Immune To Reality By Professor Marc Cicchino On Human Experiences PDF

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Essay on "Immune to Reality" and how it relates to other pieces of literature....

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Amanda Scheuer Professor Marc Cicchino Expos 101 29 June 2017 Immune to Reality Making sense of core human experiences from a scientific perspective can shed light on the misunderstood aspects of such fundamental elements of life. There have been countless attempts at explaining the concepts of love, perception, and happiness through scientific and psychological lenses, which provide information regarding the biological and subconscious activity beneath the surface of human attitudes and behaviors. Barbara Fredrickson suggests in her essay titled “Love 2.0” that the currently accepted notion of love is inaccurate and that it is an experience not about emotions, but about the biological reactions of the brain, the hormone oxytocin, and the vagus nerve. Oliver Sacks wrote his essay, “The Mind’s Eye,” on the human ability to create mental visualizations even after losing their sense of sight, which indicates that neural plasticity plays a vital role in unique human perception. “Immune to Reality,” written by Daniel Gilbert, focuses on the inability for individuals to successfully predict and pursue their own happiness based on the hidden activity of the psychological immune system. Although there are many benefits to scientifically analyzing the human experience, the essays by Fredrickson, Sacks, and Gilbert demonstrate that there are risks to systematizing elements of life such as love, perception, and happiness. These authors offer a better understanding of the mind-brain relationship at the expense of human individuality, gratification, and meaningfulness of life’s

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experiences, which implies that individuals who rely exclusively on scientific explanations are bound to face these negative outcomes. Using science to systematically explain core human experiences may inform individuals about biological processes as well as the details of what happens behind the scenes of their behaviors and attitudes, but more importantly it takes away from precisely what makes them human. Making sense of the biology that explains how we endure love, perception, and happiness often involves misinterpreting information and overgeneralizing, which undermines the existence of individual differences in these life experiences. Applying facts to ambiguous situations and forcing rationalization is what Gilbert would call “cooking the facts,” (132) which he says humans tend to do to delude themselves into a more positive perspective, even if the situation is a negative one. He states that “The benefit of all this unconscious cookery is that it works, but the cost is that it makes us strangers to ourselves” (Gilbert 132); this means that self delusion for the sake of feeling better about a situation makes people question who they are and ultimately makes them feel worse because they are no longer being true to themselves. This “unconscious cookery” is demonstrated by Fredrickson’s application of science to a subjective life experience -- she “cooks the facts” (Gilbert 131) about biological reactions to love and implies that the emotional aspects are irrelevant by encouraging readers to forget about them. Because her version of love is based on biology rather than feelings and attraction, there is no room for individuality; there is only increased activity in the brain, hormones, and vagus nerve, which she claims, “are primary players in love’s biology” (Fredrickson 109). Fredrickson proposes that preconceived notions of love such as those that, “reflect your own unique life history, with its interpersonal triumphs and scars, [and] lessons about intimacy” (108),

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deceivingly take away from the scientific understanding of love, but Gilbert would argue the opposite. He would say that her “unconscious cookery” of love’s biology “makes us strangers to ourselves” because it ignores every “unique” and “interpersonal” element; her essay disregards individuals’ personalities, attitudes, and perspectives in favor of science. Similarly, scientific explanations of perception or sensory deprivation often suggest that perceptual experiences do not differ between individuals. Sacks explains that, of the “four memoirs, all strikingly different in their depictions of the visual experiences of blinded people” (335), none agreed with the scientific explanation of “a typical blind experience” (336). Sacks’ essay implies that neural plasticity combined with past experiences allow humans to endure unique perceptual activity, particularly when it comes to mental visualization, which differs from the systematized idea of the “typical blind” perceptual understanding. Gilbert emphasizes that “If we see ourselves cooking the facts … then the jig is up and self-deluded joins jilted in our list of pitiful qualities” (132). Much like with Fredrickson, Gilbert would argue this by saying that “cooking the facts” about love or perception is bound to make people feel like strangers to themselves because they are not living through an authentic human experience as it happens, but are instead fabricating their idea of the experience based on scientific explanations. The desire for a scientific understanding of concepts like love, perception, and happiness risks diminishing one’s satisfaction of those experiences because it enforces a systematic and functional explanation of personal life events that should be based on individual experience rather than fact. According to Fredrickson, love is not a subjective or emotional experience; she claims that it is not “exclusive, lasting, [or] unconditional” (108), but rather she describes it “as a system” (109). Her systematic version of love truthfully explains the biological reactions, but by

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boiling love down exclusively to science, Fredrickson disregards feelings of fulfillment and enjoyment in romantic relationships, family, and friends. Gilbert’s essay contradicts her perspective of a biology-based love by implying that core human experiences should be taken as they are to ensure maximum satisfaction. He indicates that “deliberate attempts to generate positive views … contain the seeds of their own destruction” (Gilbert 131) and that “Uncertainty can preserve and prolong our happiness (142). In other words, trying to alter or forge an experience will ruin the experience altogether. While Fredrickson would “cook the facts” by saying that her explanation of love can allow individuals to “find love countless times each day” (Fredrickson 108), Sacks would do the same by saying that his understanding of perception “can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes” (Sacks 345). Gilbert would counter Sacks’ essay, arguing that he is only lessening the gratification of perceptual experiences by rationalizing the scientific explanations of them. Likewise, Gilbert would assert that Fredrickson is “cooking the facts” and suggesting that her readers abandon every pleasant and satisfying aspect of love - such as attraction, infatuation, and adoration - all of which have the potential to increase enjoyment in life. Systematizing life’s experiences with science risks the meaningfulness of concepts like love, perception, and happiness that individuals endure; it puts an objective perspective on events that should be important to people at a deeper level. Gilbert argues repeatedly that “explanation robs events of their emotional impact because it makes them seem likely and allows us to stop thinking about them” (142). Relying on science to define human behavior puts at stake the importance of one’s situation in the grand scheme of their life. Arlene Gordon, one of the individuals who lost their sight in Sacks’ essay, stated that “too often people with sight don’t see

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anything” (345) which refers to the tendency for those who have their sight to force themselves to enjoy a visual experience so much that they ruin it for themselves. This demonstrates that humans often force a positive experience and in turn relinquish the value of that event in their life, which prevents them from living and learning and from allowing the significance of that experience to genuinely impact them. In regards to the natural human impulse to impose a positive understanding of a situation, Gilbert would say to Sacks that “the price we pay for our irrepressible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense of them” (143). Sacks’ essay explains the various studies of perception, which demonstrates that the meaningfulness of sensory experiences, such as visual representation, is lost in the scientific analysis of them. Although Gilbert would disagree with Sacks because he is guilty of “cooking the facts,” his paradoxical essay is guilty of excessive explanation as well. He claims that “our relentless desire to explain everything … can also kill our buzz” (Gilbert 142) and yet he himself explains away the emotional impact of his own analysis. Like Arlene Gordon’s friends, who could not appreciate the meaningfulness of the beautiful view without taking a step back to enjoy it without preconceived notions, people tend to rely on scientific explanations to make sense of life, which ruins the beauty of an authentic experience. Life can be interpreted through various perspectives and a scientific point of view can offer factual information on human behavior that are necessary to the understanding of core life experiences. Gilbert would criticize both Sack’ and Fredrickson’s perspectives in that they overanalyze the biological reactions that contribute to love and perception, but he himself uses science to systematize the concept of pursuing happiness. He contradicts the scientific perspectives taken in the other essays, as well as his own, by explaining that these systematic

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explanations have more negative implications than positive ones. These three authors successfully inform readers of the biological aspects of human experiences such as love, perception, and happiness, which provides readers with a better understanding of themselves. However, they also illustrate that systematizing the more abstract events of life pose certain risks. Despite the fact that these aspects of life can be explained with science, Fredrickson, Sacks, and Gilbert share biology-based perspectives that put individuality, satisfaction, and the meaningfulness of human experiences at stake....