The Downside of Getting Smart
As we begin to understand our minds we become compassionate for the fact that actually
evolution has set us up with a lot of problems that are not our fault. A lot of what goes on in our
minds is driven by motivational systems that are very old and evolved long before our new
capacities for imagining, anticipating, and planning, and these old systems can hook up with these
newer competencies and run simulations. Consider a zebra running away from a lion. What
happens when the lion gives up and the zebra is safe? Well, once the lion and the danger have
passed, the zebra’s physiology will settle down reasonably soon and allow it to re-orientate itself to
“in the moment tasks”. What would happen for a human, however? The human will have an
experience of relief, but they may also focus on the fact that they could have been caught and then
they’d be eaten alive!
Images of being eaten alive flood their minds! They wake up in the middle of the night thinking “oh
my goodness, what would have happened to me if I had been caught, I would be dead now?”.
They wake up the next day and think “oh my goodness, what will happen to me if I don’t spot the
lion today and it gets me? What will happen if my children go out to play and they don’t spot the
lion and it gets them? I will never be able to go out again and feel safe in that environment”.
Humans can imagine the potential for pain, terror, suffering and death in a way that other animals
cannot.
The human brain can constantly think about ‘what ifs… and suppose that’s….’ and this capacity for
planning, anticipating, imagining and ruminating is the source of our creativity but it can also drive
us into very severe (suffering-making) loops. We can become anxious, which creates an anxious
mindset of attention focusing and reasoning and then we become more anxious. We get trapped in
these loops. The threat system can take control of what we think and how we allocate attention.
For example, imagine you go Christmas shopping and in 9 out of 10 shops, the shop assistant is
really helpful to you, and you buy a present that you’re very pleased with. But, in one shop, the
assistant is very rude and you end up buying something that you didn’t really want and paying
more than you really wanted. Who do you talk about when you go home? The chances are you will
talk about the one who has sold you something you don’t really want and you’ll focus on your anger
and annoyance, despite the fact that 90% of the people that you encountered were really helpful.
Importantly, it’s unlikely that you will focus on them, even though by doing so, you will feel much
better about the world and your place in it. So, our threat system can be stimulated in one way or
another and then can recruit our capacities for thinking, anticipating, imagining (and so on), which
create these loops that we often can’t get out of. For the most part our threat system is looking out
for us and our kin. We don't feel anxious because people in another country are being bombed -
but we would if our own child was there on, say, a student visit.
This is important because we can stand back and understand how self-focused the threat system
tends to be and how much it creates loops in our minds. The key thing is that the way this works
is
not our fault
. We didn’t design our brains with these glitches in it, nature did. Many humans get
caught up in these loops and glitches, be it for anxiety, or anger and vengeance or self-serving
desires. Once we’re caught in the loop, then getting out can be difficult. This is a tragedy when it
comes to group violence and how one group may constantly ruminate, plan and carry out acts of
violence and cruelty against another group – but even tribal violence is not particularly human and
it has been observed in various primates including chimpanzee
Humans can use their new
thinking capacities to do truly horrible things, and these can become a focus for post-traumatic
disorders of whole populations – which then can create a generation of vengeance seekers.
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