DOPAMINE

Feel-Good Belief

It is quite possible that belief in the supernatural results from chemical imbalances in the brain or other physiological malfunctions. People who see ghosts or angels may be accurately perceiving reality — or they may be suffering from various forms of misapprehension. The same may be true for virtually all supernatural beliefs.

A particular chemical seems to play a special role:

"Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on your brain chemistry.

"...Peter Brugger, a neurologist from the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, has suggested before that people who believe in the paranormal often seem to be more willing to see patterns or relationships between events where skeptics perceive nothing.

"To find out what could be triggering these thoughts, Brugger persuaded 20 self-confessed believers and 20 skeptics to take part in an experiment.

"Brugger and his colleagues asked the two groups to distinguish real faces from scrambled faces as the images were flashed up briefly on a screen. The volunteers then did a similar task, this time identifying real words from made-up ones.

"Believers were much more likely than skeptics to see a word or face when there was not one.

"...The researchers then gave the volunteers a drug called L-dopa ... Both groups made more mistakes under the influence of the drug, but the skeptics became more likely to interpret scrambled words or faces as the real thing.

"That suggests that paranormal thoughts are associated with high levels of dopamine in the brain." [Helen Philips, “Paranormal Beliefs Linked to Brain Chemistry,” NEW SCIENTIST, July 2002  http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2589 ]

All forms of belief may be tied to dopamine. Our beliefs trigger warm flows of dopamine, while challenges to our beliefs shut off the flow. When we consider ideas that we embrace, we receive the reinforcement of a feel-good chemical and we see little or no reason to question either these pleasant ideas or the pleasant sensations they produce. But when we are confronted by ideas that we dislike, we start thinking hard — we go through the difficult process of reasoning and analyzing, looking for the kinds of weaknesses we hardly ever look for in our own cherished beliefs.

An article in the NEW YORK TIMES explores this subject, approaching it from an unexpected angle: 

"In September 1909, Dr. Frederick A. Cook and Robert E. Peary each returned from the Arctic with a tale of having reached the North Pole. Neither provided any solid proof or corroborating testimony; both told vague stories with large gaps ... Yet each explorer’s claim immediately attracted its supporters, and no amount of contradictory evidence in the ensuing years would be enough to dissuade the faithful.

"The believers who have kept writing books and mounting expeditions to vindicate Cook or Peary resemble the political partisans recently studied by psychologists and sociologists. When the facts get in the way of our beliefs, our brains are marvelously adept at dispensing with the facts.

"...[According] to researchers who have studied both Democrat and Republican partisans using brain scans and other techniques[:]

"When we contemplate contradictions in the rhetoric of the opposition party’s candidate, the rational centers of our brains are active, but contradictions from our own party’s candidate set off a different reaction: the emotional centers light up and levels of feel-good dopamine surge.

"With our rational faculties muted, sometimes the unwelcome evidence doesn’t even register, and sometimes we use marvelous logic to get around the facts.

"In one study, Republicans who blamed Saddam Hussein for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were presented with strong counter evidence, including a statement from President George W. Bush absolving Hussein. But most of the people in the study went on blaming Hussein anyway, as the researchers report in the current issue of Sociological Inquiry.

"Some of the people ignored or rejected the counter evidence; some 'counterargued' that Hussein was evil enough to do it; some flatly said they were entitled to counterfactual opinions. And some came up with an especially creative form of motivated reasoning that the psychologists labeled 'inferred justification': because the United States went to war against Hussein, the reasoning went, it must therefore have been provoked by his attack on Sept. 11." [John Tierney, "A Clash of Polar Frauds and Those Who Believe", NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 8, 2009.]

The TIMES article did not extend its argument to supernatural beliefs, but we can do so easily. Anthroposophists, I would suggest, often behave like true-believing advocates of political opinions. They do not reason so much as rationalize; they stick with what feels good to them, regardless of evidence or logic to the contrary.

I've pointed out, elsewhere, the logical contradiction in a basic Anthroposophical position (one that is related to something Holly said recently): In order to know spiritual truths, you have to start from an attitude of veneration. This is a tautology: To learn to believe, you have to start by believing.

The role played by dopamine adds a second layer to this. Steiner's position is not only illogical, it is irrational — that is, it is rooted in mere emotion. Essentially, he and his followers say: Your mood is what counts. Don't think, feel. (A song comes to mind: "Don't worry, be happy.") This is what they mean by having heartfelt thoughts, experienced thoughts, living thoughts. Problem: Such “thoughts” are not really thoughts at all. 

“The cosmic ether, which is common to all, carries within it the thoughts; there they are within it, those living thoughts of which I have repeatedly spoken in our anthroposophical lectures, telling you how the human being participates in them in pre-earthly life before he comes down to Earth. There, in the cosmic ether, are contained all the living thoughts there are; and never are they received from the cosmic ether during the life between birth and death. No; the whole store of living thought that man holds within him, he receives at the moment when he comes down from the spiritual world — when, that is, he leaves his own living element, his own element of living thought, and descends and forms his ether body. Within this ether body, within that which is the building and organising force in man, are the living thoughts; there they are, there they still are.” [Rudolf Steiner, CURATIVE EDUCATION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), lecture 2, June 26, 1924.]

Note that these "thoughts" do not come out of your own brain; they are not ideas that you think of yourself; they are prepackaged ideas that are planted in you before birth. You find and accept them through clairvoyance or intuition, using second sight to gaze within. This is meditation, or feeling deeply; it is not rational thought, which is so damaging, according to Steiner. “The intellect destroys or hinders.” [Rudolf Steiner, WALDORF EDUCATION AND ANTHROPOSOPHY, Vol. 1 (Anthroposophical Press, 1995), p. 233.]

We all want happiness, we all want to feel warm and certain. But the only real certainty comes from truth, which we must find with our minds. Fantasies — ideas or beliefs that we cannot justify on the basis of real knowledge and reasoning — provide only the illusion of certainty: They provide a chemical bath that sure feels good but that has no real ideational content.

[R. R., 2010.]

- Compilation and commentary by Roger Rawlings