Transcending Our Instincts
Finding the Good News
Is there any good news we can find here? Are we little more than glorified automatons, believing in our own superiority and uniqueness while all too often engaging in base behaviors, nevertheless? Thankfully, the answer is a qualified no.
The sum of all the biological factors that play a role in shaping how we act is immensely long. The more we learn about each of them and how they influence behavior, the more the concept of free will is challenged. As Sapolsky points out, however, while we can cite genetic, hormonal, and neurological antecedents to our actions, it is ultimately our social context, interacting with our biology at that moment in time that produces our behavior. Therefore, if our individual and communal aim is to act in accord with our nature’s better angels; to live up to our potential; there are several practices we should consider incorporating into our daily routines.
First, we can accept that while we may personally strive to express kinder and more generous actions toward others, we possess innumerable alternative response patterns that prioritize our perceived individual and group survival in ways that can and do bring out our darker impulses in particular contexts. One modern-day equivalent can be seen in our need to “win.” The drive to win is especially strong when we perceive that a US vs. THEM paradigm is present. Examples: Aggressively beating the traffic on our drive to work; quickening our pace to reach the open checkout line ahead of the mom with the full cart of groceries and the four-year-old in tow; anonymously posting the harsh and unsubstantiated accusation online against the person who represents the opposition, as we define it; our pouring into the street to protest against policies we perceive as threats to the values and the symbols of those values.
It is when the darker impulses are aroused that we must draw on ethical principles shared by the world’s wisdom and faith traditions that have stood strong for centuries. “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” (Judaism). “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself,” (Islam). “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful,” (Buddhism). “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” (Christianity). “Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you,” (Hinduism). “All are related,” (Lakota Nation).
Second, draw on your mind’s ability to momentarily emotionally detach from the situation that is generating the anger and related darker urges. Look at the situation from a detached perspective, as though you were looking back on yourself from a distance. Within our brain’s prefrontal region, the network that lies in the lower middle (the ventromedial region) is talking to other brain regions where our threat appraisal structures are busily firing away and spurring us to unleash our aggressive urges (amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate). By stepping away in our mind’s eye, we supercharge the neural network that that lies higher and toward the outside regions of the brain (the dorsolateral region). This allows us to reflect on the ethical wisdom cited above and temporarily suppress aggressive competing urges. “I still don’t agree with you, but you have a right to your opinion,” is a more likely conclusion when we do so.
Third, in these polarized times, passions are too easily inflamed. Anger, impatience, and a rush to judgment abound. Anger and aggressive impulses exist in the presence of fear. When fear is in charge, the risk we’ll exhibit behaviors through which we all lose is heightened. We can learn to identify what we are afraid of, consider that the “other” may well be marinating in fear, too, and seek to identify the basis of the other’s fears, knowing full well we may disagree.
In my practice, especially when working with couples who are angrily estranged from one another, I frequently pose questions in response to the views they share and the arguments they make that justify their darker, more vengeful impulses. My goal is to avoid what the Cold War relied on: Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
I say, “You’ve taught me what you have experienced and how it has impacted you. From that framework, your proposed response makes sense. But I have a question. What if there is more here than what you’ve shared? What if there are parts of you that are not defined solely by this hurt, pain, betrayal, etc.? Could you allow yourself to imagine, just for a few moments that (the other) is carrying their own hurt, pain, or betrayal that is driving their actions? If we can create some distance from the intensity of the emotional heat burning both of you, what might we notice? Could we find a sliver of light that we can build on toward a different outcome?”
Fourth, when facing differences between that lead to drawing the lines in the sand that divide us, whether between spouses, committees at work, parents of players on opposing teams at their children’s baseball games, or in weightier situations, consider acknowledging the perspective of the other without that being perceived as having given in or given up. Acknowledgment of the “other” and their views is an important step toward enabling “cooler heads” to prevail in ways that benefit us all. In the end, acknowledgement of a different perspective is not synonymous with capitulation to that perspective.
Moreover, research into groupthink (Irving Janis in the 1970’s) showed how often it led to national policy disasters, like the thinking that opened the door to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Actively seeking the perspective of others leads to stronger and more multifaceted solutions than arise when everyone voices the same view. Collections of independent individual thinkers consistently outperform individual experts. Decentralized views can transcend a homogenous group’s shared but unrecognized biases, such as the unorthodox views that allowed Apollo 13’s stranded astronauts to be brought safely back to earth in 1970. Paul Wellstone, a beloved U.S. Senator from Minnesota famously said, “We all do better when we all do better.” Implicit in this saying is that we all do better because we find ways to acknowledge and amplify the voices and opinions of all Minnesotans, rather than predetermine which view are worthy and which have no place in solving the complex challenges the state’s residents face.
Fifth, the more we devote ourselves to learning more about the “other,” the more the acute differences we perceived and around which we organized our staunch views, the more we begin to perceive subtleties and nuances that deconstruct the inflexibility inherent in the original US vs. THEM framework.
Early in my career, a woman with a horrendous history of a variety of abuses came to see me. She overidentified herself solely as the victim of her abusers. THEY did this to ME and there is no ME other than that which has continued to suffer from what THEY did. She was seeing me for visceral and somatic pain that impacted her from head-to-toe. In our work together, I asked her to conduct an internally focused scan of her whole body to find any area that was in noticeably less pain than what she felt everywhere else.
Some minutes passed while she conducted the internal scan before eventually quietly telling me that one of her earlobes seemed to hurt less than elsewhere. From that subtle sliver of difference in the otherwise pervasive uniformity of her painful internal state, we created access to other parts of her self that weren’t defined by and hostage to what had happened in the past. In short, in that moment she discovered for the first time that her life (and sense of self) was larger than and not limited to the victimized self-identity. From those humble beginnings, a powerfully liberated view of ME vs. THEM emerged that heralded a cascade of changes she was able to make that enriched and expanded her social world.
Finally, be attentive to your social context. When you hear opinions that devalue, belittle, disparage, reject, or dismiss the legitimacy of an outgroup – a THEM – pause to take a breath, and consider saying to yourself that “maybe” there is more to the situation than we comprehend and that, maybe, just maybe, we ought to learn a bit more before we rush to add our voice to the flames that can become an expanding bonfire. We acquire numerous experiences in life. The views we develop that follow from them are carried as a mental map that too often hardens into rigid paths that we must follow and that others, if they have any sense at all, should follow, too. John Stuart Mill reminded us that regardless of our views, unless we can share them with others while truly engaged with them, we become victims of dead dogmas vs. living truths that require ongoing refinement, renewal, and even wholesale revamping. To do otherwise is to be doomed to the ossification of our beliefs and convictions.
To close, we are blessed with remarkable brains and minds. Our ideas and actions can be positively transformative. And, as this article has said, we don’t always draw on our full potential to create better paths forward for ourselves and our neighbors, near and far. My challenge, as I have attempted to convey, is to recognize my capacity to make generous and kind choices as often as I possibly can, irrespective of my specific views and to not be limited by well-honed excuses, explanations, and personal justification. And that, my readers, is sad, because as Sapolsky said, “The road to hell is paved with rationalization.”
Let me know your thoughts. I am eager to hear and learn from your perspectives and experiences. Please share the post with others in your network whom you believe would value this kind of writing.