Why Are Men Smarter than Women?

I was listening to a Guardian podcast on genius when it occurred to me why more men get credited with advancing society, leading most men and lots of women, incidentally, to believe that men are smarter than women. A lot of it has to do with the differences between male brains and female brains, and what society expects of each sex.
(Men also have been doing a very good job of holding back society - through wars, various kinds of harmful dogma, self-serving beliefs and practices - but that's another post perhaps. This "paradox" supports a recent observation that men tend to occupy the extremes of good and bad, while women occupy more of the middle ground.)

Genius is a complex phenomenon, and often identified only in hindsight. A quirky little boy or girl with strange ideas and perspectives will probably be noticed for being different, but not valued for his or her individual outlook unless it yields a discovery, invention, remarkable work of art, or the like. In other words, if you're going to stand out, you have to earn acceptance more than the average person!
Not every genius with the potential for that breakthrough ticket to public acceptance and even adoration finds the right opportunities to shine. We'll never know how many Marie Curies, Isadora Duncans and Virginia Woolfs died in childbirth or toiling in a field - not to mention the Mozarts, Newtons, and Picassos coughing away in attics unable to find the money for basic materials.
To get to that invention or symphony, a person needs talent and opportunity, no doubt about that. But personality - mainly, determination and belief in oneself and one's work - probably separates the sheep from the goats most of all.
That's where male-female brain differences - and how society boldfaces them - come in. Men in general have a greater ability to take a project and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. The modern cliché of the unkempt computer nerd has historical precedents in the mad scientist or long-haired crazy composer. Men are also more likely to be collectors (another form of monomania). Women are better multitaskers and generalists. While shallow thinking and attention combined with a talent for forming connections can have brilliant results, they do not tend to translate into works of genius. Gregor Mendel grew hundred of pea plants before he was able to discern the patterns of trait inheritance later called genetics. Not only was he incredibly patient and focussed and smart, he was a monk with no other job, no bills to pay, no kids to run after! If a woman did something similar, she'd be called an oddball for opting out of her "true role" as a wife and mother.
If men discover more, change more, it may be because they use their intelligence for deep focus - and tend to find support in family and community for doing so. They also may be more singleminded when it comes to pursuing a socially peripheral project that they alone find worthy; women tend to listen to criticism more.
Things are changing a little. Women with the ability to devote long hours in the lab or at the writing desk are scorned far less than they used to be, and the opportunities needed to advance (money, education, support) are more abundant in many parts of the world. But the female need to form interpersonal connections (and be praised for the ones she does form) may preclude the creation of those really big breakthroughs - the ones that make it into the history books, even if most tend to be written by men.

Why Zen - and now?

Although I have read a few chapters of Zen & the Brain today, it's mostly about the neuroscientist author's own introduction to zazen, so not as translatable into a blog summary (+ comment) as the earlier passages. Before I go back to the beginning of the book and summarize and comment upon them, I think I should explain my fascination with Buddhism - not just the Zen subset - and how a book combining Zen with neuroscience is a perfect fit for me, at this time.
I'm at a stage of my life where I feel both more hope and more despair than ever before. Age has brought wisdom, which says plenty of seemingly paradoxical things, e.g., life is full of joy and life is full of sorrow. Patterns start to form from formerly unconnected facts or phenomena (probably a good definition of wisdom in itself).
With many gloomy and challenging things ahead, such as the infirmities and deaths of loved ones, I want to maximize my cognitive and emotional strength, for my sake and theirs. The obvious refuge for many people in search of strength would be a religion, but I have a natural aversion to the organization of spirituality (and many other things). Buddhism is a way of looking, of living, not a religion, though it is often classified as one.
My studies in neuroscience have clarified many lifelong mysteries for me - and will continue to do so, no doubt! One thing is the serenity afforded by being present: quieting the distracted mind (which causes stress, a body-bruising force) and narrowing one's attention. We could all do with more serenity. In fact, many of our so-called vices are convoluted (futile) means of seeking the silence of the sacred grove - as we live in crowded cities, lead frantic lives, and can barely hear ourselves think.
I think discovering a permanent means of focus, attention, and serenity - through breathing exercises, and so on - would be a healthy, cost-free, and easily accessed alternative to eating, drinking, shopping, watching movies, and other stop-gap measures. (They are all fairly harmless in themselves - note I did not include illegal drug use - but if used instead of what really leads to the desired goal, they are empty.)
My desired goal is mindfulness. Distraction diffuses energy, wastes it. And I cannot be mindful or present or attentive unless I find a way of calming my monkey mind (what a great term), convincing it that everything will be all right.
A formidable task: "I" do not really believe this quite yet....

Zen and the Brain

Last week, I made a very short report on Antonio Damasio's Looking for Spinoza. Well, as good and as inspiring as that book is, I think I have found a better one. It's called simply (appropriately) Zen and the Brain. The author is James H. Austin, M.D.
Although it is a very long (700 pages) and incredibly complex book - ambitiously combining, as the title suggests, both explanations of Zen Buddhism and the neurological underpinnings of the practice of zazen (meditation) - it is a relatively easy one to read.
I find myself looking forward to sitting down with it, and reading one to four (short to medium-length) chapters at a time.
Yesterday, after reading Chs. 8& 9 on the Self - a topic integral to the practice of Zen and many other mystical pursuits - I thought it might be a good idea to start sort of a blog-within-a-blog. As I read the book, I could touch upon the salient features of each chapter or group of chapters. If anyone wants more details, let me know. I hope I will hear from those out there interested in inquiring about this fascinating interface of disciplines.
Please join me!

More Work on Social Networks

As can be seen to the right, I follow wunderkind Jonah Lehrer's blog, The Frontal Cortex. Yesterday's post was The Isolated Mind. He cites an article on grief, in a recent New Yorker, by Megan O'Rouke (which I have yet to read). Both she and he discuss the increased atomization of human society - more and more focused on the individual instead of the group. We are both brains - neurological systems which process inner and outer stimuli - and parts of larger systems of other brains (our own species, mainly, but arguably the brains of other species as well). Any study or belief system that examines either the individual or the group, while disregarding the other, misses a vital aspect of the human experience. I like what Lehrer says about how current research and social trends ignore the connections that define us, choosing to see us isolated minds instead.

But we are not meant to be alone: The private events inside the brain depend, in larger part, on where we are and who we are with. It reminds me of something Nicholas Christakis, who studies human social networks along with James Fowler, recently told me: "The story of modern science is the story of studying ever smaller bits of nature, like atoms and neurons," he said. "But people aren't just the sum of their parts. I see this research as an attempt to put human beings back together again."

Amen.

More Brains

Just finished reading Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist. The all-important "hook" of the book is the way art can explain science. Lehrer demonstrates this by exploring a famous artist's uncannily prescient insight into the way the human brain functions, anticipating (often by decades) current neuropsychological research. Proust dealt with memory - perhaps obviously, given his most famous book. Gertrude Stein anticipated Noam Chomsky's language theories. Stravinsky, in the The Rite of Spring, not only caused a riot amongst an audience accustomed to symphonic music, but challenged the way we perceive beauty in sound. Virginia Woolf wrote about the self in ways that broke new ground. Paul Cezanne forced us to see differently. Walt Whitman dared to express his feelings in startling ways. George Eliot brought science to bear in her fiction, reflecting Darwin's growing influence. And French chef extraordinaire Auguste Escoffier, inventer of the menu, discovered the fifth flavour, which the Japanese call "umami," and understood how we can learn how to taste (and appreciate food covered in sauces, I imagine).
Lehrer's original premise is more than a crass book-marketing schtick. He rides what seems to be a wave of art-science reconciliation. C.P. Snow famously called art and science the "Two Cultures" (like east and west, destined never to meet), and there will be those who cling to this stark division to their last breath. But how refreshing it is to see thoughtful, insightful, and engagingly written portrayals of the overlaps - interdependencies or interconnections - that existed all along. Highly recommended.
"When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art." (p.197)
How many of us have been moved by a fictional account (book or film) of a major historical event, after being unconcerned when it was just "facts"? Framing an event within a powerful narrative - with human emotions and human lives that appeal to our empathy - can be the best way to convince people that something significant happened, or that anything happened at all. Think "Schindler's List" versus all the true-life accounts of the Holocaust. My personal epiphany about this came about 20 years ago when I read Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, which ends with a (fictionalized but all too real) account of the 1973 coup in Chile that led to her uncle Salvador Allende's assassination. Although I knew the story, the novelization hit me powerfully.
Although I write plenty of nonfiction, it is important to remember how we all love a good story, and are perhaps more likely to engage with an issue if it's contained in art (writing or anything else).