Connecting those dots -- personal to planetary -- reveals that through generations our brains keep re-patterning the lopsided society that has kept reshaping our brains! This tenuous cycle has continued largely unquestioned and compounds the ongoing actions of a culture that has all too willingly been governed by greed and self-interest regardless of the toll we take on the natural world. We are meddling with each of the vital elements we depend upon: Air -- currently unbreathable in many major cities; Water -- less than 1% of the total water on the Planet is freshwater and an increasingly tiny percentage of that remains unpolluted; Earth --topsoil, takes 500 years to create one inch of mineral rich 'dirt' layers of which are being lost -- by being blown away -- or contaminated; Fire -- the increased heat of global warming is creating climate change faster than the most pessimistic forecast.
Indeed, there is a link between what has been our patriarchally dominated culture that sets little or no value on the innate nature of nurture, the nature of mothering and the sorry state of Mother Nature. Indigenous peoples have always lived in relationship to the elements, to Earth and sky. 'Civilization' seems to have forgotten this blue Planet is our life source -- within us, around us, and under our feet. All the material stuff we concoct, manufacture, purchase and trash comes from and gets dumped back onto Earth.
The salience and sacredness of matter - the material body of the Earth -- has been split off into the materialism that results in our merciless rape of Mother Nature. Is it any coincidence that the matter of mothering also counts for so little in such a compartmentalized, profit-driven culture as our own?
The vital qualities of physical and emotional connection count for little in our questionable cultural mores. Parental caring; affection; mirroring; patience; constancy, consistency; skin to skin contact, breast-feeding, comforting bodily touch -- all given short shrift. As long ago as 1951 John Bowlby warned the World Health Organization of the consequences of increasing mother-infant/child separations associated with institutional day care. What does it say about a society where materialism reigns and the responsibility to mothers and mothering -- thus babies, infants and children -- is of so relatively little importance.
The embodied feelings absorbed through being deeply nurtured are vital to make us feel viscerally safe, secure, and most of all, accepted for who and what we are. At their best, those exchanged feelings engender and strengthen the most profound levels of unconditional love. Trouble is, because those essentially human qualities don't add up, in this off-kilter culture of ours, what cannot be measured has no place on the bottom line. If it cannot be quantified, it doesn't count. . . .
. . . Until now, that is! Enter. . . neuroscience, fMRI's, and the recent decades of study by the likes of Winnicott, Bowlby, Fonagey, Panskepp, Schore, Seigel, Lipton, LeDoux, and Damassio -- a few of the primary scientists and psychologists whose research illustrates, and can now measure, what can be broadly defined as the impact that love -- or more commonly its lack -- has on the developing brain. Love and caring can, and must, be counted in our culture! (Neil Gilbert's A Mother's Work begins to address this issue.) Literally and physiologically, Love -- has everything to do with what makes us who and what we are, and makes us do what we do, individually and collectively.
Primarily in-utero, in the most vulnerable first months and through the first six years or so of life, our wiring is set. What is absorbed during that early period is embedded in the 'unconscious' cellular structure of the body. What evolves later in our early development is the rationalizing 'executive function' pre-frontal regions of the brain. Cellular biologist, Bruce Lipton, reports recent studies that indicate our unconscious/subconscious comprise 95% of the brain, and our conscious, only 5%! In prescient fashion, Carl Jung described our conscious mind as what can be seen as the tip of an iceberg, versus our unconscious which represents all that lies invisibly under the surface. Ironic somehow, that icebergs are now canaries in the global-warming coal mine.
If an infant or child does not feel sufficiently safe and secure during it's most crucial stages of growth, the primitive emotions triggered in the limbic region of the brain are adept at hijacking the more 'objective' logical, analytic, differentiating, regions of the neocortex. Thus our unconscious regularly stymies the rational and potentially more tolerant and empathic aspects of our conscious, thinking/feeling mind.
Naturally, when any of us feel threatened, uncertain, or scared, a fear response kicks in. Especially in the pre-verbal stages when there's no capacity to reason or understand the self- protective mechanism in the brain is likely to remain on high alert. This stressor triggers adrenaline which releases cortisol which in turn corrodes delicate synapses and neural pathways. Alice Miller's Drama of a Gifted Child and the work of James W Prescott both illustrate that lack of affection and intimate maternal contact results in mental issues that range from depression to violence.
Insufficient love in our formative months and years can hobble our capacity to give and receive love and to ultimately think and function for the good of the whole. Thus, what most of the world's great religions bid us do, "to love out neighbor as ourselves" is a whole lot easier said than done. When it comes to the crunch, would you say with 100% confidence that you feel totally worthy, acceptable and lovable? How then can we truly love our neighbor? Could this be the root of the ongoing centuries of religious wars that have been fought for the supremacy of one God, over another? (Deference Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Bill Maher's Religulous!)
Love, as central to the tenets of religion and spirituality, isn't part of this particular narrative but the phrase referring to "the sins of the fathers" is pivotal. When those words were written, no one could have known that 95% of our brain is unconsciously genetically and environmentally programmed by what's been passed down through generations. It's only 5% that is our consciousness, that makes us who we actually are! The result: what our parents, and our parents parents, did not bring to consciousness is who we perceive we are. As Jung intuitively defined this dynamic decades ago: "What we do not bring to consciousness, comes to us as fate".
The hard slog involved in trying to become more conscious of our unconscious and integrate this understanding can be agonizing! To quote Jung, again -- he said "psychoanalysis is like having major surgery with no anaesthetic". Becoming aware of the patterns that continue to program our words and actions which culminate in our frighteningly unsustainable lifestyles has to be one of the main, and massive, tasks ahead of us now. It may feel overwhelming, but if we are to survive, humanity must change, and adapt and evolve one way or the other. "Know Thyself" as the Delphic Oracle entreats us do, is one prudent place to start.
Good news is that our hard-wiring is not set in stone! Norman Doidge's book "The Brain that Changes itself, is testament to the possibilities for change. Unless we understand this context, and seek to utilize what we now know to be the lifelong plasticity of the brain, the hard-wiring that commonly remains with us throughout adulthood can keep us repeating the same old patterns for the rest of our lives! Those early self-protective instincts deeply embedded in the unconscious easily morph into the kind of self-persecuting behavior that for ever has the ability to trip us up. The button-pressing capacity that close relationships can trigger is all too familiar to most of us! As Ram Dass put it, "our parents know how to press our buttons, because they put them there!"
From infancy to adulthood, when fear is felt, defensive self-preservation and the knee-jerk need for control can overpower all else. The struggle to feel power or control over that which scares us, leads us to project blame or responsibility onto others. Feeling threatened can play havoc with not only our own lives but with the lives of millions as Iraq, Darfur, Serbia, Northern Ireland and the Holocaust of WW2 ashamedly remind us. Fear obfuscates our capacities for the more complex and nuanced emotions that evolve into the level of deeper understanding and empathy necessary to override our primitive impulse to dominate -- to be victor, hero, top-gun, top-dog, top of the heap.
If we feel insecure within ourselves, these very archaic drives that lead to international conflicts include the kind of inner terrorism we can inflict upon ourselves, our partners, our families, our communities -- as well as any tribe, caste, color or nation that is not 'one of us'. Feelings of powerlessness manifest as a need for validation through externalized affirmations to bolster one's sense of one's own existence. This results in the gross materialism and insatiable need for more, bigger, better, newer, older, cooler, hotter, faster, that stokes the consumerism that pillages the Planet and depletes her finite resources. Kudos, status, quarterly results and the gobsmackingly immoral salaries of the fat-cats are the blinkered, self-serving markers of success that jeopardize Wall Street and the financial and ecological systems of our World.
The psychological need that gives rise to war, greed, and our consumer culture is an indirect and dire result of what has wired our neural circuits. In aggregate, this trajectory has brought us to the point where a UN report recently headlined a startling forecast, that "the future of humanity is at stake". Time for change, indeed.
But, if we stay awake and aware enough, and want to enough, we do have the ability to change. Although the varying degrees of love and caring that may have been lacking early on can create challenging consequences, with effort and vigilance our responses can be modified and our brain can rewire itself throughout our lives. It is in our power -- individually and collectively -- to turn all of this around. One way is by utilizing the positive force of love as a counterpoint to the fear of fear itself.
Beyond being culturally relegated to the realms of poetry, music, opera, art and literature, now that we know -- empirically -- how much love really counts, it is up to us to take it's effects seriously and prioritise what matters most in our own lives.
The critical importance and value of caring, child-rearing, and parenting needs to be fully acknowledged -- by all of our institutions. The ripple effect that love (or, too little of it) has, not just on our personal lives but on our professional ambitions and on the morality of our choices, has to be understood, recognized and acted upon -- and soon! A crisis prods us -- albeit reluctantly -- to rethink and retool and stimulates systemic change on both micro and macro levels. It's time to tighten our belts and make necessary sacrifices before more damage is done. Lest we do so, Mother Nature may keep ramping up her awesome strength and get her own back on us one way or the other.
It is time to connect the unlikely dots between Love and the Brain and the Planet! As Einstein said, 'we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them". It's time for all of our infrastructure, policies and systems: economic; ecological; political; corporate; family; education; academic; scientific; institutional; military, medical; philanthropic and religious to incorporate what we now know. Thanks to neuroscience, we can now logically rationalize the significance of the most profound and valuable qualities of what it means to be human. Love, caring and empathy can now be quantified, so finally, it must be taken into account.
Who amongst us wants to feel responsible for leaving this shameful a legacy for all for our children, and for those as yet unborn? And what about all our other furred, finned and feathered friends who evolved here on Earth way before us, and whose home this is too?
Whether we be CFO or cab-driver, healer or hedge-fund manager, physician or fruit-picker, more love is needed in all of our lives. What emerges from the current global climate and economic crisis is a call to action -- perhaps a mandate -- to begin to include what is indispensable across the board and around the world -- and it is Love. Rather than remain so addicted to the love of power, the responsibility is for humanity to change this story, and to incorporate what is closest to our hearts and souls, and harness the Power of Love -- before it's way too late.
Can we change? Yes, we can!
"LOVE IS THE BALM THAT HEALS THE WORLD"
-- seen scribbled in chalk on a New York City sidewalk
P.S.
Reducing something as infinite, ephemeral, mystical, magical, healing, life-affirming, intimate, Universal, spiritual and soulful as Love to a calculable denominator, is approached here with much reluctance. But, it's the hope it might help link the disparate parts of our lives -- inner with outer, spirit with matter, right-brain with left-brain, body with soul, heart with mind, life with death.
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A fellow Scot, Alan Watts said "no one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing". I think of that every time I try to tackle this subject as the ripple effects are so far-reaching and it can be approached from so many different angles because it effects every aspect of our lives.
We're all in the same boat, after all. And time, and literally, tide, stop for no man. The breadth and depths of the topic of Love is so multi-faceted, integral, vast, intimate, personal and Universal, I believe it is for us to evolve and that we are on this Planet to learn how to love.
It's sure something I want to learn if attempting to do so doesn't kill me first! My particular reason why, is a long story for another time.
Incidentally, a list of tools and books that have helped point a way through the dark and light of my own story that has led me to ask these questions, will be following, soon. This will add to the many people I have acknowledged here who have, in many different ways, shone a light on my path. Like so many others, my life was bent and molded and fragmented as a result of WW2, although I was born after it ended. I wonder how that might apply to you, too?
The questions continue. What are yours?
