsy as a causal mechanism for such noticeable cerebral asymmetry.

The idea of hemispheric lateralization is a topic of debate amongst neuroscientists. There is no doubt that such lateralization does occur, what is debated is the extent. Lateralization was initially suggested by Pierre Paul Broca, who, in 1865, published his observations about two patients who both had severe aphasia and, upon their deaths, were both found to have lesions in the same left frontal area of their brains. We now refer to the region of the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere (usually left) where language production is localized as Broca's area. More generally, verbal and visual memory tend to be localized on the dominant and non-dominant sides of the brain, respectively. As the topic of hemispheric lateralization will crop up repeatedly within this book (especially in the first chapter), the assumption will be that "left" and "dominant" are equivalent, though it is conceded that it is not clear to what extent functionality and localization are reflected in people who are right-dominant. This is a question I leave to the neuroscientists.

It is known that lateralization also occurs in extraordinary ways in the animal kingdom. For example, ants were tested for lateralization by separately training their left and right antennae to recognize a stimulus. It was found that those trained with the right antenna had a time-tested response to stimulus that was very strong at ten minutes, weaker after that, and non-existent at longer times. In contrast, those trained with the left antenna showed no response at ten minutes or even an hour. It was only the next day that a strong response was elicited. The researchers suggested that this was strong evidence that short-term memory was stored in the right hemisphere and long-term memory in the left. More to the point specific to this book, ecstatic seizures can mimic mania found in those with bipolar disorder. Indeed, I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as an explanation for my episodes. Research using fMRI suggests that those with bipolar depression have abnormal readings in the area of their right insular cortex, while those with unipolar depression do not. Given the centrality and connectivity of the insular cortex in the brain, it may be that "left-brained"as suggested by McGilchrist implies "dominated by the left insula", and "right-brained" by the right insula. Lateralization will be explored in more detail in the first chapter.

The Bible speaks of the notion of gaining the world, but losing one's soul. And this exemplifies the increasingly cutthroat social relations engendered by the continued deification of wealth and power. But what of the opposite? Is it possible to gain one's soul but lose the world? If so, then under the assumption of an "insular lateralization of values" one might suggest that there are two types of anomie, "left" anomie that strives for infinite power and resources while expecting the same approach from others, and "right" anomie that strives for the perfection of place, context, and authenticity of the self while prioritizing the same in others. The primary ideology of the former is dehumanization, while that of the latter is rehumanization. Indeed, it is reflective of our current society that dehumanization is a term that is fairly commonplace in socio-political discussions, while 'rehumanization' is suggested to be a spelling error.

* * * * *

To be or not to not-be, that is the question. To be is to establish an identity based on a direct recognition of one's context, needs, and desires with relation to the world and reality. I am going to be a doctor. Such an approach accords with McGilchrist's left-brain description. To not not-be is to construct one's identity through a process of elimination of what one does not want to be, a process that is highly non-linear and requires sufficient context of what exists outside and in relation to oneself, a more right-brained pursuit. Of course, it is seldom the case that one's decision is based entirely on one approach or the other. We are constantly weighing consequences and trade-offs between the predictability and stability of sameness and the novelty and potential for discovery of difference.

Yet the extent to which being and not not-being decide our identity is not individually determined but is itself dependent on external factors, namely the extent of our information. Before the advent of the internet, our identities were dominated by a desire to be because we had very limited information about what the "adult world" actually consisted of. We would largely develop an ideal of a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, for example, based on a general description and a few examples, and pursue a course that would maximize the likelihood that we would eventually assume that identity. With the internet, there is now an overwhelming number of highly nuanced information and examples about any professional career one might wish to pursue. The explosion of information implies that there is now a far greater likelihood that we will incorporate into the constructing of our identities the elimination of those that we don't want to be.

This book, then, is an exploration of right anomie, an extremal approach to constructing an identity through difference alone. Of course, constructing an identity by progressively eliminating alternatives until only one path remains cannot be a directly conscious strategy. In fact, as I have gained a greater awareness of my relationship to a world that has always felt strangely foreign to me via a combination of internal reflection, research, deduction, and pattern-matching on the one hand and the external consequences of my choices on the other, I have found it necessary to at times refer to my brain in the third person. That is, as my life goes on and the internal and external seem to become more separate and yet together, it increasingly feels like my brain has a mind of its own.

Why did I write this book? Because, as Iain McGilchrist puts it, the left sides of our brains are taking over our minds. As a society of individuals, we appear to be so committed to a direct, linear path of consumption, competition, manipulation, and unending growth (which is clearly not sustainable in a finite world of finite resources and finite space) that we don't seem to be able to stop and meaningfully ask ourselves "what are we, as a species, really trying to achieve here?" By presenting a progressive construction of the external from mind to life to world and finally to reality by a process of the elimination of contradiction, I hope to provide new insight to the reader that comes not from asking "who am I?" but rather "what is left over when I've exhausted what I am not?" In other words, our identities are fashioned by defining ourselves internally and being defined by the external world in demeanour and role. What happens if you possess a demeanour to let the external world define your role by exhaustive elimination, and discover retroactively through future events that the demeanour that led you down this path may also be beyond your control? To what extent is it "freedom" to feel completely free during your actions to decide the how and the what and of the why of what to eliminate only to deduce later that the whole process seemed predetermined? How did Arthur Schopenhauer feel about his life after freely writing his Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will in order to conclude that we were all determined?

Beyond constructing an identity, this exhaustive approach also applies to the way I internalize and organize information. I have an extremely difficult time memorizing discrete facts. During my academic lectures, I follow the lecture and predict where it is going to go. If the results are as I predicted, it would mean that the information was already organized and deducible from what I already know. If they are not, I ask as many questions as I need to in order to understand the flaws in my reasoning. Internally, it is like planning and building a city. Everything new should be connected to and implied by an existing constellation of information, which in turn should be able to be ascertained from what I have previously established as justified true belief through a combination of direct observation, appeal to a trusted authority, and / or logical non-contradiction. And this direct observation and appeal to authority includes four university degrees in four different disciplines (plus a fifth that was discontinued), life in many different cities in Canada (which itself is one of the most diverse countries in the world), travel to sixty countries, becoming friends with people from all walks of life, and reading extensively on as many topics as possible. Exhaustive. Anomie.

Further, in addition to what I have consciously learned in my life, there is also what I have come to understand by reflecting on my semi-conscious ecstatic states. In these instances, my brain literally does have a mind of its own. It is like a machine learning algorithm is making non-linear neuronal connections and leaps that I could not possibly suggest myself. For example, during my first ecstatic seizure, after a massive surge of electrical activity in the centre of my brain, I envisioned that reality was a shared joke between myself and my best friend, and once I revealed to the world that I had caught on, he would come through a black hole and high-five me and the game would be over. To the untrained mind, this comes across as absurd nonsense. But through understanding these seizures as a progressive semi-conscious process, looking at patterns in that process, and contextualizing it within how I understand my brain, I conclude that it is reflective of trying to connect the most distant and abstract entity (black holes) with the closest and most familiar entity (my best friend). From this, I surmise that this surge reflected some sort of extreme translation of information from the local and direct encoding of the left hemisphere to the distant and abstract encoding of the right hemisphere. I have no ground from which to say that I am correct, especially as this is a unique and wholly subjective experience. I only have sense-data, logic, and non-contradiction to go on while under the assumption that there is an underlying motivation for the brain to know itself by translating the physical, spatial, electrical motherboard governed by physics into the metaphysical, ethereal realm of thought through metaphor.

Carl Jung maintained (mythology, two brains)... [The Mythology of a Brain... let me read Memories, Dreams, Reflections and The Red Book and come back to this project.]