I don’t know how this guy remains so calm. Maybe his YouTube career helps him feel like he’s getting the word out.
Two things I never heard before, even though I’ve read Haidt’s work on the disgust response. One, he says the insula cortex, the part of animal brains that is disgusted by bad odor and taste, evolved in humans around 30K years ago to include morality. Two, we have to think about it. Other animals use phermones to recognize kin. We are taught who our families are.
It took a few tries, so far I’ve found one article confirming the evolution time period on this. It occurred around the time we started living in communities that extended beyond tribes.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone can say when such a trait evolved. Interesting that we have pretty much stereotyped such behavior among men and women - e.g., spiders and snakes scare women more on average. Sugar and spice and everything nice.
Our life story - who we are and the life we lead is written in our brain, Every thought, feeling (contrary to popular belief - it’s your brain and not your heart that feels), action, reaction, idea, memory, and behaviour takes place in your brain.
It is the most complex object we know of, constantly changing (even as you read this), learning, and predicting, wired and influenced by what happened millions of years ago to our ancestors to what chemicals were secreted milliseconds ago between our 100 billion neurons.
Not understanding our brains is not understanding ourselves. Find out more about the broad workings and specific intricacies of our amazing brain
Though I’m disappointed that both, “body” and “interacting with environment” aren’t mentioned, just an oversight, but a telling one. Still thanks for the link, it will be fun exploring their other articles.
Elephants are exceptionally smart creatures . They have the largest brain of any land animal, and three times as many neurons as humans. While many of these neurons exist to control the elephant’s large and dexterous body, these creatures have demonstrated their impressive mental capabilities time and time again.
Watch this when you don’t respect an elephant’s right to his land.
I think I skipped over the part that was so interesting to me. The evolution of the insula cortex is intellectually interesting, but the part about using this part of the brain as a dual processor for determining the healthiness of inanimate objects and for determining who we should associate with. I’ve heard different takes on how we came out of our tribal past, from the mythology that has been passed on to us, to studies about rats in mazes and comparisons to our ape cousins. But this neuron activity relation to how we react to people who look different than us.
And because this is innate, and we have difficulty sorting what is instinctual and what is our frontal cortex using logic, we can be manipulated to think people who have certain ancestors are actually dangerous to our health.
I became accustom to diversity at an early age. My last report card of Kindergarten said that they could not state who my first grade teacher would be due to bussing. It wasn’t bad at all. I love diversity. Things aren’t normal to me if there is no diversity. I raised my sons among a lot of different people. Humans come in a variety shapes, forms, and colours. The more colour the better, IMO. Before someone jumps out of their chair, white is a colour too.
The surprising thing for me was to find out how we know where some of that comes from in the brain chemistry. And, more important, that it’s not pure machinery. It’s an interaction with parts of the brain, including the higher order thinking.
We can hate, but to simplify that into call us biological hate machines, seems a tad extreme. One may have been conditioned to do nothing but hate, but I’d wager that’s in your mind, more than your biology.
We are biological survival machines. Sometimes hate enhances our survival, sometime it doesn’t. Hate certainly isn’t what motivates biological bodies. But it does get complicated.
… We can clearly see that some people fall into hate more easily while others gravitate towards actively fighting prejudice and discrimination. Evolutionary psychology states that every person in every culture is born with innate mechanisms that make them capable of hatred and prejudice.
Nature made us ready to hate our enemy if need be and equipped us with the tools to identify who is an enemy and who is a friend.
Some express these evolutionary characteristics more than others; but the true challenge is how to build a better world without our primal instincts getting in the way.
The lesson is not at all that we are hate machines. Sapolsky and others research has shown that brain plasticity is one of our superpowers. While evolution has protected us and other animals by creating fear of unfamiliar things, our brains learn!
Aposematism evolved to protect certain species from predators. That’s a promoter of peace, not hate. Color is also used to pollinate flowers and attract mates. Again, not hateful.
Those humans who are vulnerable to scare tactics and conspiracy theories seem to naturally fear change and impede progress. But research has shown that we do not have to choose ignorance. What an improvement it would be to realize the world John Lennon imagined.
Not just elephants, nearly all mammalians and I’m sure, others too.
Which seems to me the overriding emotion, if you think about it, …
If mom’s mind/brain/body were tuned toward hatred, how far do you think her children will get?
So to me, . . . affection, emotional commitment, love, seem the more “natural” constructive state of affairs.
Well said.
True enough, but doesn’t that sort of go with the territory, especially when writing for us regular mortals?
Besides, the history of science shows us time and time again that Nature is always way more complex and convoluted and surprising than what we humans imagine. While remaining internally consistent with itself.
Take climate science, the past half century has shown us incredibly surprising details and shocking never dreamed of mechanisms, insights, Yet, when we pull back to the big picture, the fundamentals and the prognosis, remains quite consistent.
There’s little difference between the basics of climate understanding, along with their conclusions, between 1970s and 2020s. Even as the fine details get wildly complicated and difficult to gage.
A little bit all over the place, but I get what you mean. , We don’t always have to be hateful. That doesn’t change the fact that hate is entirely necessary for survival, so it will never go away – and not giving into it is much easier said than done, no matter how much “brain plasticity” we develop.
Why does being grossed out (and disgusted) have evolutionary value?
Guess, that might beg the question,
does being grossed out and disgusted trend into feeling hatred?
I’m not seeing how one would lead to the other, but who knows.
Hatred seems more a thing of the mind, whereas disgust is a visceral reaction to physical stuff.
