Janus: A Summing Up

by Arthur Koestler

  I am aware that this sounds over-optimistic, in contrast to the pessimistic views expressed in previous chapters, of the prospects ahead of us. Yet I do not think that these fears are exaggerated, and I do not think that the hope for a rescue is entirely utopian. It is not inspired by science fiction, but based on the recent spectacular advances in neuro-chemistry and related fields. They do not yet provide a cure for the mental disorder of our species, but they indicate the area of research that may eventually produce the remedy hopefully invoked in the Prologue: that combination of benevolent hormones or enzymes which would resolve the conflict between the old and recent structures in the brain, by providing the neocortex with the power of hierarchic control over the archaic lower centres, and thus catalyse the transition from maniac to man.

  Yet I have learned from painful experience that any proposal which involves 'tampering with human nature' is bound to provoke strong emotional resistances. These are partly based on ignorance and prejudice, but partly on a justified revulsion against further intrusions into the privacy and sanctity of the individual by social engineering, character engineering, various forms of brain-washing, and other threatening aspects of overt or covert totalitarianism. It hardly needs saying that I share this loathing for a nightmare in whose shadow most of nay life was spent. But on the other hand it has to be realized that ever since the first cave-dweller wrapped his shivering frame into the hide of a dead animal, man has been, for better or worse, creating for himself an artificial environment and an artificial mode of existence without which he no longer can survive. There is no turning back on housing, clothing, artificial heating, cooked food; nor on spectacles, hearing aids, forceps, artificial limbs, anaesthetics, antiseptics, prophylactics, vaccines and so forth. We start tampering with human nature almost from the moment a baby is born, by the universal practice of dropping a solution of silver nitrate into its eyes as a protection against ophthalmia neonatorum, a form of conjunctivitis often leading to blindness, caused by bacilli which lurk in the mother's genital tract. This is followed later by preventive vaccinations, compulsory in most civilized countries, against smallpox and other infectious diseases. To appreciate the value of these tamperings with the course of nature, let us remember that the epidemics of smallpox among American Indians were one of the main reasons why they lost their lands to the white man. It also decimated the population of Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century -- its ravages only equalled, perhaps symbolically, by the massacres, in the name of true religion, of the Thirty Years War.

  A less well-known form of tampering, pertinent to our subject, is the prevention of goitre and the variety of cretinism associated with it. When I was a child, the number of people in Alpine mountain valleys with monstrous swellings in the front of their necks, and of cretinous children in their families was quite frightening. On recent trips, revisiting the same regions half a century later, I cannot remember having come across a single cretinous child. Thanks to the progress of biochemistry, it has been discovered that this type of cretinism was caused by a malfunction of the thyroid gland. This in turn was due to the shortage of iodine in the nutrients of the mountainous areas affected. Without sufficient iodine, the gland is unable to synthesize the required quantities of thyroid hormones, with tragic consequences for the mind. Thus iodine in small quantities was added by the health authorities to the common table salt, and goitrous cretinism in Europe became virtually a thing of the past.

  Obviously, our species does not possess the biological equipment needed to live in environments with iodine-poor soil, or to cope with the micro-organisms of malaria and smallpox. Nor does it possess instinctual safeguards against excessive breeding: ethologists tell us that every animal species they have studied -- from flower beetles through rabbits to baboons -- is equipped with such instinctual controls, which inhibit excessive breeding and keep the population density in a given territory fairly constant, even when food is plentiful. When the density reaches a critical limit, crowding produces stress which affects the hormonal balance and interferes with lifespan and reproductive behaviour. Thus there is a kind of feedback mechanism which adjusts the rate of breeding and keeps the population at a more or less stable level. The population of a given species in a given territory behaves in fact as a self-regulating social holon.

  But in this respect, too, man is a biological freak, who, somewhere along the way, lost this instinctual control-mechanism. It seems almost as if in human populations the ecological rule were reversed: the more crowded they are in slums, ghettoes and poverty-stricken areas, the faster they breed. What prevented the population from exploding much earlier in history was not the kind of automatic feedback control which we observe in animals, but the death-harvest of wars, epidemics, pestilence and infant mortality. These were factors beyond the control of the masses; but nevertheless conscious attempts to regulate the birthrate through contraception and infanticide are on record from the very dawn of history. (The oldest recipes to prevent conception are contained in the so-called Petri Papyrus, dating from about 1850 B.C.) Birth control though infanticide was also common from ancient Sparta to quite recently among Eskimos. Compared to these cruel methods, the modern ways of directly 'tampering with Nature' by intra-uterine coils and oral contraceptives are certainly preferable. Yet they interfere in a radical and permanent manner with the vital physiological processes of the oestrous cycle. Applied on a world-wide scale they would amount to the equivalent of an artificially induced adaptive mutation.

  There is no end to the list of beneficial 'tamperings with human nature', compared to which the abuses and occasional follies of medicine and psychiatry shrink to relative insignificance. What the sum total of these tamperings amounts to is in fact correcting human nature, which without these correctives would in its biological aspect hardly be viable, and which in its social aspect, after countless disasters, is heading for the ultimate catastrophe. Having conquered the worst of the infectious diseases which assail the body of man, the time has come to look for methods to immunize him against the infectious delusions which from time immemorial have assailed the group-mind and made a blood-bath of his history. Neuropharmacology has given us lethal nerve-gases, drugs for brain-washing, others to induce hallucinations and delusions at will. It can and will be put to benevolent use. Let me quote a single example of the type of research pointing in that direction:

  In 1961 the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre organized an international symposium on Control of the Mind. At the first session, Professor Holger Hyden of Gothenburg University made headlines in the Press with his paper -- 'Biochemical Aspects of Brain Activity'. Hyden is one of the leading authorities in that field. The passage which created the sensation is quoted below (the reference to me is explained by the fact that I was a participant at the symposium):

  In considering the problem of control of the mind, the data give rise to the following question: would it be possible to change the fundamentals of emotion by inducing molecular changes in the biologically active substances in the brain? The RNA*, in particular, is the main target for such a speculation, since a molecular change of the RNA may lead to a change in the proteins being formed. One may phrase the question in different words to modify the emphasis: do the experimental data presented here provide means to modify the mental state by specifically induced chemical changes? Results pointing in that direction have been obtained; this work was carried out using a substance called tricyano-aminopropene. * Ribonucleic acid, a key substance in the genetic apparatus. ... The application of a substance changing the rate of production and composition of RNA and provoking enzyme changes in the functional units of the central nervous system has both negative and positive aspects. There is now evidence that the administration of tricyano-aminopropene is followed by an increased suggestibility in man. This being the case, a defined change of such a functionally important substance as the RNA in the brain could be used for conditioning. The author is not referring specifically to tri
cyano-aminopropene, but to any substance inducing changes of biologically important molecules in the neurons and the glia and affecting the mental state in a negative direction. It is not difficult to imagine the possible uses to which a government in a police-controlled state could put this substance. For a time they would subject the population to hard conditions. Suddenly the hardship would be removed, and at the same time, the substance would be added to the tap water and the mass-communications media turned on. This method would be much cheaper, and would create more intriguing possibilities than to let Ivanov treat Rubashov individually for a long time, as Koestler described in his book. On the other hand, a counter-measure against the effect of a substance such as tricyano-aminopropene is not difficult to imagine either. [1]

  The last sentence is formulated with caution, but the implications are clear. However shocking this may sound, if our sick species is to be saved, salvation will come, not from UNO resolutions and diplomatic summits, but from the biological laboratories. It stands to reason that a biological malfunction needs a biological corrective.

  2

  It would be naive to expect that drugs can present the mind with gratis gifts, and put into it something which is not already there. Neither mystic insights, nor philosophical wisdom, nor creative power can be provided by pill or injection. The biochemist cannot add to the faculties of the brain -- but he can eliminate obstructions and blockages which impede their proper use. He cannot put additional circuits into the brain, but he can improve coordination between existing ones and enhance the power of the neocortex -- the apex of the hierarchy -- over the lower, emotion-bound levels and the blind passions engendered by them. Our present tranquillizers, barbiturates, stimulants, anti-depressants and combinations thereof are merely a first step towards more sophisticated aids to promote a balanced state of mind, immune against the sirens' song, the barking of demagogues and false Messiahs. Not the Pop-Nirvana procured by LSD or the soma pills of Brave New World, but a state of dynamic equilibrium in which the divided house of faith and reason is reunited and hierarchic order restored.

  3

  I first published these hopeful speculations -- as the only alternative to despair that I could (and can) see -- in the concluding chapter of The Ghost in the Machine. Among the many negative criticisms which it brought in its wake, the one most frequently voiced accused me of proposing the manufacture of a little pill which would suppress all feeling and emotion and reduce us to the equanimity of cabbages. This charge, sometimes uttered with great vehemence, was based on a complete misreading of the text. What I proposed was not the castration of emotion, but reconciling emotion and reason which through most of man's schizophrenic history have been at loggerheads. Not an amputation, but a process of harmonization which assigns each level of the mind, from visceral impulses to abstract thought, its appropriate place in the hierarchy. This implies reinforcing the new brain's power of veto against that type of emotive behaviour -- and that type only -- which cannot be reconciled with reason, such as the 'blind' passions of the group-mind. If these could be eradicated, our species would be safe.

  There are blind emotions and visionary emotions. Who in his senses would advocate doing away with the emotions aroused while listening to Mozart or looking at a rainbow?

  4

  Any individual living today who asserted that he had made a pact with the devil and had intercourse with succubi would be promptly dispatched to a mental home. Yet not so long ago, belief in such things was taken for granted and approved by common sense -- i.e., the consensus of opinion, i.e., the group-mind. Psychopharmacology is playing an increasing part in the treatment of mental disorders in the clinical sense, such as individual delusions which affect the critical faculties and are not sanctioned by the group-mind. But we are concerned with a cure for the paranoid streak in what we call 'normal people', which is revealed when they become victims of group-mentality. As we already have drugs to increase man's suggestibility, it will soon be within our reach to do the opposite: to reinforce man's critical faculties, counteract misplaced devotion and that militant enthusiasm, both murderous and suicidal, which is reflected in history books and the pages of the daily paper.

  But who is to decide which brand of devotion is misplaced, and which beneficial to mankind? The answer seems obvious: a society composed of autonomous individuals, once they are immunized against the hypnotic effects of propaganda and thought-control, and protected against their own suggestibility as 'belief-accepting animals'. But this protection cannot be provided by counter-propaganda or drop-out attitudes; they are self-defeating. It can only be done by 'tampering' with human nature itself to correct its endemic schizophysiological disposition. History tells us that nothing less will do.

  5

  Assuming that the laboratories succeed in producing an immunizing substance conferring mental stability -- how are we to propagate its global use? Are we to ram it down people's throats, whether they like it or not?

  Again the answer seems obvious. Analgesics, pep pills, tranquillizers, contraceptives have, for better or worse, swept across the world with a minimum of publicity or official encouragement. They spread because people welcomed their effects. The use of a mental stabilizer would spread not by coercion but by enlightened self-interest; from then on, developments are as unpredictable as the consequences of any revolutionary discovery. A Swiss canton may decide, after a public referendum, to add the new substance to the iodine in the table salt, or the chlorine in the water supply, for a trial period, and other countries may imitate their example. There might be an international fashion among the young. In one way or the other, the simulated mutation would get under way. It is possible that totalitarian countries would try to resist it. But today even Iron Curtains have become porous; fashions are spreading irresistibly. And should there be a transitional period during which one side alone went ahead, it would gain a decisive advantage because it would be more rational in its long-term policies, less frightened and less hysterical. In conclusion, let me quote from The Ghost in the Machine:

  Every writer has a favourite type of imaginary reader, a friendly phantom but highly critical, with whom he is engaged in a continuous, exhausting dialogue. I feel sure that my friendly phantom-reader has sufficient imagination to extrapolate from the recent breath-taking advances of biology into the future, and to concede that the solution outlined here is in the realm of the possible. What worries me is that he might be repelled and disgusted by the idea that we should rely for our salvation on molecular chemistry instead of a spiritual rebirth. I share his distress, but I see no alternative. I hear him explain: 'By trying to sell us your Pills, you are adopting that crudely materialistic attitude and naive scientific hubris which you pretend to oppose.' I still oppose it. But I do not believe that it is 'materialistic' to take a realistic view of the condition of man; nor is it hubris to feed thyroid extracts to children who would otherwise grow into cretins . . . Like the reader, I would prefer to set my hopes on moral persuasion by word and example. But we are a mentally sick race, and as such deaf to persuasion. It has been tried from the age of the prophets to Albert Schweitzer; and Swift's anguished cry: 'Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole,' has acquired an urgency as never before. Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out. To hope for salvation to be synthesised in the laboratory may seem materialistic, crankish or naive; it reflects the ancient alchemist's dream to concoct the elixir vitae. What we expect from it, however, is not eternal life, but the transformation of homo maniacus into homo sapiens. [2]

  This is the only alternative to despair which I can read into the shape of things to come.

  We can now move to more cheerful horizons.

  PART TWO

  The Creative Mind

  VI

  HUMOUR AND WIT

  I

  The theory of human creativity which I developed in earlier books [1] endeavours to show that all creative activities -- th
e conscious and unconscious processes underlying the three domains of artistic originality, scientific discovery and comic inspiration -- have a basic pattern in common, and to describe that pattern. The three panels of the triptych on page 110 indicate these three domains, which shade into each other without sharp boundaries. The meaning of the diagram will become apparent as the argument unfolds.

  The three domains of creativity

  The creative process is, oddly enough, most clearly revealed in humour and wit. But this will appear less odd if we remember that 'wit is an ambiguous term, relating to both witticism and to ingenuity or inventiveness.* The jester and the explorer both live on their wits, and we shall see that the jester's riddles provide a convenient back-door entry, as it were, into the inner sanctum of creative originality. Hence this inquiry will start with an analysis of the comic.** It may be thought that I have allowed a disproportionate amount of space to humour, but it is meant to serve, as I said, as a back-door approach to the creative process in science and art. Besides, it can also be read as a self-contained essay -- and it may provide the reader with some light relief.