I may have mentioned that I’m lucky enough to be a part of a group of boyhood friends from our prep school in Philadelphia that meets monthly on Zoom.
Yesterday the question came up as to how our political beliefs are formed, and the group found my input somewhat shocking.
First, from what I can understand from neurologists, our brains are “wired” to function in certain ways. Via some combination of genetics, epigenetics, and early experiences, we are incapable of looking at the world in a fundamentally different way than we do now. I am no more capable of being a Trump supporter than I am of starting as quarterback in the NFL or memorizing the first 22K digits of pi, the way certain savants can.
This is validated by studies showing that our political philosophies are shaped by the way our brains fire under certain circumstances. When experimental subjects were hooked up to electronics that monitored their brain activities were shown pictures that depict certain threats, the results from self-described “liberals” and “conservatives” differed considerably. When shown photographs of kittens and mountain ranges, both groups processed those images in the same regions of the brain. But when shown photographs of snakes and tarantulas, conservatives were far more likely to process these images through the amygdala, the “fight-or-flight,” or “reptile” brain that kicks in when we interpret something as a danger to our survival.
I’m not losing my mind about immigration into the U.S.; I’m unconvinced that hordes of immigrants from our south or the Muslims from the Mideast are destroying our nation.
Why is that? My brain is wired to doubt it. For whatever reason, I’m more inclined to think that I’m one of 8 billion people on this planet that have almost identical goals and ideals. We all want to survive, to love our children, to be productive and responsible human beings, and to appreciate beauty.
On top of that, I’m a follower of Sam Harris, neuroscientist, author, and philosopher, whose work has shown that free will is an illusion. He points to a study whose findings are that, when we make up our minds in an instant to do a certain thing, say lift our finger from a table at a certain point of our choice, that our brains have made that decision a full half-second before.
Needless to say, there is a ton more to understand here about Sam Harris and his work on this subject. I urge readers to take that step forward.
