Le Dernier Cri

I recently read about a study that examined how the brain responds to nonsense. Two researchers read Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” to a group of college students and then administered a number of tests, with the conclusion that after exposure to something that makes very little sense, the brain demonstrates a heightened ability to sense patterns or connections in other areas (mathematics, language, etc.). It’s interesting to note that this reaction isn’t a conscious decision, but rather what researchers term “implicit learning,” or “knowledge gained without awareness.” (You can read about the study HERE: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?th&emc=th). The results seemingly indicate that the brain is hard-wired to find meaning in the world; if it can’t make sense of one scenario, it steps up its capacity and puts extra energy and focus into finding it elsewhere. In short, nonsense makes us smarter.

It’s ironic that, albeit indirectly, things without meaning play a role in giving our lives more meaning. But in this world rife with nonsense, I’m seeing lots of opportunities to enhance my mental acuity. I can watch reality TV and surf YouTube. I can benefit from the encounters with the man at the train station (and the many like him) who shouts ”Terrorists and Thugs!” at random intervals and then reminds me that he doesn’t need to date to get married. I can admit that there might be something to gain after all from listening to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. And when I said I was a wiser person for frequenting the KSL chat board, I had no idea just how true that was.

Of course, one of the finest sources of nonsense in the last decade came from the Bush administration—a prolific source of “implicit learning” particularly in its approach to science—and no tribute to nonsense would be complete without proper acknowledgment of such. I dug up an NYT article from several years ago that highlights some of the finest nonsense lobbyists can buy.

This article (”Protocol is Cited in Limiting Scientists’ Talks on Climate”; Felicity Barringer, 3/9/07) discusses how Fish and Wildlife Service employees attending international meetings on the Arctic were prohibited from talking about climate change, polar bears, or sea ice (officials said it was simply a matter of “diplomatic protocol” in sticking to the agreed-on agenda). One of these employees, an expert on polar bears, “was invited by the World Wildlife Fund to help advise villagers along the Siberian coast on avoiding encounters with the bears.” The problem requiring his advice, as stated by the article, was this:

“With increasing frequency, polar bears are being found near the villages of the Chukchi in part because their migrations have shifted as warming trends alter the sea ice.” 

Uh oh: the perfect storm. I’m very curious to know how he responded to that (but as far as we know, by the time he got the memo—doctored into accordance with diplomatic protocol—it simply said: ”With increasing frequency, villages of the Chukchi have shifted their migrations. Please advise.”).

The article also noted that “top-down control of government scientists’ discussions of climate change heated up as an issue last year, after appointees at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration kept journalists from interviewing climate scientists and discouraged news releases on global warming.” Scientists could speak about science and policy “as long as they did not say they spoke for the agency.”

Because apparently, the agency did not speak for science.

With that kind of nonsense, I’m surprised it didn’t make geniuses of us all. Then again, after 8 years of “compassionate conservatism,” we were smart enough to know that we needed Change. Some nonsense we can do without. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.