Deviate

Humans have the wild and generative gift of being able to see their lives and affect them just by reflecting on the process of perception itself. We can see ourselves see. That is what this book is fundamentally about: seeing your see or perceiving your perception, which is arguably the most essential step in seeing differently. By becoming aware of the principles by which your perceptual brain works, you can become an active participant in your own perceptions and in this way change them in the future.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole and ends up in a world in which fantastical things happen. She grows in size; time is eternally stopped for the Mad Hatter at 6 p.m.; the Cheshire Cat's grin floats in the air, sans the cat. Alice must navigate this bizarre new environment and at the same time maintain her sense of self, no easy task for anyone, let alone a child. The book Alice in Wonderland underscores the virtue of being adaptive when confronting shifting circumstances. From the perspective of neuroscience, however, there is a much more powerful lesson: We're all like Alice all the time—our brains must process strange new information arising from unpredictable experiences every single day, and provide us with useful responses—except that we didn't have to drop through the rabbit hole. We're already deep inside it.

My goal in Deviate is to reveal the hidden wonderland of your own perception to you as my more than 25 years of research have revealed it to me. You don't have to be a so-called "science person." Although I'm a neuroscientist, I'm not just interested in the brain only, since neuroscience is so much bigger than just the brain. When neuroscience is applied outside the disciplines it is traditionally associated with—such as chemistry, physiology, and medicine—the possibilities are not just immense, but fantastically unpredictable. Neuroscience—when defined more broadly—has the potential to impact everything from apps to art, web design to fashion design, education to communication, and perhaps most fundamentally, your personal life. You're the only one seeing what you see, so perception is ultimately personal. Understanding of the brain (and its relationship to the world around you) can affect anything, and lead to startling deviations.

Once you begin to see perceptual neuroscience this way, as I did several years ago, it becomes hard to stay in the lab… or at least the more conventional, staid conception of what a "lab" is. So, a decade ago I began redirecting my energies toward creating brain-changing, science-based experiences for the public: experiment as experience… even theater. The theme of one of my first installations at a leading science museum was Alice in Wonderland. The exhibit, much like Lewis Carroll's strange, topsy-turvy novel, took visitors through illusions intended to challenge and enrich their view of human perception. This first exhibit—which I created with the scientist Richard Gregory, a hero in perception who shaped much of what I (and we) think about the perceiving brain—grew into many other settings, all of them based on the belief that to create spaces for understanding we need to consider not only how we see, but why we see what we do. To this end, I founded the Lab of Misfits, a public place open to anyone where I could conduct science "in its natural habitat," a playful and rule-breaking ecology of creativity. This was most dramatically the case when we took up residency in the Science Museum in London.

My Lab of Misfits has enabled me to bring together primatologists, dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, children, teachers, mathematicians, computer scientists, investors, behavioral scientists, and of course neuroscientists in a place where concepts and principles unite, where the emphasis is on innovation, and where we passionately investigate things we care about. We've had an official "Keeper of the Crayons" and "Head Player" (not that kind of player—as far as we know). We've published papers on nonlinear computation and dance, bee behavior and architecture, visual music, and the evolution of plant development. We've created the world's first Immersive Messaging app that enables gifting in physical space using augmented reality, which allow people to re-engage with the world. We've initiated a new way to interact with the public called NeuroDesign, which combines those who are brilliant at telling stories with those who understand the nature of the stories the brain desires. We have created an education platform that, with the raison d'être of encouraging courage, compassion, and creativity, doesn't teach children about science but makes them scientists, and has resulted in the youngest published scientists in the world (and the youngest main-stage TED speaker). Many of the ideas in Deviate were created, prototyped, and embodied through experience in this physical and conceptual "Lab of Misfits" space. This means the book is also a product of all these misfits, the interactions between them, and even more significantly, our interactions with historic and contemporary misfits outside the lab.

This brings me to a key theme in the pages ahead: that perception isn't an isolated operation in our brains, but part of an ongoing process inside an ecology, by which I mean the relation of things to the things around them, and how they influence each other. Understanding a whirlpool isn't about understanding water molecules; it's about understanding the interaction of those molecules. Understanding what it is to be human is about understanding the interactions between our brain and body, and between other brains and bodies, as well as with the world at large. Hence life is an ecology, not an environment. Life—and what we perceive—lives in what I call "the space between." My lab, and all my research on perception, draws on this inherent interconnectedness, which is where biology, and indeed life itself, lives.

Now I have started all over again and built my lab into a book—hopefully a delightfully misfit one, shot through with deviations. This creates a sense of danger, not just for me but for you as well, since together we will need to question basic assumptions, such as whether or not we see reality. Stepping into such uncertainty isn't easy or simple. On the contrary, all brains are deathly afraid of uncertainty—and for good reason. To change a historical reflex will have unknown consequences. "Not knowing" is an evolutionarily bad idea. If our ancestors paused because they weren't sure whether the dark shape in front of them was a shadow or a predator, well, it was already too late. We evolved to predict. Why are all horror films shot in the dark? Think of the feeling you often have when walking through a familiar forest at night as compared to during the day. At night you can't see what's around you. You're uncertain. It's frightening, much like the constant "firsts" life presents us with—the first day of school, first dates, the first time giving a speech. We don't know what's going to happen, so these situations cause our bodies and our minds to react.

Uncertainty is the problem that our brains evolved to solve.

Resolving uncertainty is a unifying principle across biology, and thus is the inherent task of evolution, development, and learning. This is a very good thing. As you will have observed from experience, life is inherently uncertain because the world and the things that constitute it are always changing. And the question of uncertainty will become an increasingly pressing issue in all parts of our lives. This is because, as we and our institutions become more interconnected, we become more interdependent. When more and more of us are connected to each other, the effects of the metaphorical butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world are more quickly and more powerfully felt everywhere, increasing the pace of change (which is at the heart of a nonlinear, complex system). An increasingly connected world is also inherently more unpredictable. This creates fundamental challenges for living today, from love to leadership. Many of the most sought-after jobs today, from social media expert to web designer, weren't even around twenty years ago. A successful company, a thriving relationship, an environment free of dangers—the existence of these things today doesn't guarantee their continued existence tomorrow. You are never truly "untouched" in a connected, flux-filled world. There will always be events that blindside you, that you didn't predict, from the unforeseen change in weather spoiling your BBQ in London on a Saturday afternoon to those in London suddenly finding themselves living outside the European Union. This is why our brain evolved to take what is inherently uncertain and make it certain… every second of every day. The biological motivation of many of our social and cultural habits and reflexes, including religion and politics, and even hate and racism, is to diminish uncertainty through imposed rules and rigid environments… or in one's vain attempt to disconnect from a world that lives only because it is connected and in movement. In doing so, these inherited reflexes—by design—prevent us from living more creative, compassionate, collaborative, and courageous lives. With the making of this kind of certainty, we lose… freedom.

At Burning Man in 2014, I had an experience that has stayed with me—actually quite a few, but I'll share this one here. It was a profound—and profoundly simple—example of how deviating can radically change one's brain. As many know, Burning Man is a weeklong festival every August in the Nevada desert that brings together art, music, dance, theater, architecture, technology, conversation, and nearly 70,000 human beings. Costumes are ubiquitous—and at times a complete lack thereof (though often with body paint). It is a city-sized circus of free-form creativity… picture a giant pirate ship sailing along on wheels… that explodes on the desert floor, then vanishes seven days later, leaving absolutely no trace… an essential part of the Burning Man ethos.

On a windy day midway through the week, my partner Isabel and I were riding our bikes and getting to know the "city." Desert dust swirled, silting us and our goggles in a fine layer of beige. We ended up in a camp of people from a town on the southern edge of the Midwest and met a guy I'll call Dave. This was Dave's first year at Burning Man, and he said it was turning out to be a transformative experience for him. At first I internally rolled my eyes at this. Being "transformed" at Burning Man has become not just a cliché but almost an imposed aspiration. If you don't transform there, then you have somehow failed. But what is transformation? Of course, no one really knows because it is different for every person, which is why so many people at Burning Man hungrily chase signs of it all week, going around asking: "Have you been transformed?"

The more we talked to Dave, though, the more I realized he really was undergoing a deep shift in his perceptions of self and other. He was a computer programmer from a place with fundamentalist religious values and a narrow outlook on what was socially acceptable. In his town, you either learned to fit in or you were ostracized. Dave had learned to fit in… the business casual attire he wore at Burning Man reflected this. But it had clearly curtailed the possibilities of his life, curiosity, and imagination. Yet here he was, at Burning Man! It was the decision to be there that mattered. It was his choice… his intention enacted… to come, and the questioning manner he had brought with him.

As we stood there in his camp, he told us that the little green plastic flower that I saw stuck behind his ear—perhaps the least flamboyant adornment in Burning Man history—had provoked an epic struggle inside him. He had sat in his tent for two hours that morning weighing whether or not to wear the flower. It had forced him to confront a complex host of assumptions in his mind—about free expression, masculinity, aesthetic beauty, and social control. In the end, he gave himself permission to question these assumptions symbolically manifested in a plastic flower, and stepped out of his tent. He seemed both pleased and uncomfortable, and in my eyes far more courageous than most of the people out there in the Nevada desert that day in search of something powerful.

As a neuroscientist, I knew that his brain had changed. Ideas and actions previously out of his reach would now be available to him if he was willing to question his assumptions, and in doing so create a new, unknown terrain of wondering. As a person, I was moved.

This is what transformation looks like: Deviation toward oneself. So simple. So complex.

Nothing interesting ever happens without active doubt. Yet doubt is often disparaged in our culture because it is associated with indecision, a lack of confidence, and therefore weakness. Here I will argue exactly the opposite. That in many contexts, to "doubt yet do… with humility," like Dave, is possibly the strongest thing one can do. Doubt with courage and your brain will reward you for it through the new perceptions this process opens up. To question one's assumptions, especially those that define ourselves, requires knowing that you don't see the reality—only your mind's version of reality—and admitting this, not to mention accepting the possibility that someone else might know better. In the pages-based lab of Deviate, not knowing is celebrated. The word "deviant" has all sorts of negative connotations, yet it comes from the verb "deviate," which simply means not to take the established route. Whereas politicians emphasize unchanging routes, in our cultures we also idolize people who are deviators, from Rosa Parks and Oscar Wilde to William Blake, because we admire and are thankful for the unestablished routes they took… usually in hindsight, much more rarely in the present (indeed, like so many others, Blake's work only came to be understood for its true value long after his death). The vast majority of Hollywood superhero movies are predicated on deviance. Have you ever met an average hero?

Doubt is the genesis of powerful, deviating possibilities. In this way, the human brain is able to shed constricting assumptions and see beyond the utility with which the past has trained it to see. As I like to say, the cash is in the questions.

Be Delusional

The doubt-driven ride this book will take you on is going to physically change your brain. This isn't braggadocio, but a fact-based understanding of everything from the electric patterns of your thoughts to the neurons of your emotions. The simple act of reading can change your brain because two and a half decades of research have led me to one indisputable conclusion: what makes the human brain beautiful is that it is delusional.

I'm not talking about insanity. What I'm getting at has to do with the brain's imaginative powers of possibility and how richly they interact with behavior. We can all hold mutually exclusive realities in our minds at the same time, and "live" them out imaginatively.

Human perception is so layered and complex that our brains are constantly responding to stimuli that aren't real in any physical, concrete sense, but are just as vitally important: our thoughts. We are beautifully delusional because internal context is as determinative as our external one. This is verifiable at the neural level: fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique for tracking brain activity through blood flow) show that an imagined scenario lights up brain regions the same way the real-life equivalent scenario does. In other words, ideas and thoughts and concepts have lives inside of us. They are our history, too, and directly feed our current and (maybe more importantly) future behavior. As such, our perception is much more plastic and subject to influence than we're often aware of or comfortable admitting. The stock market tends to go up when it's sunny, and down when it's not. The seemingly rational decisions we make, then, are actually guided by "invisible" forces of perception that we're not even conscious of.

Another example: In 2014 the Lab of Misfits organized our first party/study, an initiative we call The Experiment, which is designed to do many things. One is to improve the quality of scientific research by taking it out of the artificial situation of a lab and into authentic human situations. The situation we engineered was a true social gathering in which people ate and drank and talked in an old crypt with strangers with a larger theatrical context. For the participants it was designed to be purposefully ambiguous as to whether it was science, a nightclub, an interactive theater and/or cabaret, but it was a memorable experience in which they also served as subjects in an experiment-as-experience. The goal of The Experiment is to discover, challenge and raise awareness through "empirical embodiment" of what it is to be human. One of our experiences sought specifically to see whether people group themselves depending on how they perceive themselves as either powerful or not.

After the food, once everyone was full, relaxed, and enjoying themselves, we had people do a brief writing exercise to prime them into a perceptual state. Depending on the memory they were prompted to recall, they were primed into either a low-power state, a higher-power state, or a neutral-power state. What this means is that their recollection prompted them to unconsciously perceive themselves to be either less or more in control. We then had them walk in a large concentric circle within a big underground crypt space in a Victorian jail in East London. Next, we asked them to segregate themselves under two lights at opposite ends of the room—in short, to stand next to the people who "feel like you." That's all we said.

What happened shocked the guests as much as it did us scientists. Without knowing who had been primed in which way, the people organized themselves according to their power-state with two-thirds accuracy. This means that well over half the people in each corner were with other people "like themselves." This was astounding for two reasons: One, it showed how strongly the participants' simple thoughts about themselves changed their own behavior; that is, their imagining changed their perceptual responses. Two, the people somehow perceived the imaginatively primed perceptions of others. What a wondrous example of how delusions affect not only our behavior, but the ecology in which we interact as well. In the chapters ahead, you will learn how to make your brain's delusional nature enhance your perception.

I want to create a fresh layer of meaning in your brain that will be as real as anything else that has affected your perception—and your life. The narrative of this book embodies the process I'm going to teach you. I constructed it so that reading from first page to last is seeing differently. It will allow you to experience what creativity feels and looks like from the inside. Think of it as a software solution for your perception. When you're done with the book, you simply change the context and reapply the software. Perhaps the most encouraging part is that you don't have to acquire a new base of knowledge.

To fly a plane, you first have to train as a pilot, which involves a tremendous amount of specialization and practice. But in order to deviate into new perceptions, you already have the basics. You don't have to learn to see and perceive. It's an essential part of who you are, if not the essential part. In this sense, you already have a firsthand account of the subject of this book. Furthermore, the process of perception is the same process by which you change perception. This means you are your own pilot (in the context of your larger ecology). My task is to use the science of your brain to teach you a new way to fly, and to see anew what you thought you had already seen.

One of the ways I will do this is by applying my knowledge of perception to your reading experience. For example, the brain thrives on difference… on contrast, since only by comparing things is it able to build relationships, which is a key step in creating perceptions. This is why you will find deviant design elements, such as varying font sizes and occasionally puzzling images. On the page you will also find exercises, tests, and self-experiments that require your participation. (They won't be tedious; in one I'm going to make you hold your eye open and momentarily "go blind.") When I began Deviate, I wanted to challenge assumptions about what a science book could be—my own step into uncertainty. What better space to do this than in a work about innovation and the brain, using the brain as my guide? This book is different in other ways as well.

In my view, as soon as you've told something to someone, you've taken the potential for a deeper meaning away from them. True knowledge is when information becomes embodied understanding: We have to act in the world to understand it. This is why Deviate will not give you recipes. Instead of a how-to guide that offers task-specific formulas, I will give you principles that transcend any single context. Just because you are able to make one fantastic meal by following a recipe doesn't mean you are now a great cook; it means you are good at following the instructions of a great cook. While it may have worked once, it hasn't given you the wisdom to make your own fantastic meal, as you have no idea why the recipe is a good one. Understanding why the recipe is a good one (and how) is one key aspect of what makes a chef a chef.

Deviate is designed to innovate your thinking by giving you new awareness, which creates the freedom to change. The first half will explore the mechanics of perception itself, making you reconsider the "reality" you see and helping you to know less than you think you know now. Yes: that is my aim, for you to actually know less overall, while understanding more. The second half will then make this understanding practical by giving you a process and technique to deviate in your life.