Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

420 I HOW THE MIND WORKSselves are interchangeable with the tactics they use to control; others.How do you prevent your child from scratching his hives in hi$ sleep?Put mittens on him. How do you prevent yourself from scratching yourhives in your sleep? Put mittens on yourself. If Odysseus had notplugged his shipmates' ears, they would have done it on their own. Theself that wants a trim body outwits the self that wants dessert by throwingout the brownies at the opportune moment when it is in control.So we do seem to use paradoxical tactics against ourselves. The agentin control at one time makes a voluntary but irreversible sacrifice of freedomof choice for the whole body, and gets its way in the long run. Thatis the bright spot in this whole depressing discussion of selfish genes anddoomsday machines. Social life is not always the equivalent of globalthermonuclear war because the part of us with the longest view of thefuture, when in control of the body, can voluntarily sacrifice freedom ofchoice for the body at other times. We sign contracts, submit to laws,and hitch our reputations to public declarations of loyalty to friends andmates. These are not tactics to defeat someone else, but tactics to defeatthe darker parts of ourselves.One more speculation on the battle inside the head. No one knowswhat, if anything, grief is for. Obviously the loss of a loved one isunpleasant, but why should it be devastating? Why the debilitating painthat stops people from eating, sleeping, resisting diseases, and getting onwith life? Jane Goodall describes a young chimp, Flint, who after thedeath of his beloved mother became depressed and died himself as if ofa broken heart.Some have suggested that grief is an enforced interlude for reassessment.Life will never be the same, so one must take time to plan how tocope with a world that has been turned upside down. Perhaps grief alsogives people time to contemplate how a lapse of theirs may have allowedthe death and how they might be more careful in the future. There may bean element of truth to the suggestion. Bereaved people find that they acheall over again every time they discover another habit to unlearn, like settingout an extra plate or buying groceries for two. And blaming oneself is acommon symptom. But the pain of grief makes planning harder, not easier,and is too extreme and long-lasting to be useful as a strategy session.William James wrote, "It takes a mind debauched by learning to carrythe process of making the natural seem strange so far as to ask for the'why' of any instinctive human act." Though legitimate to a scientist,the question "Why do we grieve?" is preposterous to common sense. If