In My Flesh I See God: A Neurobiological Perspective on Being Human
by Joachim Bauer and Tsvi Blanchard
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/jan10_bauerIs the search for a caring society naive and merely utopian? The ideological structures of contemporary Western society make this a complicated question to answer. The present economic crisis may have moved us in part past a devotion to "looking out for number one." It has not, however, strengthened our trust in empathy and mutuality as part of "human nature." We still tend to think of competition and aggression as innately human. America's dominant ideology still presents society as primarily a constraining force that assures "fairness" and "safety" in the unavoidable aggressive competition that is human social, political, and economic life.
Traditional Jewish thinking also sometimes imagines an "evil impulse" as necessary for the growth of society. This "impulse" (a code word for erotic narcissism) guarantees human reproduction and the development of economic and political institutions. However, it is also suggested that this very same impulse can and should be used for good. To understand this seeming paradox, we must remember that "eros" is the generative force that joins and unites people. Even in an explicitly competitive society, success in business, politics, and reproduction depends on effectively bringing people together. What is worth noting is that this very same impulse would work equally effectively in a society that defines itself as caring and mutually supportive.
The Jewish esoteric tradition-interpreting Job's "in my flesh I shall see God"-suggests that we might look to the biological structures and processes of the human body for insight. Why not then turn to contemporary neurobiology? To be sure, neurobiological perspectives cannot claim primacy when tackling the fundamental anthropological question "What is human nature?" They can only add their piece to a mosaic to which numerous other disciplines also contribute, perhaps most prominently among them, philosophy. Nonetheless, although unwelcome, biology indeed pervades, sometimes quite unconsciously, the varied anthropological views found in contemporary culture. We need only think of the German, and for that matter American, reception of Charles Darwin's ideas that revolutionized thinking between 1880 and 1930: for example, Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Such fundamental anthropological convictions showed a tendency to become implicit-and thus predominantly unconscious-certainties in Western late capitalist ideology.
Selfish Genes or Communicative, Cooperative Genes?
Modern sociobiology spurred a fundamental revival of the conviction that humanity is driven in its innermost by primary aggression. A key representative of this trend is the book The Selfish Gene by the British zoologist Richard Dawkins. The book was very influential all over the world. The question then became: if our genes are already "selfish," then aren't all other human tendencies epiphenomena at best? This thinking is not merely pernicious-since these untenable and pseudoscientific sociobiological dogmas have actually become widespread conviction-but also dystopian. This is ideology in the worst sense, that is, thought used only as a justification of the current dominant global economic system.
What do we really learn from current neurobiological research? During recent years the insight that genes are not "selfish," but rather are communicators and cooperators, has become ever clearer-in great part due to the complete sequencing of numerous genomes. Genes constantly change their activities in reaction to signals from the environment. What's more, signals that arrive during sensitive phases of an organism's development can leave a sort of biological "fingerprint" by exerting a long-lasting effect on the responsiveness of a gene, a phenomenon called "epigenetics." The fact that genes always depend on cooperative interactions with numerous other molecules to become activated, read, or duplicated is reason enough to call genes communicators. Since experience and the behavior of the human body operate several system levels above what defines humans in terms of the mechanisms and function of their genes, one cannot draw conclusions on the nature of humans from the gene level.
A biology-centered view of the human being as a sentient, integrated organism requires a perspective that goes beyond genes. It has been only a few years since neurobiology realized that the human brain possesses a specific neuronal system to experience "drive," "vitality," and "motivation." The brain's "motivation system" is located in the midbrain and owes its name to the fact that the nerve cells residing there have the potential to produce and release messenger substances whose effects are the biological correlate of those psychological states that humans experience as "motivation" and "vitality."
Our Brains Reward Us for Being Social
The motivation systems do not become active spontaneously but depend on stimuli that reach the system from the outside. Initially, neurobiological research knew only that addictive substances are potent stimuli of this system. Drugs owe their potential for addiction exclusively to the fact that they directly stimulate nerve cells of the motivation systems to release dopamine and endogenous opioids. This is why the motivation systems are sometimes called "addiction systems." Only during recent years-predominantly through the use of non-invasive methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging-could the natural stimuli of the motivation systems be elucidated: interpersonal affection, (joyful) movement, and music. Casually put, the human brain turns psychology into biology: experiences of interpersonal relationships are perceived through our five senses, evaluated in the so-called limbic system (a sort of system for emotional intelligence), and translated into biological signals.
The surprise finding that affection, "being seen," and appreciation are biologically potent stimuli of those motivational systems that had been dubbed "addiction systems" led the current director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, the neurobiologist Thomas Insel, to ask the following question in Physiology & Behavior #79: "Is social attachment an addictive disorder?" Astonishingly, Insel himself believed it was. If one goes by the findings garnered on the motivational systems of the human brain, social acceptance is among the central, biologically anchored aspirations of humans. This led American brain researchers to coin the term "social brain."
The basic drive for social acceptance also leads along a neurobiological path to the phenomenon of aggression. Arbitrarily inflicted pain is one of the most reliable triggers of aggression, not only among humans but also in all other mammals. From an evolutionary perspective, the significance of aggression should thus most likely be to protect the organism from pain and from damage to its physical integrity. From a neurobiological perspective, nothing supports the notion that acting out aggression is a primary drive. Experiments show that nontraumatized, average, healthy humans react to the suffering of others with an empathic reaction that is biologically mediated by the system of mirror neurons. The human motivational systems cannot, per se, be stimulated by the prospect of being allowed to act aggressively (this changes only when aggressive acts earn the aggressor social acceptance). Both phenomena-fear and aggression-are neurobiological and psychological triggers: they help us to identify and fend off dangerous situations. From today's perspective, aggression, like fear, is also not a "drive" in psychologically healthy humans but a biology-based program that can be activated when needed (nobody would think of talking of a "fear drive").
What helps us understand the dynamics of human aggression better than before are recent neurobiological experiments that show that the pain centers in the brain are activated not only when an individual experiences physical pain but also when the individual experiences social exclusion. If pain is a potent elicitor of aggression, and if social exclusion is equal to experiencing physical pain "from the brain's perspective," then it becomes clear why both physical pain and social exclusion work as potent triggers of aggression. More recent studies from social research have investigated the factors one can identify as predictors of violent behavior in juveniles. They showed that personally experienced violence (physically inflicted pain) and social exclusion (lack of bonds) did in fact have the highest predictive value.
The Neurologically Anchored Feeling of Social Fairness
Biology is the wrong place to go for answers to the question of whether humans are "good." The discipline has an a priori lack of competence in this question; in addition, it is incapable of giving a "yes or no" answer. Only one thing can be shown experimentally: humans have a biologically founded sense of social fairness. One such experiment consists in giving a fixed amount of money (let's say €100) to player A and asking her to split this amount with player B-whom she has not known until now-at her own discretion. The instructions given to both players are as follows: If player B agrees to the mode of distribution chosen by player A, both players take home their share. Should player B refuse to agree, the entire amount is collected by the experimenter rather than the players. Both A and B are then dismissed; no second chance is granted (this is why the experiment earned the name "Ultimatum Game").
How do "normal" humans behave in the "Ultimatum Game"? As we might have already guessed intuitively, player B agrees to a 50:50 distribution offered by player A 100 percent of the time. The agreement rate changes only insignificantly if player A chooses a 60:40 or 70:30 distribution in her favor, but decreases rapidly from an 80:20 ratio on. This is the case even though just €20 (or only €10) would be an advantage for player B compared to the alternative of going home without any money at all, assuming that humans behaved like "homo economicus." Yet we rightly feel that player B will generally not behave as a "zweckrational (objective-rational) decision-maker." So what happens in player B's brain when player A makes him an unacceptable (since deemed unfair) offer (e.g., 90:10)? Analysis based on functional magnetic resonance imaging shows that disgust centers are massively activated. These networks of nerve cells in an area of the "insula" brain region would also become active if player B were to smell a disgusting substance.
To summarize, current-day brain research can offer three central statements to add to the anthropological mosaic:
Human beings are geared toward social acceptance in their innermost neurobiological drives and motivations. This is the reason why we are willing to take pains to receive the appreciation of our fellow humans.
The brain experiences social exclusion or humiliation as it would physical pain. As a result, it responds with aggression (or depression), as it would respond to inflicted pain.
Humans have a physically (neurobiologically) anchored feeling of social fairness.
When considering these points, it's important to note that, on the one hand, human beings vitally rely on social acceptance, but on the other hand, humans are not equipped with the natural automatisms (instincts) necessary for sufficiently pro-social behavior. Evolution has dropped us off, so to say, "halfway there." For humans, closing the gap between our pro-social biology and our actual social behavior is a task, a project. Culture is what bridges that gap.
We Are Wired for the Rabbinic Dream of a Caring Society
What are the ramifications-social, economic, political, and spiritual-of this deeper look into our "flesh"? We'd like to touch on this, even though a full discussion would require far more space than we have here.
First, recent brain research undercuts the claim that our present economic, political, and educational systems are the only realistic option. There are naturally satisfying alternatives to legal, economic, political, and educational institutions built on aggressive competition and/or the humiliation of others.
We need to strongly qualify the ideologies that, in support of such institutions, assert the inherently aggressive nature of human beings. We need to recognize that aggressive and/or destructive forms of competition derive from specific types of interpersonal behavior, as well as from the institutional structures that assign social roles and mediate the distribution of material, emotional, and intellectual resources. We are not trapped in an innately antagonistic biology.
Second, while only abundance promises the complete elimination of competition for resources, it is cooperation and mutual recognition that will give us the greatest satisfaction as we work out how we will share resources, whether scarce or abundant.
This means that the rabbinic notion of true strength as manifested not in dominating others but in caring for them and protecting them is not merely a utopian dream. We are in fact wired for it. We can build our culture on the notion that we are here to care for and support each other. We need only rethink, not eliminate, our notions of glory, honor, triumph, winning, achievement, etc., so that humiliation of others is eliminated.
Third, the spiritual and the biological are friends, not enemies. The search for positive "interconnectedness," a fundamental component of all human spirituality, is biologically essential to human happiness. But this satisfaction does not come from assimilating the individual person to a group. It comes from mutual recognition. Buber was right: despite the inevitability of I-It relationships, the deepest spiritual and biological fulfillment, even reality, lies in I-Thou relationships.
Joachim Bauer, one of Germany's foremost brain researchers, is director of the outpatient clinic in the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at Freiburg University. He is the author of a bestselling book on what brain research tells us about human nature. Tsvi Blanchard, senior fellow at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, has been a scholar in residence at several medical schools and taught at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. He is co-author of Embracing Life & Facing Death: A Jewish Guide to Palliative Care.
Bibliography:
Bauer, Joachim (2008): Das kooperative Gen. Abschied vom Darwinismus. [The cooperative gene. A farewell to Darwinism] Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe; Shapiro, James A. (2006): Genome Informatics: The Role of DNA in Cellular Computations. In: Biological Theory (1), 288-301.
Bauer, Joachim (2006): Prinzip Menschlichkeit. Warum wir von Natur aus kooperieren. [A principle of humanity. Why we are natural cooperators.] Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe.
Bauer, Joachim (2005): Warum ich fühle was du fühlst. Intuitive Kommunikation und das Geheimnis der Spiegelneurone. [Why I feel what you feel. Intuitive communication and the mystery of mirror neurons] Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe und München: Heyne.
Insel, Thomas R. (2003): Is Social Attachment an Addictive Disorder? In: Physiology & Behavior (79), 351-357.
Sanfey, Alan G. (2003): The Neural Basis of Economic Decision Making in the Ultimatum Game. Science (300), 1755-1758.
Weikart, Richard (2004): From Darwin to Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
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