The Neurobiological Basis Of Why We’re Heading Into The Wall
And how we can slow down and make a turn
For the first time in the history of our species, the challenge for humanity is not to survive predators, hunger or disease, but to survive itself.
The French book Le Bug Humain by Sébastien Bohler, endorsed by Nicolas Hulot and Jean-Marc Jancovici, investigates a crucial question: if we all know where we are heading and if we have this incredible human capacity for projection and planification, then why are we still pursuing the way of life that consumes our planet and chances for future generations? What is wrong with us?
Note from a bacteria nerd: bacteria are fundamentally more evolved than we are: they have 3 billion years of evolutionary advance on us, with new generations up to every half hour and horizontal gene transfer to share their traits without even waiting for the next generation. They are more advanced because they exert population control. In fermentation, bacteria display a form of quorum sensing and when their population density gets high in proportion to the nutrients available, they will stop to replicate.
Instead, we humans continue to reproduce and consume in oblivion of the resources available. The population basically doubled since the 70s, and now that we are almost 8 billion human inhabitants, our insatiable biology is bringing to extinction species at an unseen rate and affecting the planet’s ecology in a way that is likely to end our civilization.
If everyone on the planet lived like the average French person, we’d need 3 planets to meet our needs. If everyone lived to the American standards, we’d need 5 planets.
As long as we are growing to numbers and lifestyle that our environment can’t support sustainably, we are morally and biologically inferior to bacteria.
So, what’s wrong with our brains?
Much like other animals, our evolution developed a brain motivated by its striatum — by the dopamine released in the reward center. Evolution valued our survival and reproduction. As a consequence, we are programmed to pursue the 5 essential objectives that favor such chances: eat, have intercourse, gain power, do so with minimal efforts, and collect as much information as possible about our environment. If the actions we pursue lead to success, our brain releases dopamine, which provides us with a feeling of pleasure and reinforces the brain circuitry that was found effective so we will repeat the same positive experience. Like checking social networks for more likes and peer approval.
The striatum is the system’s CEO, the one that provides motivation to all executor systems: reason, planification, organization, abstraction, and even memory.
All we do as humans is provide what our striatum seeks, with the minimal efforts. Never would it occur the striatum to limit itself: the more the food in the plate, the more the sexual partners, the more social power and information, the best. This is the big production defect of our brains.
Importantly, the stronger is the reward system, the stronger is the risk of addiction — dopamine reinforces the action that led to success, but the next time you do the action, you will have the chemical reward only if the result is better than the expectation: there is a phenomenon of habituation that means increasing the dose, always, for the pleasure to show up.
“My brain rewards me if I obtain more than last time”
Dopamine of course is not bad per se, it is actually the driver and motor of life. Mice whose dopamine neurons were inactivated were still able to feel the hunger (the neurochemical signal of hunger was expressed) but did not feel motivated to go eating. They died off in a few weeks despite having food in reach.
So can we oppose the striatum’s insatiability to offer our children a future in which there is more than a silent spring and still ocean ?
With willpower?
After commenting on interesting facts regarding the neurobiology and consequences of our drive for food, sex, domination, information and the least possible effort, Sébastien Bohler notes that willpower can’t be expected to solve our problem.
The valorization of willpower has been part of human evolution through the Millenia, and one of the main aims of religion was to keep in check the striatum’s excesses, like the 7 capital sins. But it doesn’t really work, as the striatum’s temptation is stronger than the cortex and frontal lobes rationalization. In fact, we decide through emotion before the thought process rationally finds the reasons with which we justify the decision.
The decision is the striatum’s, the excuses are the cortex’s.
So, can humanity define other goals than those of its striatum, and how?
1. The Concept of Temporal Depreciation, or learning to delay gratification
Temporal depreciation is our propensity to consider that an immediate reward has a higher value than a delayed reward. The Marshmallow Test was first used in the 60s: toddlers were presented with an option: one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows in 5 minutes. Further studies highlighted that the capacity to delay gratification was predictive of later success in personal and professional life, being associated to a better aptitude to master immediate stimulations and to keep in mind the long-term objectives.
The problem of our time is that living sustainably costs an important effort today (isolating our house, spending more for ethical banking and energy, eating less meat and fish, travelling less, substituting Google searches by direct entry to our favorite websites…) while the benefits to reap are far off, and conditioned to sufficient people making sacrifices today.
Education and socio-cultural environment are determinant for the development of this capacity to delay pleasure: it is crucial to acclimate children to waiting, to not have everything they want right here, right now, and to invest in efforts before harvesting results.
As adults, this ability can also be stimulated by delaying our rewards: we can order this much-desired game next month, have this chocolate cookie once this piece of work is done with…
The new technologies have brought a culture of “everything, right now”. We no longer bear with information that’s too long, our attention span to digital information is 8 seconds. If you read so far into this article, you are exceptional.
2. Channeling the striatum
Mother Teresa used to go visit the poor, alcoholics and orphans with her mother when she was barely 6 years old. She was taught never to accept bread that wouldn’t be shared with others. With such education principles, she integrated very young that altruism was honored and rewarded, and her brain was wired to associate good deeds with pleasure. As masters of ourselves, as parents to our children and as citizens in our society, we can create such associations and decide what should bring us pleasure.
This is the most empowering pathway. We need to and can change the social norms and look up to those who act in favor of the environment, to the vegans, the sober, to those who travel by bike and not by Porsche. The people who dedicate themselves to creating, sharing and disseminating solutions should become the social heroes. Political leaders succeeding to decrease GHG emissions should become the new alpha males to be celebrated and to become the models that will shape everyone’s desire. Let’s turn the social stage and pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of contribution; let’s measure success by the carbon footprint or solutions implemented to benefit the community instead of bank account and car model.
Each one of us has the power to participate to this social shift, by choosing who we look up to, how we chose our partner, how we spend our money, and with which values we educate ourselves and the next generation.
3. Exercising Awareness
To accept to consume less, one way can be to reap more pleasure from less intake. For example, there is a lot of sensual awareness in the food we eat: there is a world of colors, lights, shapes, smells, flavors and texture in a single grain of raisin. The attention given to each of these details multiplies the pleasure in eating it.
Bohler highlights that we human beings are creatures of high intelligence but low conscience. We are pushed to be successful intellectually but too seldom do we ask “why”. “Do you have conscience of what you are doing?” “Why are you pursuing this objective?”
By developing awareness and mindfulness, we can cultivate the pleasure & satisfaction of a sober lifestyle, of eating plant-based, of enjoying friendships in which no social comparison exists, and we can create new pleasures in placing rewards in objectives that are aligned with our prefrontal lobes values…
Together, we can create an economy that shifts from amplifying impulses & consumption to one that develops knowledge, contribution & awareness and is compatible with nurturing each other and all life. Let’s do it!
