This store, opening near my subway platform entrance, got me thinking more about my 'Brain project', an ongoing attempt of mine to document and better understand our culture's relationship with the Brain as bio-system and the brain as our center of consciousness and cognition. I'm trying to find out how 'neuro' came to be one of the oft most used adjectives on American's tonques and a word fragment so gifted with economic endowment it has its own line of designer beverages.
I want to trace the 'brain' as it came to be an object of common household knowledge. A table topic, if you will, for Americans that reflects upon the nation's eye on science and the individual's self-awareness of a particular gray organ that President Bush dedicated a decade (the 90's) to and we are draining other developed countries of. The brain sells, simply put, and myriad industries are catching on. Above we see a store that specializes in 'toys' for children, adults, and seniors to develop and maintain optimum brain functioning. Nootropic substances, like the Neuro line of 'smart' energy drinks, are being churned out in the form of supplements and foodstuffs that promise 'smart' results. Popular science literature, magazines like Scientific American Mind, 'self-help' or 'personal health' pieces and whole schools of thought like the Baby Einstein movement and Dianetics are already fairly over-exposed outlets at which to throw your cash at. These consumables are what really speak to the neuro-health dialogues at work, which work to make sense of what is essentially an intangible concept we use to understand our consciousness in the world. Even for those who have seen a disembodied brain, there is no inherent, meaningful link between a blob of neurons and those intimate feelings and thoughts we tie, culturally, to the brain like sadness (thanks psychopharmacology!), 'sharpness' and memory.
So, about this preparation. There is something discretely Foucaultian about the marketing of products that improve memory, hand-eye coordination and verbal acuity. I wonder about the free-will of the consumer of these products. What SES do they claim? What literacy level are they at? And what about their kids? Do they think the future success of their children lies in stimulating toys and software? Does the average 'smart' product consumer think they are higher than average intelligence? Lower? Are they motivated by organic health concerns like Alzheimer's or other dementias? To what extent do they 'buy into' all this, so to speak? It's standard rhetoric among micro-economic politics that education is the 'key to success' that all Americans are not denied, but certainly encouraged to supplement with higher education, private schooling and all the consumables as discussed above. It is almost as if this market is saying that the average American is not smart enough but can make better use of their brain because the capacity exists.
Are there subtle 'disciplines' being carried out upon the bodies of the American public? Surely all this 'smart' talk is suggesting that being 'smart' is good, hence worthy of consumer dollars, and that there are ways to increase 'smartness', again worthy of consumer dollars. Are these toys and foodstuffs sites of valuation where the American body politic comes to terms with the economic worth of their brain, be it ever so lacking? At just the periphery of this argument is the negotiation of bio-value the consumer market has come to face. This is no small project, but one I see as becoming more and more pertinent to our 'scientific American' culture.
As I realize my own bio-value in terms of cognitive capacity, I am better understanding how other people do the same and one of which the ways Americans love to do this is through consumerism. I'd love to study what presence these products have in Indian IT firms.
These products claim increased cognitive capacity and performance, 'healthier' aging and smart kids. This reminds me of something...a document I've come to regard as one of my guiding doctrines; the Kass Report from the President's Council on Bioethics, published in 2003. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (aka The Kass Report) is a document that aimed to sum up the scientific expansion of Bush's Brain Decade and to comment upon the role of biotechnology, which is used vaguely here, in American health in light of the spontaneous ethical debates that rose from biotech innovations such as stem cell research, cloning and targeted gene therapy. The issues addressed include the pursuit of happiness, achieved through pharmacotherapy, ageless bodies, superior performance, better children and happy souls and aimed to interpret these 'shared goods' through the lenses of biotechnology (I use the imagery of a 'lens' to call attention to the incremented levels with which we analyze our biological lives through. A closing remark, the Report claims biotechnology will prevail, "yielding a society in which more and more people are able to realize the American dream of liberty, prosperity, and justice for all" (p.302). These 'smart products' are a result of biotechnology, remnants of research and development, and have strong consumer pull, much like other forms of freedom we can buy, and link product outcomes to attributes with well defined, acknowledged economic worth.
You may not see all this as summing to a major ethical debate but bio-valuation has obvious deleterious connotations. Who wants to be judged based on biological constraints? If mental acuity more regularly brought success, should more be granted access to these lifestyle products? If we can tolerably say that it is not fair to judge someone based on their inherent cognitive limitations, can we say it is fair to expect everyone to maximize their capabilities and therefore their bio-value? Can we judge those who consumer 'smart' supplements to be healthy and therefore virtuous? How is this different from a person who follows the slow food movement, from a locavore? In Seattle, farmer's markets are trendy. Popular restaurants try to craft menus from entirely locally sourced products. The rhetoric surrounding this consumerist movement addresses both the support of the local economy but also the health benefits of eating fresher, less processed foods. Shopping at farmer's markets and eating at these establishments is expensive. I am interested in the ways economic barriers shapes the value judgements of health movements, from locavorism to nootropic drinks and Baby Einstein. I am also waiting to see 'ingredients on menus as well, although I don't think Seattle will be on this bleeding edge. I think we are a little too 'granola' to show that kind of following for what are mostly synthetically created chemicals. I am also interested to see if, or when really, these chemicals make their way into mainstream children's food products and if those ever show up in the (public) school system and what school-board arguments may arise from that.
Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The President's Council on Bioethics. Washington, D.C., October 2003.
