This is the dawn of a new era: For the first time in human history, there is sufficient hard evidence to begin explaining Man’s persistent irrational behavior.
And there is much to explain. Our entire history is a history of war and strife; we build up only to tear down, and cry, “Peace, peace!” only to wage war. Our literature and drama cry out that we are fatally flawed: from Achilles to Macbeth to Willy Loman, flawed heroes succumb to passions they’re unaware of, and destroy themselves and the things they love. Were this not enough, the evening news provides a running commentary on our daily irrational behavior: jealous rages ending in murder; road rages ending in fatal wrecks; intractable family feuds; bizarre lawsuits; sexual perversions and abuses; genocides; corruption … the list goes on.
If Man were rational, this behavior would be unfathomable. Why would we rationally choose to kill one another – and live in fear of being killed – rather than rationally choose to live in peace and harmony? Why would we choose to hurt the ones we love, and to harm, maim, and kill others for insignificant reasons? Clearly, it is only if we allow the possibility Man is irrational – that we are driven to these things in unconscious ways – that our behavior becomes understandable. But standing in the way of accepting this possibility is our absolute conviction that the things we do are things we have consciously decided to do; so we persist in believing we are rational, despite the overwhelming evidence we are not.
This is now changing.
Although the evidence has accumulated slowly, it has now become sufficient. It is now possible to understand how we can be tribal territorial animals unconsciously driven to war with one another, and yet have the utter conviction that we are consciously deciding everything for rational reasons.
The explanation lies in a remarkable brain function, dubbed the “interpreter” function by the neuroscientists who discovered it. This interpreter function has been extensively written about by Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga, the lead neuroscientist on the team making the discovery, and a description of the discovery is included in all of his books written for the general public, most recently in The Ethical Brain (2006.) The following description of the discovery of the interpreter function is based upon Dr. Gazzaniga's writings. For reasons you will see, I prefer to call the interpreter the “Great Explainer.”
First, some necessary background:It is well known that the brain has a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere, and that the left brain controls voluntary movements for the right arm and leg, and the right brain controls voluntary movements for the left arm and leg.
It is almost as well known that the abilities to speak and to comprehend language reside in only one of the brain’s two hemisphere, usually the left, so it is customary to write and talk as if they are always in the left brain. Whenever the non-speaking brain also has some language ability, it is usually limited to understanding nouns and verbs but not rules of grammar.
Normally the two hemispheres communicate continuously with each other through bands of connecting fibers, and we in fact have a single, fully integrated brain. If someone suffers from severe epilepsy, however, the two hemispheres of their brains must be surgically separated to prevent the electrical discharges associated with epilepsy from spreading from one half of their brain to the other, causing seizures and unconsciousness.
Once the hemispheres are split, only the left brain can speak, and it can only speak about what is known to it – present within it. This enables researchers working with split-brain patients to study the abilities of the two half-brains by providing information selectively to only one or the other and observing how the patient responds.
Predictably, whenever a symbol was displayed to the left brain the patient could easily speak the name of the symbol, but whenever a symbol was displayed to the right brain the patient would claim to have seen nothing. This was actually true, because it was the patient’s left brain speaking, and the left brain had not seen the symbol ... it knew nothing about it.
If cards containing pictures of the test symbols were placed in front of the patient, however, and he was asked to point to the picture of the observed symbol with his left hand (controlled by the right brain, which had seen the symbol) he would unerringly point to the correct card every time, even while he was claiming to have seen nothing! If asked to point with his right hand, he could select the correct card with only chance accuracy.
Startling as this behavior was to observe, it only confirmed expectations. It wasn’t until later testing that something completely unexpected showed up. To compare the two hemispheres’ ability to infer things, two different pictures were displayed simultaneously, one to each hemisphere, and the patient was instructed to use both hands to pick which two of a series of cards in front of him contained pictures that were related to the two displayed. In one example, the patient picked a picture of a chicken with his right hand to match the picture of a chicken claw displayed to his left brain, and picked a picture of a snow shovel with his left hand to match a picture of a snow scene displayed to his right brain. When asked why he’d picked those two, his left, speaking brain answered unhesitatingly, “Why the chicken goes with the chicken claw and the shovel’s needed to clean out the chicken shed.”
Whoa! The left brain knew nothing of the snow scene and had no idea why the left hand chose the shovel, but it instantly and effortlessly made up a reason, and believed it. Thus began the revealing of the Great Explainer.
When patients who could recognize nouns and verbs in their non-speaking right brain were tested, it became possible for the silent right brain to become more active during testing. The word “smile” could be flashed to the right brain and the patient would smile; if asked why, he would calmly provide a reason. The word “walk” could be flashed and the patient would get up and begin walking away; if asked why he would calmly explain that he was going to get a drink, a coke, or whatever. Never would the “Explainer” in the left brain be nonplused nor seem surprised by whatever action the right brain initiated, but would calmly explain it away with varying degrees of logic. If the explanation seemed implausible and the patient was questioned about it, he would become annoyed, even angry, for he clearly believed – knew – it to be the true reason he’d performed the action.
It eventually became apparent that whenever the non-speaking brain caused the performance of some action unbeknownst to the speaking brain, the speaking brain would immediately generate some explanation for it, sometimes plausible, sometimes outrageous, to make the action seem deliberate. What’s more, the subject would truly believe the explanation and defend it, angrily if necessary.
Now these patients frequently were highly intelligent people fully aware of the nature of the tests and capable of saying, “I don’t have the slightest idea why I did what I did, it must have been my right brain responding to some instruction you gave it.” The self-generated explanation was so strongly convincing, however, that it was not questioned … despite the circumstances, and despite sometimes being glaringly illogical. The “Great Explainer” in our brain is totally convincing, and is never questioned.
So, after these many millennia, it is finally possible to understand how we can be tribal territorial animals unconsciously driven to contend with one another, and yet have the utter conviction that we are consciously deciding everything for rational reasons. It is becoming increasingly evident much of our behavior actually is controlled by animal instincts, and that the brain’s Great Explainer function deludes us into believing we have rational reasons for our irrational behavior.
Once we accept this, we can get on with finding ways to cope with our hidden programming … so that we may someday live in peace.
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