I heard a story once about a Native American elder who was asked how she had become so wise, so happy and so respected. She answered: "In my heart, there are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. It all depends on which one I feed each day."
This story always gives me a little shiver. It's both humbling and hopeful. First, the wolf of love is very popular, but who among us does not also harbor a wolf of hate? We can hear its snarling both far away in distant wars and close to home in our own anger and aggression, even toward people we love. Second, the story suggests that we each have the ability -- grounded in daily actions -- to encourage and strengthen empathy, compassion and kindness while also restraining and reducing ill will, disdain and aggression.
In a previous post, I explored some of the basis, in the brain, of romance and love. In this one, let's consider the dark side of bonding: how attachment to "us" both fuels and has been nurtured by fearful aggression toward "them." Acknowledging the reality of the wolf of hate, and understanding its origins, powers and "food," are vital steps toward restraining that wolf, and thereby making our homes, workplaces and world safer and more loving places to be.
The Evolution Of Hate
Economic and cultural factors certainly play a role in human aggression, whether in thoughts, words, or deeds. Additionally, recent studies are shedding light on the effects of biological evolution, driven by the "reproductive advantages" of anger, prejudice and violence.
For millions of years, our ancestors were exposed to starvation, predators and disease. Making matters worse, climactic ups and downs brought scorching droughts and freezing ice ages, intensifying the competition for scarce resources. Altogether, these harsh conditions kept hominid and human population levels essentially flat despite potential growth rates of about 2 percent per year (Bowles 2006).
In those tough environments, it was reproductively advantageous for our ancestors to be cooperative within their own band but aggressive toward other bands (Choi and Bowles 2007). Cooperation and aggression evolved synergistically: bands with greater cooperation were more successful at aggression, and aggression between bands demanded cooperation within bands (Bowles 2009).
The result was ubiquitous and commonplace violence. For example, most modern hunter-gatherer bands -- which offer strong indications of the social environments in which our ancestors evolved -- have engaged in ongoing conflicts with other groups. While these skirmishes lacked the shock and awe of modern warfare, they were actually much more lethal: roughly one in eight hunter-gatherer males died from them, compared to the one in a hundred men who died from the wars of the 20th century (Bowles 2006; Keeley 1997).
The Angry Brain
Much like cooperation and love draw on multiple neurological systems, so do aggression and hate:
Locked And Loaded Today
Our brains still possess these capabilities and inclinations. They're at work in schoolyard cliques, office politics and domestic violence. (Healthy competition, assertiveness and fierce advocacy for people and causes you care about are very different from hostile aggression.)
On a larger scale, our aggressive tendencies fuel prejudice, oppression, ethnic cleansing and war. Often these tendencies are manipulated, such as by the demonization of "them" in the classic justification for strong-father, authoritarian control. But those manipulations wouldn't be nearly so successful if it weren't for the legacy of between-group aggression in our evolutionary history.
What's Left Out
There's a Zen saying, "Nothing left out" -- nothing left out of your awareness, nothing left out of your practice, nothing left out of your heart. As the circle shrinks, the question naturally arises: What is left out? It could be people on the other side of the world with a different religion, or people next door whose politics you don't like. Or relatives who are difficult, or old friends who hurt you. It could be anyone you regard as less than you or as merely a means to your ends.
As soon as you place anyone outside the circle of "us," the mind/brain automatically begins to devalue that person and justify poor treatment of him (Efferson, Lalive and Feh 2008). This gets the wolf of hate up and moving, only a quick pounce away from active aggression. Pay attention to the number of times a day you categorize someone as "not like me," particularly in subtle ways: not my social background, not my style, and so on. It's startling how routine it is. See what happens to your mind when you consciously release this distinction and focus instead on what you have in common with that person, on what makes you both an "us."
Loving The Wolf Of Hate
Ironically, one answer to "What's left out?" is the wolf of hate itself, which is often denied or minimized. For example, it makes me uncomfortable to admit how good it feels when the hero kills the bad guy in a movie. Like it or not, the wolf of hate is alive and well inside each one of us. It's easy to hear about a dreadful murder across the country or terrorism and torture across the world -- or milder forms of everyday mistreatment of others close at hand -- and shake your head, thinking, "What's wrong with them?" But "them" is actually "us." We all have the same basic DNA. It is a kind of ignorance -- which is the root of suffering -- to deny the aggression in our genetic endowment. In fact, as we've seen, intense intergroup conflict aided the evolution of within-group altruism: the wolf of hate helped give birth to the wolf of love.
The wolf of hate is deeply embedded both in the human evolutionary past and in each person's brain today, ready to howl at any threat. Being realistic and honest about the wolf of hate -- and its impersonal, evolutionary origins -- brings self-compassion. Your own wolf of hate needs taming, sure, but it's not your fault that it lurks in the shadows of your mind, and it probably afflicts you more than anyone else. Additionally, acknowledging the wolf of hate prompts a very useful caution when you are in situations -- arguing with a neighbor, disciplining a child, reacting to criticism at work -- in which you feel mistreated and revved-up, and that wolf begins to stir.
When you're watching the evening news -- or even just listening to children bicker -- it can sometimes seem like the wolf of hate dominates human existence. Much like spikes of SNS/HPAA arousal stand out against a backdrop of resting-state parasympathetic activation, dark clouds of aggression and conflict compel more attention than the much larger "sky" of connection and love through which they pass. But in fact, most interactions have a cooperative quality. Humans and other primate species routinely restrain the wolf of hate and repair its damage, returning to a baseline of reasonably positive relationships with each other (Sapolsky 2006). In most people most of the time, the wolf of love is bigger and stronger than the wolf of hate.
Love and hate: they live and tumble together in every heart, like wolf cubs tussling in a cave. There is no killing the wolf of hate; the aversion in such an attempt would actually create what you're trying to destroy. But you can watch that wolf carefully, keep it tethered, and limit its alarm, righteousness, grievances, resentments, contempt and prejudice. Meanwhile, keep nourishing and encouraging the wolf of love.
We'll explore how to do this in upcoming posts.
For more on this subject and how to nourish the wolf of love and tame the wolf of hate, see my book, "Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom," from which much of this post is adapted.
References:
Bowles, S. 2006. Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism. Science 314:1569-1572.
Bowles, S. 2009. Did warfare among ancestral hunter-gatherers affect the evolution of human social behaviors? Science 324:1293- 1298.
Choi, J. and S. Bowles. 2007. The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science 318:636-640.
Efferson, C., R. Lalive, and E. Feh. 2008. The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science 321:1844-1849.
Keeley, L. H. 1997. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sapolsky, R. M. 2006. A natural history of peace. Foreign Affairs 85:104-121.
Kristin Neff: The Chemicals of Care: How Self-Compassion Manifests in Our Bodies
Rick Hanson, Ph.D.: 21 Ways to Turn Ill Will into Good Will
Studies of meditation and mental states show that the mind controls the chemistry of the brain. Buddhists, for example, are taught to recognize afflictive emotions and gain control over them to the point that the negative emotions no longer arise. A mind that is filled with love has no room for toxic anger or hatred to arise and no reason to make excuses blaming the human nervous system for boorish, racist or violent behavior.
The problem is a dominant culture that encourages and teaches anger, hatred, fear, violence and ignorance --- in its sports, its entertainments, its competitive uncompassioante values, its bloated war machine, its worship of the male and toughness and war and its denigration of the feminine and compassion amd its constant looking to rationalizations of the head to justify human evil instead of looking to the love and softness of the natural kind human heart.
The "dominant culture" wouldn't teach all this if it didn't come from somewhere and there's pretty considerable evidence that it's where we start - even if it's not where we have to end up.
In my experience, too, people who talk very philosophically about the violent impulses in human beings are often the first to lose it in traffic dust-ups, for instance. The Greeks taught us long ago that the first step in dealing with our more primitive urges is to admit they exist and not pretend that Reason somehow erases them.
Watch a pack of them tear apart a coyote (as in a certain public TV documentary) and they look pretty aggressive to me.
Hatred is as valid an emotion as any other. Where it becomes toxic is when revenge and retalliatiÂon are added to the mix. Also, hatred can be part of one's healing process. When it's finally embraced, we know it has come from that deep part of ourselves which is indignant at unjust treatment. It lives in that healthy portion of our egos in which our self-respeÂct resides. We're all born with it..it's just squelched in some, more than others. Saying "ouch" if someone steps on your foot is only natural, especially if it's deliberateÂ.
And, as far as forgivenesÂs is concerned, it's a purely personal choice. If the offender is genuinely remorseful for causing harm, suffering or humiliation, forgivenesÂs is a definate option. However, I believe hatred can be a powerful emotional tool to keep us safe from what has made us repelled by someone or something in the first place. Hatred is to be understood and respected.
There was no reply button under your request, so I'll put this here and again on The View thread...and hope you see it. :)
At the top right of your HuffPo web page, you'll see your username. Click on it. Then, right below the green banner, but above were you can turn stealth and badges on and off you'll see "Edit Preferences". Click on that. Under your avatar, you'll see "Preferences". Click on that...then scroll down until you see the window for writing your micro-bio. Once it's written, be sure to click the blue "Submit" button. (I don't know about anyone else, but it took them three weeks to approve my micro-bio once I'd submitted it.)
You'd think this would be more straight forward, but there it is! (Do let me know if you need further assistance or if I've steered you in the wrong direction.)
Hugs,
--AN
"Language systems in the left frontal and temporal lobes work with visual-spatial processing in the right hemisphere to categorize others as friends or foes, persons or nonentities who can be exploited, enslaved, raped or murdered."
Helps shed some light on what's going on in the brains of the baggers although it's seems they use the little reptilian brain more than the other parts. ;)
Time to stop thinking with that big horn, man.
It reminds me a bit of Plato's Charioteer analogy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_Allegory
lol