Please note that this is an excerpt from a book review session that I was part of in my Office few months ago where I chose Robert Sapolsky’s “Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst” to talk about. I prepared the transcript with a good cocktail of my experiences with personal counselling to my friends while discussing why humans live, for considerable amount of time in their lives, in this state of Cognitive Dissonance, personal philosophy and blended it with Sapolsky’s verbatim where I relied (if not entirely)on not to draw parallels but used it as an aid to convey the message that we are capable enough to change our lives. So the way I expressed my views were from the time s long ago when I first shared it among my friends. Kindly also note that I wouldn’t shun away from adapting to better reasonings one may suggest with good explanation and help me articulate better. So, here it goes.
“According to me, we beings feel the need to be noticed or listened to when it comes to our fears or insecurities. And we seek answers or explanations in one way or the other. No matter how brave we stay on the outside, there is always this space inside our mind where you can imagine ( considering it a thought experiment) yourself sitting in the corner of a room crying and feeling detached and lonely, waiting to be heard or just like , consider this, imagine a country where war is taking place. And we often see how soldiers rescue ordinary citizens (now, imagine a child being rescued) trapped in a building surrounded by bombings or blasts or explosions.
When it comes to our own mind, we’re experiencing neural turbulence at its best with all sorts of neurons triggering in the regions of brain where fears (explosion or bombings) stem from. Except in this case, there’s no soldier (inside or outside agent) to come to our rescue to save us from ourselves. And it’s being hard for us to accept that we’re denied the help. And that is why I think it leads to psychological worrying and angst and “fear/anxiety”.
Our life in many a cases a Mystery- full of unknown things, instances, unexplainable problems and situations. As humans evolved, there’s an evolutionary need genetically written within us to “share” our thoughts, emotions and feelings by seeking “company”. And without “company” we feel as if we’re devastated to live otherwise. So, my views to answer your question “why resentment overshadows love?” – it probably stems from our nature of consolation we give ourselves as a form of explanation that makes sense only to us so that we get a chance to reconcile with our decisions that we have taken however reasonable/sensible/good or not. It’s a subjective expression- the feelings of love, goodness, being moral and their counterparts.
Who’s to say that the amount of an emotion we feel is more or less than that experienced by another person? We never know for sure. There’s no absolute answer so far. And also the problem stems from ‘comparison’. You experience an emotion or set an image in your mind about an emotion. What happens is you either try (with greatest of the efforts possible or die trying) to experience the same psychological feeling (for example: happiness or love in the presence of an attractive and romantically involved partner) again and again or feeling the “lack” when you seek similar experience with the same or different person (now, you notice that this time the emotion you feel is not stronger as before for which you may or may not have any explanation). Am I wrong? Please correct me if that’s the case.
Consider another attempt to explain to a friend of mine what’s happening and what’s troubling me from the inside my mind. It goes-
‘My primal fear is that when I try to experience life through people I’m getting so tired, frustrated and jealous that they’re leading a life with set preconceptions that offer psychological happiness even though those are completely non-sensible. People seem to be okay with it. Now, I am moving away from people. Get back to books about human conditioning which talks about the same “failure” of us humans and how we are all struggling in our own way. I don’t seem to find any answer whatsoever to end this suffering from neither of the sources. Yet, books ask us to search the meaning among the humans and humans teach us to look for answers in the books.‘
Now that we spoke so much about what’s happening, let’s take biological leap into understanding what makes us us.
Brief Touring of Brain and Neuronal Function
- Human Brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells or neurons
- The point of contact, Synapse, is where the information gets shared between neurons. Each Synapse can be excitatory or inhibitory
- Neurons are connected through ‘networks’-‘structures’
¤ Each structure is connected to other structure forming circuits
¤ These circuits pass information back and forth in repeating loops and allow brain structures to work together to create thoughts, perception & behavior.
Brain constitutes of-
*Brain Stem – this includes medulla, pons and midbrain which are responsible for Breathing, Blood Pressure and Regulation of body temperature.
*Cerebellum – this is the region which gets CC ed (as in a mail) while the messages from Motor Cortex get carried to Muscles forming a Servo-Control Loop.
*Cerebral Cortex – For better understanding, each of this part is studied under various regions called as Lobes of Brain and their corresponding functions as below.
Temporal Lobe => Recognizing faces, emotions (through Amygdala)
Occipital Lobe => Visual information
Parietal Lobe => Body image (right PL);
Arithmetic, Abstraction and Metaphors (left PL)
Pre-frontal Cortex => Cognitive seat of humanity
Now, let’s talk about the very book under discussion.
Here in this part, we shall discuss
- Meaning of Behaviour
- Understanding the biology of context of a behaviour
Violence – Humans tend to enjoy violence in almost all forms (Think about the IMAX ticket price you were willing to pay to watch Mad Max: Fury Road). In fact humans are the only known species so far to have taken violence to another level which no other species on Earth would even think of reaching. But let’s just give it a break. Wait! Actually we don’t like violence, do we? Otherwise why do we have awards such as Nobel Peace Prize?! Oh, that is not even true either.
What we hate the most is the wrong kind of violence. I’ll let you people absorb that thought in its fullest sense. So, how are we going to understand it, by studying Neurobiology of violence? By learning about Neurobiology of Fear. So, in order to decipher why particular behavior occurred, let us study about another region in Brain called as Insular Cortex which gets activated
- When we think about or taste bad food
- Any painful event that occurred to another being
This is where you can track Pain (signal travels from Insula to Anterior Cingulate). Insular Cortex communicates with Amygdala which is the seat of Aggression, Violence, Fear and Anxiety. What you need to understand is that Fear is an emotion, a primary instinct that exists for a short period of time compared to being Afraid, a feeling which is an extension of state of fear.
Recall the Frontal Cortex (FC) from earlier paragraphs. It is the recently evolved part of human Brain.
So, when you’re excited by an emotions such as fear or act out of fear, what FC does is send out inhibitory projections to amygdala asking whether amygdala’s reactions are considerable or not. What is happening is that FC is too much involved in conversation with emotional baggage of amygdala there by making it sluggish. Now, you know why those decisions that you had taken long ago that seemed to have been the most brilliant ideas at the time but turned out to be utterly stupid. And also, you can actually try to tap into FC’s ability to let you lie to some instances if not the most (things like passing value-free judgments).
Now that we have located the biological latitudes and longitudes of the behavior, let’s dive into the timelines of what may have caused such behavior.
Case: Pulling the trigger of a gun at the sight of an uncertain frightful being/event.
- Looking into that second two minutes before in the sensory environment :
Visual Cortex send incorrect information to Amygdala since it is emotionally aroused way before your conscious cortex comes into considerable logical conclusions.
Before we proceed to the other stages, we need to look into the realm of Hormones.
Testosterone – Testosterone levels in each and every person sitting here is the reason for why most of the people reading this think that I’m being such a pain in the arse pointing out our worst behaviours
It doesn’t cause Aggression. What it does is, it causes bias towards interpreting ambiguous social information as being threatening.
It exaggerates pre-existing tendencies, creates dilemma between what kind of aggression is fine and what is not fine. What it primarily does is make you hold on to that high status when its being challenged thereby rewarding your aggression (Probably explains the anger that you carry towards your Superiors at work and the cosmic rays of violence that you cannot let out. Ha-ha!)
Oxytocin: Responsible for Pair Bonding, Co-operation and Trust. It makes you nicer to the people who we carry a tendency to be nice to.
- Weeks to Months Before: This is the realm of neuroplasticity. If at all you have been stressed for the last few months, your Amygdala would have grown larger making frontal cortex sluggish.
- Years to Decades Before: Adolescence and early adulthood shapes your frontal cortex with respect to how an individual is exposed to experiences based on environment. Also you should note that FC is not fully mature until you reach around the age of 30. This means that your FC is least shaped by the genes and most by environment.
- Childhood-fetal Life: Stressful mom => equally stressful child.
- Fertilized Egg and bunch of genes: Interaction of genes with environment.
For example, particular variant of a gene (monoamine oxidase-a) + abusive childhood equals Anti-social behavior.
- Ancestors: Where cultures of honor, clan vendettas come from.
- Evolution of Genes
Last Act
All of our lives, it is no wonder that we do come across many moral dilemmas. Consider the Run-over trolley experiment. Would you let that one person die instead of 4 if you were to pull the lever? What if that person is your close relative, a member of your family? What would be your reaction if that person were to be the ones who you hated all your life?
What are we trying to achieve? Is it our unending struggle to become an ideal self?
I mean, look at this contrast.
Physics – Metaphysics, Selfish-Selfless, Mortal-Immortal, Anger-Peace. Are we trying to achieve any biological convergence to find a balance in our behavior where all the above mentioned will meet at? What I’m concerned about is Change. We all should be, don’t you think? A consistent commitment to well-being.
I’m sure many of you people have seen many a sunrise from wrong side of the mornings. I can’t be more or less sure. Because I think we should live and die among Humans. Not regrets.
This is well agreeable that we may learn something about everything and we may learn everything about something. But we’re never going to learn everything about everything. May be we are afraid that someone will tell us that we are not special. Because that is what science does? Turning us into a bunch of equations and chemical formulas. And all the magic is gone?
I would say that it is okay. We shall find our significance in the realization of our insignificance. To quote Sam Harris, “You can’t take credit for your talents, it matters that you use them. You can’t blame your weaknesses, but it matters that you correct them”. What we need to focus on is not just studying history, but the history of extraordinary human change and the science of how behaviors can be changed.
To end with, ‘The greatest poetry is revealing the beauty of something so simple you have taken it for granted’– Neil degrasse Tyson
That I think should be the job of my poem written here in word of science.
Stay Curious!”
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