The Wisdom Paradox Page 6
My first point is that not only is it possible for a vigorous mental life to continue through the whole lifespan, but also in some people actually reaches its peak at a rather advanced age. I call such individuals late and luminous bloomers. History is replete with examples of great creative genius and political leadership reaching its peak only by the age of sixty, seventy, and even eighty. Examples of such remarkable individuals, whose greatest achievements took place late in their lives and became synonymous with their names, can be found in the worlds of literature, architecture, painting, science, and politics. Below are six examples that challenge our well-entrenched cultural bias that aging invariably equals decay.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the great German writer, is clearly a case of an “uphill” life in literature. He published the first part of Faust at the age of fifty-nine and the second part at eighty-three. Goethe was a very prolific author throughout his literary career. Nonetheless, it is Faust, his late-life achievement, that has been synonymous with his name through the centuries. The life of Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (1852-1926), the great Catalan architectural visionary, followed a similar trajectory. He began the work of his life, the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, exploring architectural forms then without precedent in the Western tradition, as a relatively young man. But the project culminated toward the end of his life, when he focused exclusively on his beloved Sagrada Familia. Gaudí died in a car accident at the peak of his creative powers at the age of seventy-four, and the cathedral remained unfinished. Closer to home, Anna Mary Robertson (1860-1961), better known as Grandma Moses, began to paint only in her seventies. By the time her paintings of rural farming scenes began to gain recognition, she was almost eighty years old. Grandma Moses continued to paint until the very end of her long life and is remembered today as one of the foremost American folk artists.
In a very different arena of human accomplishment, Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) defied his own saying that “mathematics is very largely a young man’s game.” Wiener was the father of cybernetics. By postulating the existence of unifying principles of complex organization underlying all biological and artificial systems, he shaped much of contemporary science. A unique blend of mathematician and philosopher, Wiener published his Cybernetics at the age of fifty-four, and his second most important work, God and Golem, Inc., at the age of seventy. The modern-day science of the general principles governing complex systems, known as “complexity studies,” owes much of its foundation to Wiener’s insights, many of which were formulated at a relatively advanced age.
Examples of late-life ascendancy to the pinnacle of political leadership are no less remarkable. Golda Meir (1898-1978) served as prime minister of Israel from 1969 through 1974, and guided her country through some of its most momentous crises. She assumed the leadership of Israel at the age of seventy-one, older than Winston Churchill at the beginning of his first term as prime minister (sixty-five), or Ronald Reagan at the beginning of his first presidency (sixty-nine). She was known toward the end of her life as the “Mother of Israel.” Nelson Mandela (1918- ), one of the most compelling political personalities of the twentieth century, served as the first democratically elected state president of South Africa from 1994 through 1999. Mandela assumed the presidency at the age of seventy-six, his clarity of mind and force of personality undiminished by a twenty-eight-year imprisonment. Mandela helped mold his country’s new identity in definitive ways, and he remains the symbol of free South Africa at the time of this writing.
One might say that the late-life creative accomplishments, and even a late-life creative peak, exemplified by our six examples, are merely a matter of genetic luck, that some people are fortunate to retain their mental acuity well into old age. While encouraging, such examples are not particularly surprising, since every curve has its outliers. But now we are ready to reach yet another, truly unexpected conclusion, which brings us to my second point.
My second point is that even partial loss of mental powers does not necessarily portend “cognitive doom”—that a person may remain productive and cognitively competent in important ways, even despite measurable cognitive decline, perhaps even despite early dementia. I call such individuals eroding yet powerful minds. The thought of a person at an early stage of a dementing process being able to make important contributions to the cultural or political life of society may sound at the first blush outlandish, but careful examination of history leads to this astounding discovery. Some of the most fateful political decisions (both constructive and destructive) and lasting artistic creations were made by minds touched by well-documented neurological effects of aging, sometimes even by early dementia. This is true both in politics and in the arts, and possibly in philosophy and science as well.
The account of our history and culture being influenced by individuals at various stages of neurological decline and early dementia makes for amusing reading. But merely recognizing their mental infirmities distracts us from a much more interesting question: What were the attributes of their minds that compensated for the effects of neurological erosion and preserved their mental power and effectiveness, their ability to shape culture or politics and to dominate their worlds? To a great extent, the compensation was provided by a rich arsenal of pattern-recognition devices, which had been formed in their brains decades earlier.
The etymology of the word “dementia” is “the loss of mind.” It is a cruel, merciless, doom-spelling word. It implies a certain, rather significant amount of cognitive loss. It has threshold connotations. For all these reasons the term “dementia” should be used sparingly. In reality, most forms of dementias develop gradually and in fact rather slowly. The decline extends over years, sometimes as long as a decade and a half, and in some isolated instances even longer. It is not as if a precipitous transition from total lucidity to total mental blackout were to take place overnight; far from it. Nor is it true that dementias affect all the mental faculties at once. In most cases, the process first affects only certain faculties, while others remain spared for a while, often for long periods of time measured in years. But ultimately the disease spreads. During the early stages of the process, the afflicted individual is still in command of most of his or her mental facilities and may be fit to perform complex activities, even highly intellectual ones, for a number of years to come. While such a person may be at an early stage of a downhill slope leading eventually, and in many cases inexorably, to full-blown dementia, he or she is not yet nearly demented and will not be for years. Furthermore, not every case of mild cognitive impairment will progress toward a full-blown dementia. So, there is a difference between a dementing process and down-and-out dementia. This fact has been long recognized by physicians and psychologists, and different stages of mental decline have been elaborately described.
Earlier I made the point that a mind equipped with a wide range of previously formed pattern-recognition devices can withstand the effects of neuroerosion for a long time. In the forthcoming chapters we will discuss the brain mechanisms ensuring such protection. But first let us examine the phenomenon itself, just so there is no doubt in the reader’s mind that it is possible to be neurologically affected by aging and cognitively powerful at the same time, implausible as this may sound.
On the pages to follow, I will discuss the lives of several remarkable artists and political leaders who were cognitively affected by aging while making an indelible imprint (for better or for worse) on history and culture. I will talk about their neurological infirmities and early signs of mental decline intertwined with impressive accomplishments. We will begin with the lives of two of the twentieth century’s greatest artists.
Art and Dementia
The Basque country, straddling the Spanish-French border, has long been regarded a land of mystery. The Basque language is itself unique, unlike any Indo-European language, its origins uncertain. The Basque people are presumed to represent the earliest population of Europe, related to the Celts or possibly even pre-Celti
c peoples, a vestige of the tribes inhabiting the continent before the multiple waves of migration and conquest changed its ethnic and linguistic complexion. The Basque country is also more recently known for its volatile, sporadically violent independence movement, although for a tourist this is an abstract notion, and there is no palpable feeling of menace in the air. Quite the contrary, the Basque provincial capital San Sebastian is among the most famous European beach resorts, synonymous with boats, sun, excellent restaurants, and the sybaritic pursuit of the good life. The area is also the home of a unique tradition of monumental sculpture associated in particular with the names of the great Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) and his lifelong rival Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003).
During my visit to San Sebastian, the conversation over dinner turned toward Chillida, who had died earlier that year at the age of seventy-eight. My hosts, neurologists from the local medical center, were recounting how the famous sculptor had ended his life in their care, in a state of advanced Alzheimer’s dementia. It turns out that Chillida was completely incapacitated during the last year of his life, his mental powers sapped by the disease.
The next morning we drove to the famous Museo Chillida-Leku, a sculpture garden in the nearby village of Zabalaga, which houses the largest collection of works by Chillida. The vast estate is centered on a sixteenth-century barn, converted by Chillida into a residence and surrounded by lush gardens and lawns studded with sculptures. Chillida’s work is monumental and mostly abstract. He used metal, marble, stone, and wood to create nonrepresentational yet highly evocative shapes, a magical fusion of a Cyclopean scale and introverted private moods. As I was strolling among the gigantic forms, I felt that an elusive similarity existed between these contemporary sculptures and Stonehenge. They seemed ageless, inspired by the same muse, or at least by the same lineage of muses. The Basques and the Celts are both direct heirs of the ancient peoples of Europe, pushed to the westernmost fringes of the continent by the invading waves of newcomers. Could it be that their shared history translated into shared artistic sensibilities, transcending the four millennia separating the druids of Stonehenge from the Basques of today, that an ancient tradition found its modern-day expression in the works by Chillida and Oteiza? The thought amused me and created a pleasant buzz in my head as I continued my stroll through the sculpture garden.
And then I began to notice that some of the plaques next to the sculptures, in fact quite a few, bore the dates in the mid-nineties, late nineties, and even the year 2000. As we already know, Alzheimer’s disease does not assault one all of a sudden. Quite the contrary, it is a gradual decline, a slippage into mental oblivion that unfolds over years, not months. Someone who was in a state of advanced dementia in 2001, as reportedly Chillida was, certainly had to be already affected by the disease process in the late nineties, and probably as early as in the mid-nineties. Yet here I was surrounded with the masterpieces, which every curator of every major museum in the world would give an arm and a leg to have . . . created by an artist most likely suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. When I shared my chronological observations with my hosts, they seemed as perplexed as I was. We left it at that, but the image of an aging master, losing his memory but not the secrets of his craft and triumphing over his illness through his art, at least for a while, kept haunting me for months after the visit.
Eduardo Chillida and his poignant story find a counterpart in a North American contemporary and fellow artist, Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). A Dutchman who came to the United States in 1926 at the age of twenty-two and made it his home, de Kooning epitomized twentieth-century American art like no one else. His career as a painter and occasional sculptor spanned three quarters of a century. De Kooning was a true original who helped forge a new direction in painting. Being an original was the essence of his identity. “Nothing grows under big trees,” he once told a student who was quizzing him as to why he had never studied with a famous artist. He himself became that “big tree,” which in defiance of his own admonition spurred the growth of a whole new school. From an early infatuation with cubism, through the transitional stages of painting, by his own account, increasingly abstract “quiet men” and then “wild women,” de Kooning moved on to become a founder of what has since become known as “abstract expressionism.”
Sometime in the late 1970s, de Kooning’s memory loss became evident to those around him. As is usually the case, his amnesia affected his memory for relatively recent events and spared the memories of the distant past, a phenomenon well-known to neuropsychologists and neurologists under the cumbersome name “the temporal gradient of retrograde amnesia.” But even more distant memories may have faded as the disease progressed. His biographer Hayden Herrera recounts an episode in which de Kooning was unable to recognize an old and close friend of many years. The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease eventually followed.
But the old master continued to paint, spending all his days in the studio, sometimes finishing several paintings a week. “A finished painting is a reminder of what not to do tomorrow,” he was quoted to quip at the age of eighty-one. (His memory may have eroded, but his wit was undiminished.)
De Kooning’s art continued to evolve even toward the end of his career. In the 1980s his brushstrokes broadened and then toward the late 1980s his paintings began to acquire what his biographer and friend Edvard Lieber called “hyperactive forms”—spare, brightly colored, wavy curves. De Kooning, well into his eighties, was aware of the change: “I’m back to a full palette with off-toned colors. Before it was about knowing what I didn’t know. Now, it’s about not knowing what I know.” This change was more than a change in style. For de Kooning, his work had always been a means of comprehending a deeper meaning of things and of his own experience, and not merely forging a set of formalisms. “Style is a fraud. . . . To desire to make a style is an apology for one’s anxiety,” de Kooning wrote many years earlier.
So what evolution of de Kooning’s own human experience did the changes in his work reflect? What role did the change in his cognition play in the evolution of his art? Was the effect one of decline or one of ascendancy? Or some complex interplay of both?
The change in de Kooning’s work did not elude the art critics. It was regarded as evolution and not as regression, as the ascendancy to a new level of insight and understanding. “The rhythms are more deliberate, meditated even, and the space more open . . . a new order prevails, a new calm. . . . de Kooning has purified his stroke, and what had been quintessentially sensuous is rendered immaterial, ethereal, a veiled tracing of its physical origins,” wrote David Rosand. “de Kooning, who has never strayed far from nature for long, is closer to it now than ever,” wrote Vivien Raynor in the New York Times.
So here are the stories of two great twentieth-century masters, Eduardo Chillida and Willem de Kooning, who were able to create first-rate art despite the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, with its crippling effects on many other aspects of their lives. Before we proceed further with the discussion of what made this possible, let us step back and appreciate the sheer power of the facts themselves, whatever their explanations may be.
Leadership and Dementia
To fully appreciate the force of these facts, let us also make note of their universal nature. The art is not the only arena in which the masters of their crafts retain their touch despite the crippling effects of the assorted brain diseases of aging. Let us also consider the arena of statesmanship and politics. And here we are stepping into a morally agnostic territory. If the great artists are remembered for their good, at least as public personas, then the important statesmen and politicians can be either heroes or villains, or tangled juxtapositions of both. We will consider examples of all of the above among those aspiring to rule despite their cognitive decline and even early dementia.
“First among the virtues found in the state, wisdom comes into view,” wrote Plato in his Republic. We wish! We often think of the rich and the powerful as exempt from the laws of
nature, including the laws of physics and biology. What’s more, the rich and the powerful are probably the first to share this belief. This is benevolently known by some as “boundless self-confidence” and less benevolently by others as “hubris.”
But whatever may or may not be true for other natural laws, the biological processes causing dementia do not discriminate on the basis of wealth, power, or even moral rectitude. We are only beginning to understand dementia’s biological causes and the processes by which it robs the mind of its powers and turns the most brilliant intellect into a shell, an incoherent and confused wreckage of a human being. Many forms of dementia exist, some causing gradual brain atrophy and others causing a gradual accumulation of small strokes. To make matters worse, they often appear in combinations. All dementias are equal-opportunity scourges, eroding the mind in a variety of insidious ways, without sparing the rich, the powerful, and the righteous. It is amazing how many history-shaping decisions have been made, and continue to be made, by eroding, even dementing minds before the eyes of a power-awed, unsuspecting public.
This thought first crossed my mind many years ago, as I was making my diagnosis of Ronald Reagan. A refugee from the former Soviet Union, I had been an anomaly among my friends in the liberal New York intelligentsia as an admirer of Reagan, the man who helped dismantle the “evil empire” I had fled half a lifetime ago. So, when the inkling of Reagan’s dementia first crossed my mind, I was far from gloating; I was genuinely upset. That was well before Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease became public knowledge or even a matter of public speculation. In fact, it was well before Reagan left the White House.
Sometime during his second term, Reagan was quizzed by a journalist about the wreath-laying Bitburg affair, when in 1985 Reagan honored a cemetery full of Nazi SS guards against the advice of his aides. The feeling was that the American president was being manipulated by the then West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who needed the gesture for his own political ends. As I was watching the interview on TV, Reagan’s responses to the journalist’s questions sounded so staggeringly incoherent that I picked up the phone, called my neurosurgeon friend (and a fellow foreign affairs buff) Jim Hughes, and said: “Reagan has Alzheimer’s!” Jim laughed, not realizing that I meant it literally, and not as a figure of speech.