502. Evolution, Survival And Emotional Needs
Bertold Brecht said it quite drastically "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann die Moral". There are different ways to translate this, because morals can be understood differently. The translation as 'a hungry man has no conscience' may be the closest to Brecht's meaning.
But it can also be translated like this: 'There are no morals, unless there is grub.' In this sense, morals are more generally any cognitive influence on the behavior. Usually (there are exceptions), as long as someone is driven by urgent and strong physical deprivations, non-physical cognitive needs are not strong enough to determine or even influence the behavior and all emotional needs are a luxury beyond imagination.
I have already mentioned the theory of the environment of the evolutionary adaptation. Today we life in an environment, that has drastically changed from what the human brain has adapted to by evolution, which according to this theory is the savanna as it was about 10,000 years ago. But this environment had only insignificantly changed until a few centuries ago. The most drastic changes for the majority of the population in the rich western countries came only during the last century.
Only today's physical comfort and security of unlimited food supply, bright electrical light, warm water from the tap, central heating in sturdy buildings, health care, laws and law enforcement, safe birth control and nearly unlimited access to information provide people with an environment, in which they now are free to be fully aware of their emotional needs.
Bertold Brecht said it quite drastically "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann die Moral". There are different ways to translate this, because morals can be understood differently. The translation as 'a hungry man has no conscience' may be the closest to Brecht's meaning.
But it can also be translated like this: 'There are no morals, unless there is grub.' In this sense, morals are more generally any cognitive influence on the behavior. Usually (there are exceptions), as long as someone is driven by urgent and strong physical deprivations, non-physical cognitive needs are not strong enough to determine or even influence the behavior and all emotional needs are a luxury beyond imagination.
I have already mentioned the theory of the environment of the evolutionary adaptation. Today we life in an environment, that has drastically changed from what the human brain has adapted to by evolution, which according to this theory is the savanna as it was about 10,000 years ago. But this environment had only insignificantly changed until a few centuries ago. The most drastic changes for the majority of the population in the rich western countries came only during the last century.
Only today's physical comfort and security of unlimited food supply, bright electrical light, warm water from the tap, central heating in sturdy buildings, health care, laws and law enforcement, safe birth control and nearly unlimited access to information provide people with an environment, in which they now are free to be fully aware of their emotional needs.
This freedom to have full access to cognitive awareness is so new, that there has not been enough time to adapt the innate automatic responses for appropriate coping with emotional needs. People have not yet learned to use their cognition as a tool to adapt to their emotional reality. Today people are still driven by strong instincts, impulses and tendencies, that are dysfunctional in our highly technical environment:
1. The human brain has had not time yet to evolve sufficiently to the difference between real people and technically reproduced life-imitating representation of voices, still and moving pictures, because these only exist since about a century.
2. The human cognition has evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to survive successfully. The sensitivity to have emotional, intellectual needs and to suffer pain, when such needs are not met, are only a byproduct of the evolution of cognition. But these non-material and non-physical needs were hidden from the awareness by the much stronger dire necessity of a daily struggle for physical survival needs. Someone at the point of starvation and perishing due to lack of shelter or serious disease has no awareness for feelings like dignity and appreciation. Being hidden from awareness, the by-product did not influence evolution.
Not being aware of emotional needs like for attachment and trust and of intellectual needs like for knowledge and comprehension while being under the pressure of hunger and life threatening perils is like being unable to hear the birds sing underneath the much louder noise of an electrical drill. The evolutionary adaptation of human instincts is like being adapted to permanent loud noise. When the electric drill is turned off, someone hearing the birds for the first time does not know, that what he hears as an irritating sound are birds. Since in the recently changed environment the permanent threat of perishing has been removed, this has left people without sufficient innate understanding for the own and even more for the expressed emotional needs of others. Whatever innate empathy and mirror neurons there are, they do not suffice to enable people to avoid hurting and harming others without a cognitive decision to do so.
The tragedy of today's situation in modern rich countries is the discrepancy of people still treating others as the same ruthless instinctive driven animals in the savanna, while the comfort and security of the standard of life has freed the cognition and enhanced the perception for pain and suffering.
1. The human brain has had not time yet to evolve sufficiently to the difference between real people and technically reproduced life-imitating representation of voices, still and moving pictures, because these only exist since about a century.
2. The human cognition has evolved as an evolutionary adaptation to survive successfully. The sensitivity to have emotional, intellectual needs and to suffer pain, when such needs are not met, are only a byproduct of the evolution of cognition. But these non-material and non-physical needs were hidden from the awareness by the much stronger dire necessity of a daily struggle for physical survival needs. Someone at the point of starvation and perishing due to lack of shelter or serious disease has no awareness for feelings like dignity and appreciation. Being hidden from awareness, the by-product did not influence evolution.
Not being aware of emotional needs like for attachment and trust and of intellectual needs like for knowledge and comprehension while being under the pressure of hunger and life threatening perils is like being unable to hear the birds sing underneath the much louder noise of an electrical drill. The evolutionary adaptation of human instincts is like being adapted to permanent loud noise. When the electric drill is turned off, someone hearing the birds for the first time does not know, that what he hears as an irritating sound are birds. Since in the recently changed environment the permanent threat of perishing has been removed, this has left people without sufficient innate understanding for the own and even more for the expressed emotional needs of others. Whatever innate empathy and mirror neurons there are, they do not suffice to enable people to avoid hurting and harming others without a cognitive decision to do so.
The tragedy of today's situation in modern rich countries is the discrepancy of people still treating others as the same ruthless instinctive driven animals in the savanna, while the comfort and security of the standard of life has freed the cognition and enhanced the perception for pain and suffering.
Would people only ignore their own emotional needs, they would only harm themselves. But the worst tragedy is the harm done to
others due to the general oblivion and denial of emotional needs. While people suffer emotional pain as targets of behavior, they continue to be unaware of inflicting the exact same pain on others, when they act driven by their own instincts.
The choice of how to interact with the other gender is a good example. Today's environment allows everybody to attempt happiness in a monogamous committed relationship with one partner. Instead men continue to promiscuously abuse women's body, and women are driven by greed to exploit men. These causes suffering and makes them gullible customers for psychopharmaceuticals as already explained in entry 498.
