Jefferson Lecturer Tom Wolfe Have

Jefferson Lecturer Tom Wolfe have always enjoyed reading Tom Wolfe's writing, and this speech was no exception. His speaking style leaves something to be desired; one of the things that makes his writing so engaging is the wit and almost arrogance detectable just beneath the surface of humor and outrageousness, and he did not appear as comfortable speaking as his writing suggests. But reading the speech as he had prepared it for delivery brought back the sense of style I remember from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests.

That book made some strange occurrences and people seem totally -- well, nearly -- reasonable and understandable. In this speech, Wolfe does the opposite -- he takes something as familiar and seemingly mundane as the human gift of speech into something extraordinarily important and life changing, not just for individuals but for the human species and others. The first few pages really made me sit back and reflect on the amount of power humans have, and the usually careless and unthinking way in which we wield it.

Of course, I understood that speech was significant, both for what it allows us to accomplish and how it separates us from most -- if not all -- other forms of life (whales, dolphins, and other creatures, I have heard, are believed to have languages nearly as or as complex as ours), but Wolfe outlines it in his folksy and accessible way that makes it at once engaging, obvious, and totally profound.

Wolfe moves on from speech to talk about "the human beast" at large, and some of the tings he reveals took me by surprise. The experiments of Delgado's that he describes were exhilarating to read about, and I can only imagine having been present at the bull ring when the huge and angry animal suddenly stopped at the push of a button. The sense of awe in the crowd and achievement on the part of Delgado must have been almost palpable, as it was in Wolfe's rendering of it.

The kind of power this knowledge gives us as the imperfect and often vicious beasts that we are is also scary, though; to know that the will is a function of the brain, and that the brain -- and therefore the will -- can be externally manipulated calls all sorts of things into question, not the least of which is, what is real? Delgado questioned that, too, with his experiments in the sensory deprivation chamber (something I've wanted to try ever since seeing Altered States), and philosophers have been questioning it since the dawn of philosophy -- it is the essential question, and one that maybe can't be answered.

But this information about the brain seems to suggest that not only will we never know what is truly real, but that because of the very nature of the brain itself, we can never know what's really real.

Of course, this is based on what we know of the brain, and if we can't really know anything...and this line of reasoning might be of great importance, and it might (probably is, I think) be pure and pointless sophistry, but how can we (and can we) know? I would have like to see more information about the sensory deprivation chamber and how that affects the brain.

I don't know if the research simply isn't available, or if Wolfe didn't see the relevance in regards to his discussion of humans as Homo loquax, but simply extrapolating from the scant mention he makes of it might have been sufficient. For.