The Thanatos Syndrome

drug-free natural high. We know it suppresses the cortical response to bombardment from the limbic system, which again you know is the main source of anxiety. Tom, we can see it! In a PETscanner! We can see the glucose metabolism of the limbic system raising all kinds of hell and getting turned off like a switch by the cortex. We can see the locus ceruleus and the hypothalamus kicking in, libido increasing—healthy heterosexual libido—and depression decreasing—we can see it! And here’s the damnedest thing, Tom!—here’s where we need your help—we need your help because of your expertise with the CORTscan, your baby—we know and you know that there are certain inhibitory functions in the cortex—you call it superego, Freudian forgetting—which wipe out most memory recall from the temporal lobe. Tom—!” He’s as exhilarated now as “Wiener Blut.” “Those suckers can remember everything. We can see it both on PET and SPECT. Ask them a question: What did you do on your fifth birthday? and, Tom, I’m telling you, it’s like watching the mainframe at NIH scanning its data bank. They retrieve it! If it’s in the neurones, they get it! What do you think?”
    â€œI’m impressed.”
    â€œThen be the devil’s advocate. Attack us from your own expertise. Name one thing wrong we’re doing.” Both Bob and “Wiener Blut” wind up with a triumphant chord.
    â€œWell, there’s the technicality of civil rights. You’re assaulting the cortex of an individual without the knowledge or consent of the assaultee.”
    â€œAssault!” He leans forward again, eyes blazing. “Let me tell you about assault and who’s assaulted!”
    â€œAll right.”
    He points north, past Grand Mer. “Do you know what’s up the river fifteen miles or so?”
    â€œSure. Angola.”
    â€œRight. Angola. The Louisiana State Prison Farm. Ten thousand murderers, rapists, armed robbers, society’s assholes, who would as soon kill you as spit on you. That’s where the assault comes from.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo, two little numbers, Tom. One: The admissions to Angola for violent crime from the treatment area have declined seventy-two percent since Blue Boy began.”
    â€œBlue Boy?”
    â€œThe name of our little pilot program.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œTwo: The incidence of murder, knifings, and homosexual rape in Angola, which is of course in the treatment area, has—declined—to—zero.” He pauses. “Zero,” he whispers.
    â€œSo why do you need me? It sounds like your pilot has succeeded.”
    â€œI’ll tell you why we need you.” He turns over the cassette. Here comes “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” “First, you know as much about the action of radioactive isotopes on neurones as anyone—you’re the pioneer. But I need you for something else.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œTom, as you intimated a moment ago, we’ve got an interesting philosophical question here. Both my colleagues and I need some dialoguing on the subject and we think you could contribute a very creative input.”
    The Strauss is very lovely. The Feliciana woods here, bathed as they are in the gold autumn sunlight, are surely as lovely as the Vienna woods. “What creative input do you have in mind, Bob?”
    â€œOkay, try this for size. What we have here is a philosophical question. Yes, you’re right, though your language was pejorative. Yes, we’re treating cortical neurones by a water-soluble additive, just as we treated dental enamel by fluoride in the water fifty years ago—without the permission or knowledge of the treated. The courts upheld us then, probably will again. But that’s not the question. The real, the fascinating, question is this. What do you think of this hypothesis, which is gaining ground among psychologists, anthropologists, neurologists, to mention a few disciplines—as well as among academics and in liberal-arts circles—even among our best novelists!—Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book setting forth this very thesis.” He eyes me. “You already know, don’t you?”
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œThe hypothesis, Tom,” says Bob, speaking slowly, “is that at least a segment of the human neocortex and of consciousness itself is not only an aberration of evolution but is