Transcriber: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello everybody!
I've always loved the character James Bond,
because no matter how much danger he's in,
he always has mastery of his emotions.
Like in the movie "Skyfall," when he's attacked by three thugs,
who are trying to kill him!
And a man-eating reptile!
And he doesn't even look worried!
He just handles it.
I guess I admire him so much
because I am more like... Lucy!
(Laughter)
Recently, my daughters were supposed to be doing their homework,
but instead, the 11 year old decides to spin in her desk chair,
so I'm really dizzy,
and then she starts singing at the top of her lungs
while the little one, who's only 7,
decides she's going to go all the way back to being a baby,
grabs my ankle, crying: "Mommy, I want milk!"
I got the kids settled down without screaming at them.
This was a victory.
I'm calmer now with my children, and my family is happier.
(Laughter)
So let me ask you, to try and see if you can strain your mind
and think of something in your life that's stressful right now.
I'll wait, I know it might take a while.
(Laughter)
As a psychology journalist reading the latest publications,
I have found such a helpful discovery,
but before I can share this great new coping strategy with you,
I need to step back and give you some context.
We all tend to have set ideas
about who we are and what we are capable of.
Like the little dog, who thinks he's big and scary,
these ideas may be more or less accurate.
But what scientists are telling us
is that our self-concept is just a creation of the mind
it's not a blueprint.
If we're able to step back and widen our perspective
- if only, right? -
we can access a whole range of options for how to handle a situation.
So, for example, in my life, if I'm feeling insulted,
which happens like, every day,
and I've got a mental maelstrom going on about how to handle it,
I'm learning how to see my options.
Allow me to explain how the new science of the self has helped me.
and I belive it will be useful to you as well.
Like the legal principle: ''presumed innocent until proven guilty''
we all tend to asume: "I'm right!" until proven wrong.
For example, my dog used to get triggered by just about anything,
and start barking and I'd start yelling at him to stop
and then we would be with him barking
and me screaming and him barking and me screaming
until one of us would just give up!
I finally stopped doing that,
when he passed away.
(Laughter)
But at that time I was sure I was doing the right thing to get him to stop
even though it didn't work,
and that's how we tend to think, that "I'm right,"
that there's a single "I" inside my head,
and this "I" is trustworthy and in control,
like the captain of a ship.
(Laughter)
This is what psychologist Daniel Wegner of Harvard University, calls:
"the illusion of the little man inside the mind
or the humunculous illusion."
We may not actually visualize a miniature version of ourselves,
dressed in a captain's uniform, inside our heads,
but we do have a strong sense of a coherent self
in charge of the entire operation.
It's this sense that says, "I'm right!"
Well, in a particular moment, I may be right,
though probably not, if you ask my husband,
but we are wrong
that there's a single decider sitting at the controls.
We need this sense of ownership of our bodies and our actions.
It allows us to focus our attention and do complex tasks,
but as we know from studying how the senses work,
our minds are perfectly capable of producing illusions,
that help us navigate the world.
Just because an illusion is useful, doesn't mean it's true.
For example, we all have a blind spot in our field of vision,
it's right about here,
but it wasn't even discovered until the 1660s,
because our minds just fill in the spot
to make it look like the area around it,
so we appear to see a complete image.
Similarly, my concept of "Erika"
is just an avatar, continuously created by my mind while I'm awake.
Scholars like Michael Gazzaniga at UCSB, say the self is generated
in order to integrate complex and often unconscious mental processes.
As I pondered this, I began to feel deeply uneasy.
If "Erika" is a simulation, then what am I?
I felt disoriented,
the way the character played by Jim Carrey in "The Truman show" must have felt
when he discovered his identity as an insurance agent, was just created
for the entertainment of other people on a TV show!
At least in our case,
our illusory identity helps us function.
I believe the fear that I experienced
recalls what people felt in the 17th century.
At that time, most people believed
the Sun revolved around the Earth.
See that tiny little sun there, to the right?
Then Galileo showed that the Earth revolves around the Sun
and he insulted the Pope a little bit,
and the Pope put him under house arrest.
Galileo was demonstrating the idea that God had carefully placed man
at the center of his creation.
That was a fantasy!
And people were concerned, and asked,
"Well, what does this mean?! Has god forsaken us?"
And now, I'm asking, "What is my home if not myself?"
This is when I realized something surprising is going on.
Given the dysfunctional relationship between science and religion,
our current view of identity locates the self at the center.
What we might call "egocentrism,"
ego being Latin for "the self."
But, if you look at our sensations and thoughts,
they're just merely peripheral details like our hair color or body type.
In this unexpected convergence of science and spirituality,
today's consciousness researchers are emphasizing
the primacy of consciousness itself.
This shift away from egocentrism toward consciousness,
is a development we might call "consciocentrism,"
"conscious" being latin for "aware."
I want to pause for a moment; I invented this word
to describe the shift that's happening in psychology and neuroscience.
So, I believe that it can help you, as it has helped me
relax in a variety of situations.
It might even bring ministers and scientists,
give them some common ground,
open up some dating opportunities.
(Laughter)
Let's learn this word: "conscio," like "conscious,"
and "centrism," like "centrism."
If you'll say it with me: "consciocentrism."
Thank you!
So, what does this word mean?
Look at the godlike abilities that each of us has.
Consciousness both creates and observes
every single experience that we have.
If we're lucky, and our brains are intact,
these experiences are informed by our memories,
and our skills and our sense of self.
Last year, pretty much everyone in this room
had to practice consciocentrism, - we didn't call it that obviously -
in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
In my case, in our family, my daughter, a competitive gymnast,
developed an e-coli infection,
and she needed a transfusion and a wheelchair,
because she was so weak.
Then, most of the power went out in the hospital due to hurricane Sandy,
and then, I discovered, in the chair I'm sleeping in next to her,
bedbugs!
If you had asked our family,
"Could we handle this kind of situation?!"
we would have said: "No!"
but we did, and she recovered.
My friend, Christina...
- oh, yes, there's the bedbugs, sorry about that - (Laughter)
Christina had a crisis during Sandy.
A wave took a boat and crashed it into her house.
She had to move her family to a safe location.
Later, I said, "How did you do this?"
She said, "You do what you have to do."
In an emergency, with the help of adrenaline,
ironically, we're able to access hidden abilities,
that in a normal situation,
might be suppressed by our endless rumination,
and when I say "our" I mean ''my,''
about who is doing what now to me.
Let me give you another quick example of consciocentrism.
Recently, I was driving my daughters home from school during rush hour.
The little one's singing the Winnie the Pooh song in the backseat,
and my older one is describing
how the teacher is trying to just gently shush the class,
and the kids are getting more and more out of control,
and I'm thinking, "I'm bonding with my daughter, that's good!"
but we're making fun of somebody, a teacher!
This is a moral dilemma!
Other drivers're cutting me off, my little one's shouting "Pooh!"
and my big one's saying, "Stop!" and I'm thinking, "I can't handle this!"
This is when I usually would have said, "Be quiet!"
but this time, I was able to relax, let them bicker,
let the other drivers try to kill us.
(Laughter)
So what was different?
When I felt my emotions closing in on me,
you may recognize that claustrophobic feeling
that you get when you're trying to protect yourself,
or actually, your self-concept sometimes.
And I realized, all of my experiences
are being created within my mind,
and contained
within this vast consciousness that each of us has,
and I was able to relax because I had room to breathe.
In conclusion, we need to think of ourselves
as normal, rational ship captains in order to function,
but this self-concept turns out to be a false reference point.
Scientists are challenging us to look from the vantage point
of conscioussness itself.
To be the audience, as well as the lead actor,
in our mental performances that we do every day.
So that we can learn how to rewrite those internal scripts.
In short, they're asking us to step out
of the comfort zone of our everyday identities.
LIke an extreme version of Halloween
they're doing over there in the halls of psychology.
When we adopted heliocentrism,
we lost our status as the center of God's creation,
but we gained a magnificient larger kingdom.
It's a hundred to five hundred billion galaxies.
In the same way, we're now losing the importance given to us,
by our illusory self-concept,
but we're gaining a vast territory, our inner world,
a new understanding of our own godlike abilities.
Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science,
recently spoke at the World Science Festival.
Referring to the brain and neuroscientists exploring consciousness, he said,
"We are like astronomers discovering a bigger and bigger universe."
Thank you very much.
(Applause)