What a tangled web we weave (even when we're not trying to deceive)

It will be obvious from my previous posts that I assume that everything that we do and say, and even our anatomy, can in some way be explained in terms of survival. Analyzing things that way helps me figure out where and why things go wrong, and can even help me accept things more easily, because it allow me to view problems much more rationally. Basically, I see two main categories of problems: (1) opposing interests, and (2) stimulus-response type problems.

Opposing interests
Can exist between individuals, between groups, between individuals and groups they do not belong to, and between individuals and the group they belong to, up to and including the species as a whole: what is good for the species is not always good for the individual (again with thanks to Richard Dawkins, writer of The Selfish Gene, for the basic idea). These types of problems - though definitely not easy to solve – are so easy to understand that I will not spend any more time on them, other than to note that the human race seems to be becoming more aware that on the whole, cooperation can be more beneficial than competition, and that we all depend on each other to some degree.

Stimulus-response type problems include
• Problems at input
• Faulty processing or analysis, and
• Inappropriate responses

Almost all of the input runs through the nervous system, but the processing and output can either be done by the limbic system (emotions) or the nervous system (thought), or - usually - both at the same time.

The most common input problem is related to receptiveness or sensitivity, which differs from one person to the next. This can be physical, with oversensitivity to certain stimuli (warmth, pain, allergens) on one end of the scale, and the inability to perceive these stimuli on the other. Or it can be emotional, whereby very sensitive people will have the problem that most input hits too hard (which may cause them to overreact – “I’m only shouting because you are!!!!” – even though you had only raised your voice slightly), while less sensitive people will be slow to react to anything, as in the staple complaint in marriage counselling sessions: “He/she never listens”.

Response problems can include no reaction or overreaction - a problem of fine-tuning, you could say - and of course the problem of timing: there is always a lag time between a change in circumstances and the response to that change, examples of which are all around, at every imaginable level. At the level of the species, changing circumstances may require increased resistence to certain pathological agents, or increased tolerance for temperature differences, but genes take time to change. Within human societies, there is always a delay between changing mores and legislation. Corporate life nowadays is all about flexibility and adaptability, but of course, many companies fall by the wayside. And individuals may also be slow to change (e.g. because of laziness, inability to solve the dilemmas, fear of the unknown/uncertain, etc.).

All of these are quite interesting, and I will probably get back to them, but the problems I am most interested in are those in the processing stage, and especially in the case of thought/analysis, because that is where I think we stand the best chance of improving things. To give just a very few examples, we have faulty analysis at work at the level of western civilisation as a whole (just think of the current third-world aid mess), at the level of nations (witness many governments’ misguided attempts to repress drug and alcohol use), at group level (whole classes who seem to believe that all their problems are the fault of one of the other classes), but of course especially at the level of the individual, which is the basic unit of thought and therefore ultimately responsible for everything.

So basically, it is all my fault.

But what is it I am doing wrong, then? Well, for one, the whole stimulus-response system is based on making assumptions. You cannot process input in a vacuum any more than you can literally pull yourself up by your own bootstraps: you have to compare your observations with “template patterns”, take the best possible fit, and see if you can’t find a better fit as you go along. If you are very smart, this will not take to long. If , however, you are not so smart, but very determined (like me), you whittle away for years and years, until things start making sense. In any case, I’m off the hook again, because we all do this to greater or lesser degrees. We use assumptions. They may be the mother of all fuck-ups, but – like the opposite sex - you might not be able to live with them, but you can’t live without them either. The only good thing you can say about templates is that – again like relationships - the more you work on them, the better they get. And if they don’t, you may need to jettison them altogether.

Of course, not everybody has the same processing skills. I’m not talking about intelligence in the old-fashioned sense of the world (math, logic, linguistics): I am thinking more specifically about the difficulty to test theories. It would be perfectly understandable if living with your family has led you to reach the conclusion that all siblings are scum, but what distinguishes the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, is the ability to process new input. Seeing other families in action should probably help you conclude that in fact, you were overgeneralising: only your siblings are scum.

This can go a lot further, of course. Some people never really grow out of the comic book perspective, where people can fly, karate-chop through concrete pylons, and burst into flames (oh, allright, you might actually make a case for spontaneous combustion, but that is after death, not before it). In fact – but now I digress even further – I suspect this might be a pre-requiste for becoming a conservative politician. (Hey, that was a good one: in a few short paragraphs, I have succeeded in shifting the blame from myself to conservative politicians.)

But probably the most common processing problem is the fact that it is often difficult to separate thoughts from emotions. And I have no doubt that we should do try to do this: the two systems were designed to do different things, which is why your brain may tell you to do something completely different from your gut (note I do not say "heart" - this is because "using your heart" is not really about emotions at all, it is a metaphor for wisdom, or taking all sides into account, which in fact is a rational, not emotional activity).

More about this in a next entry!