The brain

One lesson stands out among all the rest in my efforts to understand the human condition: The brain is not primarily a truth-seeking organism. 

The brain’s prime directive is to facilitate the making of grandchildren. To the extent that an “accurate” map of reality helps us survive and make grandchildren, the brain is perfectly willing to go there. But if reality gets in the way of grandbaby-making, out goes reality with the bathwater. No contest. The brain can be ruthless in shutting out reality when it feels called to do so.

What is more important to the grandbaby-making quest than reality?

Belonging.

We might be tempted to say, “Food!” “Shelter!” “Safety!” And yes, those are all more important than truth. But they pale in comparison to belonging. For starters, how are we to secure food, shelter, and safety except by belonging to a group? In today’s world, you can do it if you have the right skills, but in the ancestral environment? Not so much. And second, how are you going to secure a mate and raise children who will in turn raise their own children without belonging to a group? 

And so. If reality–truth–threatens belonging, we are hardwired to cast out reality.

Which in my view explains a few things. How can they deny climate change in spite of overwhelming evidence? In order to stay in sync with their group. How can they believe Trump won when 60+ lawsuits and even the Cyber Ninjas confirmed Biden’s victory was legit? In order to stay in sync with their group. How can they believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago by a “loving” god who delights in killing children? In order to stay in sync with their group.

Max Boot offers a compelling narrative of breaking away from the group–and the cost that accompanies it–in a Washington Post op-ed. He writes of breaking with the Republican Party:

It was a traumatic experience. I lost old friends and colleagues, and I was not exactly welcomed by some on the left who insisted I was a “war criminal” for having supported the Iraq War. Humans are tribal animals, and it’s disorienting to leave your tribe behind.

He goes on:

Leaving the GOP made me realize how much I missed by looking at the world through a partisan lens. In particular, I was willfully blind to what the Republican Party had become long before Trump came along. The racism, the nativism, the hostility to science, the conspiracy-mongering, the cruelty, the willingness to win at all costs. . . .

My point here isn’t how bad the Republican Party is. It is the degree to which membership in a group bends the mind to conform to the group’s norms. Leaving the group allowed him to think things that he was literally unable to think when he belonged to the group.

It’s an aphorism that “systems function according to their design.” The brain is a system. It was designed* to create grandbabies. Staying in good graces with your group is far more important to that task than correctly identifying the winner of an election. The brain does what it has to do.

*Yes, I know that has a teleological sound to it and evolution does not actively “design” things. But we can map the structures and functions of the brain–and I don’t know a better word than “design” to describe that.

--by Dan T.

Snowy wants to add this, a big thanks to Dan for his first thread here, and may I recommend you copy and paste the invite list in two sections as follows and post them as comments - as I do:

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