I recently reconnected with a classmate on Facebook who was kind enough to check out my blog. A recent post here inspired a comment from him, which subsequently led to the post below. I am honored and flattered that G. White graciously agreed to be today's guest blogger.
Public discourse, these days, has gotten so full of vitriol, I’m no longer the avid reader of news I used to be – it gets to be rather unpleasant. Still, I do try to keep up and when I do, I frequently find myself tempted to respond emotionally with negative and vindictive comments in response to offensive, negative, divisive and plain untrue polemics from right-wingers. Attacking and calling into question the patriotism, intelligence, or morality of the individual with the mean-spirited comment against my own values is very tempting, but it is simply responding in kind and continuing the vicious tone that is all too prevalent these days. Better each of us should try our best to keep the conversation on the moral high ground and try to engage in legitimate problem-solving. However, those who try to be constructive and respond rationally get drowned out in the shrill screaming matches increasingly characteristic of interchanges in the public conversation. Interestingly, there seems to be a brain-based reason that rational, even moral, responses are inherently at a disadvantage in the public marketplace of ideas and arguments.
This built-in disadvantage to being rational and positive in the midst of emotionally charged polemics has its basis in how the brain is constructed, as outlined in Paul McLean’s influential Triune Brain model (for brief explanations, see
http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/triune%20brain.htm;
http://www.buffalostate.edu/orgs/bcp/brainbasics/triune.html). Because this model is based on evolutionary concepts of how the brain developed over the course of human history, however, those of you who don’t believe in evolution can now stop reading and resume listening to Rush, Sean, Glenn, etc (oops, there I go getting angry and attacking, rather than calmly offering positive alternatives – my bad!). The rest of you, here’s my best explanation of the Triune model of the brain.
The brain is divided into three regions, each which developed over the course of evolution: 1- the R-complex or Reptilian brain (developed first, this region deals with basic bodily survival such as hunger, automatic bodily responses, etc), 2- the limbic system or mammalian brain (evolving later in higher animals, it deals with more primitive behavior that is associated with strong emotions, which trigger the well-known fight-or-flight response to stress or perceived danger), and 3- the neocortex which is primarily associated with human and other primates (responsible for rational, goal-directed thought, including planning and inhibition of those behaviors that emotions tend to impulsively elicit before we think things through). These three regions are thus responsible for increasingly complex functions, and the presence of nerve tracts that provide connections among all three regions seem to allow for some limited communication among all three areas and thus mutual influence.
However, these areas aren’t created equal. They respond hierarchically, with the more basic or primitive areas having priority access to resources and overall control of our behavior. This happens because those lower areas are critical for physical survival. That means that the default option is for the lower, more primitive brain to dominate control of our behavior. Only when there are no bodily survival or strongly emotional situations in our immediate experience do we have the luxury of being able to rationally and calmly deliberate and direct our actions by the highest standards of human intellect, planning and morality. Confronted with a situation that elicits anger or fear, we immediately resort to animalistic impulses, and our poor neocortex has to fight an uphill battle just to get in a rational word edgewise.
We’ve all had experiences when we responded out of anger and then later, after we’d calmed down, we realized what a dumb thing we did, and we ask ourselves: “What was I thinking, how could I have been so stupid?” Well, of course, the problem was, we weren’t thinking, we were reacting emotionally, which means we were acting with significant numbers of IQ points being locked in the closet while our mammalian brain’s emotionally directed impulses dictated our behavior. That kind of immediate responding without thinking works pretty well if you are needing to act quickly to avoid the saber-tooth tiger chasing us for a quick snack, but it is spectacularly unsuccessful if we are trying to make sense of a political argument or to resolve a difficult dilemma.
These brain-based tendencies in our behavior have important implications for politics and what is going on these days in our country. Groups who have resorted to using propaganda over hundreds of years instinctively understand this. History is full of examples where propaganda has been skillfully applied to the masses to get them to behave as the manipulator wishes, and the basic rule for effective propagandizing is to appeal to emotions. Even before the Triune brain model came about, people understood that if you appeal to people’s strong emotions, such as anger and fear, you could get them to believe something and act the way you want, because when we are responding emotionally, we are not using the smartest part of our brain and we are thus more susceptible to being mislead or lied to without realizing we are being led around by the ear. (It also helps if you cleverly mix in some truth to your emotional message, as your distortions of the reality are less likely to be noticed in the midst of the emotional turmoil you induce.)
It seems to me that the extreme right-wingers have in recent years perfected, well beyond what moderates and liberals seem capable of, the art of using emotional propaganda to manipulate people into acting against their own best interests and to even miss the obvious facts in front of them. Bring up death panels and socialism and it’s funny how quickly otherwise seemingly intelligent folks fail to see they are being taken for a ride by the very people who got us in the mess we now find ourselves in.
Another related factor where the Triune model also helps us understand what is happening is the increasing prevalence of news media outlets (and blogs, don’t forget them). The old television news saying “if it bleeds it leads” is based on understanding that success economically in the media is associated with emotional and simplistic language. It turns out that the Triune model of the brain explains this tendency rather well. In order to make money or attract attention (often the same thing), media outlets in a saturated market understand that a reasoned discussion appeals to a minority of people and doesn’t garner high ratings. Use brief and inflammatory, exaggerated or ominous talking points in your headlines and programs, and you have a brain-based recipe for a financially successful media presence, if you can overlook the social damage this causes (and so far, that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for most of them, Fox Noise being a particularly egregious example).
So there we have a somewhat bleak picture of how our public discourse seems to come with a built-in tendency to revert to the lowest common denominator. What to do? Well, even though it is an uphill climb and it does go against the default option of emotion and aggression, we can, with effort and determination, bring our neocortex and rational part of ourselves into the argument. Those neural tracts that connect all three of the brain regions would seem to suggest that we do have the capacity to use our higher brain to help influence in a positive way those lower, more primitive brain regions, although it will take more persistent effort, since this isn’t our brain’s default option.
If we are going to stop being victim to the mendacious manipulations of those factions in this country who are more interested in keeping power for the few than in what is best for the common good, we’ll have to get much better as a society at being media savvy and realize when we are being take for a ride emotionally and call the perpetrators out on it. We’ll also have to try more often to catch ourselves when we get angry and negative, calm down for a moment, and give our better side (the neocortex) a chance.
Thank you to G. White! Comments will be forwarded to the writer for response.
