Do You Think You're Clever? (16 page)

(Medicine, Cambridge)

What a question! What I like is that someone can pose this question and that I can try, however ineffectively, to answer it. I like not what the brain is but what it can
do
. I like the fact that it enables me to think, to analyse and respond to experience, to formulate ideas and to know what pleasure is, and pain. I like the fact that it gives me my life.

I can’t say I especially like it physically. In fact it’s a little bit disgusting to look at. But I like the fact that with it
I can contemplate that this big dollop of paté contains a microscopic network of nerve cells that make it the most fantastically complex thing in the universe. Estimates vary wildly, since of course no one has counted them all, but there are some 100 billion separate cells in the human brain – which is, by strange coincidence, much the same number as there are galaxies in the universe. But this bald number, however awesome, doesn’t begin to capture the almost miraculous complexity of the brain, with each of those 100 billion cells making 1,000 or more separate connections with other cells – and unimaginably more alternative pathways for nerve signals to crackle, fizz and buzz along as they make us jump up or sit down, laugh and cry, love and hate, sing, shout, swear, eat, drink and do everything that makes us human.

I like the way it’s continually defying expectations and proving a more wonderful mechanism than a few scientists would have us believe. There was a time not long ago, when scientists portrayed it as a dying machine, a computer that gradually lost its effectiveness as you went through life, as old nerve cells died off and were never replaced. Using techniques such as fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans, scientists have now discovered that the brain is not simply a failing machine that steadily loses its working parts. Instead, it’s a flexible, living organism with an amazing capacity for change and development throughout your life. It’s said to be ‘plastic’ – that is, it can go on programming and reprogramming itself almost limitlessly.

I like the fact that it has become clear that your mental powers have very little to do with the number of brain cells that you have. It’s the connections between them that matter – and there is an almost infinite possible number of connections between brain cells, at any age. Indeed, your brain goes on making more and more of these connections as you get older, not fewer. I like too that while you may lose brain cells as you get older, some, at least, can actually grow again. And losing brain cells may actually be good for mental powers, not bad. When you’re a child, your brain evolves as it learns through repeated mass extinctions of little-used brain cells that allow those that prove their use to develop properly – a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ process called apoptosis. Losing brain cells as you get older could actually be the brain’s way of improving efficiency – cutting away the dead wood to allow the good to flourish.

But perhaps the brain’s best victory over the reductive scientists is the recent discovery that its performance is in your control to a much, much greater extent than we ever realised. It has become clear that the future of your brain is at least partly in your own hands, or rather, your own thoughts. What I like best of all about the brain, though, is the fact that I have one, just like everyone else’s but unique to me.

(Human Sciences, Oxford)

It’s one of the strange anomalies of the modern world that the USA, one of the most technologically advanced of all nations, should have so many uncompromising Christians who challenge some of science’s best-established theories.

On a simple level, those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, which describes how God made all the world’s creatures at a stroke, must inevitably disagree with the theory of evolution, which suggests that all the world’s living things evolved naturally over billions of years. But there is more to this question than that. Although there have been tussles, there are many Christians all around the world who are quite happy to accept the theory of evolution, without feeling their basic beliefs compromised.

The USA, however, is different. Recent surveys suggest that more than half of all Americans entirely reject the notion of evolution. In fact, in a survey of the US plus 32 European countries, Turkey and Japan, it turned out that fewer people in America accepted evolution than in any other country but Turkey. And when it comes to acceptance of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, in which evolution progresses in an entirely automatic, mechanical (entirely God-free) way, the numbers shrink further – with only 14 per cent of Americans agreeing with it. Yet this idea has been accepted by scientists for not far short of a century.

It may be that many Americans are simply not sufficiently educated. The more people seem to know about science, the less unnerving they find the notion of evolution. Yet a study by Miller, Scott and Okamoto published in 2006 in
Science
, backed up by a recent Gallup poll, suggests that it really is religious beliefs that are at the heart of the issue. Regardless of education, over half of American non-churchgoers believe in evolution, while less than a quarter of churchgoers do. However, non-belief in evolution does seem to go hand-in-hand with strongly conservative politics and a pro-life stance – and moral certainty rather than spirituality. So it seems likely that the American distrust of evolution is maybe as much cultural as purely religious. There is a broad section in American society (proved to be in a minority, at least for a while, by the 2008 election of Barack Obama) which distrusts progress and distrusts outsiders – and distrusts science.

Just why so many Americans distrust science is hard to say. Maybe they see science as a danger to cherished values, as well as fundamental beliefs. Or maybe they dislike its democratising power, just as conservative elements distrusted the ascendancy of human logic in the eighteenth century over divine inspiration which helped spur the French and, ironically, American revolutions. Or maybe, in common with so many people in Europe, they are wary of science’s tendency to hubris – its negative associations with failed drugs and inflated claims – or the way it threatens to, as Keats put it, ‘unweave the rainbow’ and take the
magic and mystery out of life. Yet, paradoxically, some anti-evolutionists happily embrace GM technology.

It’s not always entirely clear just what aspect of evolution unconvinced Americans actually disagree with. When questioned, most, but by no means all, are Creationists – that is, they believe that God created all life on earth. But they are not always specific about whether they believe it was created fully formed as it is today, or whether species have come and gone, and if so, how?

One powerful element among the evolution challengers in America has come from those who promote the concept of ‘Intelligent Design’. This is not an idea that has come from the Bible at all, but a pseudo-scientific notion aimed, apparently, at challenging evolution on intellectual grounds. In essence, it says that the astonishing complexity and aptness for their circumstances of most life forms on earth must indicate that they were designed intelligently, that is by God.

This argument from design is an old one, known by philosophers (and long-discredited) as the teleological argument, but the Intelligent Designers have given it a new scientific gloss with expensively funded ‘research’ institutes and apparently ‘scientific’ papers spread across the internet that trap the unwary. There have been many battles fought over whether Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution as a ‘theory’ in science lessons in American schools. The ‘Designers’ often, though not always, seem to win, but it’s ultimately a con; it’gds no more a scientific idea than basic Creationism and so should have no more place in the science curriculum. It’s hardly surprising, though, that so many Americans remain unconvinced by the notion of evolution, with so many powerful and persuasive voices lobbying against it.

(Architecture, Cambridge)

One of the big shocks of the last few decades has been how so many of the modernistic, highly prized housing schemes of the 1960s have quickly become crime hotspots – sink estates where nobody wants to live if they can help it, and where crime is endemic. Clearly the mix of people living here can sometimes play a part, but there has been a growing realisation that the built environment plays a much bigger part. The wrong kind of architecture not only fails to deter crime, but positively encourages it.

It helps when answering this question if you know a little about a whole new approach to architecture, known as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), that has become popular in recent years. Its origins lie back in the 1960s in the USA when authors such as Jane Jacobs in
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
(1961) observed just how alienating the new urban landscapes were, with their vast areas of ‘no-man’s land’ and the lack of interaction between neighbours. It’s now
a major field of study that has attracted a lot of research because the implications are so important. Yet much of what CPTED promotes is simply common sense – so much so that it’s hard to appreciate just how badly architects once got it wrong. It’s about taking obvious preventive measures to make it harder to commit crimes, combined with more subtle measures that reduce the mentality that makes people actually want to commit crimes.

CPTED practitioners like the word ‘natural’. They talk about ‘natural surveillance’, for instance, ‘natural access control’ and ‘natural territorial reinforcement’. The idea is that instead of imposing military-level surveillance systems and building houses like fortresses, you exploit thoughtful design so that neighbourhoods become naturally self-policing, and access is discouraged. It’s about building a sense of ownership and community so that people look out for each other. Principles like these were used in the design of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and they are being used in the new Buckingham and Suffolk University campuses, with lots of glass, grass and people-friendly spaces.

Crime is much less likely in settings where people are more involved in each other’s lives and care about their shared spaces. This means housing must be ‘human’-scale. In a large development, housing should be divided into small enclaves with a shared communal space where neighbours are likely to meet casually all the time – something which can be enhanced by landscaping gardens. But each enclave needs to be at least subtly different to personalise
it, and given features such as signs and ornaments in styles that may have special meaning for the residences. The shared space needs to be attractive, too, with places for sitting, and the boundaries between shared and private space need to be soft and appealing to encourage a sense of pride and shared ownership. This shared space, and the arrangement of doors and windows to face it, may help, too, to reduce social isolation, another factor behind crime. The sense of ownership is important, and this is what CPTED practitioners mean when they talk about ‘natural territorial reinforcement’ – making the most of design and layout so that people have a sense of ownership which makes intruders stand out.

‘Natural surveillance’ means doorways and windows should look out into brightly lit open spaces so that neighbours can easily see comings and goings, who’s in and who’s out. This is not just a question of making it easy to spot potential intruders, but encourages a casual knowledge of who lives where, which makes the individual dwellings less appealing for criminals. Dimly lit corridors and stairwells and dark, tucked away spaces should be avoided at all costs. Hidden away parking lots and rubbish areas always attract problems. Far better to have parking arrangements in full view (unless completely secure).

‘Natural access control’ means using architectural design to discourage intruders, rather than razor wire and concrete. It’s easy to underestimate the value of protecting potential targets architecturally. Break-ins happen,
for instance, where ways of getting in are either weakly protected or out of sight. Windows and doors can be more strongly constructed and armed with deadbolts. They can also be sited in places that are well-lit and public, or, in the case of windows, hard to access. A second-floor window near a wheelie bin area, for instance, is an obvious target. But making somewhere look like a prison camp increases alienation and probably incites crime. So these features always need to look attractive and stylish, as well as strong. And it’s worth creating space for planting and plant barriers rather than building a lot of walls, bars and concrete. Planting not only gives a place a more attractive, cared-for look; burglars are actually more deterred by flower beds and hedges than they are by walls. It’s surprisingly hard to climb over a hedge!

Architectural devices like these are being used more and more, and police and social workers are now often brought in as consultants on architectural schemes. This is all good. The strange thing, though, is that when communities built housing for themselves in the past, they often did all this as a matter of course, without the need for consultants …

(Land Economy, Cambridge)

‘Greed is good’ is what Michael Douglas said as the ruthless financier Gordon Gekko in the 1986 film
Wall Street
,
as he prepared to brutally shred a company and sell off the parts. Director Oliver Stone portrayed Gekko as a monster, yet back in those Thatcher and Reagan days that kind of high-powered acquisitiveness was actually very much in vogue and Gekko was something of a hero. Ambitious young men and women aimed for the City determined to clock up their first million before they were 30. The ‘loadsamoney’ ethos filtered right down through society, and if few people were quite so upfront about proclaiming their greed as Gekko, they had no qualms about showing an in-yer-face, get-rich-quick lifestyle.

It wasn’t simply that individual acquisitiveness had lost some of the stigma it once had; it was encouraged by economists as good for society. Famously, Milton Friedman advocated removing the fetters of regulation to allow individual self-interest to flourish. In an extreme version of Adam Smith’s laissez-faire capitalism, Friedman unabashedly insisted that greed was the real driving force behind societies, and giving it full rein was the only viable route to prosperity and political and social freedoms. Deregulation of the financial markets under Reagan and Thatcher – culminating in the London Stock Market’s ‘Big Bang’ on 27 October 1986 – was soon coupled with huge performance bonuses to lead to an explosion of the world of money.

The story is all too well-known now. Cities such as London and New York rose on a tide of money in the 1990s and early 2000s, revelling as property prices went through
the roof and whizzkids indulged in a spree of spending on luxury goods such as £80 sandwiches. It seemed as if greed was very good. And then, of course, in autumn 2008, it all went wrong, as the massively overstretched banks were plunged into deep trouble, with the Midas touch of institutions like Lehmann Brothers suddenly turning to dross. As people felt their livelihoods threatened, the consensus switched almost overnight. Greed suddenly became BAD and synonymous with a cavalier selfishness that had brought the world to the brink of ruin. Greedy bankers became targets for vilification, and there were widespread calls for tough regulation to curb their wicked ways. Public anger at the revelation of the inflated expenses claims of British MPs in the spring of 2009 seemed to mark a final nail in the coffin for ‘greed is good’ as public figures stumbled over each other to proclaim ‘greed is bad’. Even if in private people were as committed to personal acquisition as ever, few, even bankers, now feel it’s acceptable to shout this out in public as they did twenty years ago.

Yet despite this apparent change, the influence of the 1970s and 80s on underlying beliefs will not be so easily dispersed. People may not say ‘greed is good’ but most believe it’s inevitable. The rampant individualism encouraged by Mrs Thatcher, characterised in her infamous comment, ‘There is no such thing as society’, was part of a picture, along with the title of Richard Dawkins’ groundbreaking book on evolution,
The Selfish Gene
, which seemed to imply that we are all selfish, right down to our
genes. There is still a widespread assumption that people are essentially selfish and greedy underneath it all, and so there is no point in behaving as if they are not.

Indeed, the competitive individualism that came to the fore in the 1980s and 90s went hand-in-hand with a kind of paranoia – a feeling that you were likely to get ripped off or slighted if you didn’t make the right moves. People become pugnacious and determined to get their fair share – even suggesting that others are fools if they allow themselves to be ‘exploited’. Greed may be bad, many say, but it’s a fact of life. Very few people will declare like Gekko that greed is good, but they will maybe insist that it’s how we have to live if we are to survive and prosper in a tough world.

Yet the prevailing culture has a profound influence on how we all feel and behave. It’s my belief that selfishness and paranoia are simply reflections of a selfish and paranoid time in society rather than an intrinsic part of human nature. Put people in a different culture and they may behave entirely differently. I feel disinclined to criticise either bankers or politicians on expenses for being greedy simply because few are better or worse than the culture they moved in. In some ways, criticism is another kind of greed – greed for a sense of superiority. But I would say that greed is bad, not just because it’s morally disreputable, but because it’s bad for society. A world in which people are not generous – both emotionally as well as materially – and put too much energy into acquisition is much less likely to be a happy place.