October 31, 2004
In the October 13 issue of AlterNet, columnist and TV pundit Arianna Huffington published an article entitled, "Appealing to Our Lizard Brains." She argued that the President and Vice President are appealing to our most ancient and lowest brain levels when they warn of possible terrorist attacks in the waning days of the presidential compaign.
Apparently voters are so overcome by their atavistic fears that they are reduced to infants who are compelled to reach out to "authority figures to comfort us and keep us safe." In support of her thesis, Arianna quotes Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Siegel: "Voters are shrouded in a 'fog of fear' that is impacting the way our brains respond to the two candidates." Arianna follows up with, 'Thanks to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain."
What about left, right, and lizard brains anyway? I suggest that conservative thinkers and Republicans get answers to this question forthwith. Arianna has sent the first shot across the bow with a novel and creative mode of attack. Conservatives generally prefer to deal with concrete fact and recoil from cryptic gibberish about what minds are made of. That is for those effete academic types and intellectual progressives to fret about. But if the brain untimately controls everything we feel, think and do, then does that not include politics as well?
The human brain is the product of millions upon millions of years of evolution proceeding from the earliest living beings, then to reptiles, then to mammals, and, finally, to primates including our species. Following the great neuroscientist Paul MacLean, the human brain may be roughly partitioned into the following four functional segments.
Level I, or the reptilian-compulsive-instinctive segment, is the most fundamental and ancient. It mediates the most basic and necessary of life's processes (e. g., metabolism, sleep, breathing, and many other vital activities) along with basic survival programming ("instincts") including defensive, dominance, and predatory forms of aggression, very basic courtship and sex role patterns, primitive deceptive behavior, certain mimicking behaviors, territorial behavior, some aspects of fear, and so on. This is the "lizard brain" invoked by Arianna.
Level II is the mammalian-emotional- feeling segment of the brain, or "limbic system" as MacLean named it. In my view, this is where most of the truly human experiences are mediated- sex, more complex sex roles, fun, play, anger, kinship, parental care, warmth, love (especially "mother love"), and a host of other warm and fuzzy things. MacLean even suggests that "empathy" is more mammalian than anything else. In fact. I would argue that most pet dogs are more empathic toward their masters than vice-versa.
Now a quick look at that final thin layer of grey matter we call the neocortex or "thinking brain." Chauvinistic humans- especially liberals- tend to think that this great and wonderful cortex is really the "brain" and the ancient brain stem and inner white matter is neither here nor there. Actually, many brain scholars argue that the thinking brain is not the master but is the servant of the more ancient, all-encompassing, and powerful lower systems. Really, ask yourself how many objective and rational thoughts you have had today. Now list the thoughts you have had about sex, food, revenge, hatred of enemies, and the like. Embarrassing isn't it?
The thinking cortex may be divided into two anatomical and functional entities- the right and left hemispheres. Level III is the impressionistic-intuitive-nonverbal right brain that works very closely with the lower reptilian and mammalian systems in the day-to-day behavior of most people. We do not walk around solving quadratic equations in our heads most of the time; instead, we live in an intuitive, impressionistic world dominated by vague thoughts, fantasies, needs and wishes.
Arianna and Dr. Siegel are right that most people do walk around in a bit of a haze or psychological "fog" much of the time Indeed, most human beings operate pretty much on automatic pilot with their ancient evolutionary needs and wishes calling most of the shots. If this is true, the political implications are enormous.
Really, how many "rational" votes will be cast on November 2? George Soros and Swift Boat Veteran's for Truth are not sentimental about these matters. They know that the upcoming election will be won at the lowest levels of the brain, not the highest. In fact, the spate of brutally negative advertising in the final week of the campaign is appealing to anything but an objective and rational analysis of the substantive issues.
Now to Level IV, the quintessence of evolution...the verbal-logical-analytical left hemisphere of the neocortex. This part of the brain is used so little by human beings that I fail to understand how it evolved in the first place. Yet, a relatively small number of really smart left-brainers have given us the greatest technological civilization of all time. That small cadre of smarties put it all in place over evolutionary eons and the average and below average masses of today just enjoy its benefits.
Now we see what Arianna is talking about. There is a grain of truth in her contention that "...people are not really assessing the facts [about GWB]. They're not looking at the evidence. We are reacting. Not all of us, thank God, but millions are reacting out of fear."
But are Democratic voters any less reactive or less readily seduced by appeals at the level of the "lizard brain?" Moreover, are they any smarter, more left-brained, or more analytical than their Republican counterparts? I contend that John Kerry's shallow intellectual pomposity, pie-in-the-sky "plans" and promises, shameless appeals to selfishness and raw materialsm, divisive race baiting and tribalism, and hateful attacks on the opposition, are prime elicitors of regression to the "lizard brain." When it comes to having the capacity to draw followers from higher to lower segments of the brain where emotion rules over logic, George Bush is a rank amateur, Kerry is damn good, and the epileptoid Howard Dean is peerless.
Thus, it takes a lot of nerve for Arianna to accuse the Republicans of taking the neuropsychological "low road' in using fear for political purposes. Moreover, the "fears" that George Bush and Dick Cheney address are brutally real ones as any left-brained, reasonable, and logical person would conclude.
Any "fears" that Republicans raise pale against the politics of irrational, reptilian, predatory and nigh-psychotic hatred that the Democrats have unleashed against George Bush over the past four years. Talk about plumbing the depths of our lizard brains! Columnist Charles Krauthammer has a name for it- the Bush Derangement Syndrome- or (BDS) for short (Washington Post Writer's Group, Dec. 5, 2003).
Bush has been called a liar, a stupid oaf incapable of logical thought, an incurious nonintellectual who cannot ask a question much less answer one, a reckless Texas cowboy, a war-monger, a right-wing religious fanatic, a closet racist and overt homophobe, and, worst of all, a swaggering man's man who is completely comfortable in his own masculine skin.
Using our neurological model, GW is a total person, a well-rounded, warm, empathic, compassionate, sentimental, masculine, daddy-type figure who wears his feelings on his shirt sleeve. He has a personality and a very nice one at that. His neurons are firing across all four of our theoretical levels of the brain. OK, he doesn't spend a surfeit of his time at left hemisphere level IV generating abstract ideas, but he readily understands the abstractions of others and incorporates the best ideas into his own cognitive system. When he moves up to level IV, it is usually to ponder matters relating to his very complete and rich system of moral and religious values.
By contrast, no one seems to know what or who John Kerry really is. He is smart and verbal to a fault, but what are his core values and what does he stand for? Who is the real John Kerry as contrasted with the day-to-day flip flops, the relentless and compulsive self-promotion, the overweening ambition, and his willingness to submerge himself in the penumbra of very rich and powerful women?
In my view, his compulsive ambition to dominate emanates from reptilian level I and there is not much else going on until we get to the verbal, logico-deductive, left-brained level IV. Compared to GWB, there is seemingly little warmth, empathy, or "personality"in between Levels I and IV. Beyond being a very ambitious nerd and intellectual wonk, what else is there? Is there a real, warm, and vital person in there somewhere?
I get the feeling that liberals and the Democratic party do not particularly like Kerry all that much personally, but fate and a sorry slate of candidates have conspired to make him their man. And, he may be our president in a few days.
In conclusion, Arianna and Dr. Siegel employ an evolutionary interpretive model very close to my own. I hope conservative readers will not be turned off to the model because of its misapplication on the leftward side.
Kent Bailey [kbailey(at)vcu.org]
