Robert Wright’s latest book brings together two big ideas: 1)
Evolutionary psychology and 2) Theravada Buddhism. It’s pretty wonderful as I’m very familiar
with both and yet the connection hadn’t occurred to me.
When I read Wright’s The Moral Animal a decade ago I
was reassured that people can both accept evolution in its full force and not
worry about falling wholesale into immorality.
There is plenty of evidence for cooperation and reciprocal altruism in
nature – this is a theme I’ve explored in this blog years ago and one that he
extended with his second book NonZero.
Now he’s written Why Buddhism Is True binding evolution,
psychology, and the Thai-Forest Buddhist philosophy/practice. Buddhism, he summarizes
“has been studying how the human mind is programmed to react to its environment…
Now, with Darwin’s theory we understood what had done the programming.” (p 224)
There are many kinds of Buddhism (“Zen is for poets, Tibetan
is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists” ) and some carry
supernatural beliefs like reincarnation which Wright and I reject.
Vipassana meditation,
from Theravada Buddhism, is sometimes called “mindfulness” meditation and has a
great deal of support in the books I read. I meditated regularly for most of a decade and intend to
return; I’ve never doubted
the value of sitting quietly and watching the mind.
First, a little background, the basics of evolutionary psychology. Our brains were groomed over 3.5b years to compel
us toward things that increase the probability of passing on genes and steer us
away from threats. Of course that was a
very different environment than we have now.
Things that worked well enough were hardwired and things that didn’t
were combed away. There was no premium
on accuracy so we are beset with delusions, illusions, and impulses, all nicely patched up with convenient rationalizations.
This hardwiring becomes a problem when the environment
changes faster than the genes do. Simple
example: once storing enough calories was a pretty big problem so craving fat
and sugar was selected for. When fat was scarce, that helped. We still have the craving but now we put on dangerous weight. Offense triggers aggression?
That worked for us once, now we get stupid road rage. Impulses are not always the best guide.
And while we get pleasure from satisfying our
impulses it doesn’t last very long. Why
should it? There’s no traction in satisfaction -- we have to reset quickly to be ready for the
next impulse. Studies have shown that even after winning the lottery people
soon go back to feeling a “normal” amount of happiness again.
Thoughts can inform emotions, that’s what cognitive
behavioral psychology has shown us. But emotions, Wright says, are the real drivers of action and the prefrontal
cortex, our "thinking" and most recent part of the brain, then rationalizes the action. This is not intuitiv. We feel as if “we” simply make decisions and act on them. Brain
scan studies show the brain signals movement before the person herself know she's going to move her arm. On seeing a stranger the amygdala announces within 0.2 seconds “attractive=friend” or “stranger=danger” before our prefrontal cortex -- and our awareness -- registers “thing.” In a world of snakes, cougars, and warring tribes
this reactive module was useful so evolution locked it in.
Wright then pointed out the next logical thing, and I was surprised that it
hadn’t occurred to me: Emotions can be
true or false. This goes against popular psychology but if the feeling of desire (groomed by
evolution) says “eating this bag of chips is good for me” -- and it’s really not -- your desire is lying.
Now a little background in Buddhism, there are three truths
to existence 1. Anicca, 2. Dukka, and 3.
Anatta. Nothing is permanent, there is suffering,
and there is no self. The last one probably
requires a little explaining.
What are the fundamental qualities of self? Buddha started with the proposition that to be “self” it must have some consistency through
time and it must be something
that we control. Both of these concepts
are implicit in the sentence “I did that.”
The Buddha said there are five aspects to our
existence. 1. the physical body and its organs, 2. our basic
feelings, 3. perceptions of things, likes vison and hearing, 4. mental formations
like thoughts, habits, etc, and 5. consciousness which is the awareness of the
other four. That’s a real simple summary
but the question becomes which of these is something that is persistent through
time and under our control -- the answer of course is none of them. Meditation helps you see that one by one.
Hence, no self.
So why do we have a “sense of self?” It’s good for the organism to look after its
body, the discrete package that carries its genes. In fact the body is probably the most
important thing, you want to wrap it up with a protective sense of self. If you don’t feel that there is something real special about what’s inside your
skin you won’t have a reason to protect it.
Good thing, too, if we’re going to live, right?
Of course that's impossible for a human to easily accept, but to get a taste of no-self try this. Meditate and focus on something that you'd normally consider part of you -- a thought, a desire, a pain ... When it becomes the object of your attention it seems to become something other than you.
The brain encourages use to recognize a special "self" which we fiercely protect. That makes evolutionary sense. Wright wonders whether self should be so discreetly bounded. In meditation he noticed that a pain in his foot sent a signal
to his brain – “inside = me.” A bird
chirping sends a signal to his brain – “outside = not me.” But, he wondered, in what sense is the
cramp different from the song? They both are signals, both are processed and interpreted by the brain. Both can affect our outlook.
The Modular Theory of the Mind is pretty compelling, I thought. It goes something like this. The mind contains competing
modules, each of which stimulates the organism toward taking some sort of action. The strongest module wins. Plenty of studies show how we can
easily fabricate reasons for doing something when we actually had no reason whatsoever.
A quote shows a good example of how this can work: “A
long-term module may generate a sense of guilt when you reach for that chocolate
bar. It may also give you a feeling of pride when you resist the allure of
chocolate. On the other side of the
contest is the chocolate lust generated by the short-term module. But the short-term module may have subtler
tactics as well. Is it, perhaps, the
module that dredged up the memory of that article about the long-term benefits
of antioxidants? It just thought the
long-term module might find that article interesting?” (p 129)
This has a practical implication. Instead of trying to overcome a habit – say,
smoking – by strengthening self-discipline, maybe try instead to weaken the
module that has taken control. How do
you do that? Simply by looking at it
carefully, and that’s where mindful meditation comes in. Looking closely at the desire can turn it into an object of interest rather than a transparent impulse. Mindful observation, he says, keeps the module from getting its reward.
Wright uses the example of a rat which pushes a lever to get
a reward. Keep the rat away from
the lever and the rat will still associate
the lever with reward; when you look away he'll push it again. On the other hand if you disconnect the lever
from the reward, the rat will lose interest in the lever. In the mind, you need only to bring the lever
into your awareness to disassociate the
two. From my experience, this can work.
Wright also explores the “essence” of things. These are the adjectives we assign to
objects -- that house is a “modest” house, or that person is a “nice”
person. Everything meaningful in our
awareness is an association we have assigned to it, he says, and again, this has evolved for practical reasons.
Once you categorize something you don’t
have to continually reassess it. Attaching essence to things is something we do all day. It's a shortcut we aren't even aware of.
We also have an “essence preservation mechanism.” If
a friend does a bad thing we consider it unusual, just as when a “bad” person
does a good thing. Still good. Still bad. Wright suggests that not seeing “essence” consists mainly of
not feeling intensely toward things. “Dampening of feelings leads to clarity of
vision,” he says (p 165) “… not making
judgments’ ultimately means not letting your feelings make judgments for you.” (223)
The way to see this for yourself is through meditation, he says. It’s the practice of “fighting your creator:
natural selection.”
