Brain Drain (eBook)

PART I
 
THE AUTOMATIC BRAIN

Chapter 1
The Brain Drain Begins

“I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”

-Albert Einstein

Since Homo sapiens (modern humans) developed on earth around 200,000 years ago, our brain has helped us survive. The autonomic nervous system, which is the machinery behind the automatic brain, has been the main reason for our success. The fight-or-flight component of this brain is the predominant mechanism. It reacts quickly and efficiently to danger, with powerful instructions to fight or flee the danger, and thus to ensure the survival of our physical body and survival of our DNA. That was the life of prehistoric humans—birth, survival, procreation, death. The automatic brain is that part of our brain dedicated to carrying this out and is the same now as it was eons ago. Our ancestors knew it as the automatic response that helped them fight or flee predators. Today, we recognize it as the feeling we get when we see a police officer in our rearview mirror or are unexpectedly called upon in a meeting. The police officer or meeting situation are far from life threatening, but as I will show in later chapters, the automatic brain is antiquated, over exaggerates danger, and can no longer be trusted as a survival tool.

In order to begin to understand why our brain is so draining, constantly churning up unwanted, often self-sabotaging thoughts, we must make a brief exploration into its origins.

In the beginning…

What separates Homo sapiens from other species is the development of our brain and nervous system. Our closest relatives on earth appear to be the chimpanzee; their brains are about 50 percent neocortex, human brains 80 to 90 percent. The neocortex of the brain evolved most recently, and is responsible for higher reasoning and thinking. All mammals have some neocortex, but other animals seem not to. The evolutionary debut of the neocortex probably preceded the appearance of Homo sapiens, possibly around 2.5 million years ago.

Fossil records show an expanding brain size as early Homo sapiens evolved into modern-day humans. Around 50,000 years ago, the appearance of more advanced tools, cave paintings, trapping techniques for hunting, and clothing made from animal hides were signs that humankind was becoming more sophisticated at survival techniques. Our prehistoric ancestors were hunters (of animal flesh) and gatherers (of plants for food). Although they showed signs of neocortex development, reproductive and survival needs were probably behind most of their activity. Their automatic brain still dictated their behavior.

According to most authorities, the last ice age on earth ended between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. Somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved from being primarily hunters and gatherers to agriculture-based sustenance and the domestication of plants and animals.

Four hundred thousand years (including our pre-Homo sapiens’ ancestors) of hunting and gathering for survival turned to agriculture in a relatively small window of time. To grow food requires more advanced thinking—an understanding that something large can grow out of something very small. It requires awareness of more than just the day-to-day need to survive. Considering what life was like for the humans of the Middle East around 6,000 years ago, what did their brain look like? I believe their brain had exactly the same components as that of their predecessors. Their brain was just as reactive and attuned to signs of danger, and able to respond quickly with a fight-or-flight response. But something had to change at around this time to make it possible for humans to grow crops and take care of animals. What changed was our brain—it suddenly became more complex.

How can we get into the heads, so to speak, of our ancestors of 6,000 years ago? The earliest written history of modern man is the Five Books of Moses, the Torah, the Old Testament, the Bible. As it happens, that history begins almost 6,000 years ago (5,770 years ago as of 2009), placing it within the timeframe of the cultural transition I’ve described. The point is that history from the biblical account places the creation story of Genesis around the time of rapid transformation from hunting and gathering to agriculture in the Middle Eastern nomadic communities.

The biblical story of man’s creation takes place in the Garden of Eden. As I outlined above, man’s shift to an agricultural lifestyle took place around 6,000 years ago. Adam and Eve were quite happy in their new garden, their new agricultural wonderland. I believe this story depicts the first humans to connect with something greater than their physical environment—a connection to their spirituality, through a newly developed part of their neocortex—the mind. This mind became the portal to connect with an ethereal energy, what the Bible calls God.  Their home—now a cornucopia of nature and spirit—represented, I believe, a place as close to heaven on earth as any human being could get.

But just like you and me, and there ancestors spanning thousands of years, Adam and Eve possessed the automatic brain. As described previously this brain recognizes all signs of danger, threat, or vulnerability. Anything beyond our senses or our physical environment is unknown and the unknown to the automatic brain is one of the greatest danger triggers. So, just as you and I, when things are going well and our thoughts drift to the possibility of something going wrong, so too, did Eve follow her automatic brain. After all, the automatic brain interprets basking in calm and peace, happiness if you will, as vulnerability—having one’s guard down, not being well prepared for danger. To the automatic brains of Adam and Eve, the garden in which they lived was “dangerous.” The serpent is symbolic of the automatic brain and attempts to influence Eve to do something to increase her chances of long-term survival—to leave the garden and stop taking direction from the less tangible mind and its connection with her spiritual guide.

Eve made a choice to believe, trust, and take direction from the serpent, her automatic brain, and that choice evicted her and Adam from the nirvana of Eden. From that point on, thoughts generated by the protective and always fearful automatic brain have forever tormented humankind.  Finding our way back to Eden, despite the ever-present automatic brain, I propose, had become our spiritual challenge.

Based on what I know of the automatic brain, this brain influenced much of Bible.  This in no way diminishes the impact of the document, nor does it call into question the existence of God. Let’s face it, something very big happened around the time of Moses; that is indisputable. I would go further and say that there were many actual “miracles.” Those miracles, Moses truly believed, came from God, and were communicated to him through his mind. Those around Moses had to take it on his word that those acts were miracles from God. But as I describe in a later chapter, the automatic brain of humankind quickly rejects that which it cannot explain or comprehend outside the realm of physical reality. In other words, we would also expect Moses’ contemporaries to flee or fight what is dangerous or threatening to them; in other words, the miracles.

After Moses’ first trek up Mt. Sinai, he returned to find that the people had already given up on him and God. Moses became angry, and the people apologized. Moses then went back up the mountain, and this time he returned to a receptive audience. Traditional Jewish interpretations tell us that the Torah was written during the years after Moses delivered the Ten Commandments. By whom and how it was transcribed is up for debate, even by the rabbis of that time and later.

More valuable for our purposes than discussing those theories is considering how the automatic brain ties into the Israelites’ behavior after they saw all the miracles, yet gave up on Moses so quickly the first time around. And this is where I break from tradition. My belief is that the authors of the Torah had trouble accepting what they heard from Moses, who clearly was guided by the connection of mind and spirit, or as some might say, by God. I imagine that every step of the way, Moses met with great resistance as he sought to explain God. Though the people observed great miracles, the automatic brain requires constant reinforcement. God and the miracles represented unknowns, things that defied predictability by the five senses.

What they did see was a guy named Moses, who looked like any other man, with the same parts as any other man, and five senses just like any other man. Though passionate about his beliefs, Moses faced a daunting task in attempting to persuade the people what God had told him. At first, not everyone believed Moses’ story. The conventional explanation, after all, is generally the safest. The brains of the Israelites who lived a few thousand years ago were not that different from yours and mine, and we can surmise that all the mysterious goings-on triggered their automatic brains. God as the ultimate unknown is a concept that always turns on the automatic brain and leads to a fight-or-flight response. The authors of the history (i.e., the Torah) had to do something to make God more real and...