Don’t Think of a Pink Elephant

One of the tenets of Neurolinguistics is that the brain does not process negatives. This is to say that any statements that include the word don’t or prefixes such as un or non, are automatically, subconsciously processed in the positive. This is because in order to affix meaning, the brain must associate something with the words spoken.

Here’s an example. When a parent says to a child, “Don’t spill your milk!” the child’s brain must subconsciously process, in effect, the command SPILL YOUR MILK. The negative don’t is affixed afterward in the conscious mind.

This is why psychologists advocate for using statements phrased in the positive. Rather than focusing on an outcome that is NOT desired, they suggest that the client focus on what IS desired. The negative statement “I don’t want to feel bad” is changed into a positive by saying, “I want to feel good.”

Another well-used example is this: “Don’t think of a pink elephant.” In order to understand those six words, to process the meaning of the sentence, the listener has no choice but to imagine a pink elephant!

So every time someone uses a word, even if using it in a sense of negation – such as “non-affiliated” or “anti-establishment,” the listener is forced to make the association and THINK OF the very concept being linguistically negated.
If someone says antibigotry, you have to process the concept of bigotry. And you have just performed the act of feeding – that is, perpetuating – the meme of bigotry.

Say nonviolent – you just perpetuated the meme of violent (a meme of hostility).
Say uncaring – you just perpetuated the meme of caring (a meme of empathy).
Say atheist – and you just perpetuated the meme of theist—a theist being one who believes in the existence of gods.

Words are invented, proliferate, and die just like living organisms. When a word falls out of use, all its cultural connotations begin to fade, which thereby hastens its disuse—it’s a downward cycle of decay. An example, in biological terms, is cell death; if blood is cut off from an arm or leg, the cells are starved of oxygen until finally they die.

In many ways, words have also lifecycles. Words such as buggywhip or scurvy or corvee (the dues paid by a serf, usually as labour, in return for use of his lord’s land) have died out. And what causes the death of the word? The disuse of the tangible thing it stood for, or the word as the symbol for the concept, or both?

Now imagine what would happen if people stopped using these words: demon, angel, devil, heaven, hell, sin, ghost, paranormal, supernatural, god.

By continuing to use the words, we perpetuate the concepts and the connotations of the words. We feed the memes. We keep them alive, just as a hundred years ago, the word buggywhip was necessarily kept fresh and alive.

What if no one used the word god at all? This is an interesting thought experiment, a foray into cultural engineering. If people simply QUIT using the words for fantastical elements or entities, what would this do our culture?

Think about it. You’re approached by someone on the street who asks you “Do you believe in god?” If you respond, “In what? What does that mean?” your questioner is stopped in his tracks, suddenly forced to give an explanation of a word that he assumed that you were fully cognizant of.

But what if you didn’t know the word because it had fallen into such disuse that it had suffered “cell death”?

Words are memes. They act as viral agents that spread and perpetuate ideas, concepts, attitudes. For atheists, it’s tough to talk about your perspective in only positive statements. If you say “I don’t believe in god,” you have just perpetuated the concept of god. Say “there is no heaven or devil,” you have just fed the memes of both.

Nonuse of a limb causes it to atrophy. And nonuse (a negative, I know) of words causes them to slide into oblivion.

So what words can I use to express my personal paradigm?

This works well. “Self-awareness, and the ability to make this statement, leads me to the conclusion that I, and other human beings, exist. When confronted with a mystery, I seek rational explanations and evidence that is, by consensus of the existing scientific community, viewed as empirical.”

Notice that this statement does not address what I don’t believe in. There is no use whatsoever of words for concepts that are, for me, imaginary or illusory.

Try it out. See if you can go for 30 days without using any terms for the ideas that other people may think of as real but you do not. After 30 days, check in with your brain and see how contents have shifted. You may be surprised. And the next person who tries to stronghold you into a debate about religion will be even more so.

Right Brain, Left Brain, No Brain

Most of us know about the hemispheres of the brain—that is, that the brain is split into two segments, like a walnut, the left and the right—and research has shown that each hemisphere has specialized to perform certain types of skills. The left hemisphere handles language, math, and logical tasks. The right is specialized for spatial abilities, creativity, and imagery. The imagination. Dividing the two sides, running through the middle like a neural traffic cop, is the corpus callosum: a highway of white matter that transmits signals from one side to the other.

It’s a marvel of evolution, and yet not altogether surprising, considering the symmetry of the human animal. Our bodies have left and right sides—two arms and legs here, two arms and legs there. Two eyes, ears, and nostrils. Just about everything about us points to duality. Yin and yang, as the Buddhists might say.

Consider the saying “I’m of two minds about it.” We can sometimes feel that we actually have two minds and that they are talking—even warring—with each other. One side says, “Yes, go for it!” while the other says, “Hmm, no better wait.” Put it into a cartoon, and you can almost see the “angel” on one shoulder and the “devil” on the other.

Such is the endless conflict between opposites. Left and right, night and day, up and down. Our drive for the good and our drive for the bad. (Notice that I don’t say “good and evil” as if these were autonomous entities that exist outside of our volition. They don’t. They ARE us.)

When you start discussing religion versus reason, the dualities become blindingly clear.
Religion draws from the part of the brain that deals with emotion and imagination (the key elements in every Disney movie, perhaps?). It provides a strong reason to feel love (for God), an indisputable reason to feel hate (for sins and those who commit them, Satan and all his representatives), and purported reasons to feel fear (an eternity of punishment).

You probably also know of the “fight or flight” instinct that all animals possess. Expanding this one emotion further, and adding human terminology, we have:

Hate = Fight
Fear = Flight
Love = Embrace

These are our most basic, most primal emotions. They’re what we feel at three hours old and what we feel throughout our lives.

Safe in the community of a religion, people find outlets and havens for these basic emotions, which is all fine and good. I’m all for healthy emotions.

Enter the left hemisphere, the part of the brain that’s specialized for reason. Reason and rational thinking are necessarily divorced from emotion. It is this part of us that allows us to be dispassionate when needed, to analyze rather than panic (as an example, the EMT who must think clearly and stay focused in times of crisis), to negotiate rather than bomb.

The evolution of our frontal lobes and our reasoning abilities has been the backbone of humanity’s progress over the millennia. Our scientific discoveries, our technological advances in math, physics, medicine, and the exploration of the largest (the cosmos) and the smallest (quanta) have been possible, to a large extent, because of our left brains.

When logic butts up against emotion, you have scenarios that are as cliché as Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk. One thinker and one feeler. You see the same dichotomy in many marriages. It’s the age-old “opposites attract” situation.

As well, we have theists and a-theists. Yin and yang.

So in our evolution as a species, this is where we’re at. We’re at the point in the long history of homo sapiens where we are bicameral and dualistic. The two halves of our brains foist us into conflicts that can manifest at every level from two strangers bumping into each other in the street to two nations threatening each other with nuclear annihilation.

At the level that’s completely individual and internal, there is always that voice inside that says “But I do believe … but I don’t believe…”

For now, with our dualistic brains and the opposite-sides-of-the-fence cultures of believers and nonbelievers, we are going to have to learn to coexist peacefully. Like the pot-smoking hippies who live next door to the buttoned-down, Republican couple. We have to acknowledge our differences, our diversity, and our opposite natures, just as we understand the duality of our neural structures.

But as we move into the future—not over decades but millennia—I hope that our reason will take the stronger lead over the emotional impulses and fabula, or theater, of religion.

Creativity cannot and should not be excised from our lives. But the pablum of religion—that is, when it is an infantile clinging to supernatural Mommy and Daddy figures—ultimately thwarts our progress as a species.

Perhaps eventually, day by day, era by era, our species will develop the autonomy that allows us to let go of the fearful part of the brain, the part that seeks reassurance in religion, and find the courage to face our own adulthood.