How We Think and Behave: It Gets Weird
“All men desire by nature to know,” Aristotle begins his best-known work, The Nicomachean Ethics. “The Ethics,” as it’s normally called, explores man’s relationship to his fellows and the optimum way to live our lives.
Fast forward 2300 years, and the quest for knowledge of the human condition has headed us in the direction of brain anatomy and chemistry. As we discussed recently, whereas we believe that our mental and emotional viewpoints are based on cold reason and an objective interpretation of what we perceive, this is almost never true. In actual fact, most of our outlook on things is rooted in things over which we have no control: the impact of early childhood experiences and the way various parts of our brains interact with each other.
Here’s a fun little datum from the syndicated radio program “This American Life” with Ira Glass: round things brings us an immediate sense of joy, and we tend to favor them over angular things. When experimental subjects are hooked up to instruments that tell us the locus of brain activity, sharp things tend to stimulate the amygdala, the portion of our brain responsible for stimulus/response and fight-or-flight, where round things tend not to do that; they recall things like hula-hoops, soap bubbles and tiny kittens.
From a personal perspective, this rings completely true.
Above is an example of Romanesque architecture, to the right is the facade of a Gothic cathedral. Which do you find more pleasing? I’ve always favored the former.
Of course, there is a level of importance here that goes far beyond our aesthetic appreciation of art and architecture; brain physiology helps us understand how we react to real-world situations, like those contemplated by the great Aristotle more than two millennia ago. Two people of comparable education and intelligence, as well as similar life experiences can have identically opposite points of view regarding how other people should be dealt with and how society should be structured.
Some people, for example, have an abiding dislike of people of different ethnicities, where other people see no important distinctions, and believe that everyone should be given a chance at a healthy and happy life. Interesting, it appears that the differences between these two people resides almost entirely on the physical make-up of their brains, which, of course, is something over which they have no control.
