Narcissism of small differences

In a post on AWAD there was a description of religion:

The word religion derives from Latin ligare (to tie or to bind, as in 'ligament'), but it best serves as a tool to divide people. My religion is better than yours. My god true, yours false. What, we have the same religion? No problem, my sect is better than yours.

The last line reminded me of a term that I had come across a few years ago- narcissism of small differences. I saw a great joke about it on the web:

I was walking across a bridge one sunny day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.'

'Why shouldn't I?' he asked.

'Well, there's so much to live for!'

'Like what?'

'Are you religious?'

He said: 'Yes.'

I said. 'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?'

'Christian.'

'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?''

'Protestant.'

'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?'

'Baptist.'

'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?'

'Baptist Church of God.'

'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?'

'Reformed Baptist Church of God.'

'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?'

He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.'

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

Social smile vs Spontaneous smile

I have great difficulty smiling politely but spontaneous laughter at a joke comes easily. This is true even in the situation I described in my last post. I had always wondered about this till I came across a passage in How the Mind Works:

Facial expressions are useful only if they are hard to fake. As a matter of fact, they are hard to fake. People don't really believe that the grinning flight attendant is happy to see them. That is because a social smile is formed with a different configuration of muscles from the genuine smile of pleasure. A social smile is executed by circuits in the cerebral cortex that are under voluntary control; a smile of pleasure is executed by circuits in the limbic system and other brain systems and is involuntary. Anger, fear, and sadness, too, recruit muscles that can't be controlled voluntarily, and the genuine expressions are hard to fake, though we can pantomime an approximation. Actors must simulate facial expressions for a living, but many cannot avoid a mannered look. Some great actors, like Laurence Olivier, are highly coordinated athletes who have doggedly learned to control every muscle. Others learn method acting, inspired by Konstantin Stanislavsky, in which actors make themselves feel an emotion by remembering or imagining a charged experience, and the expression pops on the face reflexively.

Probably this is what has happened: the stroke has affected my voluntary muscles making it difficult to produce a polite smile but since my involuntary muscles are working fine, spontaneous laughter is easily produced. I have used this Stanislavsky method for years without knowing why I had to do so. Often when I had to smile politely, I tried to think of some joke which will make me laugh and everyone will think I laughed because of what they had said.

You see the problem with this post, don't you? Now everyone who comes to meet me after reading this post will have a nagging doubt in his mind - Is this guy's laughter genuine or is he indulging in a bit of method acting? H'm, I can see some uncomfortable meetings ahead.

The strange case of the face and the brain

Sometimes my face refuses to follow orders from my brain. This usually happens after some exertion, like a bout of cough or prolonged laughter. Visitors may say that I look as if I might cry, leaving me bewildered. I can feel that my expression is not quite what I want it to be but I can't do anything about it. It is as if the messenger between the brain and the face is AWOL.

The impression that I am about to cry is accentuated by the fact that my natsultook'ah is not always a tear-free zone. Perhaps my stroke has weakened the muscles controlling my tear glands so my eyes tear up after some exertion like coughing or laughter. The nurse has to wipe my eyes often because I find it difficult to read due to the blur caused by the tears. Sometimes a new physiotherapist, on noticing the tears, will stop the exercise thinking that some movement was painful. The nurse will assure him that the tears have nothing to do with the movements.

In Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley describes the p53 molecule:

Let us take a closer look at the TP53 gene. It is 1,179 'letters' long, and encodes the recipe for a simple protein, p53, that is normally rapidly digested by other enzymes so that it has a half-life of only twenty minutes. In this state, p53 is inactive. But upon receipt of a signal, production of the protein increases rapidly and destruction of it almost ceases. Exactly what that signal is remains shrouded in mystery and confusion, but damage to DNA is part of it. Bits of broken DNA seem somehow to alert p53. Like a criminal task force or SWAT team, the molecule scrambles to action stations. What happens next is that p53 takes charge of the whole cell, like one of those characters played by Tommy Lee Jones or Harvey Keitel who arrives at the scene of an incident and says something like: 'FBI: we'll take over from here.'

In the scenario I described above, my face plays the role of Tommy Lee Jones and takes over the operations while my brain looks on helplessly like the local police chief. The only way I can rectify this is by sitting quietly for sometime. This conflict between the face and the brain reminds me of how a colleague used to describe his cross eyed boss- 'looking London seeing Tokyo'.

Strangling fig

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins describes strangling figs:

The story of the strangling figs is worth telling. The forest floor is a dark place, starved of solar energy. It is the goal of every tree in the forest to reach the open sky and the sun. Tree trunks are leaf-elevators, devices for lifting solar panels - leaves- above the shade of rival trees. Most trees are fated to die as saplings. Only when an adult tree in the immediate vicinity crashes down, overcome by gales and years, does a young sapling have its chance. At any one point in the forest, this lucky event may happen just once in a hundred years. When it does, there is a gold rush to the sun. All the saplings in the area, drawn from many species, enter a headlong race to be the one to fill the precious gap in the canopy.

But the strangling figs have discovered their own sinister short cut and their story would upstage the serpent of Genesis. Instead of waiting for an existing tree to die, they contrive the event. A strangling fig tree begins life as a climber. It wraps itself around an existing tree of another species and grows like a clematis or rambling rose. But, unlike a clematis, the strangling fig's tendrils continue to grow stouter and stronger. It relentlessly tightens its grip on the unfortunate host tree, preventing it growing and eventually achieving the botanical equivalent of throttling it to death. The fig tree has by now grown to a respectable height, and it easily wins the race to the patch of light vacated by the stifled tree. The banyan tree is a kind of strangling fig with an added, remarkable, feature. Having smothered its original host, it sends out aerial roots which, when they hit ground, become proper, absorbing roots but, above ground, serve as additional trunks. So the single tree becomes an entire wood which may be 1,,000 Feet in diameter and can provide shelter for a medium-sized covered market in India.

When someone mentions anything about MRI (even if it does not have anything to do with me) I am reminded of strangling figs. Thinking of lying in the narrow space inside an MRI machine makes me feel like the tree being smothered by a strangling fig.

Claustrophobia

Who would believe that so small a space could contain all the images of the universe? – Leonardo da Vinci, on the eye.

I was reading about the discovery of the Chauvet caves, which has wall paintings dated at about 32,000 years old, in Evolution : The Triumph of an Idea.

Chauvet's team followed a mule path through the oaks and boxtrees until they reached a cliff, and there they found a hole. The hole was barely big enough for them to stoop their way inside, and they soon found themselves in a downward-sloping passageway a few yards long. It might well have been a dead end, but among the rubble at the end of the passageway they felt a slight draft.

The three of them took turns pulling the rocks away from the passageway, lying on their stomachs, heads downward. Finally they cleared a way through, and Deschamps, the smallest of the three, wriggled her way forward 10 feet. She found that the passageway opened at its end. When she cast her flashlight ahead, the beam soared out into a giant gallery, its floor 30 feet below.

I suddenly felt nervous and my heart started racing. I felt as if I was trapped in a narrow passage, unable to see anybody or to wriggle out. The feeling was inexplicable because I had watched programmes on spelunking on TV without any problems. I think that it happened because I have become so reliant on my eyes to communicate that the thought of not being able to see anything made me nervous. Sometimes a cloth accidentally covers my eyes and I feel more helpless than a shorn Samson.

What you see is not the whole story

For a few years after the stroke people used to suggest that I be taken to some hospital where some doctor will cure me in a few months. When asked whether there was a bed with railings and adjustable upper half (which is required for giving feeding), we will be told not to worry about such small things. When asked if there are facilities for attenders to stay, we will be told that it can be arranged. When Jaya will wonder about where to leave Sujit, the refrain will be that it should not be a problem. For everything there will be some such vague answer. But as usual, the devil lies in the details and it will be for Jaya to worry about them.

I think watching me sitting relaxed in the front hall for an hour or two, they perhaps did not realise that Jaya and the nurse had to put in some hours of hard work to make me presentable. If I have to travel at 10 a.m., they will probably have to get up around 5 a.m. in order to get me ready. I myself will not have to do anything more taxing than lying quietly watching TV while I am being pulled this way and that (and getting worried about what all could go wrong).

Once Jaya had to attend her cousin's wedding. The nurse was on leave at the time and was to return on the morning of the wedding. Jaya decided that she will go for the wedding if the nurse returned otherwise she will skip it. One person said that she should not skip the wedding and that if the nurse doesn't return he will stay back. After all, he reasoned, it should not be too difficult to take care of me - I will just be lying on the bed watching TV and giving feeds is easy. Jaya asked him what he will do if I wanted to pass urine or motion. He uttered an 'Oh!' It was the first time it had occurred to him that such unpleasant things were involved. I could see his hitherto 'can do' expression becoming sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

Probably, after interacting with me for a brief while, it does not occur to some that looking after me may be a bit like what is often said about legislation and sausages- the outcome is more pleasant to contemplate than the process that went into making it .

My homebody disposition

Any suggestion that would require me to travel gives me a daymare. Occasionally, family members will ask me to accompany them to somebody's house. I will balk at all such suggestions but very occasionally I will succumb to the entreaties and agree to travel. Such instances would have caused Jeeves to observe, 'A somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, sir.' I would be beset by all sorts of anxieties - Would my gastrostomy leak and cause pain (as it sometimes does) making me want to lie down? Would I suddenly want to pass motion? would Jaya have to attend to some phone call leaving me with no means of communication?

People around me are always willing to help but it is not much use if they cannot understand what I am telling. Some famous neurologist whose name I forget said,'When I point look at where I point not at my finger'. Many people have the habit of looking at my face instead of looking at where I am looking with the result that they remain baffled about what I am indicating.

I think the biggest reason for my reluctance to travel is the perception of loss of control, however illusory, of my surroundings. In my room I know what is kept where, where the switches for the fan and lights are, etc. Folks at home can easily make out what I want . If I want to suddenly pass motion or urine, the appropriate steps can be taken immediately. This is not easy when I am out of my home. In Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Robert M. Sapolsky says:

Place two people in adjoining rooms, and expose both to intermittent noxious, loud noises; the person who has a button and believes that pressing it decreases the likelihood of more noise is less hypertensive. In one variant on this experiment, subjects with the button who did not bother to press it did just as well as those who actually pressed the button. Thus, the exercise of control is not critical; rather, it is the belief that you have it. An everyday example: airplanes are safer than cars, yet more of us are phobic about flying. Why? Because your average driver believes that he is a better-than-average driver, thus more in control. In an airplane, we have no control at all.

Another reason for my reluctance to roam the countryside is that I may not find the conversations gripping. I was not a social butterfly before my stroke so I am not likely to be a party animal now. An inability to speak is not the best aid for charming conviviality. I will keep thinking wistfully about how I could have spent the time reading something interesting. I will be relieved when I finally return home. By that time I will have a backache and a headache after inhaling all that smoke at traffic jams. (I am getting a bit long in the tooth, you know!) I am happiest when comfortably ensconced in my wheelchair in my cozy little room quietly poring over a book or perusing an interesting blog post.