The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey

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This is a wonderful, strange, and genre-defying book... [ The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars] powerfully evokes the beauty and absurdity, the sadness and the mystery, the beating pulse of life." To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man. More than a compilation of case studies, Broks’s book is a digressive journey through the subject of human consciousness… Like the box of old family photographs Broks achingly describes, this metascience narrative is well worth sorting through.” In PART TWO: A THOUSAND RED BUTTERFLIES, Broks delves more into his trade, musing much on the nature of consciousness between scientific research and theory and philosophical explorations. I kept having to set the book aside and digest his thoughts. One section prompted a mental WTH? and given that in his prologue he said that facts sit alongside fiction and that he thought the fictional elements were easily identified, I'm not sure if he was serious that not all humans are sentient - at least, that's what a colleague discovered in that particular story (although...there was considerable evidence of such in 2016 and since, but that would make his 10% far too low...) I won't spoil where the title of this second part comes from...you'll have to find that out yourself. I admit that I was, because I am by nature, less enamored of the philosophy elements, but the stories are still good anyway.

In this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a book, the neuroscientist Paul Broks takes us image by image, story by story, into an exploration of life with all its brilliant hues of grief and despair, joy and resilience, biology and society. There's science here, and curiosity, and humanity, all forming a remarkable portrait of who we are—and who we hope to be." But here’s the cool part — as a approaches infinity, the ideal S approaches 1/2. That means that you never want to suffer more than half of your life, no matter how much of a multiplier effect you get from suffering – even if an hour of suffering would make your next hour of pleasure insanely wonderful, you still wouldn’t ever want to spend more time suffering than reaping the benefits of that suffering. Or, to put it in more familiar terms: Darker nights may make stars seem brighter, but you still always want your sky to be at least half-filled with stars. In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too. No one but you and one ‘jade’ I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna, Geneva, January 1, 1868. Ethel Golburn Mayne (1879), Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to His Family and Friends, Dostoevsky's Letters XXXIX, p. 136. I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior, Anton Antonich Syetochkin. He was the the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I even wonder at the fact myself now. But I even went to see him only when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential to embrace my fellows and all mankind immediately. And for that purpose I needed at least one human being at hand who actually existed. I had to call on Anton Antonich, however, on Tuesday — his at-home day; so I always had to adjust my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday. Broks weaves many threads—memoir, neuroscience, and metaphysics—into a rich fabric of reflection, speculation and deep feeling. This is a work that defies categorization, fusing non-fiction and imagination into a single instrument of piercing insight and emotional honesty.” In it the author digs deep in a grief inspired journey through eternity and the nature of consciousness and reality, you name it. He considers many questions I’ve pondered my whole life. It was interesting.

A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. Part I, Book I: A Nice Little Family, Ch. 2: The Old Buffoon; as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, p. 44 Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition? Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone. If there is no immortality, there is no virtue. ... Without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.'" Ivan is the incarnation of the refusal to be the only one saved. He throws in his lot with the damned and, for their sake, rejects eternity. If he had faith, he could, in fact, be saved, but others would be damned and suffering would continue. There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion. Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over. There's some very weird moments too - the author explains at the beg I’ve thrown in a few fictional pieces, speculative tales through which to explore selfhood and consciousness, life and death. I get to discuss grief with C. S. Lewis; I get to meet some zombies; to my great surprise, I discover I have a long-hidden sub-personality fluent in French and adept in the arts of seduction; I celebrate my 150th birthday. Along with these standalone pieces, there’s an intermittent fictional thread woven with the factual material. It involves a time-twisting drunk named Mike who appears at various points dispensing pearls of wisdom, especially on the nature of time and fate. Strange things happen to the flow of time when Mike’s around. In the final chapter he gives me an opportunity to time travel, and with it a deep dilemma.

There are different points in this book when the author seems to assert that consciousness or "self" is an illusion. How can anyone possibly know that for sure when we don't even know exactly what consciousness is? For all we know, what we have is the real deal. If it's not, what exactly is it supposed to be? I think you have to know what a thing is actually supposed to be before you can decide whether or not it's an illusion. So am I mistaken about this? Is there something I missed? I have heard of recent discoveries that show that more neurons than we used to think do get replaced, but not all of them. I am aware that the mind is not a physical thing but a product of the brain. Consciousness is a process, but it seems to me that an underlying physical substrate, like neurons that last our entire lives, presents a pretty good theory for answering the question of the continuity of self. I’m not saying for certain that that is the answer, but it seems like a pretty compelling possibility to me and I don’t understand how Dr. Broks could possibly be unaware of this. If he is aware of it, he does a pretty good job of ignoring it. Brok skilfully twines together strands from myth, legend, personal anecdote, philosophy, neurobiology, developmental biology and psychology to give us an answer which is much greater than the sum of the parts. In this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a book, the neuroscientist Paul Broks takes us image by image, story by story, into an exploration of life with all its brilliant hues of grief and despair, joy and resilience, biology and society. There’s science here, and curiosity, and humanity, all forming a remarkable portrait of who we are—and who we hope to be.”James Baldwin in "Doom and glory of knowing who you are" by Jane Howard, in LIFE magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21 (24 May 1963) But,' I [Dmitri Karamazov] asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said. Variant translation: Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery. I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.

I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers...Many Russian novelists influenced me as well: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov, Gogol, and Bulgarov.

Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society. In your brain, it’s a different story. New neurons are made in just two parts of the brain—the hippocampus, involved in memory and navigation, and the olfactory bulb, involved in smell (and even then only until 18 months of age). Aside from that, your neurons are as old as you are and will last you for the rest of your life. They don’t divide, and there’s no turnover.” It says in part: “All across your organs, cells are being produced and destroyed. They have an expiry date. The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly.