Sickness
In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner conducted an experiment to determine whether electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain could influence a rat’s choice of direction. An accidental misplacement of an electrode, however, produced a curious reaction. When the rat was stimulated, it was noted to sit up quickly and look around, sniffing the air, as if reacting to a favorable stimulus. Later experiments confirmed this, and showed that the reaction was strongly correlated with proximity to specific areas of the midbrain. Rats were placed in Skinner boxes, where the pressing of a lever by the rat resulted in electrical stimulation of the telencephalon. Olds discovered that rats would work furiously to self-stimulate these areas, pressing the lever up to 5000 times per hour, and to the point of utter exhaustion. Rats would forego eating, even while starved, in favor of self-stimulation. It was a landmark discovery, demonstrating for the first time the location of the so-called reward centers of the brain, through which all behavioral reinforcement occurs.
Many times throughout my education, my thoughts have turned back to this experiment, and to the rats which played the pivotal role. Out of nowhere, these animals were inexplicably given the power to tap into their own fundamental motivations, and to do so with an intensity that nothing in life could equal. With each press of the lever, they were reinforcing the very process of reinforcement, on and on in exponential recursion, until nothing existed outside of the lever, nothing mattered but being able to press it. Everything else was gone, vanished into inconsequence. It wasn’t about seeking pleasure, that little buzz of satisfaction-no, it was simpler than that, far more elemental. The lever had to be pushed. This was an intrinsic necessity beyond joy or sorrow or pain, an obsession more primal and self-evident than any thought that had ever come before it. There could be no reason, no justification that could touch this. A need like this exists outside of rational thought. It could never be explained, never be defined, and could never be resisted. This was pure, irreducible meaning; purpose distilled into a simple series of movements. Pressing that lever became the only reason these rats had ever lived. For those few raw hours, it was the very center of all thought, all intention, all hope and desire. And if any of this can be imagined, if any of us can come close to understanding what those rats were experiencing, then surely there can be no chance of grasping what they must have felt when that lever was finally taken away, and they were left alone again in this cold and sterile world, now rendered hollow by comparison, and forever without worth.
Many times throughout my education, my thoughts have turned back to this experiment, and to the rats which played the pivotal role. Out of nowhere, these animals were inexplicably given the power to tap into their own fundamental motivations, and to do so with an intensity that nothing in life could equal. With each press of the lever, they were reinforcing the very process of reinforcement, on and on in exponential recursion, until nothing existed outside of the lever, nothing mattered but being able to press it. Everything else was gone, vanished into inconsequence. It wasn’t about seeking pleasure, that little buzz of satisfaction-no, it was simpler than that, far more elemental. The lever had to be pushed. This was an intrinsic necessity beyond joy or sorrow or pain, an obsession more primal and self-evident than any thought that had ever come before it. There could be no reason, no justification that could touch this. A need like this exists outside of rational thought. It could never be explained, never be defined, and could never be resisted. This was pure, irreducible meaning; purpose distilled into a simple series of movements. Pressing that lever became the only reason these rats had ever lived. For those few raw hours, it was the very center of all thought, all intention, all hope and desire. And if any of this can be imagined, if any of us can come close to understanding what those rats were experiencing, then surely there can be no chance of grasping what they must have felt when that lever was finally taken away, and they were left alone again in this cold and sterile world, now rendered hollow by comparison, and forever without worth.