I don’t think we behave irrationally. There are millions of people in this world suffering from what they feel are irrational fears. These fears are not irrational. Fears are part of a primitive defense system, developed millions of years age, and that system is just as active today as in that world of anarchy. If the world ever goes back to anarchy, that fight or flight mechanism may be the better system to use!
As the world is constantly evolving, animals are in a race to develop new behaviors to cope with an ever-changing environment. Most animals fail to adapt, and disappear. It is the ones that have managed to develop strategies to handle new threats that are alive today.
However, we never forget our old behaviors for survival. They are all permanently implanted in our brains today.
Our present world needs new methods of survival, compared to life a million years ago. And those old skills can sometimes interfere with our attempt to develop better skills for surviving in this modern world.
Here is an example of how a piece of brain, that was developed to survive in a world of anarchy, can interfere with a piece of brain that developed to live in today’s world.
- The Primitive Brain: How to survive in a world of anarchy
The primitive fight-or-flight mechanism was developed to survive in a very hostile environment.
The rules for this brain are quite simple:
- If you bump into something that tries to destroy you, panic, and try to escape by any means possible.
- If something that looks like something that once tried to destroy you, panic, and run away BEFORE you bump into it.
- Repeat Rule 2 for the rest of your life.
This fight or flight mechanism is a very powerful survival system, because it is found in just about all animals that have survived to this day.
In human beings, it is at the root of all our defensive responses, such as panic, fear, anxiety and worry.
- The Thinking Brain: How to survive in this modern world
This system involves using some very complex communication skills, that take years to learn. These skills help us to communicate with others, and to survive with minimal conflict, so that we can increase our chances of a longer life.
The rules for our modern brain are also quite simple.
- Study hard early in life.
- Get a good job, and hope you don’t get fired.
- If you get fired, try to get another good job.
- Repeat Rule 3 until you retire.
This new system involves lots of new intellectual skills found mainly in human beings. It is a remarkable mechanism, located in our cerebral cortex. It teaches us how to work hard, and get our rewards later.
The Primitive and the Thinking Brains live in harmony most of the time.
The primitive brain makes us into careful drivers so nobody gets killed, and the sophisticated brain teaches us to all sorts of boring skills, so that we can collect pieces of paper, called money, which we save, so that we can hopefully use for a comfortable and worry-free old age.
These two brains are located in very different part of our brain, with very few connections between the two of them. And these two brains sometimes clash!
For instance, let’s say you are on your way to work, get into the elevator alone, and the elevator gets stuck. No big deal. But the lights go out, and the intercom doesn’t work. You are all alone the dark. Your heart starts racing, you feel suffocated, and in a few brief seconds you are having a full-blown panic attack, and you feel you are about to die. The primitive system is in full defense mode. Scream, bang on the walls, do anything, but get me out of here NOW!
Rescue occurs in 10 minutes. The panic subsides. Your morning trauma is the major topic of your office. But eventually everything settles down, and you go about your business, and continue on your modern-day survival plan.
The next day, you need to take the elevator. You certainly remember your last experience, – and who wouldn’t? You now know that you were never in danger, and help was only a few minutes away.
You enter the elevator, and press the button for your floor. As the doors close, you feel an overwhelming feeling of panic. You grab the doors, pull them apart and run back into the lobby. You seem to be having a panic attack even before you got stuck! Where did that come from? What now?
After awhile, some co-workers appear, and you feel more comfortable going up with them. This then becomes your usual morning ritual: riding the elevator with friends. Fun!
Then you begin to notice you are getting uncomfortable in other elevators, even when you are with friends, and you find yourself beginning to avoid elevators wherever possible.Before long, you have a full-blown phobia about elevators. Your old fight-or-flight mechanisms decided to take over, and it is now beginning to mess up your ability to stay in a good job, unless you can have a job close to the first floor.
So here is a primitive survival mechanism doing its job of keeping you away from situations that produce panic attacks, and a modern survival mechanism that requires you occasionally take a risk and use elevators.
- From the Primitive Brain’s point of view, it says you almost died in that elevator, and my job is to stop you from ever getting into elevators again. Enough about this crazy idea of going to work, which is miserable and boring anyway. Play it safe, and learn from your trauma. Parts of the world out there are very, very dangerous. Especially elevators.
- From the Thinking Brain’s point of view, you see the anxiety is being irrational, and completely unnecessary. However all of your logical reasoning seems to have no effect on the behavior triggered by the Primitive System.
- The mismatch between these two systems is now beginning to destroy your chances of surviving well in this modern world.
Actually both systems are functioning perfectly well. The trouble is, these systems developed independently, and they don’t have a way of talking to each other.
Both systems perceive themselves to be working rationally, and see the other as being irrational.
What is rational, or not, is in the eye of the beholder.