The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey

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In this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a book, the neuroscientist Paul Broks takes us image by image, story by story, into an exploration of life with all its brilliant hues of grief and despair, joy and resilience, biology and society. There’s science here, and curiosity, and humanity, all forming a remarkable portrait of who we are—and who we hope to be.” More than a compilation of case studies, Broks’s book is a digressive journey through the subject of human consciousness… Like the box of old family photographs Broks achingly describes, this metascience narrative is well worth sorting through.”

When celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks' wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection that traced a lifelong attempt to understand how the brain gives rise to the soul. The result of that journey is a gorgeous, evocative meditation on fate, death, consciousness, and what it means to be human. I’ve thrown in a few fictional pieces, speculative tales through which to explore selfhood and consciousness, life and death. I get to discuss grief with C. S. Lewis; I get to meet some zombies; to my great surprise, I discover I have a long-hidden sub-personality fluent in French and adept in the arts of seduction; I celebrate my 150th birthday. Along with these standalone pieces, there’s an intermittent fictional thread woven with the factual material. It involves a time-twisting drunk named Mike who appears at various points dispensing pearls of wisdom, especially on the nature of time and fate. Strange things happen to the flow of time when Mike’s around. In the final chapter he gives me an opportunity to time travel, and with it a deep dilemma. A great many people were put down as mad among us last year. And in such language! "With such original talent" ... "and yet, after all, it appears" ... "however, one ought to have foreseen it long ago." That is rather artful; so that from the point of view of pure art one may really commend it. Well, but after all, these so-called madmen have turned out cleverer than ever. So it seems the critics can call them mad, but they cannot produce any one better. Variant translation: I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they will not understand. Dostoevsky(1999)[1880]. The Brothers Karamazov. Constance Garnett, translator. Signet Classic. pp.p. 312. ISBN 0451527348.And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November — on the third of November, to be precise — and I remember every instant since. The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars is an extended meditation on selfhood, consciousness, life, and death. The book traces a loose arc of loss, acceptance, and renewal through interlinked fragments of autobiography, neurological case stories, and excursions into myth and speculative fiction. Why such diverse modes of storytelling? Well, I say, why not? I am writing about brains and selves. The human brain is a storytelling machine, and the self is a yarn it spins. From the first glimmerings of self-awareness, we enter a nexus of stories, and those stories take many different forms, from the mundane to the magical, from scientific to mythic. My mind is in the habit of shooting off in every direction, and I have honored the old cliché: Write something you yourself would want to read. It says in part: “All across your organs, cells are being produced and destroyed. They have an expiry date.

A really innovative book about the nature of consciousness. Rather than just try to answer the question of consciousness directly, Broks uses illustrations from different sources to touch on the answer from many angles. It is at one time both biological, cultural, personal and individual. It is one thing to experience it, and another to describe it or define it. It could be described differently at different times and places and life stages. It is the subject of philosophical discourse. I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers...Many Russian novelists influenced me as well: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov, Gogol, and Bulgarov. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877) [ edit ] Using primarily the translation of Constance Garnett (1900) - Full text at Wikisource I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. I learnt the truth last November — on the third of November, to be precise — and I remember every instant since. Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all... They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? The children of the sun, the children of their sun — oh, how beautiful they were! They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. The actual forms and images of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language... How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at.The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly. And i wish all my friends to tell them this cause i really believe in the following below and i want to say it to every one who needs help am there. "You are safe with Braum.""Put away your worried face!""Keep your spirits high.""When going gets tough, you call Braum.""They may have many, but you have me." The heart is the strongest muscle.""No time for worrying."

There are different points in this book when the author seems to assert that consciousness or "self" is an illusion. How can anyone possibly know that for sure when we don't even know exactly what consciousness is? For all we know, what we have is the real deal. If it's not, what exactly is it supposed to be? I think you have to know what a thing is actually supposed to be before you can decide whether or not it's an illusion.Attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in self-help books and on social media. The words are from an untitled poem (dated 1878) by the 19th century Russian poet Apollon Maykov. The full quatrain goes: "Не говори, что нет спасенья, / Что ты в печалях изнемог: / Чем ночь темней, тем ярче звезды, / Чем глубже скорбь, тем ближе Бог."