The evolutionary story tells us that we are
set up
to
1. Live a short-life with birth, a need for nurturing from which we flourish then decay and die.
2. Our brains and gene expressions (phenotypes) are sculpted by our environments.
3. We have within us the seeds for becoming Angels or Demons because evolution has created
different motivational and emotional systems that can be easily triggered in certain contexts.
4. We are vulnerable to creating loops in our minds, especially in the threat system. These loops
keep us focused on the perception of threat, feeding our anxiousness, frightened paranoia
and aggressiveness because this is what our threat-defence system has evolved to do; a kind
of ‘better safe than sorry’.
5. Evolution has built all kinds of biases into us
such kin biases where, we give much to our
children but very little on the children starving in other parts of the world; we privilege our own
group over the needs and wishes of other groups even to the point of exploiting other groups
to feed our own wants and ‘cultivating hatred’
And of course groups can be divided on
different lines including gender, religion and race.
6. In terms of drives, evolution has built us to be relatively pleasure seeking, self-focused and
kin-focused because that's advantageous to gene replication.
7. We have also evolved into a highly social species. As mammals we form attachments that
require us to be soothed and encouraged in supportive, caring relationships. We have
neurophysiological systems that are specifically orientated to detect and respond to kindness
and caring. As we mature friendships and alliances become an important source for feeling
safe in the world.
8. We have evolved a smart brain that is capable of thinking about the minds of other people and
understanding that other minds have feelings and motives and can suffer. Indeed it is this
aspect of our minds when linked to caring motivations that becomes genuine compassion.
Hence compassion is more than caring. It is about the ability to comprehend, to mentalise, to
be in tune with the experiences of others and motivated to create states of mind within them
that are freed from suffering and able to live in states of well-being and peacefulness.
9. The desire to become a compassionate person focuses our intentionality and self-identity and
helps us to train our minds versus the mind that is simply reacting to whatever stimulus
happens to arise.
10. Our ability to experience compassion from others and self-compassion are linked to
capacities for affiliative emotions as is love. Compassion to others especially, when focused
on rescuing people from danger or the higher principles of morality, fairness and justice may
be less dependent on affiliative emotion and more moral maturation and complex traits like
courage.
As we begin to become more mindful and wake up to understand the kind of mind we have
inherited from evolution, then it becomes possible to see how compassion regulates the mind with
soothing qualities and creates certain types of affiliative relationships with others. As we see the
benefits of compassion on our own well-being and that of others, we can choose how to cultivate it
– not only in personal practice but also in the world and social conditions we wish to create. We
recognise the power of social context for the growth of the young, and those yet to be born and
whose minds and genetic expressions are yet to be shaped in those environments.
There is now good evidence that feeling loved (in contrast to feeling unloved or unwanted) and
being loving (in contrast to be indifferent or hating) helps us to function most optimally in terms of
stress hormones, immune system functioning, frontal cortical processing, creativity and fosters
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Implications for Compassion
