THEIs our brain inclined towards peace or war? We have been trying to answer this question for centuries. The ancient Greeks called armed struggle polemosthe same word that indicated, with a capital letter, the demon that took possession of men when they decided to battle. «Pólemos is the father of all things» wrote Heraclitus, at the dawn of Western thought. He will prove it wrong Immanuel Kant publishing the short essay For perpetual peace. We are in 1795 and the father of modern thought illuminates a horizon that is still distant today. As much as the culture of nonviolence has tried to flourish, its roots have not been firm enough to stop the fury of devastation. There are more than 110 armed conflicts (according to the report by Geneva Academy).
Perhaps the massacres continue because ours is “a terrible love of war” as the psychoanalyst James Hillman defined it? New discoveries in neuroscience are opening up interesting insights into the understanding of the human mind. The American academic Mari Fitzduff summarizes them by going to biological roots of the strugglesnot only between nations, but between individuals (in the volume Our Brains at WarOxford University press). The first misunderstanding to clarify is that in clashes, reason matters much less than instincts. A conclusion that contradicts the image of the Machiavellian head of state, driven by calculation, as described in the manuals on which generations of politicians and managers were trained. No, Fitzduff points out, the conflictuality is pre-logic.
Primitive behavior
To understand hostility between states, the neuroscientist starts from the primitive behavior in which the brain gets stuck. There are two areas implicated in the conflict: theamygdalawhich is the control unit of emotions, fulcrum of the archaic brain, and the prefrontal cortexresponsible for controlling their impulses, assigned to higher functions in the Sapiens, the seat of critical thinking. When the amygdala evaluates something as danger, even if symbolic, it takes control and inhibits rationality.
He explains it well in his new book, Why meditate (just published by Rizzoli), the psychologist Daniel Goleman: «The amygdala is the brain’s radar for detecting threats. At the slightest sign of danger it takes control of the prefrontal cortex, the executive center of the brain, and causes us to experience feelings such as fear or anger. It is a system that apparently did its job well in prehistoric times, when the dangers identified could have been ferocious animals that wanted to tear us apart.”
Today, however, this mechanism can be deceptive, also because “threats are rarely physical, they mostly reflect complex symbolic realities, for example when we realize that someone is not treating us as they should”. Our emotional control unit is triggered if we feel a sense of disappointment or the perception of damage. And we react by triggering the stress circuit. Ready to fight or flee, as if we were facing a tiger, flooded with adrenaline.
Count to ten
At that point the phenomenon that Goleman calls “amygdala hijacking” occurs: the emotional mind takes the wheel and, even when the stimulus has ceased, continues to recall it, to ruminate, keeping us in a state of chronic alert. It would be better for the brain to turn off these negative emotions. Think. Meditateas the psychologist suggests. Count to ten, as was once taught. Be that as it may, we should hand over the scepter to the prefrontal cortex, because it is only the most evolved part of the brain that can calm and pacify us. What matters is who really commands our mental chariot, as he imagined it Plato in Phaedruswhether the black horse of instincts or the white horse of exquisitely sapiens areas. So is reasoning enough to avoid arguing? Is it enough for two disagreeing parties to examine the facts objectively? The path is not so linear. During highly emotional exchanges, we react automatically and perhaps only use logic afterwards, so as not to regret our immoderate responses and justify them. We don’t realize that an angry gesture or thought is dictated by our archaic part and we build ideological castles on top of it. The black horse is always the one pulling the chariot.
Toxic leaders
And when deep beliefs are questioned? Once again, intimidation is perceived and unfortunately the activity of the areas linked to reasoning does not increase. We do not try to better understand the perspective of others, but we tend to believe that the other party is wrong and, to strengthen our mental scaffolding, we only look for people or sources who confirm them. Social media algorithms only amplify this need, bombarding us with emotionally intense but sometimes false or distorted content and fueling a spiral of mistrust and anger. This explains why many discussions in the political arena, on television talk shows or on social media prove sterile. When opinions are based more on emotions than logic, nothing can affect them, not even data and common sense.
Mari Fitzduff observes that toxic leaders are fully aware of this and fuel fears and prejudices to gain or maintain power. The dynamic that is exploited is the one that instinctively distinguishes between “us” and “them”, outlining a common “enemy” to oppose. Neuroscientist Fitzduff recalls that our brain is not neutral, that we are biologically predisposed to cooperate with those we perceive as similar, while we can close ourselves off from strangersthe different, from which to defend ourselves. The paradox is that a group’s cohesion grows when a common threat is perceived. Ultimately, racism, sexism or homophobia arises from insecurity and ignorance. And leaders who pretend to flex their muscles by praising discrimination are leveraging the hominid that has remained entrenched in our brains. These black horses of society are not the pinnacle of history, but a legacy of primitive backwardness.
Feel compassion
For Fitzduff, the critical point to address if we want to progress is to prevent the perception of “different” from fueling the fractures that can lead to stripping others of their humanity. It is within our possibilities to reprogram the brain through practices that blur the boundaries between “us” and “them” and develop the possibilities of cooperation. According to the British psychotherapist Paul Gilberta calming system operates within us that is as innate as the fear and anger reaction: it is compassion, which is the ability to recognize suffering and commit to alleviating it. Precisely this feeling, which also passes through the prefrontal cortex, and therefore the control of higher functions, seems to deactivate the hyperactivity of the amygdala. Goodness silences ferocity.
Investing in services, not weapons: a proposal
September 25th 1961, John F. Kennedy rdelivered the famous warning to the United Nations General Assembly: «Humanity must end war, or war will end humanity». Lilli Gruber, in the preface to the book War is shit (just published by Solferino), by the journalist Jacques Charmelot, recalls «the gigantic deals behind the war market» and comments: «It is incredible to think that Europe is preparing to invest 800 billion euros for what is not even the construction of a common defense which I instead consider very appropriate – but rather a arms race of individual states national. A inconceivable waste of public money while everywhere, and particularly in Italy, health services are in crisis, schools do not have the necessary funds to educate and innovate, bridges are collapsingi trains stop (when there are) and the cities suffocate in traffic and pollution. It is unfair to think of allocating funds to bombs, fighter jets and drones that should be invested to reduce increasingly unacceptable inequalities.”
Eliana Liotta (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Eliana Liotta is a journalist, writer and science communicator. On iodonna.it and on the main platforms (Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast) you can find his podcast series The good that I want.