“present-tense emotionality is what communication by animals is mostly about.”
“Language pries apart a message from its meaning, and as our hominid ancestors kept getting better at this separation, great individual and social advantages accrued. We became capable of representing emotions in the past and possible emotions in the future, as well as things that have nothing to do with emotion. We evolved a uniquely dramatic means of separating message from meaning and intent: lying. And we invented asthetic symbolism; after all, those 30,000-year-old paintings of horses in Chauvet cave are not really horses.”
“Our early use of symbols helped forge powerful bonds and rules of cooperation, as human societies grew increasingly complex and competitive. A recent study by Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia and Azim Shariff of the University of Oregon revealed that, across 186 societies, the larger the typical social group, the more likely it was the culture created a god who monitored and judged human morality—perhaps the ultimate symbol of rule enforcement.”
“As evolution continued to tinker, it did something remarkable with humans. It duct-taped (metaphorically, of course) the anterior cingulate’s role in giving context to pain into a profound capacity for empathy.”
“We’re not the only empathic species. Chimps show empathy when, for example, they become more likely to groom someone who has been unfairly thrashed by an aggressive jerk of a chimp. And we’re not the only species with an anterior cingulate. But studies show the human anterior cingulate is more complex than in other species, with more connections to abstract, associational parts of the cortex, regions that can call your attention to the pains of the world, rather than the pain in your big toe.”
“And we feel someone else’s pain like no other species. We extend it over distance to help a refugee child on another continent. We extend it over time, feeling the terror of what are now mere human remains at Pompeii. We feel it embodied in words, as we contemplate George’s sadness that Lennie is never going to get his rabbits. (That part of Of Mice and Men never failed to leave me a sopping, tearful mess when I’d reread it obsessively as a kid.) We even feel empathic pain prompted by symbols encompassed in pixels. “Oh no, the poor Na’vi!” we cry, when Home Tree is destroyed in Avatar. Because the anterior cingulate has trouble remembering “it’s only a figure of speech,” it functions as if your heart is literally being torn out.”
“Let’s consider another domain where our brains’ shaky management of symbols adds tremendous power to a unique human quality: morality.”
“You’re in a brain scanner and because of the scientist’s weirdly persuasive request, you bite into some rotten food. Something rancid and fetid and skanky. This activates another part of the frontal cortex, the insula, which, among other functions, processes gustatory and olfactory disgust. It sends neuronal signals to face muscles that reflexively spit out that bite, and to your stomach muscles that make you puke. All mammals have an insula that processes gustatory disgust. After all, no animal wants to consume poison.”
“But we are the only animal where that process serves something more abstract. Think about eating something disgusting. Think about a mouthful of centipedes, chewing and swallowing them as they struggle, wiping off the little legs that you’ve drooled onto your lips. Whammo goes the insula, leaping into action, sending out its usual messages of disgust. Now think about something awful you once did, something deeply shameful. The insula activates. It has been co-opted into processing that human invention: moral disgust.”
“Our wobbly, symbol-dependent brains are molded by personal ideology and culture, shaping our perceptions, emotions, and convictions.”
“Many cultures inculcate their members into acquiring symbols that repel, doing so by strengthening specific neural pathways from the cortex to the insula, pathways that you’d never find in another species. Depending on who you are, those pathways could be activated by the sight of a swastika or of two men kissing. Or perhaps by the thoughts of an abortion, or of a 10-year-old Yemeni girl forced to marry an old man. Our stomachs lurch, and we feel the visceral certainty of what is wrong. And we belong.”
“The same brain apparatus is behind symbols that move us to our most empathic, inclusive, and embracing.”
“Our metaphor-making brains are unique in the animal kingdom. But clearly we are dealing with a double-edged sword. We can dull the edge that demonizes, and sharpen the one that urges us to good acts.”