The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress & the Key to Human Resilience by Scott Carney

 

Published in 2020

I read The Wedge as a sequel to Carney's earlier book What Doesn't Kill Us, which reported about his dive into the Wim Hof Method. The Wim Hof Method involves a combination of cold exposure and intense breathing and breath-holds that seem to allow the nearly impossible in terms of control over autonomic functions in the body. What Doesn't Kill Us was intriguing, to say the least, as Carney had begun his inquiry with the idea of debunking the wild-eyed Dutchman. But by the end of his time with Wim Hof, Carney concluded that Wim Hof was on to something, and Carney was all in. And when I say "all in,' this includes a climactic climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in near-record time while dressed only minimally--and even in the heart of Africa, it gets mighty cold there. This experience triggered Carney to look more deeply into what happens with the Wim Hof method and how it might be duplicated in some measure by other techniques. And thus, The Wedge.

Carney lays out his hypothesis upfront in clear, simple (but not too simple) prose: 

So what is the Wedge, exactly? The most comfortable way to think about the Wedge is that it is a choice to separate stimulus from response. . . . The Wedge is the measure of control that we all have to insert choice into the space between sensation of the outside world and the physiological responses that it triggers. . . [I]nevery situation a human might get themselves into, there’s always a tension between the challenge (stress) and the built-in automatic reactions. The Wedge intercedes and introduces a measure of control in things that otherwise feel uncontrollable.

Carney then compares this "wedge" space with our normal ego as it functions: 

The tricky thing about understanding the Wedge, and what makes it so incredibly difficult to explain, is that you—or rather, your ego—is not always the thing in charge. Remember, there is no self. All the parts of an individual and environment work together to generate an illusion of a self. Ego is just a perspective on the reality that we’re part of a superorganism.

Carney continues with some greater in-depth thoughts about how the wedge may work, and he notes three different pathways by which the wedge might operate: at the point of stress (from the environment), at the point of (bodily) sensation, and in our "mindset" or "orientation;" that is, "your mental attitude, expectations, emotions and disposition at the time that you receive sensation from your nervous system." From this deployment of a mindset, one can in some sense pre-load one's responses to stresses and sensations to allow a wedge to form. Carney also makes an important point about emotions, writing that

Emotions create a symbolic link between what’s happening in the world and what occurs inside of our bodies. And because evolution is a rather slow process, it would be hubristic to think that the sensory and emotional tools that Homo sapiens have access to appeared fully formed when the first member of our species started walking the Earth between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.

Indeed, Carney argues 

Inserting a wedge requires learning the language that your body uses to communicate information about the environment. Its syntax and grammar aren’t made of words; they’re sensation, emotion, and keen observation of the links between your mind and the external world. 

Before I conclude this summary tour of Carney's thoughts and theories about the Wedge before he jumps into a series of concrete instances of its manifestations, I must note his discussion of fear, that most potent and often vexing emotion.

How we resolve the tension between risk and reward defines who we are. And fear is a guidepost for how we use the Wedge. It is as much an involuntary response to a prediction of the future as it is a sensation that immobilizes our biology and stops us from taking action. Mastering fear doesn’t mean ignoring danger, but rather finding a reason that makes danger worth it—separating the stimulus from the response.

Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist, uses video from divers who investigate great white sharks to elicit fear in test subjects in his lab. (It would work for me.) Carney quotes and summarizes comments from Huberman about fear:

Fear would have meant he [the diver] was out of control. No choices. So maybe he wasn’t exactly afraid in the moment. It was something else. Huberman decides to paraphrase the great horror writer Stephen King: Fear has a lot to do with time frames. Before the event, a person experiences the dread of anticipation; during the event, there’s terror when they’re helpless in the moment; and after it’s over, a person remembers the experience as horror.

Carney continues:

Fear is an excellent inflection point to demonstrate the physiology of the Wedge. It’s powerful, visceral, has a strong influence on our behavior, and yet also preserves our ability to make choices about our actions. We experience fear on both a biological and psychological level. It triggers the fight-or-flight response just as reliably as the cold does, issues a burst of adrenaline, secretes sweat, dilates pupils and ramps up the heart rate. However, with fear, our bodily reactions are based on sights, sounds and our own idiosyncratic assessment of how things are changing around us in a bad way. It starts in the mind, not the body. And this is why I hope that his research into fear can help me dissect every other emotional and environmental interface that contributes to the Wedge. 

I spend a good deal of space quoting Carney on fear because it seems to me that in our world--and certainly its always been so in the human world--fear drives much of our behavior. Indeed, even though we no longer face man-eating beasts or the like, we suffer less tangible but more chronic fears that lead to more subtle reactions, such as "anxiety." Perhaps we do live in "The Age of Anxiety" as suggested by the W.H. Auden poem and the Scott Stossel non-fiction book. My own conclusion is that fear is an excellent and necessary warning system but a terribly unreliable guidance system. But because it's such a primal emotion, it's not easily corraled by the thinking brain. If Carney's book proves to have any value--and I certainly believe that it does--it's because his theme of dealing successfully with fear is the crux of the Wedge.

Lest I give you the wrong impression, Carney's book isn't simply an extended essay conjecturing about how the world and our bodies work. The other part of the book is a series of personal experiences and reporting on ideas and techniques about how we can deal with our world, especially fear-creating or uncomfortable experiences, in a manner that improves our resilience. One of the activities that Carney experiences and reports upon is playing catch with a heavy kettlebell. (A kettlebell is an iron ball with a handle attached that allows the user to swing it and thereby create a ballistic motion. It's an increasingly popular form of exercise imported from Russia, and, I must add, an excellent addition to any home gym.) Playing catch with a heavy object that will wreak havoc if it lands on the wrong place (such as your foot) requires an intensity of mind that must move beyond fear to successfully negotiate such a high-stakes game of catch. Carney also explores a variety of breathing techniques in addition to the standard Wim Hof method that he's been working with now for several years. He explores "the potato diet" and the use of saunas (in Lithuania, no less), flotation tank experiences, and two drugs: MDHD (Ecstacy) and ayahuasca. In undertaking the latter to experiences, Carney expresses the most hesitation. As he notes with all of his other wedge experiences and experiments, he could bail at any time, such as simply halting a breathing technique or quitting a game of kettlebell catch. But during a drug trip, Carney knew he couldn't simply stop and get off at any time that he wanted. He was therefore prudent. With the MDHD (Ecstasy), he took the drug along with his wife and under the guidance of two experienced therapists. They used the occasion as an opportunity for couples therapy. Carney also went to Peru to try ayahuasca, and again Carney expresses and practices what seems a reasonable degree of prudence in dealing with a substance in a land and culture far from his own.

I found the two experiences with the two different drugs the least informative, but I don't say that to denigrate those experiences or to criticize Carney. From what he says and my understanding of those types of experiences in general, I believe that they are the most complex to predict and describe. Most of the other experiences that he undertakes to explore and expand his wedge hypothesis are simpler and easy to "do at home," and he provides self-practice advice in a section on the end about "Techniques" for the (non-drug) practices.

At one point in thinking about writing this review, I was going to describe the book as having two parts: one part, which is represented by the several quotes at the beginning of this review, center on the wedge hypothesis and its grounding in science, and the other part about Carney's experiences and observations. But I realized that the book is too integrated to describe it this way. Carney's self-experimentation, observations, reporting, conjectures, and hypotheses are distributed throughout the book and make it an integrated whole. This scheme makes the book a delight to read and ponder. I believe that Carney is on to something here (and "it" has been "here" for all of human history), and he's bringing what has been largely lost (especially in modernity) back into focus. Thus, it's a book that is at once enlightening and entertaining, and well worth the read.

Emotional Awareness: A Conversation Between the Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman

Leading psychologist Paul Ekman received an invitation to a Mind and Life Conference with the Dalai Lama in 2000. He went because he knew it would it please his daughter, an admirer of the Dalai Lama. Ekman himself had no great knowledge of Buddhism and no religious beliefs or practices of his own. What happened as a result of this initial encounter changed Ekman's life, both personally and professionally. He hit it off with the Dalai Lama, experiencing a warmth and openness that affected him emotionally and that puzzled him as a scientist. And he learned things about the Buddhist tradition that triggered new perspectives and research agendas from him about the emotions and how we humans can learn to better cultivate them. This book records conversations held between Ekman and the Dalai Lama over several years. These transcripts and sidebars become a treasure-trove of insight into this most basic human (and animal) phenomenon that Buddhism has explored more than two millennia via introspection (meditation). Now science is taking a closer look at, especially with the advances in neuroscience and other techniques that provide us new ways of viewing and testing emotions. This book allows any reader can come away with a better understanding of how we live our emotional lives, and how we can cultivate those emotions for our own good and the good of those with whom we live. No small accomplishment.

The first two of the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha state his assessment of the human condition. The First Noble Truth: Life is unsatisfactory. (More often, we see the original Sanskrit or Pali translated as “suffering”, but I agree that this word is perhaps too aggressive in its portrayal of the original insight.) The Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering [or unsatisfactoriness] is attachment. Attachment, as you learn, can mean craving for something (greed), craving to escape something (aversion, hatred), or ignorance of the situation (delusion). So what has this to do with emotions? Via natural selection, mammals, and especially humans, developed emotions that refined our ability to approach or avoid. Mixed with our hyper-sociability (Jon Haidt), we developed a wide variety of emotions that attract or repel us from various perceived situations. Natural selection armed us over millions of years with these mind tools, but with the advent of civilization (living in cities instead of small hunter-gatherer groups), our array of emotions, such as anger and hatred, for instance, could lead us astray. Robert Wright argues in his course on Buddhism and Modern Psychology (now offered on Coursera) that Buddhism is an antidote to some aspects human behavior instilled in us by natural selection. Instead of acting on our feelings of attachment (“Yum, doughnuts! Let’s feast”) or aversion (“Your rotten SOB”), we learn to get between our emotions—developed for quick perceptions and responses—and our actions. This is a fundamental insight shared between HHDL and Ekman, each coming at the issue from their different traditions but finding a lot of agreement. Ekman calls a pause in our reactions a “refractory period”, which may be micro-moment, or—with cultivation—something much longer. 

After spending time defining emotions—different from moods, we should note—the two discuss how we might learn to tame them (and not, as some think Buddhism suggests, eliminate them). Here we learn of the benefits of meditation as a mechanism for developing awareness, a meta-awareness (B. Alan Wallace) that allows us to observe the development of an emotion within us and thereby make a conscious decision about how we shall (or shan’t) act in response to the impulse. This ability, along with the conscious cultivation of compassion, allows us to take ourselves in happier and more sociable directions than the naturally selected traits of our emotions might push us.

The above is just a taste of what the book covers. In addition to insights into basic and ongoing Western scientific research about the emotions and the Buddhist insights cultivated over 2000 years, we learn about the participants, especially Ekman. Ekman’s insight that he changes over the course of these conversations (estimated at about 39 hours) is really moving. Ekman grew-up with a very difficult father, and Ekman shares insights he gains about himself and that relationship. Ekman’s growth of insight and appreciation gives the book an emotional (in a very good way!) valence that adds spice to the wonderful scientific and Buddhist knowledge and wisdom that we garner through it. 

The emotions are an endlessly fascinating topic. The quality of our lives is a function of our emotions. Much of morality and ethics revolve around our emotions and how we handle them. Indeed, not just Buddhism, but all of the Axial religions and philosophies—later Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Socratic philosophy and its progeny, especially Stoicism, Confucianism, and aspects of Taoism and Hinduism—are efforts to re-direct human conduct from older, more atavistic (and now less well-adapted) traits vested in humans via natural selection. These religions and philosophies (philosophy, that is, “as a way of life”, in the words of Pierre Hadot) developed in response to a very different environment (civilization) than that of the hunter-gatherers from whom we descended. The challenge to us is to use the wisdom of these traditions and refine them (no more required, I suspect) to best fit our contemporary needs. This book goes a long way in forwarding that project. We must thank Dr. Ekman and the Dalai Lama for their courage in reaching across traditions to help us find our way.

P.S. This is a second take on this book. Indeed, blog 5/682 (i.e., near the beginning of my blogging) addresses my listening to this as an audio book. It was definitely worth a second take!

A Farewell to Alms and Emotional Awareness

I began A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark (2007) today. Clark argues against Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame, as well as those like Pomerantz, who argue that colonies and coal provide the explanation of the Great Divergence (i.e., why Britain and then Western Europe zoomed to a dominant position via the Industrial Revolution). Our visit to Cameroon spurred this interest, as the gap between the Cameroonian standard of living and ours is so great. Why? In reading Clark’s introduction, he sets forth his basic tenants. First, until the 1800’s and the Industrial Revolution, most parts of the world remained nearly equally poor. In fact, humankind may have been worse off on the eve of the Industrial Revolution than it was as hunter-gathers over 8,000 years ago. Until the Industrial Revolution, humans lived in a Malthusian world. However, in Britain, because of culture, the Industrial Revolution took off. Clark argues that coal and colonies did not distinguish Europe from China and Japan. Indeed, Clark suggests that certain attributes, such as delayed gratification and hard work spread into British society before (or more effectively than others), perhaps even through genetic changes. Finally, in his introduction, Clark reminds us of the weird but often-cited fact that we are no happier, and perhaps less happy, than our much poorer ancestors. Indeed, in our recent trip to Cameroon, we found the villagers where we stayed quite warm and welcoming,  and on the whole happy. Clark suggests that envy is the problem; perhaps, he says, the envious will inherit the earth.

I’ve been listening to the Dalai Lama (voice-over by Richard Gere) and Paul Ekman in the audiobook of Emotional Awareness (2008). The conversation is fascinating. Ekman the Western scientist has obviously been very impressed with his introduction to Buddhist thinking in the areas of consciousness, awareness, and emotional control. Today he and the DL discussed compassion and how we can cultivate it. Do we need to have suffered? How can we foster universal compassion? Ekman and the DL seem to agree on a lot, and it shows for me the deed empirical wisdom of this aspect of the Buddhist tradition, the Buddhist psychology (and Buddha was perhaps the greatest psychologist-therapist).