The Sometimes Strange Science of Us – Jim Checkley – First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

January 27, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Imagine it is 2,500 years ago and you are a Greek with a question. This question has been bothering you for quite some time and you just can’t figure it out. So one day you decide to consult the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, one of the ancient world’s most intriguing and unusual establishments. For there at the ancient temple located beneath the shining rocks of Mount Parnassus, the God Apollo spoke through a Pythia, or human priestess, and offered inspiration and guidance to all who came.

Legends tell that Delphi and its environs had long been considered to have mystical powers. A few years ago I went to Australia for my 50th birthday and actually turned 50 while visiting Uluru, formerly know as Ayers Rock, the largest monolith in the world. I was nervous about going out into the middle of the desert to a giant sandstone monolith for such an auspicious occasion – ironically, I had always thought I’d go to Greece and turn 50 at the Parthenon but I’ve got to tell you, Uluru has a magic to it that has to be experienced and cannot be described. If Delphi was like Uluru, then I understand exactly why the ancient Greeks put an oracle there and why they thought the very land held special power.

When you arrive at Delphi, you approach the entrance to the temple and notice something carved into the wall, something that has come down to us as the best known of all the Delphic injunctions: in Greek it reads: GNOTHI SEAUTON, which we translate as “know thyself.” Some sources say that “know thyself” is the answer the Oracle gave to Chilon of Sparta who asked: “What is best for man?” It is, interestingly enough, the same advice that the Oracle in the 1999 movie The Matrix gave to Neo, only in the movie the phrase was written in Latin over the entrance to the Oracle’s kitchen. Times change, but the questions (and some of the answers), do not.

Now it seems self-evident that knowing yourself would be a good thing. But just what does it mean to “know thyself”? It is a question as old at the Delphic Oracle itself. Socrates said that it meant that “The unexamined life is not worth living,” that it was important on a daily basis to look inward to discover the true nature of our beings and to consciously make decisions about our lives and our dreams. In The Matrix, know thyself meant to know the essence of your inherent nature, which for Neo meant to know, the way we know we are in love, with every fiber of our beings, that he was the One, the savior of mankind. And when asked what he thought of the injunction “know thyself”, St. Augustine replied, “I suppose it is that the mind should reflect upon itself.”

Nowadays we call such self-reflection “metacognition,” the ability to think about your thoughts, to engage in self reflection, to introspect. This ability was for centuries thought the sole province of human beings, but animal research has challenged that old prejudice’some animals seem to have the ability to reflect upon their internal mental states, if only at a rudimentary level. That aside, while I think that knowing yourself certainly includes self-reflection, I think it is more than that. For modern science has shown us quite dramatically that we are more than just our conscious selves, and knowing oneself, truly knowing oneself, would include understanding all the layers of our beings, conscious, subconscious, and unconscious.

So let me suggest that simple – or even complex self reflection will not get you where you want to go. One thing that has become clear over the years is that we humans are not monolithic beings – we are not simply a conscious being that makes fully informed choices about life. We want to think we are, and we certainly behave as if we are, but modern research on the sometimes surprising science of us has revealed that often, our control is an illusion, and that there is something very powerful and very deep going on that we don’t even know about at a conscious level.

Research shows that our subconscious and unconscious selves play a big role in who we are, how we feel, and what we do. More fundamentally, new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful, and independent than previously thought. Generalized goals, like eating, mating, traveling, and the like, appear to be instigated by neural software programs that can be run by the subconscious whenever it, and not we, chooses.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale were able to alter people’s judgments of a stranger by handing those people a cup of coffee. It’s true. What happened was this: the subject of the experiment was handed either a hot cup of coffee or an iced latte in a social setting. Afterwards, the people who held the iced latte rated a hypothetical person they read about as being much colder, less social, and more selfish than did the students who held the hot coffee. As improbable and strange as this seems, this result is consistent with others that have poured forth over the last few years. For example, new studies show that people are more tidy if there is a tang of cleaning liquid in the air, and they are more prone to be highly competitive in their negotiations with one another if there is a leather briefcase at the end of a long table rather than an old, worn backpack, in which case they are more laid back.

Psychologists say that what is going on is a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells, and sounds can selectively activate goals and motives that people already have in their brains. What is going on is that the subconscious is running preexisting programs that strongly influence our choices and our behavior – all without us actually having any conscious awareness that we are being manipulated by our own brains.

These findings help to explain how we can be happy one minute, then for no apparent reason, unhappy the next. I’m sure everybody in here has experienced this phenomenon – you show up to a party feeling great, then, without apparent reason, you get depressed, turn sour, and want to get away. No amount of self-reflection can explain the change, but it could be that one of the women is wearing the same dress that your ex-girlfriend was wearing the night she tossed all your possessions onto the street or perhaps the smell of the house triggered repressed resentments about your childhood. You didn’t consciously realize any of it, but your subconscious did, and initiated a hard-wired program that actually changed your basic equilibrium.

I’m going to go a little further and say that I don’t think that self-reflection is enough to know thyself for yet another reason. No matter how hard we try, I don’t think it’s possible to get a true picture of who we are simply by looking inward. While it’s true that only we can see our deepest thoughts, our deepest desires, and our deepest motivations, one thing we simply cannot see is how others see us. We need more data, data that reflects the who that we are in the eyes of others. In short, to fully know ourselves, we need feedback on the self that others know and experience.

And thanks to the Internet, all of us can do something that the visitors to the Oracle at Delphi could not: While they could ask a god for advice, we can Google ourselves. How many of you have Googled yourself? According to a Pew Research Study, by the end of 2007, about half of all Americans have come a little closer to knowing themselves, at least as others see them, by Googling themselves. But whether one Googles oneself or simply listens to what others who know and care about you have to say, I don’t think we can get close to truly knowing who we are without input from outside of ourselves. That perspective allows us, at the very least, to check on whether who we think we are matches with how we are perceived by others, and, if there is a discrepancy, as there often is, figure out what happened, and correct it.

Another thing about human beings is we are not static. We change as we grow older, more experienced, and, as Billy Joel might say, earn a few scars on our faces. I certainly don’t think I am the same person I was in my early twenties, before my experience with advanced Hodgkin’s disease and all that went with it. I have a sense of continuity, certainly, but deep inside I know that I have changed at a very fundamental level, a conclusion that has been confirmed by many of those closest to me over the years.

While these assertions may seem to run counter to the strong current in our culture that we each have an essence that is eternal and at some fundamental level, unchanging, recent findings in neuroscience and neuropsychology tend to support my experience. I do not dispute that we are born with certain aspects of ourselves hardwired. Nor do I dispute that this hard wiring is sometimes quite difficult to change. Nonetheless, research is showing that while older brains may be less efficient than younger brains, and may in fact, show signs of memory loss and the like, older brains may actually be wiser brains. It has to do with how information is accumulated and processed, but the point is that for this and other reasons, our brains – and with them, us – change over time. So unlike some people who think it’s better to be consistent than right, I think it’s OK to change your mind because, in fact, your mind changes. We change. We become different people with different desires, different wants, different goals, different values. And keeping up with ourselves, not living in the past, is a big part of knowing ourselves.

Which brings me to the point that knowing thyself doesn’t just mean knowing and understanding one’s essence. It also means knowing our dreams, our abilities, our real virtues and even our frailties. It means knowing ourselves in all our aspects, including how we change over time, at least as well as we know the world, our jobs, and those around us. But this often isn’t the case. Just as we are generally good at helping somebody else figure things out, whether it be their love life, money situation, problems on the job, or whatever, we are often not so good at taking care of ourselves, and the same applies here. As I’ve gotten older I have realized just how much I was unaware about my younger self and I think many people have had the same experience and that some, some go almost all the way though life as complete strangers to themselves.

So does all this mean it’s not possible to fully know yourself? I think that’s a fair question. There are those who say that it’s not possible to understand oneself, that an accurate definition of self is impossible from an objective point of view. Others think that the exploding field of neuroscience – the study of the brain at an anatomical, but in particular, at the cellular and even molecular level – is the most hopeful candidate for providing scientific answers to the questions that have perplexed human beings for thousands of years, including who we are and what is our true nature.

Neuroscience is expanding at a fantastic pace. My son, TJ, who is doing the lay leading today, has his masters degree in neuroscience and so I have some idea of how far we have come since the old days of stone knives and bearskins when I was studying biochemistry in graduate school.

But you know, while I think neuroscience is going to be able to teach us a lot about what we are and how our brains work, I think it’s going to be less good at telling us who we are and how we should live. So while it is clear that we are comprised of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious beings, and that our feeling of total conscious control is something of an illusion, no matter what science says, no matter what the limitations, it is vital that we get to know ourselves to the best of our ability, and be honest and accepting of what we learn. If you insist on being ignorant or if you insist on being somebody else, then who will ever be you?

All of which brings me to William Shakespeare. Thought by many to be the world’s greatest playwright, Shakespeare’s greatest play may have been Hamlet. In Hamlet, Polonius is preparing his son Laertes for his travel abroad. Polonius directs his son to commit a “few precepts to memory”, the most famous of which is, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Much has been written about this quote, and I certainly am not going to do any literary exposition here. But I do think it’s interesting that Polonius assumes that Laertes knows himself, for how can one be true to oneself without first knowing oneself? Thus, before following Polonius? advice, we first must follow the advice of the Oracle at Delphi, something that is at best a daily exploration, and at worst, impossible. But leaving aside for the moment the very real issue of how do we know ourselves, what does it mean to be true to that self? What does it mean to be true to the self we know and understand today, who needs to get about with the task of living, and hopefully living well?

Well, the first thing we know is that Shakespeare was not trying to grant Laertes permission to behave however he wanted. If you are an axe murderer, it will not avail you to say you were simply being true to yourself. So that’s not what’s going on here. Unless we live in solitude, being true to oneself will always mean being true in the context of culture, society, and law. Thus, one of the most difficult aspects of being true to yourself is how to navigate in a complex society that presents us with scores of often complicated, difficult, and even ambiguous relationships.

And we do live in a complex society that demands much of us, and that, for almost all of us, requires some level of compromise. It is inevitable. So we tend to wear masks, masks that have the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, that are safe, that don’t rock the boat. Sometimes we wear them because we have to, one of those accommodations to reality that just has to be. But sometimes we wear them out of fear, and sometimes we wear them out of a lack of self-confidence. Those are the masks we need to work on, need to shed, if we are to live a truly authentic life of integrity.

Still, we are left with the difficult question of how to choose our path, when to fight and when to yield. There are many answers to this question, of course, but let me quote what Thomas Jefferson had to say: “In matters of style, swim with the current, in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” Looking back on the 1970s, I’m not sure I agree with Jefferson on matters of style, but I do certainly agree with him on matters of principle.

Which begs the question, of course, which principles? Well, if we are being true to ourselves, then the principles we are being true to are the principles we found within ourselves, while we were following the Delphic command to know thyself. You know, taken seriously, this position is a pretty radical one in our culture, one that sits at the core of what I understand it means to be a modern Unitarian Universalist and an adherent of liberal religion.

I’ve been coming to this church for 31 years, and have always believed that one of the important missions of this church is to help people get to know themselves, their real selves, and then assist them in being true to themselves as they live their lives and participate in our world. This is, I think, a very different mission from many other churches. In many other churches the mission is to convince you to distrust your humanity, to almost disavow it, in favor of revealed truth that comes from God, truth that is unchanging, that is to be accepted and obeyed. Our church, and all those like it, are very special places, are sanctuaries of humanity in the broadest sense of the word and I, for one, am grateful for them.

But did you know that some of the people in this church are among the most disliked people in America? It’s true. And I’m not talking this time about being gay or lesbian. According to a study conducted by sociologists at the University of Minnesota, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers are among the most disliked persons in America. They fell below Muslims, homosexuals, and recent immigrants in a poll that measured the respondents? view of whether and how much a number of different groups shared the respondents? vision of America and what it means to be an American. Unitarian Universalists, as free thinking adherents of liberal religion, and by that I mean us – you and me – we are not much liked or trusted by many in mainstream society, something it pays to know when you are out and about in the world.

Having noted that, we all know that no matter who you are, sometimes being true to oneself and one’s principles takes enormous courage and may even put you at risk of harm. It sometimes means having to stand against the majority, or your friends, or even your family. It means engaging in a regular pattern of behavior, and of making choices that are consistent with your espoused values and with the person you claim to be inside. It means having the courage of your convictions, and of being willing to put them out on the table, even when they are not popular. And I suggest to you that it all begins with knowing yourself, and then of accepting yourself, fully and completely, both the good and the bad, in order to be true to the good and change the bad.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that we are always alone in our lives and in our quest to be true to ourselves. Certainly, we have our friends, our family, we have this church, and we have a community of thought and feeling that goes back hundreds of years. All of that is enormously important.

And yet, we are a creedless religion that honors the individual conscious; which leads me to one of the scariest things about liberal religion and trying to know and be true to oneself.

There isn’t anyone else to blame.

When it’s up to you, when you are being true to yourself, then that’s all there is. This is another reason why living authentically, living the life of personal integrity, takes so much courage. Sometimes we’re all we’ve got.

And on this topic, it occurred to me that some Christians wear WWJD wristbands “What would Jesus do?” At first I thought we could wear WWED wristbands – you know, What would Emerson do?” Or even perhaps just get our own WWJD wristbands – only they would stand for What would Jefferson do? But ultimately I realized that none of these would be authentic, that if there was going to be a UU wristband it would have to read: WWID? What would I do?

Finally, there’s more to life than principles. There’s dreams, there’s goals, there’s fun. Yes, even tortured soul UUs get to have fun. But strange as it sounds, being true to your dreams, your goals, and your potential can sometimes be just as scary and intimidating as standing up for unpopular principles. Once we take off our blinders, once we see for real, we begin to understand just how much is possible in our lives and we wonder if we’re up to it. We look out at the vista of possibility and it can be overwhelming.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it this way: “There is nothing with which every person is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.” We talk about becoming the true beings that we are and then of being authentic and living lives of integrity, and it certainly sounds good, even exciting, but when it comes down to it, sometimes those prospects can be intimidating and scary. Sometimes it’s as if we are waiting for somebody to give us permission to be ourselves and pursue our dreams and our potential.

My message to you is don’t wait for anyone or anything to work on yourself and your dreams. You see, when we know ourselves, then we come into focus, our dreams become clearer, our path becomes straighter, and our sense of purpose and meaning grows until we feel such power and such of sense of belonging to and being right with the world, that as night follows day, we almost cannot help being true to ourselves.

So let me close today by suggesting this: I think there is a way to both know who you really are and at the same time, be true to who you are. And it’s not through ruminating, or self-reflecting, or taking classes, or any other inward looking activity. Ultimately, I think knowing yourself and being true to yourself is best accomplished simply by engaging fully in life and making choices and standing by them.

In the hit move Batman Begins, Rachel Dawes tells Bruce Wayne that it isn’t who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you. You are the choices you make and the actions you take. So if you want to know who you truly are, then put yourself out there, in situations that are challenging, that call for action, because then you’ll know. “There will be an inner voice that will tell you how you are doing.” You can sense it if you are honest with yourself and listen carefully.

So let me ask you to do something today, something we should do every day of our lives. Do something that is you. Do something that is true.

Presented July 27, 2008

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Revised for print.