Body and Soul

You know Bob, right? Isn’t that him over there? He’s not been himself lately. Maybe he’s been taken over by some alien pod creature or something.  It is kind of bizarre how we identify people. That looks like Bob. And yet we also recognise knowing someone by their personality and character. So, if Bob had been body-snatched then that may be Bob’s body, but it’s not Bob. We make a distinction between Bob the body and Bob the soul within that body, with Bob the soul taking precedent in regards to Bobness.

In our dealings with others we recognise a certain unique spark that we call the soul. In death the lights go out there is nothing there but a vacant shell. So it is easy to imagine how our primitive ancestors, seeing that spark one moment and then gone, contrived a separation of body and soul as two distinct parts with one being the shell and the other being the life essence within the shell.

From this simple starting point, human beings of every culture throughout history have added to the collective lore concerning this thing called the soul, but one thing is generally agreed upon. The soul is this unique thing that makes us who we are. It is what makes Bob Bob.

From a scientific perspective, there is a study devoted entirely to the study of the soul. Its name come from the Greek word psyche, meaning soul, and the familiar suffix –ology, meaning the study of something – though most people would hardly consider psychology to be the study of the soul. Nonetheless, when we speak of the soul we are indeed referring to the psycho-emotional make-up unique to each individual rather than some mystical energy force.

The study of neuroscience gives further insight into the functions of the brain and therefore the functions of the soul. For the soul is not independent from the body. All that comprises it are the product of a complex electro-chemical computer called the human brain. We know this because some victims of severe brain trauma undergo radical changes in personality; in old age, we often see a personality deteriorate; and under the influence of certain drugs a person changes into someone else – very Jekyll and Hyde. In light of this understanding, we should start thinking of the soul in physical terms, but old habits die hard and we still grant it a supernatural position transcending the affects of the flesh.

I predict that in the distant future it will be possible to input a DNA sample from a newborn baby into a computer and from that create a slideshow of how that body will develop through the decades and into old age. You will be able to see how this infant will look at forty. Within our DNA is the blueprint of what our bodies will become.

Of course this future DNA imaging will not be entirely accurate. The infant may develop eating habits that will lead to obesity or become a slim and muscular health fanatic. An accident may twist his form or acne may scar his face. The child’s personality may imprint a dour expression or one filled with hope and joy. There are so many variables that can alter the base-line form established from our DNA slideshow, but that essential form will still be fixed despite these divergences.

The same holds true of the soul. There is a fixed and immutable baseline of who we are as individuals that cannot be changed any more than we can make ourselves taller or shorter in body. However, as with the flesh, variations on this basic theme occur.

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. A person who is naturally kind and generous may find themselves constantly taken advantage of by others and unappreciated. This may lead to a bitter and miserly soul, not unlike the body of a beautiful person twisted by hard living. Just as a naturally scrawny man may use bodybuilding to bulk-up, so too might a naturally lazy soul develop positive habits to be more industrious.

Also, some templates are naturally different from others. Looking at two year old children it is not difficult to distinguish the future athlete and from the future philosopher with his “old soul”. Just as one child has the physical form inherited from his parents that will make him a future athlete, another child has the hardwired soul, also from his parents, that will make him a future philosopher.

Some athletes die from heart failure in their thirties while fifty year chain smokers live into their eighties. It’s all in the genes. This has led many to consider predestination. To what degree do our genes predetermine the direction and limitations of the development of our bodies and souls? To what degree can we truly affect the positive changes we desire?

A 2011 film called The Adjustment Bureau addresses this topic. A man discovers the existence of an agency, which is implied to be divine, that keeps people moving along a life path determined by “the chairman”, aka God, but our hero is determined to make his own choices in spite of their meddling. He succeeds in the end and is told by an angel figure:

Most people live life on the path we set for them, too afraid to explore any other. But once in a while people like you come along who knock down all the obstacles we put in your way. People who realize freewill is a gift that you'll never know how to use until you fight for it. I think that's the chairman's real plan. That maybe one day, we won't write the plan, you will.

The point being made here is that most people will naturally follow the course predetermined by their genes and only wilful action can change that, however I believe that even then there are limitations. Just as a short body cannot be made tall, certain aspects of personality are also fixed. Or as the prayer says, we must “accept the things we cannot change, have the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.

In the field of human development and personality, the long running debate is Nature vs Nurture. The question is, “Are we predominantly the product of our inherited genes (Nature) or the product of our environment (Nurture).” The answer tends to swing back and forth over the decades as to which is predominant and these days we find that Nature seems to be winning by several percentage points.

We have inherited the physical aspects of both of our parent’s genetic soup to become a genetic amalgam, so too is your soul a mix. Hence the mother’s cry, “You’re just like your father” or the adage that all women eventually become their mother, or that “the apple does not fall far from the tree”, so you can judge someone by their family.

In contrast, the Victorians accepted the Tabula Rasa theory, known as the colloquially as the “clean slate”, dating back to Aristotle. This view holds that we are born a clean slate and our identity is manufactured during our development. They were wrong of course, but they were right.

Today, we encourage children to “be themselves”, let them develop naturally, and we only interfere when their “natural” behaviour becomes annoying, threatening, or politically incorrect. Looking at the body, we encourage children to eat right and get exercise. We do not just let them be natural, yet we as a society do not impose the same regiment on their souls as our Victorian forebears had done. The genetically preordained nature of body and soul is not inherently right, necessarily desirable, or automatically advantageous. So we fight against it.

The reason I chose to write on this topic is because of a conversation that I recently had with a friend of mine concerning a past relationship of mine that did not work-out. I mentioned my failures and she pointed out that being incompatible does not denote failure.

When we think of the soul of a mystical force that transcends the flesh, we are setting ourselves up for failure. There is a human tendency to imagine the subjective as whatever we wish it to be. We see this phenomenon in religion. I do not like homosexuals; therefore “God hates fags”. The same holds true of the soul. We can imagine ourselves to be whatever we want to see ourselves as regardless of objectivity. This leads to inflated egos, solipsism, arrogance, and a sense of failure when we do not live-up to expectations of ourselves or others.

This thing we call the soul is just as objective as the rest of our bodies. By continuing to think of the soul in subjective terms we put it into the realm of ideas, imagination, and wishful thinking. This denial of reality can only lead to frustration and disappointment as we try to change ourselves, or others, into someone we are physically incapable of becoming.

If we hold the soul to the same criteria as the rest of the body, then we realise that positive change takes work that does not happen simply because someone wishes it to be so. Building the soul, like building the body, takes wilful effort and years of constant habit to yield consistent results, even then the best we can hope for is doing the best with the body or soul that we inherited.

So when we look at past relationships, or any past actions, with regret because of the outcome, we can take some comfort in the fact that we could not have acted any differently. Our behaviour was dictated by our soul and our soul is as fixed as our body. Acting differently would be the physical equivalent of suddenly running a marathon that you are not prepared for and then berating yourself afterwards for not even coming close to finishing.

I appreciate that what I am suggesting here may endorse complacency. I am who I am and cannot help my actions, so be it. However, we also see this is the realm of the flesh. Some people accept their physical forms regardless of how unhealthy or fat they are. While others are conscientious and constantly seek improvements while at the same time recognising that they are not at their desired state. The same hold true of the soul. We can just accept the neural pathways that have developed and say “so be it”, or we can strive to open new ones and be ready when that unexpected marathon comes along.

Just as some people are naturally athletic and others fat, so too are some born with certain neural functions that make them naturally industrious, for example, and others lazy. This has been a source of frustration for me personally when I realised that many of the Romantic virtues I espouse are gifted to some by nature, whereas I have to work at them.  But just as the natural athlete can squander his gifts to become fat or the naturally fat work to become more athletic, so too can the gifts of the soul be wasted or improved upon. The only difference is that one is visible and the other the product of the invisible workings of the human brain.

It has been said that this is the next frontier – achieving an understanding of the human mind that will allows us to mould our souls in the same way that we mould our bodies. For now we must stick to the tried and true old ways when it comes to the workout for the soul found in religion, meditation, hypnosis, and self-discipline to create new patterns of behaviour – new self-made souls.