Wonderworks - Angus Fletcher

Preface: A Heaven of Invention

• What prompted ancient reverence for literature?
  • Narrative (story) → connect events, provide beginnings and endings, answer questions like, “Where did our universe come from?” & “Where will we go when we die?”
  • Stirring of emotion → love, wonder, faith

• Why was literature invented?

  It was a narrative-emotional technology that helped our ancestors cope with the psychological challenges posed by human biology. It was an invention for overcoming the doubt and pain of just being us.

  • Treated as many different inventions for specific purposes
• First survey abundance of literature that’s been created, then combine with modern neuroscience

Introduction: The Lost Technology

• Aristotle’s Poetics → invention-finding method: 1) identify what literature does (specific psychological effect), 2) uncover how literature does it (unique literary invention, usually engineered from core narrative elements)
• For example: the plot twist → emotional “up” of thaumazein, or wonder
  • Foundational to more basic literary invention: the stretch, simply extending a regular pattern of narrative style
  • Stretch = at the root of all literary wonder, has profound impact on our brains— dissolution of mental representation of self
• Function of Greek tragedy in addressing post-traumatic fear (catharsis)— encourages revisiting past experiences
  • Particularly effective when used to boost our sense of self-efficacy, such as stimulation of perspective-taking pathways when a character incurs a trauma abs doesn’t realize it until later (Oedipus), but we have an omniscient POV… = Hurt Delay, allowing us to embrace God’s Eye

1: Rally Your Courage

Homer’s Iliad and the Invention of the Almighty Heart

• Anthropomorphized human-God narrator → connection to common humanity and cosmic scope of the divine at once → feeling of reciting a paean
• Physiological effect of oxytocin release → feeling of courage
• Found in works with far-seeing narrators, from A Tale of Two Cities to Gray’s Anatomy

2: Rekindle the Romance

Sappho’s Lyrics, the Odes of Eastern Zhou, and the Invention of the Secret Discloser

• Use of the I voice representing an individual, beyond he/she/they
• Neuroscience of love:
  • Cycles of dopamine release dependent on 1) self-disclosure of personal things AND 2) doing so with stretch— wonder!
  • Much of pleasure from love = us wooing ourselves… “I like myself more when I’m with you.”
• Two-part blueprint for love:
  • Self-disclosure + stretch found in odes of Chinese poetry, but using epic he voice
  • Sappho → addition of I voice, showing the more private self-disclosure = more powerful
  • Additional innovation → writing self-disclosure about others, on behalf of every epic he/she/they → can make any story a love story!

3: Exit Anger

The Book of Job, Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Invention of the Empathy Generator

• Technology of forgiveness to temper desire for justice, via empathy
  • Empathy → understand another person’s actions (while not needing to condone, agree with, or share beliefs behind them)
• Neuroscience of justice: by evolution, we desire fairness
  • Two potential consequences of too strong a desire for justice = social (cruel punishments, excessive violence) and individual (obsess over unfairness, consumed by anger)
  • Thus, counterbalance of empathy developed— some of newest neural circuitry, ex. perspective-taking
  • To improve our powers of empathy: invention of the tool of the apology: “I’m sorry I did that; I won’t do it again.”
• Concept of forgiveness/apology initially integrated into revised Book of Job, then into Greek tragedy by Sophocles (may also have been influenced by Greek tradition of oral apologies related to “like-thinking,” or suggnômê)
  • Sophocles’s innovation = convincing us of sincerity of apology → fool-proof empathy
  • The Empathy Generator = mind-reading glimpse of character’s remorse: can be physical collapse, unspoken, internal dialogue
  • Further innovation = using this to stir empathy for characters who have done little or nothing wrong, but just express regret or remorse

4: Float Above Hurt

Aesop’s Fables, Plato’s Meno, and the Invention of the Serenity Elevator

• Three secret inventions contained within satire of Socrates
  1. Parody → exaggerated imitation
  2. Insinuation → implied insult requiring us to connect two “dots”
  3. Irony → revelation of truth someone else doesn’t see
• Innovation = the Serenity Elevator: combining all three and satirizing ourselves (eg. we are the animals in Aesop’s Fables, we are Meno)…
  • Choosing to accept this this → laugh at ourselves → flip perspective-taking networks, reduces pain
  • “[T]he greatest cosmic joke is us.”

5: Excite Your Curiosity

The Epic of Sundiata, the Modern Thriller, and the Invention of the Tale Told from Our Future

• In addition to previous passive form of wonder, second variety = active wonder → different literary blueprint: the riddle, combined with suspense (knowing the answer is coming, but not yet!)
• When reader knows the answer to the riddle before characters, → irony— often the case for Greek plays
• To instill impatient curiosity of the unknown required invention
  • Our brains have evolved to work hardest when we have some information but are uncertain → dopamine feedback
  • Present riddle at beginning, and a hint that you will, in the future, know the answer

6: Free Your Mind

Dante’s Inferno, Machiavelli’s Innovatori, and the Invention of the Vigilance Trigger

• Allegory long used by medieval Church to stretch → wonder, devalue pagan literature (as in Beowulf)
• Dante → reverses the allegory, interspersing pagan myth into Christianity allegory rather than vice versa
• Neuroscience of that “odd feeling”
  1. Familiar object in strange environment → feeling as though home has been stretched to faraway places, produces wonder (as with Christian revisions in Scandinavian Beowulf → Your faith extends everywhere.)
  2. Strange object in familiar environment → triggers paranoia, threat detection! (as in Medusa appearing in hell in The Inferno— and Virgil as guide with slick-speech) → recognizable as “the myth that doesn’t fit”

7: Jettison Your Pessimism

Giovanni Straporala, the Original Cinderella, and the Invention of the Fairy-tale Twist

• Too much poetic justice → lack of hope… how to fix the fairy tail?
  • Add the Lucky Twist, adapted from Greek tragedy! (Arbitrarily good from bad)
  • Energizes our inner optimist
• Neuroscience of our inner optimist
  • Divergence in risk assessment btw left brain (more connected w PNS → focus on positive) and right brain (more connected w SNS → focus on wrong)
  • To tilt pessimism → access optimism, several tools to shift perspective, incl invoking luck
• Straparola amplified Lucky Twist → Fairy-tale Twist with two innovations:
  1. Enlarge amount of good luck
  2. Make royal bride imperfect or even incompetent → success seems even more likely due to luck than skill
     • Modern versions = superhero stories
     • Do have to balance the luck with skepticism from right brain— some role of skill, hard work

8: Heal from Grief

Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Invention of the Sorrow Revealer

• Greek tragedies → help us deal with grief
  • At first, focus on plot (ex. revenge) to do so… vs the strange plotlessness of Hamlet
• Components of therapy to deal with grief:
  1. Acknowledge the hurt→ activates amygdala, memory networks in thalamus to start processing → allows return to emotional balance, reassurance that it’s okay to be overwhelmed
  2. Dwell on happy memories → small dopamine release, draws us back into flow of life
     • Shakespeare’s removal of plot from Greek tragedy → more focus on these feelings
• Second problem with grief (in addition to pausing in it) = moving on, working through guilt
  • Solutions could be revenge, memorial (tried and failed by Hamlet)… or, sharing of sorrow
• Sorrow Resolver = Grief Releaser (freedom from plot) + Grief Lifter (a character to share our feelings)

9: Banish Despair

John Donne’s “Songs” and the Invention of the Mind-Eye Opener

• Donne was fascinated by the literary paradox— claiming that opposite truths can exist simultaneously → bizarre feeling of seeing double
• Neuroscience of seeing impossible things:
  • Ex. optical illusions of physical objects depicted in 2D that can’t exist → each half is possible, but intersection is not!
  • Creates pause in visual processing → moment of wonder, feeling if the psychedelic
    • Psyche (soul) + delos (visible)
• Psychedelic experience stimulated by Donne in “A Valediction,” where eye of the mind and body see differing images…
  • Other examples of the Mind-Eye Opener = visual illusions of Escher, movies pairing thoughts of the dead with sights of the living, William Carlos Williams’s “This is Just to Say” describing the taste of plums we know no longer exist

10: Achieve Self-Acceptance

Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber, Zhuangzi’s “Tale of Wonton,” and the Invention of the Butterfly Immerser

• Zhuangzi → alternative view to “better and worse” of things (ex. summer > winter) taught by Confucius— rather, each side suited for different contexts
  • Wrote two stories to convey this— “Tale of Wonton” → more powerful and narrow neural action, “Dream of the Butterfly” → gentler and broadening; both required for maximal effect!
• Neuroscience of self-acceptance:
  • Disrupted by “moral” emotion of shame (along with pride, guilt)
  • Shame usually more harmful than guilt, but also more vestigial → minimize effects by targeting internal list of cultural norms (cannot delete norms, but can add to them by befriending people who act differently!)
• Invention of the Chinese novel → centuries before Eur version; enhanced by the Secret Discloser and Empathy Generator
  • Cao Xueqin’s novel → set in world of many complex characters, expose reader to many ways of life → neural experience of joining community, expanding list of norms
• Cao → two additional shame-reducing inventions:
  1. Dream of the World → characters inhabit real world and illusion/dream world (ambiguous which is which)
  2. Equilateral Love Triangle → one character falls in love with two others who are both right for the person!

11: Ward Off Heartbreak

Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, and the Invention of the Valentine Armor

• Literary romances popular since ancient times bc make us feel hopeful that our heart’s desires will be meg
  • Henry Fielding’s innovation = alternating Almighty Heart romance with lightly satirical narration → uplifting
• Jane Austen figured the combo would be even more powerful if the two weren’t alternating, but simultaneous → revived use of free indirect disclosure: voice of a parroted character not formally marked off by punctuation, su narrator can maintain ironic voice while conveying character’s internal sentiment → delightful feeling of double consciousness
  • Technique invented thousands of years ago (eg. The Canterbury Tales), but Austen was first to use in romance novel
• Neuroscience of Austen’s novel:
  • We can indeed experience irony and love simultaneously, bc involve diff parts of brain— perspective taking circuit and amygdala
  • Achieves duality of detachment from greater world through irony and emotional connection with other people → allows us to care for others for who they are while protecting ourselves = Valentine Armor (another example = The Marriage Plot!)

12: Energize Your Life

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Modern Horror, and the Invention of the Stress Transformer

• Horror stories can have effect of a good rush of endorphins, or damaging rush… difference = from HPA axis, connecting hypothalamus and pituitary glands to adrenal cortex in kidney; regulates cortisol release
  • Root distinction btw distress and eustress = whether brain is perceiving it as voluntary or not → how we frame challenges as happening to us or something we are embracing
• Potential responses to of threat detection network to experiencing something “odd” = psychic unease, violent shock, or comedy (to reset system?)
  • Why experiencing something dangerous can also triggers humor response (two meanings of “funny”) → horror stories capitalize on both by playing w uncertainty of the event’s danger
• Mary Shelley’s discovery → even more empowering if you keep both responses
  • Frames Frankenstein as gothic horror within eustress of scientific expedition, then breaks both stories at the end (rather than leaving reader immersed) → breaks wonder, activates self-analysis
  • Meta-horror → feel as though we are choosing to consume the horror → maintains eustress → Stress Transformer

13: Solve Every Mystery

Francis Bacon, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of the Virtual Scientist

• Francis Bacon → introduction of induction (use individual observations to form general truths) as new and more powerful form of logic to deduction (use general knowledge to draw specific conclusions)
  • Extended by John Herschel to more complete flow: induction to build a theory, deduction to generate hypothesis, experiment to test → scientific method
  • To teach this extension to readers, needed a work of fiction (mystery!)
• Idea embraced by EA Poe → new blueprint:
• Neuroscience of learning:
  • Relies on making predictions fail → triggers negative feedback, gathering more info, new prediction
  • Works well in visual cortex, but we are bad at accepting incorrect hypotheses for more cognitive tasks (leading to confirmation bias)
    • Internal “scientific method” also disrupted by simply ignoring predictive error (“science is too hard”, intellectual insecurity), and engaging in magical thinking (envoking causes outside realm of science)
    • Teaching trick → all three barriers easily demolished by envisioning ourselves an environment other than our own → play the part of a Virtual Scientist

14: Become Your Better Self

Frederick Douglass, Saint Augustine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Invention of the Life Evolver

• Moral suasion → premise that social reform came from God and God alone
  • Actually a barrier to change (abolition, women’s rights), bc said that political participation and compromise were wrong
  • Douglass’s first autobiography written to stop readers from changing, but now wanted to rewrite after engaging with other abolitionist views… needed new blueprint, found in two parts
• Two part blueprint for compelling autobiography:
  1. Saint Augustine’s self-irony = revealing truth that our self doesn’t know → stirs contempt for
  2. Rousseau’s self-disclosures on saving grace of nature, antithesis to above!
     • Douglass combined both, guided by rhetorical education; mixed and matched sections in both styles → conveyed/ inspired personal growth… the Life Evolver

15: Bounce Back from Failure

George Eliot’s Middlemarch and the Invention of the Gratitude Multiplier

• Gratitude helps us bounce back from disappointment and disaster
  • Distracts from introspective processes triggered by failure like rumination
  • Stretching gratitude from single act → spiritually for everything triggers wonder, even more self-dissolution → even more effective at interrupting rumination
• George Eliot’s (accurate) POV: just thanking God doesn’t do anything if it’s not sincere
  • Feuerbach: Inspired by humanism, realized expressing gratitude to gifts of humanity still inspires wonder, and removes limits of “creator-god”
  • Eliot → need to reinvent the novel to incorporate humanism… shift to intimate use of “you and me”, spoken in third person → double release from ourselves, ultra Gratitude Multiplier

16: Clear Your Head

“Rashōmen,” Julius Caesar, and the Invention of the Second Look

• Neuroscience of gullibility:
  • By default, we believe what we see/read— brain accepts first, then judges whether it is actually true
  • Efficient, but makes us vulnerable to misinformation in many cases
• Literature’s “un-brainwashing” invention → prompt self-conscious introspection through verbal repetition (ex. repetition of “Brutus is honorable” in JC)
  • Amplified in the Second Look → narrator themselves repeating/correcting a scene
  • Leads to self-review and alienation (inverse of paranoia— now mistrusting ourselves, wondering what other false info we might have acepted)
  • Then.. ends with a second Second Look?!

17: Find Peace of Mind

Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and the Invention of the Riverbank of Consciousness

• William James → new idea in psychiatry that conditions like “the nerves” could be treated using internal power of our mind— believing in free will, reading “favorable books”
  • Also redefined consciousness as a stream rather than a trait— incorporating connections, direction, and not just jarring images— a concept in use by literary authors!
  • Proust → use of long sentences following single person’s thoughts, very easy to follow, all ideas flowing back to single source
  • Joyce → disjointed flashes,
• Virginia Woolf merged two styles— stream feeling of Proust + multiple minds of Joyce → combine James’s two therapeutic innovations (calm neural flow and mental freedom) → create deeper psychic peace through Riverbank of Consciousness
  • Helps prompt experience like cognitive decision when overstimulated/high cognitive reactivity

18: Feed Your Creativity

Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and the Invention of the Anarchy Rhymer

• Science of mental play:
  • Default mode network = our brain “playing” in its free time
  • Governed by bottom-up, associative processes = mind-wandering → nurtures creativity, inspire fresh solutions, increases general well-being
  • Can achieve this state by just relaxing, or prompted by artistic improv
    • Provides light scaffold (generative constraints) via prefrontal cortex to facilitate creativity
• Literary analogue = nursery rhyme
  • Encourage mental play, embracing associations with “Yes, And” mindset
  • Narrative structure like characters (Alice!) act as scaffolding between musical moments
• Further improv boosters introduced by Winnie
  • Instead of sensible character in whimsical world (Alice in Wonderland), uses whimsical character in sensible world → removes obstacle of danger from “Yes, And”

19: Unlock Salvation

To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare’s Soliloquy Breakthrough, and the Invention of the Humanity Connector

• Emerson → transcendentalism based on two core beliefs: 1) the cosmos has a human soul; 2) we can discover this soul through intuition (not bound by logic or whims of emotion)
  • Stretches humanism from linking all people to everything else in the universe that now had a soul
  • Shakespeare’s invention of the soliloquy (combining dialogue + monologue → character having convo with themselves) → profound neural effect, makes us identify as the character (eg. Hamlet)
• Neuroscience of self-awareness:
  • Not default state to identify with self: requires effort— either choosing to be self-aware, or made so by brain’s salience network (monitors for internal conflict)
  • Innovation of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” = triggering salience from an internal conflict → allows us to identify with, not just feel for, another character
• Further innovations increasing power of soliloquy as Humanity Connector:
  • Shift from theater → novel subtracted another layer of separation btw reader and character
  • Multiplicative use of having us relate to character who is relating to another character’s soliloquy (occurs in TKAM via Scout) → stretched to experience even more minds

20: Renew Your Future

Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Frantz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and the Invention of the Revolution Rediscovery

• Science of rediscovery:
  • We forget much more than we learn, but easier to relearn something we once knew → added benefit of allowing for added knowledge from relearning
  • Happens both individually and collectively
• One Hundred Years of Solitude → filled with cycles of rediscovery → characters not physically going anywhere, but changing
  • Use of poetic language (flipping usual word order, using unexpected phrases) → brain-slowing burst of dopamine, moments of wonder— similarly refamiliarize is with what we already know
• Kafka → poetic narrative, taking whole storyline we know and flipping it → reestablishes laws of narrative, surprises us into reconsidering the old
• Building from rewording of poets to reworlding of Kafka, Borges to retelling collective memory and history by Márquez

21: Decide Wiser

Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Thomas More’s Utopia, Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and the Invention of the Double Alien

• How to free ourselves from mental biases, like fundamental attribution error?
  • Thomas More → use fake travel narrative to bust biases— had noticed travel helped him broaden cultural POV, challenge expectations (backed by neuroscience that travel stimulates error-detecting ACC) BUT this effect not conveyed through traditional travelogues
    • New style → two authors/guides that disagree; ends with ambiguity… BUT our brain forces still judgement
  • Jonathan Swift → another form of fake travel narrative using untrustworthy narrator… BUT then leads us to judge everyone!
  • How to pause our judgement longer? Ursula Le Guin → double swoon that leads us in half repulsion, half agreement with narrator… become Double Alien

22: Believe in Yourself

Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and the Invention of the Choose Your Own Accomplice

• Neuroscience of self-trust:
  • When we are given words of wisdom, rarely listen bc wisdom of elders threatens our sense of self, need to be strong and independent
  • To dispense counsel more effectively, must also nurture self-belief: ex. “What you’re doing is really creative; it might even work better if you try x.” → self-affirmation
  • Praising values → activates parietal lobe (mental rep of self) and ventral striatum zone (assoc with valuing objects)
  • Self-self-affirmation is even more potent— how to get this from literature?
• Maya Angelou → discovering birth of existentialism by Sartre and all
  • Existential “theater of the absurd” (e.g. The Blacks) → remove all core values, force you to supply your own?
  • Angelou combines absurdity and harshness of above in first-person, past-tense narration with gentle guidance, existential wisdom of present-tense, omniscient, third person → stabilization, grounding

23: Unfreeze Your Heart

Alison Bechdel, Euripides, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, and the Invention of the Clinical Joy

• Confusion over genre of Euripides’ tragicomedies (Alcestis) for a long time…
• PTSD usually characterized by overactive emotions, treated through exposure therapy— but also a second kind with symptoms of underactive emotions (numbness)
  • Both originating from limbic system
  • With numbness, “brakes” on too tight → dissociation → depersonalization, derealization
  • Can’t use same approach as treating overactive limbic system to treat the exact opposite → new form of tx… enter, the tragicomedy!
• Proposed tx for second type of PTSD = two steps: 1) identify and explain photographs of other people experiencing emotions (shows pt from a distance that emotions aren’t threatening); 2) engage in activity stimulating positive emotion → show emotions aren’t bad
  • Same process occurs when watching tragicomedy: first processing the unexpected, bizarre mix of emotions, then get positive emotion from happy ending
  • Theatric style resurrected in 1949 with Waiting for Godot, The Cocktail Party, each with half of the therapy
• Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, Fun Home, brought it together with twist happy ending (a voyage into death to redeem a lost soul → wonder, gratitude)

24: Live Your Dream

Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, a Dash of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious,‘ and the Invention of the Wish Triumphant

• Cervantes → uses Story with a Story in Don Quixote not to transport us between two storyworlds, but between two realities
  • Unreal character trying to disprove false fiction by revealing himself in real world by genuine fiction…
  • Causes ACC to repeatedly signal something is wrong → heightened awareness of line between real and fake
  • Enables counterfactual thinking (!!) → aids us in constructing plausible dreams
• Two-part literary tech to facilitate, derived from Story in the Story
  1. Comic Wink = when actor breaks fourth wall to assure us none of an unsettling performance (involving counterfactuals/thought experiments, esp) is real (ex. plays introducing idea of more women in politics)
  2. Reality Shifter → moves line btw fantasy and reality, rather than removing it— starts in real world, drifts into fantasy
     • Modern fantasy = more subtle than traditional— more of an “enrichment” of reality → makes us think about more realistic possibilities - Comic Wink shows us fantasy world where a tweak can happen; Reality Shifter carries it back to real world
• Maximized by Tina Fey in 30 Rock by pushing both reality & fantasy to extreme → Wish Triumphant
  • Increases both belief in ability to change the world and problem-solving skills to make change in reality

25: Lessen Your Lonely

Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and the Invention of the Childhood Opera

• Innovation of opera = combination of music and theater with two notes, enabling musical conflict/stories within the story
• Science of musical method:
  • Brain craves musical harmony → dopamine release, but doesn’t provide increasing stimulation when continues… introducing discord between to defer harmony causes increase in desire and reward once it comes
• Technique transferred to & extended in literature through the penny dreadful
  • Dissonance punctured by satisfying resolutions… produces bonding effect
  • Further innovation = Partial Dopamine ⇒ doesn’t completely resolve conflicts → only get half the dopamine kick, leaving us primed for the rest! → suspense, motivates reader to buy next edition
  • Pulp fiction polished somewhat to get more mainstream → novel like The Godfather
• Loneliness → triggers HPA axis to release slow drip of cortisol → all sorts of harmful effects
  • Luckily, literature can shift perception of reality, which affects HPA axis → reduces effects of not actually having people around!
  • Partial Dopamine also makes us more social (and gives us TV to bond over) → actually makes us less lonely, too
• Innovation of Childhood Opera by Elena Ferrante takes it further → gives us opera from eyes of a child → no longer reliant on adult material of pulp fiction
  • Treat relationships and emotions between kids with same agitation and discord, makes us feel like a part of their relationship
  • Resolve one stirred up feeling with another → continual bursts of almost harmony, leading to bonding