Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently

by Berns, Gregory

  In the last decade, there has been an explosion of knowledge about the social brain. One of the subfields that has emerged out of the neuro-economic movement is how the brain works to coordinate decision making in groups. If you think about it, almost every decision we make must be considered in the context of how it might affect the other people in our lives. The true iconoclast does not live in a cabin in the woods. Like Armstrong, the modern iconoclast navigates a dynamic social network and elicits change that begins with altered perception and ends with effecting change in other people (or dying a failure). Recent neuroscience experiments have revealed which circuits in the brain are responsible for functions like understanding what other people think, empathy, fairness, and social identity. These brain regions play key roles in whether an individual convinces other people of her ideas. Perception plays an important role in social cognition as well. The perception of someone’s enthusiasm, or reputation, can make or break a deal. Understanding how perception becomes intertwined with social decision making shows why successful iconoclasts are so rare: social intelligence depends on perception, but perception itself is subject to social forces. We see things like other people, and the cycle is difficult to break.

  Doing What Others Say Can’t Be Done

  Iconoclasts have existed throughout history. A name was given to this type of person when Leo III, emperor of Constantinople, destroyed the golden icon of Christ over his palace gates in AD 725. Leo’s act of defiance against the church was to consolidate his power, but the word iconoclast, which means literally “destroyer of icons,” stuck. In the same vein, the modern iconoclast, whether consciously or not, acknowledges the fact that creation is also an act of destruction. To create something new, you also have to tear down conventional ways of thinking. But whether someone is successful in this enterprise depends largely on the three key circuits in the brain. When Armstrong invented FM radio, he created something that everyone else assumed couldn’t be done. Although his iconoclastic views were eventually successful in destroying the dogma of AM’s superiority, he died convinced he was a failure. But really, the only thing that failed was the social circuit in Armstrong’s brain.

  So why write a book about iconoclasts? Because this is the type of person who creates new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology to business. The iconoclast embodies traits of creativity and innovation that are not easily accomplished by committee. He eschews authority and convention. He thumbs his nose at rules. But given the proper environment, the iconoclast can be a major asset to any organization. So whether you want to be an iconoclast or not, it is crucial for success in any field to understand how the iconoclastic mind works.

  It is, of course, not easy to be an iconoclast. The iconoclast risks social and professional ostracism, frequently alienates colleagues, and must face a daily reckoning with a high likelihood of failure. He walks a tough road. And although there is a certain romantic notion to the image of the rugged individualist, who, against all odds, triumphs over conformity, the simple fact is that most people don’t want to be an iconoclast. This book won’t make you an iconoclast, but you can learn to think a bit more iconoclastically by understanding how the three key brain circuits work. And the iconoclast can be a real asset in an organization. Even if most people don’t want to be an iconoclast, understanding how their brains work can help manage teams with iconoclastic members.

  In this book, you will meet modern iconoclasts. Some are well known; others are not. Each of them, however, has accomplished something in their field of endeavor that makes them stand out as unique individuals. Most importantly, they are iconoclasts because they had to buck conventional wisdom, sometimes in the face of overwhelming criticism, and remain steadfast in their beliefs for what they perceived to be the right and true path. While inspiring in their own right, these stories serve as jumping-off points for understanding what happens in the brains of iconoclasts. For this is where the action is.

  The overarching theme of this book is that iconoclasts are able to do things that others say can’t be done, because iconoclasts perceive things differently than other people. This difference in perception plays out in the initial stages of an idea. It plays out in how they manage their fears, and it manifests in how they pitch their ideas to the masses of noniconoclasts. It is an exceedingly rare individual who possesses all three of these traits. In the following chapters, the stories of iconoclasts provide lessons in how their brains, to varying degrees, implement the three key functions. Each story was chosen to exemplify one of these functions. Roll them all together, and you would have the ultimate iconoclast’s brain.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As much as writing is a solitary affair, the ideas in this book came from my interactions with a remarkable group of friends and colleagues. Within the field of neuroeconomics, I cherish the exchanges I’ve had with Dan Ariely, Peter Bossaerts, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Dan Houser, Scott Huettel, Brian Knutson, David Laibson, George Loewen-stein, Kevin McCabe, Read Montague, John O’Doherty, Elizabeth Phelps, Michael Platt, and Antonio Rangel. In the real world—that is, nonacademia—I am particularly grateful for the time and wisdom that these people have given to me: Reda Anderson, Dale Chihuly, David Dreman, Jim Lavoie, Joe Marino, and Michael Mauboussin. I am very lucky to have a wonderful group of colleagues at Emory University who encourage and stimulate unusual ways of thinking: Monica Capra, Clint Kilts, Helen Mayberg, Andrew Miller, Charles Nemeroff, Charles Nous-sair, Mike Owens, Giuseppe Pagnoni, and Charles Raison. All of the research that has been done in my lab would not have occurred without an extremely talented and inspirational group to whom I am eternally grateful: Pammi Chandrasekhar, Jonathan Chappelow, Jan Engelmann, Whitney Herron, Sara Moore, Allison Turner, and Cary Zink. Without my agent, Susan Arellano, and my editor, Jacqueline Murphy, none of this would have made it onto the page.

  I owe special thanks to my daughters, Helen and Madeline, for their patience (even if they didn’t know it) with my writing time. This book is for you. And finally, to my wife, Kathleen: thanks and love for tolerating this writing expedition and for reading it before anyone should have been forced to read it!

  Through the Eye

  of an Iconoclast

  The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking

  new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.

  —Marcel Proust

  GLASS DEFIES DEFINITION. At room temperature, glass takes the form of a solid, hard enough to hold its own weight, and when appropriately shaped into a container, strong enough to support other substances. But this is an illusion. It is not really solid. Chemists say that glass is a liquid but with a viscosity so high that it behaves like a solid. Raise the temperature a little bit, and its liquid nature reasserts itself. And that is where the art comes in …

  Stepping into the hotshop is like entering a carnival funhouse. Completely disorienting. Before you even see what’s going on, the roar of the furnaces sounds like a jet engine on full throttle in the moments before takeoff. The noise reverberates off the corrugated steel walls and reflects back to a skylight and bounces around the concrete floor, reaching your ears from all directions. Voices emerge from around a corner, but it’s difficult to make out what they are saying. Rising above the din, a bit of laughter here, a snatch of postmodern grunge rock there. Something smells of burning. A clean, industrial burn, not sweet like wood, or paper, or leaves.

  Then comes the visual assault. Like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, nothing seems straight. Tubes of color, in the form of glass bars, poke out from cubbyholes stuck to the wall. Every color of the rainbow imaginable is here, neatly organized into a cryptic cataloging scheme. On another wall hang enumerable organic shapes. Curlicues of glass in chartreuse, azure, vermilion, ebony flecked with gold, and colors for which there aren’t even names. The roaring furnaces are revealed to be gigantic boxes that are opened and closed by assistants wielding long poles that are gim-balled to the furnace doors. When the doors are ope
n, the heat pushes everyone back six feet. You cannot even look at the source of the heat, for it is as bright as the sun, and a brilliant orange light that emerges from one of the glory holes burns a circular blue afterimage on your retina.

  This is the Boathouse—the working studio and creative epicenter for the world’s preeminent and most iconoclastic glass artist, Dale Chihuly.

  At age sixty-six, Chihuly has become synonymous with the studio glass art movement. His glass sculptures and large-scale installations, which have included the garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a permanent installation in the ceiling of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, have become so popular that they verge on ubiquity. Millions of people have seen his work through television shows on PBS as well as the hundreds of exhibits that have occurred throughout the United States and the rest of the world. His studio continues to churn out thousands of pieces a year, and yet, they continue to fetch prices ranging from a few thousand dollars for a modest bowl, to $25,000 for a vase, to well over $1 million for an installation like the one in the lobby of the Bellagio. In 1986, Chihuly became one of the few American artists to have a solo show at the Louvre. Not since Louis Tiffany has there been a force in glass like Chihuly.

  Far from a starving artist, Chihuly has also mastered the business of art. Although the Chihuly operation has varied in size, it currently hovers around one hundred people. And with no limit to the prices the market has been willing to pay for Chihuly’s work, the artist has done well by all conventional standards of success. Indeed, few artists have achieved a level of financial success like Chihuly. Those inviting immediate comparison include Picasso, Warhol, and Hockney.

  For all practical purposes, Chihuly invented the forms of glass sculpture that he is now associated with. His work has become iconic, even to the extent that he has copyrighted some of the forms. There have been lawsuits, of course, with the public airing of gripes from former collaborators and associates, and not all of the media attention has been favorable, but the public’s enthusiasm remains unflagging. Chihuly remains the prototypical example of the iconoclast: an individual who single-handedly tears down conventional notions of glass art and creates something entirely new in its place.

  He also illustrates the first rule of iconoclasm: he sees differently than other people.

  Literally. For the first thing you notice about Chihuly is the prominent black patch over his left eye. It is anachronistic. Who wears an eye patch in the twenty-first century? Not since Moshe Dayan, the controversial chief of the Israeli Defense Forces and perhaps the last public figure to wear an eye patch, has anyone made it stylish. The most renowned eye patch wearers remain fictional characters: Bazooka Joe, Rooster Cogburn, Snake Plissken. But there it is, stuck to Chihuly’s fleshy face, like a badge of honor. He adjusts it with surprising frequency, seemingly uncomfortable with it even after thirty years. Maybe it’s all for show. It makes no difference. The loss of sight in his eye was a defining moment for Chihuly in terms of both his art and his career. Certainly, it changed his perception. It also made him into an iconoclast.

  A Different Perspective

  Chihuly does not spend much time in the hotshop. Sometimes he goes in to direct his team, but mostly he conveys his visions through paintings splashed on large pieces of butcher paper. Several paintings, each of which fetches several thousand dollars for an original, are tacked to the walls above the furnaces. Some paintings are simply splashes of color in an unusual shape. Spirals and other organic forms are in abundance. Other paintings clearly convey a particular piece. One painting of a black vase is similar in form and color to the one being blown, but instead of gold feathers, it sprouts a psychedelic version of the Medusa’s head, with tangerine-colored snakes.

  Although the team approach to glassblowing has been known to the Europeans for centuries, Chihuly didn’t really put it into full-blown action until an accident gave him no choice. While he was touring Great Britain in 1976, Chihuly’s car crashed, sending the artist through the windshield. The damage to his left eye was irreparable, and he has not had vision out of it ever since. Even while recovering from the accident, he continued to blow glass, at least until another accident sidelined him more or less for good.

  “I always felt handicapped after I had my accident. I didn’t have any peripheral vision, which was kind of hard because you are close together. And I didn’t have any depth perception,” Chihuly says:

  About a year after the accident, I went to see a friend in La Jolla for a couple of days, and I dislocated my right arm in the surf. That made it impossible to work in the hotshop. During all that time, while I was recovering, I still worked, but it was the other guy, Billy Morris, who took over as the main guy, the gaffer. From that point on I could see the advantages of not being the gaffer. Because if you have 10 people out there, and sometimes we have 15, you can watch everything that’s going on. You can talk to the guy doing the coloring, and somebody else if you want to make it bigger or speed it up. A lot of those decisions are made on the other side of the shop, not where the gaffer is. I think that made me a lot more creative and perhaps do a lot more work than other people could. It’s very tiring to be the gaffer.1

  Chihuly’s story is striking because he did not become an iconoclast until he lost his eye. Although he was not consciously aware of it at the time, in retrospect even a casual observer of Chihuly’s work can see a marked change after the accident. In 1975, Chihuly was working and teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He had established the glass department at RISD five years earlier and, in collaboration with James Carpenter, created some of the first glass installations. Chihuly spent his summers back in Washington teaching at the ecohippie glass school that he founded in Pilchuck. But at RISD, Chihuly was attempting to merge designs from Navajo blankets into glass sculpture. The glass forms were rather unremarkable, cylinders that looked like candle holders. Chihuly, however, had just learned a technique for transferring drawings into glass. He made small paintings that incorporated Navajo designs, and laid them flat on the marvering table. Taking the molten glass cylinders, he would roll the cylinders on top of the paintings until the glass picked up the design. Nor did he limit himself to Navajo paintings but included all sorts of drawings and whimsical doodles, such as French flags and caricatures of James Joyce.

  After the accident, however, Chihuly’s work took on a decidedly asymmetric form. Working at Pilchuck in the summer of 1977 and learning to deal with the loss of depth perception, Chihuly describes his inspiration after seeing a Northwest Indian basket: “I wasn’t really working on anything. And I saw these baskets, and I thought, I want to make these baskets out of glass.”

  He tried a few different methods taken from standard glassblowing techniques, but none gave him the form he was looking for. “It didn’t take me too long to figure out that I could have the heat and gravity work for me to make these shapes.”

  The baskets, although similar to the cylinders in their earthen tones, looked nothing like candle holders. Despite their name, they didn’t look much like baskets either. More like dinosaur eggs that had hatched and mutated into some organic form that seemed almost alive. It is no coincidence that Chihuly’s work departed from symmetry following the loss of vision in one eye.

  For many people, the loss of vision in one eye devastates both the body and the psyche. After Sammy Davis Jr. lost his left eye in an automobile accident, he thought his vision would be half of what it used to be, but after the bandages were removed, he found that it was less than half, describing the sensation of having a wall built over his nose.2 But the brain adapts quickly, and Chihuly, like Davis, was soon able to work again. Although the brain does a surprisingly good job at compensating for the loss of vision in one eye, it is never quite the same. A great deal of depth perception returns, and slight movements of the head allow one eye to serve the function of two. The greater effect of losing an eye is the way in which the individual sees himself.

  In glasswork
, symmetry is prized above all else. Ever since the Venetians invented the craft in the thirteenth century, symmetry has been a measure of the skill of the glassblower and has served as a sort of status symbol. Even in the 1970s, when Chihuly was blowing, the worth of a glassblower was measured by the symmetry of his work. It was unthinkable to show work that departed from this standard. Asymmetric vases were the mark of rank beginners. So when Chihuly foisted his deformed baskets on the glass world, he thumbed his nose at centuries of glassmaking dogma.

  For artists like Chihuly, the work is very much an extension of the body. Glass sculpture is a physical medium. The requirement of constant motion traditionally ensured that symmetric objects were the most highly prized. And yet, the one-eyed artist is a case study in asymmetry that he must confront in the mirror every morning. Humans do not like asymmetry as a general rule. When we look at someone’s face, we judge their beauty in large part according to how symmetric they are.3 For an artist, beauty reigns above all else. So even though Chihuly adapted to monocular vision, what makes him an iconoclast is his departure from traditional glassblowing into the realm of asymmetry. He found ways to make the asymmetric beautiful—a feat that most glass-blowers of the time thought impossible. In Chihuly’s case, it took a physical change to see differently. Although it may not be necessary to resort to such drastic means, his story provides the first lesson for iconoclasts. The iconoclast sees differently than everyone else.

  Seeing Differently

  We are visual animals. When we imagine something, it is most often a visual image that comes to mind. Where do these images come from? The eyes transmit raw information, but by the time you become aware of it, your brain has processed the information in so many ways that if a neuroscientist were to listen in on the neural signals propagating through your brain, she would have a hard time picking up anything resembling a picture. The first thing to realize is that vision is not the same as perception. Vision is the process by which photons enter the eye and are transformed into neural signals in the brain. Perception, on the other hand, is the much more complex process by which the brain interprets these signals. The end result is a mental image that reaches consciousness. The eye is not much more than an optical lens and an image detector (the retina). After that, what people’s brains do with the image is a rather individualistic process.