If You Want to Flourish, Develop Your Router
The devil gave Stubbe Peeter a magical belt that transformed him into a wolf. For 25 years in the mid-1500s, Peeter donned the belt, transformed into a wolf, and committed atrocious deeds, ranging from murder and cannibalism to rape and incest.
The authorities eventually arrested and vigorously executed him.1
Was Peeter really a werewolf?
Werewolves exist, after all. It’s called “lycanthropy,” a mental condition in which people think they are wolves.
These lycanthropists are probably pretty sane compared to the folks with Cotard's delusion. Those folks think they're dead and often demand to be buried.
Stubbe Peeter would probably appreciate the guy who, convinced his stepfather was a robot, cut off his head with a chainsaw to see if batteries and microchips would fall out. The guy suffered from Capgras Syndrome, the belief that someone has been replaced with an imposter.
All three of these folks--the lycanthropists, Cotards, and Capgrasses--have something in common.
They all suffer lesions or other damage to the right hemisphere of their brains.
In fact, that's what almost all mental problems–paranoia, anorexia, and schizophrenia—have in common: a malfunctioning right hemisphere.
Iain McGilchrist catalogs the instances thoroughly in Chapter 4 of The Matter with Things , so much so that one could justifiably accuse him of "piling on."
I have a graphic I call "The Metaphor." It illustrates how we connect to reality by analogizing to the relationship among the Internet, modem, router, and digital devices.
The right hemispheres of our brains connect to the Tao (the foundational element of Reality), much like a router connects to a modem. The right hemisphere mediates Reality and then sends the left hemisphere into the world to handle daily life, while the right hemisphere attends to more important things, like poetry and drinking beer with friends.
If the right hemisphere is damaged, the left hemisphere receives no, or only weak or damaged, signals from the right hemisphere, which means the left hemisphere's connection to Reality is impaired.
Enter Stubbe Peeter and that guy who's demanding to be buried because he’s dead.
What's even more troubling?
The would-be werewolves and would-be cadavers aren’t necessarily irrational. If you grant their premises--"You are a wolf"; "You are dead"--their positions about life become pretty rational.
And that's why there’s a problem.
A glitchy Wi-Fi connection is frustrating because the digital devices that rely on it don’t perform well. The devices themselves are fine: they’re working and keep chugging along, but due to the impaired signal from the router, they can’t do their jobs properly.
Likewise, if the right hemisphere is glitching, the left hemisphere keeps working. It keeps acting, acquiring, coming to conclusions, and offering its opinions. In other words, it keeps rationalizing, whether (or not) its rationalizations have a good connection to Reality.
Even scarier, the left hemisphere is incapable of knowing whether it's connected to Reality. Worse, it always assumes its connection is solid, no matter how impaired. That’s why a guy like Stubbe could logically think he was a werewolf, why a living person can rationally insist on being buried, and why a stepson could understandably lop off his stepfather’s head to check the batteries.
Modern culture is an edifice of the left hemisphere. As a result, we are all, to some degree, left hemispherics. We all share a mental trait with the lycanthropists, folks with Cotard’s, and the Capgrasses.
To escape, we need to re-establish the primacy of our right hemispheres. This requires two things: weakening the grip of our left hemispheres and strengthening our right hemispheres (re-establishing a robust router). Both require effort and strategies. You can get ideas by clicking here or by subscribing to this Substack.
After Peeter confessed his crimes, his executioners laid him on a wheel, pulled his flesh from his bones with red-hot pincers, broke his arms and legs with a hatchet, and then decapitated and burned him. For the full story of Stubbe Peeter, see A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, ed. Charlotte F. Otten (Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 69–76.