Everything Is F*cked(7)

Then, Damasio did something to Elliot no other doctor had thought to do: he talked to him—like, really talked to him. He wanted to know everything: every mistake, every error, every regret. How had he lost his job, his family, his house, his savings? Take me through each decision, explain the thought process (or, in this case, the lack of a thought process).

Elliot could explain, at length, what decisions he’d made, but he couldn’t explain the why of those decisions. He could recount facts and sequences of events with perfect fluidity and even a certain dramatic flair, but when asked to analyze his decision making—why did he decide that buying a new stapler was more important than meeting with an investor, why did he decide that James Bond was more interesting than his kids?—he was at a loss. He had no answers. And not only that, he wasn’t even upset about having no answers. In fact, he didn’t care.

This was a man who had lost everything due to his own poor choices and mistakes, who had exhibited no self-control whatsoever, and who was completely aware of the disaster his life had become, and yet he apparently showed no remorse, no self-loathing, not even a little bit of embarrassment. Many people have been driven to suicide for less than what Elliot had endured. Yet there he was, not only comfortable with his own misfortune but indifferent to it.

That’s when Damasio had a brilliant realization: the psychological tests Elliot had undergone were designed to measure his ability to think, but none of the tests was designed to measure his ability to feel. Every doctor had been so concerned about Elliot’s reasoning abilities that no one had stopped to consider that it was Elliot’s capacity for emotion that had been damaged. And even if they had realized it, there was no standardized way of measuring that damage.

One day, one of Damasio’s colleagues printed up a bunch of grotesque and disturbing pictures. There were burn victims, gruesome murder scenes, war-torn cities, and starving children. He then showed Elliot the photos, one by one.

Elliot was completely indifferent. He felt nothing. And the fact that he didn’t care was so shocking that even he had to comment on how fucked up it was. He admitted that he knew for sure that these images would have disturbed him in the past, that his heart would have welled up with empathy and horror, that he would have turned away in disgust. But now? As he sat there, staring at the darkest corruptions of the human experience, Elliot felt nothing.

And this, Damasio discovered, was the problem: while Elliot’s knowledge and reasoning were left intact, the tumor and/or the surgery to remove it had debilitated his ability to empathize and feel. His inner world no longer possessed lightness and darkness but was instead an endless gray miasma. Attending his daughter’s piano recital evoked in him all the vibrancy and joyful fatherly pride of buying a new pair of socks. Losing a million dollars felt exactly the same to him as pumping gas, laundering his sheets, or watching Family Feud. He had become a walking, talking indifference machine. And without that ability to make value judgments, to determine better from worse, no matter how intelligent he was, Elliot had lost his self-control.3

But this raised a huge question: if Elliot’s cognitive abilities (his intelligence, his memory, his attention) were all in perfect shape, why couldn’t he make effective decisions anymore?

This stumped Damasio and his colleagues. We’ve all wished at times that we couldn’t feel emotion, because our emotions often drive us to do stupid shit we later regret. For centuries, psychologists and philosophers assumed that dampening or suppressing our emotions was the solution to all life’s problems. Yet, here was a man stripped of his emotions and empathy entirely, someone who had nothing but his intelligence and reasoning, and his life had quickly degenerated into a total clusterfuck. His case went against all the common wisdom about rational decision making and self-control.

But there was a second, equally perplexing question: If Elliot was still as smart as a whip and could reason his way through problems presented to him, why did his work performance fall off a cliff? Why did his productivity morph into a raging dumpster fire? Why did he essentially abandon his family knowing full well the negative consequences? Even if you don’t give a shit about your wife or your job anymore, you should be able to reason that it’s still important to maintain them, right? I mean, that’s what sociopaths eventually figure out. So, why couldn’t Elliot? Really, how hard is it to show up to a Little League game every once in a while? Somehow, by losing his ability to feel, Elliot had also lost his ability to make decisions. He’d lost the ability to control his own life.

We’ve all had the experience of knowing what we should do yet failing to do it. We’ve all put off important tasks, ignored people we care about, and failed to act in our own self-interest. And usually when we fail to do the things we should, we assume it’s because we can’t sufficiently control our emotions. We’re too undisciplined or we lack knowledge.

Yet Elliot’s case called all this into question. It called into question the very idea of self-control, the idea that we can logically force ourselves to do things that are good for us despite our impulses and emotions.

To generate hope in our lives, we must first feel as though we have control over our lives. We must feel as though we’re following through on what we know is good and right; that we’re chasing after “something better.” Yet many of us struggle with the inability to control ourselves. Elliot’s case would be one of the breakthroughs to understanding why this occurs. This man, poor, isolated and alone; this man staring at photos of broken bodies and earthquake rubble that could easily have been metaphors for his life; this man who had lost everything, absolutely everything, and still cracked a smile to tell about it—this man would be the key to revolutionizing our understanding of the human mind, how we make decisions, and how much self-control we actually have.