Insight Notes - The Self Delusion
The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities
I've always made notes in the margins of books — also called marginalia, going back as far as I can remember. At some point, I learned with textbooks, these would often become part of my study notes. Or at least a marker of what I needed to learn to understand the text. Over the last few years, this has become a process of taking notes as I read and adding these bits to past insights from reading. Not intended to be a complete summary of the book, just the parts that connected for me.
Besides a catchy book cover, what else could you need in your decision to read one of these?
The Self Delusion; The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities
Summary
Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gregory Berns is arguing that we don't just tell stories of our identity, we are the stories. Our stories and self-identities are temporary and ever-changing, a delusion. Main point; we can change our narrative and story to change our future.
Why This Book?
Buddhism has been studying the "self" and its delusionary nature for millennia. -OG Neuroscientists
Looking for answers to the question, "When we identify self-limiting beliefs, how can we change them?"
If we don't really have free will - because the brain decides and acts well before we are cognizant - how can we write a better story of the future and change our lives for the better?
Simply, I'm a neuroscience geek and read just about everything I can on the vast topic.
Was this book worth it?
100% worth it if you are interested in what we know about neuroscience today, interested in changing your personal story, or just even curious about what the "self" is. Gregory is a good writer and makes a difficult topic easy to read in his style.
What insights or takeaways did I get from the book?
The centers of the brain where we say, visualize hitting a home run baseball pitch, are the same centers where our brains create "motor mapping," the central process for walking or speaking. My son has a speech disorder called Apraxia of Speech, which is a disorder of "motor mapping," hindering his ability to make his mouth form words that his brain wants to convey. Perhaps there is a connection here that could help my son?
Some neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists have a theory that emotions evolved as a way for us to cope with our changing environment without having to expend energy in "mapping" a physical body reaction to the change in the environment.
Some added studies and evidence as of late on the theory that our brains compress memory similar to what a compressed .JPG is in computer imaging. And more evidence that our brains fill in gaps in memory by telling stories, not precise replicas of what really happened in the memory. - Just more evidence that our memories are far more faulty than an accurate recording of what really happened. Makes it easier to craft the story going forward. Sounds like lying, if done for bad reasons.
Buddhists have known that the concept of a "self" is false - and that we put too much attachment to that self, resulting in suffering - now neuroscience is also coming to believe that the "self" isn't real but a construct of the story we tell of who we are. A theory…
Meaning in life comes from the narrative we tell about who we are and what we stand for. Believer in the idea that we craft our meaning in life, it doesn’t just fall from the sky.
Reality really is a shared understanding of the world by a group of people. = culture and differences between.
Probably the brain, pulling on past experience to make sense of what the senses are pulling in at this moment, uses a type of Bayesian Probability in making sense of the world.
We perceive the now through the past.
For some reason I was reminded of this graphic from Tim Urban:
The original intent of the graphic is to show how we truly have more paths available to us in the future than we think. Probably why we can't imagine this, is that our brains use our past life path to make predictions about the present and future. Our brains don't think like this graphic but they should, and can.
AND all this means that we can change our narrative, we aren't stuck with what we got as our story from birth. Truly, "Change your story, Change your life." which is the title of another book but appropriate
And how do you do that?
Changing the meaning of our lives. If meaning derives from the narratives we create, then we create a new narrative that leads to new meaning.
What if? Thought experiment, what if you could clone yourself? What would your clone do differently if you could have it do so? What if? Pick a time frame (5 years), and tell the story of your clone doing this other thing and arriving five years in the future. your alter-ego through dissociation
The key question in any strategy: "What if I reoriented my life to prioritize finding meaning?"
"Life is a sequence of events, but your narrative is what it means to you. You may not have control over the sequence, but you can absolutely choose how to narrate it."
Link to raw highlights and notes at GoodReads - sign up for an account and Friend me to see the notes: