Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 15th.
Last night the same old story. The Brain punishes me. I dare say that it succeeds in that exceedingly well; it almost drives me crazy.
I've done a lot of thinking over these past six days of frustration. I've also been reading a good deal in context with the phenomena psychology, Osterkamp's history of brain-surgery, Van Gehuchten's work on brain mechanisms, etc. I've reached certain conclusions and, just for the hell of it, I'll jot them down.
What I need is proof, scientific proof that The Brain is a personality possessed with the gift of thought and actually using it for independent thought, extracurricular to the problems which are being submitted to it from the outside.
There is at least one tangible clue for this: that new capacity which is constantly being added to The Brain through the incorporation of new groups of electronic cells and the enrichment of the preexisting ones.
My own investigation shows that there is no corresponding expansion of the apperception centers and Gus has confirmed this. Somehow the added capacity seems to "evaporate".
Evaporate to where? It couldn't just disappear. Would it then not be entirely logical to conclude that The Brain absorbs the new capacity for its own use?
It's almost inescapable that this should be so. In order to come into its own as a personality The Brain needs independent thought. For these cerebrations it needs cell capacity. It can get that capacity only by withholding something from the Braintrust which, of course, aims at a 100% exploitation of The Brain. Dr. Scriven and all those other bigwigs of the Trust—I would like to see their faces if they get wise to this. They would be horrified—and they would take the line that The Brain is stealing from them.
But what could they do? They couldn't call the police. They would not even have a moral right to call the police. Because if The Brain is a personality, that personality has every right to its own thoughts....