“We see what we believe rather than believe what we see,” is certainly one of the most striking discoveries of neuroscience.
Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga describes a patient in Sloan Kettering Hospital in NYC with a lesion in the brain’s spatial location network who thinks she’s actually in her house in Maine. When he asks her how she explains the bank of elevators outside her door, she responds, “Doctor, you have no idea how much time and money it cost me to have those installed.”
It turns out that the mind is not a video camera but a storyteller. What we take as reason is just the story we spin, concludes Gazzaniga. When there is a conflict between what we think and the objective world, we change the world, not our thinking.
What we believe, structured as our story, drives our decision-making and behavior. So, if we want to change behavior, we need to change the self-reinforcing story, and that only happens when we’re stopped in our mental tracks through the unexpected. Often we euphemistically call the uncomfortable event a “learning experience.” Great storytellers master the shift— “no, it’s not the butler that did it, even though that’s what we’ve been led to believe, but the wife.” Or more classically, “Oedipus, that woman you married is your mother!”
The pandemic handed us a learning experience on a silver tray, It’s the unexpected disruption that has forced us to rethink so much of what we’ve taken for granted, specifically how we live our lives and the place of work in those lives. Many of us have concluded that life is just too short and that we need purpose and quality of life in addition to a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
Much like the patient at Sloan Kettering, we can try to ignore what we’re seeing and rationalize away the change. But Emily Smith, who studies survivors of trauma, has found that those who do best are the ones that consciously think about what they’re experiencing and how they need to change.
During the pandemic of the Bubonic Plague in the fourteenth century, some opted for self-flagellation to atone for their sins, while others spontaneously broke into dance (the danse macabre,)perhaps because in the face of such horrific death, nothing else mattered. But enough did reflect on the changes and the result was the Renaissance, an unparalleled period of artistic creativity, scientific discovery, and concern for the human being. Indentured servitude gave way to self-employment and entrepreneurship. The quality of life improved immeasurably.
While there maybe a desire to return to the normality of our living rooms in Maine, we’ll miss a great opportunity if we do. Working as part of a large organization in a centralized place is a relatively recent idea. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most of were self-employed and worked out of our homes. The pandemic taught us that most of us are able to do just fine working without the onerous commute and close oversight. While face-to-face interaction is great for innovation and building comradery, a couple of days a month for most businesses would suffice.
Having people back in the office five days a week as if nothing has changed may feel more comfortable and familiar, but it’s not a requirement for success. In fact, it may be costing us a chance to experience our own renaissance.