Memes About the Brain Teach Us a Lesson About Helplessness
The concept that “you are your brain” is well-entrenched among many people, and it isn’t difficult to understand why. All of the strange, wonderful, seemingly infinitely complex operations that make us us take place in that compact organ in our heads. (Although this brain-centric view of identity might be an oversimplification, as recent research suggests.) It seems that a rudimentary understanding of how the brain functions leads naturally to the idea that that is all we are. We feel this emotion because of that chemical flowing through that pathway of neurons, which is triggered by this other pathway, etc. Society at large seems to have adopted this viewpoint. This view is expressed during many common discussions: Do I want to take an antidepressant, or would it make me into a different person? Do we declare legal death when the heart stops beating, or when brain activity ceases? If all else fails, why don’t we just freeze our brains until we can plop them into a robot?
In discussions like these, it becomes evident that the typical perspective sees the brain as the essential, indispensable part of the body that contains us as unique people. With this view, an amputated limb is simply a tool that no longer serves its function, and a transplanted organ does not bring with it the identity of its former owner. We confidently assume that we are our brains. It is fair to judge that this is the dominant perspective that guides most people..
There has arisen, however, a notable and pervasive exception to this idea, courtesy of Millennials and Generation Z. Perpetually the maligned underdogs, it is well known by now that they take solace in creating and distributing memes. These tiny, bite-sized, frequently cynical and nihilistic snapshots of these generations’ zeitgeist can spark countless interesting discussions. As someone who straddles the generational gap of Millennials and Generation Z, I often find it entertaining to scroll through memes while taking in the broad implications and themes I come across.
One of these themes is an interesting, and at times confounding, delineation between the brain and the self. That is, the depiction of the brain as being separate from what makes you who you are. Typically, such a distinction lies in the purview of philosophers; whether I am my brain seems like a pointless question to ask when, say, you’re busy enough just trying to pay the bills this month. Given the ubiquity of the brain-self equivalence perspective among laypeople, it is reasonable to wonder in what real-life, everyday, mundane context it makes sense to conceptually separate the two. However, it can be demonstrated that you don’t have to look very far.
You may have experienced one of these situations earlier today: think back to the last time you wandered into a room only to find yourself unable to remember why you did so. Think back to the last time you rationally understood that you should go to bed early and get a good night’s rest, but this frustrating, yet convincing, little something inside convinced you to stay awake and watch “just one more” episode, or play “just one more” match. When you wake up the next day, groggy and cursing yourself for staying up too late again, it might occur to you that you knew better, that you really tried, but that something in your mind insisted on standing in your way.
Considering that humans scarcely understand the brain, a scapegoat arises that is relatable by its very nature. We are, in a way, mere pawns of our brains. I didn’t choose to forego eating healthy in favor of a tasty snack; it was my brain’s natural attraction to such treats. I can hardly be blamed, really, for forgetting where my car keys are, because this hunk of meat can remember in vivid detail that one embarrassing night from a decade ago and yet somehow struggles to recall something I did a mere five minutes ago.
In our frustration, it is understandable for us to clutch at our heads and declare that “I just don’t understand why my brain works the way it does!”, or lament that “No matter how hard I try, my brain just won’t cooperate.” The embodiment of our innermost intentions appears, at best, to malfunction with irritating regularity. The pithy and easily digestible format of memes is ripe with potential to vent this grievance.
From the younger generations’ perspective, this is something of a natural extension of pressures they tend to already feel. Besieged on all sides by an economy they view as hopeless, a housing market they feel is impossible to break into, a political system they regard with increasing distrust, and a society with a never-ending assortment of social ills that each seem to require tireless attention, it is not much of a stretch to have identified yet one more obstacle imposing itself on their best-laid schemes, this one somehow at once intimately familiar and frighteningly inscrutable. Memes created to cope with such an array of issues range, naturally, from lighthearted (e.g. by pointing out how innocuously silly a faulty memory can be) to soul-crushingly depressing (e.g. by fruitlessly wondering why the brain won’t just allow us more feel-good chemicals when it seems at first glance like curing one’s depression should be entirely within its power).
These memes illustrate a fundamental perception that even the machinations of one’s own mind are hopelessly out of reach. We can no more coerce our brains into curing our own depression than we can wake up one morning and rid the world of corruption. The idea that our brains work for our benefit is as naive as the idea that all of the aforementioned social problems have simple and precise solutions. As an unpredictable world may rock us to our cores with no warning, so too do our brains sabotage our emotional wellbeing from within by mechanisms that are impossible to grasp.
Memes with their foundation in the absurdity of our own brains are telling us, in their characteristic flippant style, that there does not exist a reprieve from the forces which oppress us. Even the snug and familiar confines of one’s own skull are not safe from the influence of powers that we truly cannot control. They are lamentations wrapped in the bows of comedy. They are the digital-age version of gnashing one’s teeth amidst a wasteland of futility. What we once saw as the pure embodiment of ourselves has been revealed to be nothing but one more organ among many that can break down, make mistakes, and render us worse off than before.
If we are not our brains, these memes ask, then what are we? Substance unknown, origin mysterious, it seems that the thing we understand least in the universe is ourselves. And that may be the most frightening reality of all.
That is, at least, one way to look at it.
