Nervous System Mastery: Redefining 'civilisation' for better mental and physical health
In the current climate it is hard to remember the main human super powers which are: sociability and friendliness. Unsocial media, doom scrolling, constant streaming of dark news, societal polarisation is financially benefitting a small minority but causing physical, mental and emotional harm to many. In this piece I want take a goodness snapshot of being uniquely human.
Blushing: a blessing not a curse
Hide your emotions, win by any means. The problem: humans are the only species to blush- one of the ways shame can visibly shows itself. Unlike misplaced shame, ‘healthy shame’ serves a valuable purpose, it is the civil wonder web that binds us. The evolutionary purpose to engender trust, connection, encourage self awareness and growth, promote cooperation and non verbal communication. A blushing gift delivered from our sympathetic nervous system. It is perhaps a mystery that many people in ‘power’ are shameless, continually lying, cheating & self serving, but are put in power by the many in society who are not. However, if the messaging these leaders give (regardless of whether it is true or not) offers relief in the short term, the nervous system will often take the immediate, in the moment solution. To think deeply, long term and change takes energy and resources, which is in short supply for the majority, but we can do it.
Culture and our prediction machines
The brain is a predictory organ, it needs to be, it has to monitor energy levels and be as slick as possible to deliver real time individualised reality to our sense of self moment to moment. The brain will learn from its environment, its experiences, to make a prediction about how to respond both in an out of conscious awareness. So therefore our culture heavily influences the electrochemical activity of our nervous system and as a result a healthy ‘civilisation’ requires culture to play ball. But, from the get go many of us are born into societies that define success through material value, individualism, competition and excessive consumerism. The brain is hoodwinked into accepting this as a social norm, a value to shape behaviour. This has resulted in us normalising the most addictive drugs available - the news and more recently social media. The news in the short term generates money by constantly feeding (mis)information about the worst of humanity, creating division, hate, to keep the drug flooding the market. To think this has been legally dispensed to young people globally too.
Follow that gaze
Paradoxically the news ‘drug’ corrupts the evidence that humans are predominately good. We need to remind ourselves that as a species we have survived due to our ability to be social and friendly. We are exceptional social learners utilising play and bonding. Aside from blushing we also have the white sclera (the area surrounding the iris) evolved, to allow us to follow the direction of peoples gaze, enhancing non-verbal communication, trust and emotions.
Talking of emotions..
Anger, sadness, excitement, happiness and not forgetting shames older sibling guilt. Notice how shame doesn’t need any words it is held within the body, often masquerading as something else. In contrast guilt requires language, intellectual thought. All these emotions can be felt often as pain. Just like the news addiction, we find ways to stop pain, in the short term, as opposed to understanding holistically the genesis. Western medicine has no interest in understanding the source but rather plays to the productivity and profit framework. We need to remember we evolved with such a gamut of emotions to benefit our survival rather than demise.
Potentially we can collectively reevaluate and change the culture (s) we have created by placing our evolutionary uniqueness at the forefront. Blushing, shame, guilt, eye chemistry & so much more make us all human, lets not let the small shameless minority ruin the collective good and our natural world.