Image: A White Cup or Two Black Faces? by Bryan Derksen, Wikimedia Commons
My dad, the physicist, taught this: We really are a stupid species. One half of us thinks one thing, and the other half thinks the exact opposite. So there is no possibility of forward motion.
I think about this a lot, especially right now. A couple of years ago, I took a cognitive neuroscience course online at Cuyamaca College. I learned how the human brain is wired. We have two different pathways to take in information. One is through the amygdala, and the other is through the anterior cingulate cortex. The amygdala turns on the fear response. The cingulate cortex takes information in neutrally. If you are wired through the fear response, then you go into survival mode and think yelling, guns, and retribution. If you are wired neutral, then you think about the new information and sometimes reject it and sometimes agree with it; sometimes you act on it, and other times, you don’t. The scary part is that it takes a lot of work to change your brain wiring.
I am thinking this is what separates us into two opposing groups, into Republicans and Democrats, into conservatives and liberals, into the right and the left, into MAGAs and not-MAGAs. And thus, no possibility of forward motion for our country.
I don’t have a clue as to how to stop us from lurching right and then lurching left, and repeating the process again and again through time. My brain is wired through the cingulate cortex, but no matter how deeply I think about this, my brain hasn’t come up with an answer.
My family lived through the scary time of Joseph McCarthy. It was scary because my dad worked for the federal government (working on development of space suits) and we lived in a very liberal neighborhood in Washington, DC. McCarthy said there were commies in our neighborhood. The U.S. finally got rid of McCarthy because of Edward R. Morrow, who was a highly trusted TV anchor, much like Walter Cronkite who came next. Morrow said to McCarthy, “Have you no decency?” That woke up the movers and shakers, and he was censured by the Senate. So all the brains wired through the cingulate cortex breathed a sigh of relief. But now it sounds like there’s a commie in the White House.
Who is the next trusted voice? I have no idea. But until that person appears, into the streets I go..
