The pursuit of pleasure

It will come as no great shock to anyone who knows me that my patronus is a border collie.

Relaxation is not easy for me.  I'm kind of in perpetual motion from the moment I wake up.  Part of it is pure physical nervousness; even when I'm sitting still I'm not sitting still, and usually I'm bouncing one leg or swinging a foot back and forth or something.  In the last couple of months, driven by the fact that the pandemic closed the gym we belong to, my wife and I have been doing an online yoga program (we really like the one on YouTube with the ever-cheerful Adriene Mishler).  The problem is, for me at least, yoga isn't just about trying to twist your body into a Möbius strip, it's equally about focusing on your breath and finding inner stillness.  It usually begins, and always ends, with some sort of quiet meditative posture.

This is harder for me than trying to force myself into the Inverted Pretzel Asana, or whatever incomprehensible position she is encouraging us to bend ourselves into during the session itself.  As soon as my body stops moving, my mind starts to race, and it's a struggle not to start thinking of the list of things I need to accomplish next (or, if it's in the evening, all the things I didn't accomplish during the day that I need to see to tomorrow).

So retirement has had its challenges.  I know the idea is, "You worked hard during your entire career, you deserve some time off just to chill."  For me it's more like, "Now there are even more hours in the day during which I will feel tremendously guilty for not being as productive as I for some reason think I should be."

Q: How many border collies does it take to change a light bulb?  A: Only one.  He will do it quickly and efficiently, and afterward he will check to make sure all the wiring in your house is up to code.  [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Thomas Vaclavek from Woodstock, USA, Border Collie panting, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Add to this the fact that I have an insanely competitive streak, and it's a wonder I haven't stressed myself into a heart attack yet.  As an example, I can't just enjoy running; I had to join the OneNYChallenge, a "virtual" race where you run each day and log your miles online (the whole thing is a fundraiser for COVID research).  We had from May 15 to August 31 to log 500 kilometers -- I finished the race a month and a half early, and now am looking around like, "Okay, c'mon, what next?"

Anyhow, all this neurotic stuff comes up because of a paper last week in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, describing research from the University of Zürich that found that being hedonistic makes you happier than being goal-oriented -- that the old conventional wisdom that true happiness comes from self-control and delayed gratification leading to accomplishment might not be all that accurate.

The authors write:

Self-control helps to align behavior with long-term goals (e.g., exercising to stay fit) and shield it from conflicting hedonic goals (e.g., relaxing).  Decades of research have shown that self-control is associated with numerous positive outcomes, such as well-being.  In the present article, we argue that hedonic goal pursuit is equally important for well-being, and that conflicting long-term goals can undermine it in the form of intrusive thoughts.

"It's time for a rethink," said study lead author, social psychologist Katharina Bernecker, in an interview with Science Daily.  "Of course self-control is important, but research on self-regulation should pay just as much attention to hedonism, or short-term pleasure...  It was always thought that hedonism, as opposed to self-control, was the easier option...  The pursuit of hedonic and long-term goals needn't be in conflict with one another.  Our research shows that both are important and can complement each other in achieving well-being and good health. It is important to find the right balance in everyday life."

My question is whether this may be a correlation/causation error; that happier, more well-adjusted people gravitate toward occasional hedonism because they're confident enough to be a little self-righteous about their own needs and desires, not that increasing hedonistic behavior in people who are already wound a little too tight would make them happier.  To be fair, Bernecker did address that point: "But really enjoying one's hedonic choice isn't actually that simple for everybody because of those distracting thoughts...  Thinking of the work you still need to do can lead to more distracting thoughts at home, making you less able to rest."

So it makes me wonder what I can do about my own situation, since I doubt that merely eating a slice of chocolate cake for lunch and then taking a nap is going to fix my rabid goal-orientation.  And there is a good side of being as driven as I am; I have thirteen novels and a collection of short stories in print, I entertain the masses by writing here at Skeptophilia six days a week, and given that I ran five hundred kilometers in 65 days, I'm in pretty good physical condition for a 59-year-old.  But I would like to find a way to cycle down the nervous energy, and especially, get rid of the guilt, a relic of a childhood where there were two classes of activity: "accomplishing something worthwhile" and "wasting time."  (Sadly, in my parents' view, reading, writing, and playing music were all in the latter category.)

So it's time for the border collie to give it a rest.  I don't want to switch my patronus to a hound dog sleeping all day on the porch (which honestly is probably outside the realm of possibility in any case).  But it seems like I need to take the Bernecker et al. study to heart.

Maybe starting with the chocolate cake.  That actually sounded pretty good.

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Being in the middle of a pandemic, we're constantly being urged to wash our hands and/or use hand sanitizer.  It's not a bad idea, of course; multiple studies have shown that communicable diseases spread far less readily if people take the simple precaution of a thirty-second hand-washing with soap.

But as a culture, we're pretty obsessed with cleanliness.  Consider how many commercial products -- soaps, shampoos, body washes, and so on -- are dedicated solely to cleaning our skin.  Then there are all the products intended to return back to our skin and hair what the first set of products removed; the whole range of conditioners, softeners, lotions, and oils.

How much of this is necessary, or even beneficial?  That's the topic of the new book Clean: The New Science of Skin by doctor and journalist James Hamblin, who considers all of this and more -- the role of hyper-cleanliness in allergies, asthma, and eczema, and fascinating and recently-discovered information about our skin microbiome, the bacteria that colonize our skin and which are actually beneficial to our overall health.  Along the way, he questions things a lot of us take for granted... such as whether we should be showering daily.

It's a fascinating read, and looks at the question from a data-based, scientific standpoint.  Hamblin has put together the most recent evidence on how we should treat the surfaces of our own bodies -- and asks questions that are sure to generate a wealth of discussion.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Worrywarts

It will come as no particular surprise to people who know me that I can be a little neurotic at times.  I'm nervous to the point of not being able to sit still, and get seriously worked up before (for example) races, because I can so vividly envision everything going wildly wrong.  Mental images of me running out in front of a truck or collapsing with heat stroke or simply being the last person to limp across the finish line gain a life of their own, despite the fact that none of those things have ever happened to me.

Traveling is worse.  I say I love to travel, but what I actually mean is that I love being at my destination.  Traveling with me is kind of a nightmare, because I experience gut-clenching anxiety about missing a connection or losing my luggage or worse.  I still vividly recall watching with increasing horror as my wife tried to get through the immigration checkpoint on our way back into the U.S. from our first trip to Ecuador fifteen years ago.  I watched her searching her pockets and backpack for her passport, her expression gradually moving from perplexity to worry to outright panic -- and there was nothing I could do.  I couldn't go back in the line from the other side of the checkpoint and help her; even if I could, it's not like I knew where her passport was.  Images of Carol being hauled off to a windowless room with a bare light bulb to be interrogated as to why she was trying to enter the country illegally flitted through my head.

Of course, in short order she did find her passport, and disaster was averted, but it took me about three weeks to calm back down.

We also ended with nothing more than a serious adrenaline rush the time the drug-sniffing dogs flagged my backpack in Belize, although I did have to find a place to change my pants afterwards.

It's not like I have a history of terrible things happen to me.  I've never had anything worse than getting ill for a day or two, on any trip I've ever taken, and even that has been mild.

So none of this is connected to reality, not that this matters.  If no real crisis presents itself, my brain is perfectly capable of inventing various scenarios on its own.  The fact that these are highly improbable, and many of them are mutually exclusive, doesn't seem to matter.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Which is why I have now been sent a link three times by various friends and family members about a recent study showing that people who are neurotic live longer.  The study, conducted by Catharine Gale of the University of Edinburgh et al., was huge -- Gale and her team tracked 500,000 people aged 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom for six years, after giving them a personality assessment designed to determine their degree of anxiety and neuroticism.

The results were fascinating.  Even when controlled for typical risk factors -- smoking, heavy alcohol use, genetic predispositions to heart disease, cancer, or stroke -- neurotic people were less likely to die young.  Gale says:

There are disadvantages to being high in neuroticism, in that it makes people more prone to experiencing negative emotions.  But our findings suggest it may have some advantages too...  For some individuals, it seems to offer some protection against dying prematurely. 

At this point, Gale has no idea why this trend exists, so the next step is to figure out whether there's a causative link to something else, either genetic or behavioral.  Their first conjecture was that neurotic people, being worriers, might be less prone to engaging in unhealthy habits, but that turned out to be incorrect.  The percentage of smoking, drinking, and obesity among the neurotic group was not appreciably different from that of the control group.  Gale says:

We had thought that greater worry or vulnerability might lead people to behave in a healthier way and hence lower the risk of death, but that was not the case...  We now have to figure out why [this correlation] exists.

My own supposition is that neurotic people don't actually live longer, it just seems longer to their family and friends.  Heaven knows my wife, who has the patience of a saint, puts up with a great deal from my tendency toward getting anxious about damn near everything.  Amazingly enough, she still likes to travel with me, which I find a little baffling.  Sometimes I even drive myself crazy; I can't imagine what it'd be like for a normal person to put up with my continual twitching.

In any case, the whole thing is pretty fascinating, and I'm looking forward to seeing what more comes out of the study by Gale et al.  But now I need to wrap this up, because I have a race in three weeks and I need to start worrying about it.  What shall I fret about this time?  Maybe being chased and mangled by a Rottweiler.  I don't think I've used that one yet.

The bottom line

Sometimes I wonder if what drew me into rationalism was the fact that there is a whole side of my personality that is fanatically devoted to thinking irrationally.

In other words, my skepticism has evolved as a kind of internal defense mechanism.  On the one hand, I am capable of putting together evidence logically, making correct inferences, and thinking calmly and dispassionately about a wide variety of subjects.  On the other, I am simultaneously capable of being a wildly illogical neurotic who misinterprets everything, comes to conclusions that are based in fear and anxiety rather than fact, and if allowed, will run around in circles babbling incoherently in complete freak-out mode.

The whole thing comes up because yesterday I had the Medical Procedure For People Over 50 That Must Not Be Named.  I was, actually, five years overdue for the MPFPO50TMNBN, because I was heavily invested in pretending that it didn't exist.  I have spent the last five years completely convinced that screening and early cancer detection are absolutely critical, and also that the safest bet was to avoid the procedure entirely because if I had it, the doctor would tell me that I had three months to live.

But my wife and two friends finally twisted my arm into making an appointment.  The result was that I spent three weeks following scheduling my visit in an increasing state of panic.  I found myself having thoughts like, "Wow.  I wonder if this is the last time I'll hear this song, given that I have a terminal illness?" and "I hope my family will be able to get over their grief and move on quickly."  Knowing that these were ridiculous things to think -- I have absolutely zero incidence of cancer in my family, back to all eight great-grandparents, I'm not and have never been a smoker, I exercise regularly and eat right -- made no difference at all.

Of course, the closer it got, the worse it got.  Two days ago I had to start what is, honestly, the worst phase of the procedure, which is a thing with the innocent name of "prep."  "Prep" involves drinking ten glasses full of a liquid that appears to be chilled weasel snot.  After the second glass, I was reacting a little like Dumbledore did when Harry Potter had to force him to drink all the liquid from the basin so they could get the Horcrux.

But the taste is not the worst part.  The worst part is that the weasel snot causes a set of symptoms that I will not describe more fully out of respect for the more delicate members of my readership.  Suffices to say that I have it on good authority that "prep" was ruled out by Tomás de Torquemada as a means for inducing the prisoners of the Spanish Inquisition to confess to heresy, on the basis of its being too unpleasant and humiliating.

Anyhow, yesterday morning at 7 AM I was finally done with "prep," and my wife drove me to the hospital for the procedure. I sat in the car watching the trees and houses zoom past, feeling more and more like a condemned prisoner being marched toward the gallows.  I knew I was going to be sedated for the procedure, which was something of a relief; but still, the knowledge of what they could potentially find was absolutely terrifying.

At last, I was on the examining table, an IV in my arm, wearing one of those stylish hospital gowns that seem specifically designed to make it impossible for you to cover up your naughty bits when you move, and trembling like I had hypothermia.  My wife kissed me goodbye ("really goodbye," I thought), the doctor/executioner came in, the nurse put some sedative in my IV...

... and I proceeded to sleep soundly through the entire procedure.  I woke up in the recovery room and was immediately told that the whole thing had gone swimmingly, and that I didn't have to come back for a retest for ten years because I had no sign whatsoever of abnormality.

Well, physical abnormality, anyhow.  Even in my groggy post-sedative state, I was lying there thinking, "What an incredible goober I am.  I spent the last three weeks working myself up into a lather over nothing."  Which is absolutely true, but (I can say from hard experience) will not change my behavior one iota next time.  My rational brain learns from experience; my irrational brain has exactly the opposite reaction.  "Uh-huh," it shouts, flecks of spittle forming in the corners of its mouth, "all this means is that it'll be more likely that you'll be dying next time!  Mark my words!"

So I suppose, given my split personality, it's no real wonder that when I discovered rationalism during my teenage years, I embraced it wholeheartedly.  It seemed like a good way to immunize myself against loopy magical thinking.  And it's worked -- at least most of the time.  But like some latent parasitic infection, the magical thinking is still there, and all it needs is the proper incentive to come roaring back and screaming my calm logic into stunned silence.

In any case, I'm glad my irrational brain was wrong, because not only is it irrational, it's also a dreadful pessimist.  Apparently I will live to write Skeptophilia another day.  Unless, of course, there's something else I'm dying of that the test didn't catch.  Always a possibility, that.

Creative neurosis

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted this gem:

To say I relate to this sentiment is a monstrous understatement.  I have for as long as I can remember been capable of keeping myself awake at night worrying about various possibilities of how the near future could go terribly, terribly wrong.  Many of these possibilities are mutually exclusive.  Some are so wildly unlikely that I would accomplish just as much by fretting over whether Cornell University was secretly creating genetically engineered flying dinosaur super-predators, and they were gonna get loose and eat my home town for brunch.

Doesn't matter.  My brain apparently prefers tossing such hypotheses around than it does getting a good night's sleep.  And every single time, when nothing bad happens, when no airborne T-rexes descend from the sky, my brain doesn't do the logical thing, which is to say, "Wow, what a goober I am.  Next time I won't worry so much."

No, my brain says, "All this does is make it more likely that next time, I'll be correct.  So I should worry even more."

Yes, I know this may sound odd coming from a guy who plays the trumpet of rationalism on a daily basis.  It's entirely possible that I developed my skeptical outlook in order to have a weapon with which to beat my limbic system, which seems determined to make me miserable.

But there's another upside to being a neurotic mess, apparently.  A team of researchers led by Adam Perkins, of the Department of Psychological Medicine in King's College of London, has found that there is a connection between being neurotic and being highly creative.

In the paper "Thinking Too Much: Self-generated Thought as the Engine of Neuroticism," Perkins and his collaborators, Danilo Amone, Jonathan Smallwood, and Dean Mobbs, found that the driver for neurotic modes of thought was the tendency toward self-generated thought regarding threats.  And while this increase in threat sensitivity can be pretty unpleasant, it is also the source of the creative urge.

"Why should having a magnified view of threat make you good at coming up with solutions to difficult problems?" Perkins said, in an interview in TIME magazine.  "It doesn’t add up.  On one hand, it’s a clever theory—it shows the difficulty of holding down a dangerous job, for example—but on the other hand, it doesn’t explain why [neurotic people] tend to feel unhappy or why they’re more creative."

Perkins says he had his epiphany about the nature of the connection when he was attending a presentation by his collaborator, Jonathan Smallwood.  Smallwood studies the neuroscience of daydreaming -- and had just done an experiment where he placed subjects in an fMRI tube with no distractions or instructions.  Naturally, the subjects began daydreaming.  Afterwards, Smallwood asked the volunteers about the nature of their thoughts while they were in the tube.  The ones that had experienced more negative thoughts showed higher levels of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain related to imagination, memory, and creative thought.

"If you have a high level of activity in this particular brain area, then your mind wandering tends to be threat-related," Perkins said.  "[Smallwood] started describing how people whose minds wander are better at things like creativity, delaying gratification and planning.  He also talked about the way that daydreamers’ minds wander when they’re feeling kind of blue.  And my ears perked up."

So the capacity of the neurotic brain to dream up various scenarios that could result in tragedy is also apparently correlated with its ability to dream up ideas for art, writing, music, and other creative endeavors.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

All of which gives me some solace.  I just wish I could convince my brain that it's perfectly okay to come up with horrid ideas, but that (1) it'd be preferable if we could confine said horrid ideas to plot points for my next novel, and (2) there are better times to engage in such behavior than 2 AM.