I have written on Empathy before. I feel very strongly that the ability to put one’s self in another’s shoes, so to speak, is crucial to compassionate human relationships. Compassionate Life emphasizes and refines that point.
Compassion is key – for personal enlightenment, for global justice, for right relationships. It is something we have evolved for. Compassionate Life discusses at length in its beginning the evolutionary journey that has molded us to be compassionate beings. The author discusses the war, so to speak that takes place between our different “brains.”
There is the “old” or “reptilian brain,” our basest core, the brainstem, devoted strictly to survival – obtaining food, fleeing from threats, and propogating the species. It in from this brain that the “fight or flight” respose is programmed. Mindsight discusses this same concept. It is the “old brain” that takes over when we “loose our minds.” When we find ourselves controlled by anger or fear and reacting without – or apparently without – thought.
The old brain is at war with the “new brain,” our thinking, reasoning, neocortex. The neocortex gives us rationality, language, creativity, and control. It is our “higher functioning.” This is also the area that gets “hijacked” when we are overcome with rage, lust, fear, etc.
The most disturbing point Karen Armstrong makes on this topic in Compassionate Life is about the consequences when we direct the abilities of the new brain to the service of the old brain. When we apply our advanced intellect to pursuits driven by anger, fear, or lust. It is from this “co-opting” of the new brain by the old that the most horrifying attrocities known to mankind have happened.
And, on a smaller scale, human beings are often known to use the behaviours of the old brain as an excuse. I don’t know how many times I have heard the claim made that men are “genetically hard wired” against monogamy. There are dozens of arguements that run along similar lines used to justify or excuse all sorts of unsavory behaviour. And it’s all freaking BS. With the neocortex comes the ablility to override the old brain. Just because I was genetically predisposed to start breeding at 16 years old in no way meant I had to or would.
The story of the two brains reminds me of an old parable (which just happened to be related during the story for all ages at our church this Sunday):
An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
“One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will win?”
The old chief simply replied,
“The one you feed.”
And THIS is where learning true compassion is key. Nurturing that wolf, so to speak. Armstrong points out in Compassionate Life that compassion is like any other innate human ability in it’s potential for growth. Just as one can enhance the abilities of their body through excersize, their intelligence through study, and even their language through poetry, so too can practice and effort be used to expand and hone human capacity for compassion.
So we have these two warring brains – these two opposing motivational centers. Are we then always doomed to internal conflict and struggle? Must we spend our whole lives beating back the cries of the old brain with the new? And if the new brain is focused on rationality and intelligence, how is it that compassion, and with it love, is the answer?
The answer to that, as posited by Armstrong, lies in a third, more recently discovered “brain” – residing in the limbic system. Please refer to the book (or any recent neuropsychology text) for more detail, but the simplified answer, what I took away from it, is this:
Motherhood
The origins of compassion, altruism, and love lie within the evolution of motherhood in warm blooded creatures. The practice of rearing young, of sticking around to ensure their survival, carried with it evolutionary benefits. The genes of animals who were taken care of in infancy were passed on more effectively than those that weren’t. Care for the young became an ingrained trait. At the same time, among some mammals, particularly those on the lineage of Homo sapiens, began to develop bigger brains. Bigger brains also equated to better survival. Bigger brains had more successful genes. As brains grew, so did skulls, and consequently infants were born earlier and earlier in thier development. Today, human infants are born so early that their first 3 months of life is usually referred to as “the fourth trimester” since they remain virtually fetal at that stage.
Infants being born more and more helpless combined with the predisposition to care for young gave birth, essentially, to maternal love. It has been posited by many scientists that the love between a mother and her offspring is the original form of love from which all others have developped.
There is nothing more basely selfless than the mother of an infant who is willing to put every one of her own needs to the side in order to attend to probably the most demanding creature she has ever encountered. Ignoring – and sometimes not even feeling – her own pangs of hunger and exhaustion, mothers are become wholly devoted to sustaining a life other than their own. This is the origin of selflessness. This is the origin of compassion. This is the key to the struggle between the wolves of the old and new brains.
Of course, here I am talking about archetypes. There are mothers out there who are far from selfless (trust me, I know this all too well). And just because motherhood is the biological origin of love does not mean that it is the only true love or that women are in some way more capable of love then men. That is not AT ALL what I’m saying. Remember, we’re still talking about brain systems here, and men have limibic systems, too. It just happens that the example of motherhood rings very very true to me.
When I gave birth, something in me changed. Something I still don’t quite understand. It’s a change I’m sure millions of women undergo in their lifetimes. One day, I will do a whole post about it, because this synopsis will not do it justice. When I gave birth, I was already a mother. I had been caring for Punky for years, she was (and is) my daughter. But she was never a helpless infant in my arms. I met her when she was 18 months old, but even then was not too close to her since MacGvyer and I were not all that serious. I did not become a mother to her until she was 4. She was far from helpless. While I underwent much transformation in that first year of caring for her (indeed, in every year of being a wife and mother – I am ever evolving), it did not compare to the shift in me after I gave birth.
I have always been a caring and sympathetic person. I am the first to assume that when a person acts out, it is because they are in a negative place and may need help (some exceptions to this – like cruelty to animals – clearly apply). But after I had Flintstone I began to feel pain for others in an unbelievably acute way. I found myself unable to listen to the news or even remember some cases from my past without a sharp sense of mourning. To that degree, I had become obsessive, which is not a good change. But, as we will see farther into this journey on the 12 steps, appropriately developped compassion can even help with that.
Most of the change, however, was good. I felt awakened to a sort of spiritual truth about humanity. And that truth was this (or something like it): Putting your own needs aside for the benefit of others is a doorway to inner peace.
Of course, there a caveats. Of course, there’s more to it. That will come in time. But the lesson is there, and it comes from the limbic system.
And it tells us that the struggle inside us is not a struggle between two equally powerful wolves. There is a third, intrinsically wiser, mother wolf ready to aid the compassionate wolf, the new brain. We just have to learn to feed them.
Very interesting. I too have always been a pretty compassionate person but holy heck, once I had a baby I almost feel like I feel too much. Now I just want to cry I when I see a homeless person picking through the trash or when I read about orphans in China. There just seems to be so much hurt in this world and definitely not enough compassion.
And this is why I am most grateful for some of the hardest challenges in my life and the things that hurt the most- as these moments in addition to being a mom, helped me learn the most compassion and understanding as you just never know what someone else is really going through
Ahh…that’s what Christians think of as God. Whispering and guiding us, if we listen. Problem is, sometimes it’s easier to ignore. Which is not cool, but, yeah, totally guilty.
I was thinking that Punky wasn’t your flesh and blood so to speak. This sounds interesting. I can’t wait to follow your journey!