Calling Forth (Our Evolved Nature)

Are You Curious About the Fundamental Forces Pushing Us Toward Apocalyptic Collapse?

INTRODUCTION: In order to discover the origin and nature of the fundamental forces that are driving our overall descent into apocalyptic chaos, the first thing we need is a minimum of a 300,000 year perspective.

As you will see, when this vantage point is adopted it becomes clear that we never will rid ourselves of such ills as sexism, racism, genderism, classism (and more) unless there are radical changes. Nor will we ever be able to abandon our preference for choosing the pathway of violence (at all levels, from one-on-one to millions upon millions) to bring about peace, one of our species’ most disturbing oxymorons.

Alternatively stated, as long as winning and staying on top remain as primary goals of life, we will continue to destroy ourselves and much of the planet, which is our home, our once-rich nest.

What we need turns out to be radical equality.

NEWSLETTER PURPOSE: One of the primary purposes of this newsletter is to bring an evolutionary and developmental perspective to our understanding of today’s many serious issues and conflicts. Despite all appearances, we Homo sapiens are not inherently violent nor are we hierarchical. Our basic nature changed in the last 15-25,000 years when we shifted from living as small band hunter-gatherers (SBHG), as we had for most of our 300,000 years, to living as farmers.

This understanding is based upon thoroughly researched evidence and interpretations that have been published by Darcia Narvaez (Emerita in psychology from Notre Dame) and her many colleagues. See http://evolvednest.org.

CONFLICTS:  While not all conflicts are damaging, any time the conflict involves a challenge to hierarchy from either direction, the conflict will be damaging. It can be minor at a single instance, but even the minor skirmishes can add up to something major. Major conflicts can go as far as genocide. 

DIMINISHMENT & SHAME: Feeling diminished is feeling shamed. This is always an interpersonal dynamic (including introjects). It is a judgement that one is not acceptable enough to belong. Not belonging has deep roots in the fear of death.

FOUNDATION: The 300,000 year perspective requires some explaining in order to serve as the foundation for analyses and recommendation for action. This foundation will be laid in two relatively brief posts.

This FIRST POST (this one) looks at key factors that changed with the abandonment of hunting and gathering and the advent of farming. Some of these changes left us deeply insecure about our place in the world with others. 

The SECOND POST will explain how, as a result of these changes, we have come to favor the activity of the left hemisphere over that of the right hemisphere. This in turn reduces our ability to sense the big picture, to find meaning, and to know intimately the feeling nature of each other and our natural surroundings.  This means our capacity for empathy, sympathy, and compassion is increasingly limited. This understanding is significantly aided by the application of Alfred North Whitehead’s process cosmology to help explain the why and the how of the outcome of this bias. Bringing Whitehead’s insights to bear upon our current struggles is a second major purpose of this endeavor.

In the long run, these two posts will be combined and expanded into a book with the working title, Transcending Violence: The Need to Right Our Mind.

EXAMPLE OF THE APPLICATION OF THEORY: An example of the application of this understanding to the world in today’s crisis can be found in the third paragraph from the start. One implication of this 300K year perspective is to stop assuming we’ve failed if racism reasserts itself and accept that teaching, training, and legal action to push back on this attitude will need to continue indefinitely, until we can decide what actions are necessary to take in order to return to living the universal radical equality that is in our bones as the deepest part of our species’ way.

All the -isms listed are acts of diminishment, in keeping with our hierarchical society. To be superior requires others to be inferior. All efforts at change result in conflict.  In the rest of the animal kingdom, anytime there is a relatively cohesive society that is hierarchical, instability is a given.

LIVING AGAINST THE GRAIN: But our species, according to a sizable body of research done by Darcia Narvaez and colleagues (http://evolvednest.org), did not start out that way. For 90% of our 300K existence, we lived as small band hunter-gatherers and were peaceful within and among groups. We were egalitarian, i.e., non-hierarchical; there was no leader. We also were sharing: regardless of contribution, all had equal access to the group’s resources.  Our sensitivity to the natural world – our world – was keen. When we sensed we were overusing the resources in a given area, we would relocate. We were a part of nature as a whole. Losing that immersive connection has diminished our well-being.

ALLOPARENTING: One of the most important features was our practice of alloparenting, which is when a non-parent functions in manner typical of a parent. This was accomplished by the fact that the closest adult to a stressed child would immediately tend to the child, parent or not.

This was especially important for our infants and toddlers because in order to have the large brain we possess, our infants are born developmentally premature so that most of the brain’s growth and development happens post-partum. It can take 18 months, perhaps more, to catch up with other species.

This means that our newborns are still very dependent upon external care, the type and degree of care other species receive while in the safety of the womb.  Alloparenting is the solution for providing womb-like care, responding as quickly as possible. In the womb, critical features, such as feeding and eliminating, happened for the most part without delay or effort.  Alloparenting ensures that delay and effort are as minimal as possible.

Alloparenting also means that a child over time has the opportunity to be actively cared for by most or all the members of the SBHG group.  One can imagine how the extensive experience of this unfolding during the attachment phase of development (birth to three) could leave a child with an adaptable sense of belonging, of a mutual sense of unquestioned importance to the entire group.

A third benefit of alloparenting is that the care of a child is shared with the others in the group; it is the opposite of isolating. It brings and keeps people together around an important common goal, in the same fashion as hunting and gathering to provide food.

Our species turn away from living as SBHG and toward the technology of farming was a radical change. The reasons for this change are debated, but whether climate change or other factors entered in, the outcome was the same. 

Eventually, we stopped moving and settled into to what eventually came to be territories with boundaries. While there is some evidence from two or three early settlements that a group remained egalitarian when it settled in, it was not long before there were many far larger communities with definite hierarchies that would go to war against other large communities.

WRITTEN HISTORY: While trade initially may have led to what became writing, eventually writing was used to announce the bloody victories that were the glory of the winning ruler.

What this means is that our entire written history leaves little doubt we are capable of the killing sprees called wars – our species, like the Chimpanzees, is one of violence, including pre-emptive murders.  But this leaves us deeply in conflict within as our DNA has not changed. We are born needing and seeking deep and strong connections with others.

WHAT CAUSED THE CHANGES: What has happened to make these changes?  Here is one likely scenario: The first thing to consider the lack of alloparenting as a seamless intervention. What happens when a child is not quickly attended to when stressed? Keep in mind the stress can be anything (hunger, fear, pain, lacking reassuring touch).

DANGER OF UNDER-CARE: We know from the work of René Spitz alone that under-cared for infants do not thrive. In his initial study, he compared 100 newborns cared for by their mothers in prison with 100 foundlings cared for by nurses. A nurse might have up to seven infants to care for at a time. (This would mean about 15 nurses per shift.)

At the end of a year, the infants in the prison group were all advancing developmentally. But in the other group, by the end of a year, 32 or nearly one-third of the infants had died and the remainder were so regressed they were unadoptable.

FARMING MORE TIME CONSUMING: Once we shifted away from hunting and gathering (which were group activities), toward farming, we were spending more time accumulating the necessary amount of food for the group than before.

ALLOPARENTING RARE TODAY: The assessment of the impact these changes had on alloparenting has to start with where we are today and to work backwards.  In some cultures today, there is a limited form of alloparenting among families all living in a single household or in a contiguous set of households. But for the most part, families live separately and extrafamilial childcare is hired as babysitters, nannies, and the like; or just not done.

It is possible that agriculture spread people out to cover the amount of land that needed to be in cultivation to feed the group. Another possibility could be the result of the idea of land ownership where families would work separate plots. Additionally, as the communities grew in size, it would become impossible to know everyone.

UNATTENDED STRESS LEADS TO FEAR OF DEATH: What this had to result in were moments where a child in distress goes unattended for long enough and for enough times to create a serious underlying fear of the outcome if no one comes. This fear, which can and does exist without a name, is the fear of death because one was not important enough to be tended to. The subjective experience of feeling that you do not matter is what we call shame. To be shamed is to be threatened with death. If you think this is extreme, consider how many mass shootings turn on this point.  Wars have been started with an insult.

CONTEXT: To put this into a context, we have to consider the nature of memory, the developmental stage of attachment (birth to age 3), and the complementary right and left hemispheric differences.  Until age 3, the right hemisphere (RH) is dominant in size and function. The RH is all about the self’s connection with the many parts of the whole. This is a receptive position. 

TYPES OF MEMORY: Generally, what we think of as a memory fits the definition of Explicit Memories (Episodic and Semantic). (Episodic is remembering last Thanksgiving or what you ate for breakfast). These types of memories seem to begin when the left hemisphere becomes dominant at approximately age 3.  Prior to that, when the right hemisphere is dominant, we are said to have Implicit Memories which are typified by Procedural Memories, such as remembering how to drive or ride a bike.

I propose we add Emotional Memories to the Implicit side.

EMOTIONAL MEMORIES: An emotional memory simply means that the pattern of current events triggers and sets in motion the emotion that was originally triggered by an earlier incident (or a series that is similar in nature). Hence, if there were some early moments of extreme neglect (extreme being relative to conditions), then when one is slighted in the present, the intense, raw initial responses to the earliest such threats will surge into consciousness, lacking any sense of this being a memory of a discrete event decades ago. Over a few generations, this would become the norm. Virtually everyone from three or four generations would have the same types of wounds so it would function as culturally normalized, even if not biologically.

HUMAN INSECURITY: As a result, as individuals and as a species, we became insecure about our importance. In our Judeo-Christian origin stories, we put ourselves above all of life. When we first try to reckon with the night sky at the start of a more scientific understanding of reality, we cling to the idea we are the center of the entire universe; death to those who do not agree. (In one of his series that covers the history of science, Neil deGrasse Tyson pokes a number of times at human grandiosity, the reaction to compensate for the insecurity.)

RELATIVE IMPORTANCE: As this progresses, at some point, and likely fairly quickly, we play our insecurity out publicly, learning to self-define as important by making sure others are designated as inferior.  This could occur by winning a struggle or a fight or a battle or a war. This also could happen when a numerically dominant group with certain features in common decide that those who lacked the features were automatically inferior. This could happen with a unique group, though numerically inferior, that possessed superior means of destruction (e.g., guns).

EVOLUTIONARY REGRESSION? This shift into a hierarchical arrangement might also be an evolutionary regression brought on by extraordinary pressures.

Regardless of how this issue developed, it should be clear by now that our extreme reactions to being and feeling shamed are rooted in a fear of not being important enough to be cared for, leaving one with the threat of dying that can be triggered in the present by any type of diminishment (active or passive). Until we find ways solidify a child’s importance to the equivalent of the group in a nest, we are going to struggle with the deadly potential that is an outcome of continued hierarchical struggles.

All those destructive “-isms” are going to remain along with the idea that winning is everything and losing is the grave.  In these cases, self-esteem belongs to the external, not the internal. If my team wins the Super Bowl, my self-esteem is positive. If they lose, my self-esteem is totally tanked. I have no control (unless I change my loyalty). If I’m one of the privileged, I’ve got more than a leg up; and I’ll have to make damn sure not to allow others to take this away.  Or, if I’m one (or more) down, I have to equal – or better – those who are better off than I am.

HOME:  We seek what we need but don’t have and the notion of “home” is one of the most compelling themes for songs, stories, and our personal angst. The TV series, Glee, for a Thanksgiving homecoming, did a moving mashup of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” and Phillip Phillip’s breakout hit, “Home” written by Greg Holden and Drew Pearson.

While one of Cindi Lauper’s most popular songs, “Time after Time,” does not use the word “home,” it is all about attachment, which is the foundation of home. Our early experiences when no one showed up quickly or at all in response to our desperate need for connection damaged our implicit confidence in our “home” to provide food, safety, and support, particularly important when we sensed we could not make it on our own. This is why the root of our response to diminishment is so intensely black and white, as in life or death. 

RIGHTING OUR MIND: There is a second major point that will be more fully explained in the next edition of this, and that is the fact we have become predominantly left hemisphere in how we function. This is because creating the plans for winning and the implementation of those plans are the LH specialties. The RH is all about connection and getting the big picture. Why this matters will be spelled out in the next piece.  This explains why the subtitle of the overall piece is, “The Need to Right Our Mind.”

CONCLUSION: The fuller conclusion will come at the end of the next post, but for now, the primary point is need to develop practicable ways to return us to a position of radical equality. The ideas for this need to come from as many as possible, and that will be the basis for some of the future posts.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY: My primary source on the original nature of Homo sapiens is the work produced and generated by Darcia Narvaez, Emerita from Notre Dame, as well as her many colleagues. Her website includes articles as well as additional published works: https://evolvednest.org. The conclusions I have drawn from the information are my own. For a reference summarizing our inherited nature, see,  https://www3.nd.edu/~dnarvaez/documents/NarvaezVerbeekChapterproofs.pdf

Other Important Sources:

The extensive work of UCLA’s Allan Schore. Schore has provided the neuroscience (including developmental) of John Bowlby’s attachment theory. One of the critical items covered by Schore is the effects of under care and abusive care. A good number of his articles are available at https://www.allanschore.com.

Iain McGilchrist’s, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, provided substantial information on the contrasting properties of our hemispheres, as well as an analysis of the modifications of Western Civilization stemming from the operations of the hemispheres.

I also drew from Robert E. Ornstein’s, The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1997.

I was able to bring Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy to bear upon the underlying dynamics of our contrasting hemispheres in an article, “Can Whitehead’s Philosophy Provide an Adequate Theoretical Foundation for Today’s Neuroscience?,” Process Studies 46:1 (Spring/Summer 2017). This adds considerable depth to the understanding of the functioning of our hemispheres. Contact me if you would like a copy.