Caring For Each Other Is The Resistance

Most decent folk realise that success lay in how we treat each other. Ask a wife what makes a decent husband and, if self-aware, they will talk of companionship not bank balance; sharing not dominance; kindness not power. A self-aware husband would say the same.

If we are even more honest with ourselves, as much as we fear the prospect of our kids not being able to provide for themselves, what we really want for them is to be able to form meaningful relationships - to not be alone as they go through life.

And when we reflect on our own lives, it is typically the impact we had on others not our material gains that matters most.

This basic and fundamental truth of the human condition is obvious to most of us. It is less obvious, perhaps even unseeable, for those driven by greed and power.

Indeed, our shared sense of humanity is inconvenient to those who view life as a zero-sum game. Unfortunately, and perhaps quite understandably, those who seek power and those who are currently in power tend to be that selfish few. The harsh reality is that those leading us are often those who don’t get what real success is.

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To make my point, I turn to neuroscience.

In evolutionary neuroscience there are two distinct concepts that govern how our brains turn out.

The first is genetic inheritance. That is, the millions of years of evolution that have honed our brains into what is unquestionably the most advanced system in the known universe. Genetic inheritance in relation to the brain typically dictates the “hardware” of the brain - structure, neurochemistry, connectivity, etc…

The second is cultural inheritance. Essentially, this is the software part - the programming. In a civilised society such as ours, cultural inheritance is vitally important. It is the lessons we have, as a species, accumulated over time. It is the millions of years of developing deep family connections and fine-tuning the social norms that permit relationships. It is every apprenticeship taken, every book written, every law passed, and everything in-between.

What we know, from scientific enquiry (and some heart-wrenching cases), is that as amazing as genetic inheritance is - the 100 billion neurons with quadrillions of connections -, we achieve little more self-awareness than most other mammals if we do not have adequate cultural inheritance. Without our shared culture there is no speech; there is no ability to form meaningful relationships; we cannot plan ahead nor shape our environments around us to sustain us into the future. What we know is that cultural inheritance - what we are taught and experience - is fundamental to everything in our lives.

It is both incredible and terrifying at the same time. Our ability to relate to one another isn’t secured by millions of years of hardwired changes, albeit the potential for it is. Our level of awareness and intelligence is based on what we experience and are exposed to, here and now.

It is this exquisite sensitivity that the selfish take advantage of. That, by altering what parts of the world we see and experience, and in some cases how exactly we experience them, they can alter our level of intelligence and, more crucially, our ability to relate to one another. It is partly why our attention is at such a premium to them - they want to have a dominant say in what our cultural inheritance will be.

The reasons they want such control over the masses are not complex. Primarily they want the power that human cooperation brings. The wealth they seek they cannot achieve on their own. Controlling the masses is to control the wealth.

They can’t do much about the genetic inheritance. They can’t simply tweak the hardware to turn us into mindless obedient drones. But they can, with enough power and influence, affect our cultural inheritance. And as we know, affecting what we see and experience is enough, particularly for the developing brain, to change our behaviour.

And don’t make the mistake of assuming these manipulations are targeted. That, if we are conditioned against different ethnicities that this will only affect our ability to relate to those ethnicities. Or if we are conditioned to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others that this means we won’t turn a blind eye to the suffering of our own. The brain does not function in such ways. We are being programmed to relate less, generally; to care less about each other. To be unsuccessful partners. To focus more on bank balance than companionship. To cheer the success of dominance and power over kindness and affection. To seek the downfall of others to define the success of our own lives.

The win for those selfish few who have reduced life to 1s and 0s is for us all to become as selfish and self-centred as they are; to be as unable to connect with others as they are.

Those in power are shaping our cultural inheritance more and more each day. While our inherent civilised sense - our desire to get along with one another other - remains dominant, if we allow them to continue accessing and altering our shared cultural inheritance then it is unavoidable that they will have a profound influence on human civilisation.

If we allow those who only seek power to dictate what our cultural inheritance is, and shape the world into their own images, then human society will naturally become more selfish and self-centred.

And it is with this simple realisation - that what we choose to surround ourselves with dictates who we are - we are able to push back. The exquisite sensitivity works both ways; as quickly as we are conditioned into hate and fear we can condition ourselves towards care, integrity and affection. Just as the influence of the oligarch-owned media can take advantage of our high-level cognitive sensibility, so too can we.

The fight begins by realising that making connections with one another really does matter. Indeed, it is the antidote to the vitriol of the selfish mind. Each and every time we connect with one another we are defeating those who see no value in being human. A moment of kindness, of caring, helps condition our natural cooperative sense. Indeed, it is much easier for us to achieve connection than it is for our overlords to disconnect us from each other, because our natural state is to be together, to care for each other and be connected. It begins, as it always has, with how we treat each other.