It’s been a confusing week in which we’ve (predictably) seen the President of the United States take an aggressive and confrontational stance towards America’s traditional allies, and treat a Russian Dictator as a trusted friend. What, you may ask, is going on?
Exploring this principle has been the life-long work of Linguist and Cognitive Scientist George Lakoff (Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkely). He developed “The Strict Father Model” as a unifying view of the many seemingly contradictory values exhibited by factions within American politics. According to Lakoff, as we are first governed in our families we grow up understanding the governing systems of society in terms of the family dynamic. There are two poles to this – the strict father and the nurturing parent. The strict father is seen as the ultimate source of moral authority in the family and their governing influence is asserted under the threat of painful punishment. The threat of pain is used to force the child to obey – or do what is right – rather than what feels good. The logical outcome of this line of reasoning is expressed by Lakoff as follows:
Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.
The most blatant expression I’ve seen of this mindset was in an opinion given during a 2016 presidential campaign interview. The interviewee asked the question “why should my taxes be used to fund the 911 (emergency response line) service? People need to learn to deal with their own problems”! Seemingly, to that individual, the action required immediately after a heart attack, car accident or shooting would require calling a cab for a ride to the hospital’s emergency department. That approach has DOA (dead on arrival) written all over it. The alternative to this – the Nurturant Parent Model – is described in Wikipedia as follows:
The nurturant parent model is a parenting style which envisions a family…where children are expected to explore their surroundings, while being protected by their parents. This model believes that children inherently know what they need and should be allowed to explore their environment. The parents are responsible for protecting their child during this exploration, including protecting their child from serious mistakes, by offering guidance. A child will be picked up if the child cries because the parent wants the child to feel safe and nurtured. If a child grows up believing that its needs will be met, it will be more confident when facing challenges.
An article published in the journal PLOS Genetics entitled “Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans” sought to determine the neurophysiological activities/structures underpinning political orientation during risk taking activity. What they found was that the brains of liberals and conservatives were structurally different, with liberals having increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex (a brain region associated with impulse control), and conservatives having increased grey matter volume in the amygdala (known colloquially as – the guard dog). When brain activity was measured using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (as part of the study), liberals showed significantly greater activity in the left insula (part of the pre-frontal cortex associate with internal bodily cues crucial for subjective feeling states) and conservatives showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala.
The nature-versus-nurture argument has a strong application to this study, as well as other studies on political affiliation. Earlier studies identified parental political leaning as a major determinant in a child’s own political inclination. This was believed to indicate that political affiliation was genetic in nature, as parental leaning could be used to determine the views of their children with an accuracy of 69.5%. This, however, ignores the principle of neuro-plasticity where the structure of the brain adapts based on experience and learning, something that may happen to anyone as their life unfolds. An example cited in the PLOS paper is the study performed on London cab driver applicants who had learned the map of London in preparation for their new job role. These drivers demonstrated significant growth in their hippocampus, a brain region related to memory formation. The main takeaway for me is illustrated in this quote from the paper:
A classifier model based upon differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with 71.6% accuracy. Yet, a simple two-parameter model of partisanship using activations in the amygdala and the insular cortex during the risk task significantly out-performs the longstanding parental [genetic parent rather than the strict parent] model, correctly predicting 82.9% of the observed choices of party.
Lakoff acknowledges that the breakdown between strict and nurturing behaviour is by no means black and white as people tend to exhibit both tendencies depending on the context. There is, however, always one approach that is dominant. It would be naïve to assume that politics and the family are the only arenas in which this distinction manifests itself. We can probably identify people at work and in our religious communities, any community really, who exhibit a strong tendency in one direction or another. In an email exchange I had with a director at Oracle corporation, who is also involved in the Non-Violent Communication community, he described his work environment as follows:
For the last few years, I have not attended [NVC] training sessions, workshops, or empathy groups. I do however, use vernacular NVC many times a day in my job as a manager and with my family. At Oracle, specifically, I am alone. In Lakoff’s terms (see Moral Politics), Oracle works through a strict father model and [Larry] Ellison is the supreme strict father. I’m not about to attempt to change it. So, I respond upward in ways that work in the strict father model and downward with an NVC approach.
What he identifies here is the wisdom of accommodation. Although we may have a preferred (even imperative) perspective on life, there is little point communicating with someone’s right amygdala using our left insula, or vice-versa. The language and logic of both diverge so radically as to render such communication fruitless.
This need to speak the same language was brought into stark relief by the recent conflict between David Hogg (a survivor of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida) and Laura Ingraham (Fox News host). When she bullied him by diminishing the relevance of his anti-gun-violence fight by calling him a whiner he organized a protest against her show that resulted in the withdrawal of several high-profile advertisers (including AT&T, Bayer and Nestle) and netted her a week-long break from hosting the show. In an opinion piece on this story entitled “The anti-Trump resistance should stop bringing knives to a gunfight” CBC Journalist Neil McDonald makes the point:
America needs a real resistance, not slacktivists who talk about it. The left (and moderate right) needs to ape the Tea Partiers, who understood how to take over and use power.
What he describes here is the importance, when communicating with conservatives, of using language and strategies that the amygdala understands. During the 1930’s Albert Einstein was also forced by necessity to change his pacifist agenda to accommodate the realities of the third Reich. In his biography “Albert Einstein – Life of a Genius” Walter Isaacson describes Einstein’s eventual assent to the need for armed resistance against Germany. This realization followed his eviction from his home and the confiscation of all his property by the German Government due to his Jewish ancestry. This didn’t mean that Einstein had changed his point of view on pacifism, but rather that he had embraced the necessity for the protective use of force (an integral principle of Non-Violent Communication).
I raise these issues, not to promote a particular socio-political perspective, but to illustrate that in any communication one has to use language that the other party can relate to. As we will see, in chapter ?’s consideration of spiral dynamic theory, the contrast between pre-frontal and limbic function explains the primary distinction between Old Testament and New testament theology. In the Old Testament God played the strict father role, because that was the only power relationship that was understood on a societal level four thousand years ago.
Donald Trump is not the first US president to experience this kind of connection with Vladimir Putin. Another conservative President, George H. Bush, had this to say following their 2001 meeting:
I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.
Bush’s assessment is consistent with a connection between two similar brains. We will trust someone who has the same view of the world we do. We will see “eye to eye”. Our world view is determined by those neural circuits that, through genetics, upbringing and life experience, prove dominant. Bearing in mind that the European mindset is built on the activity of the pre-frontal cortex (logic, reason, compassion), it’s hardly surprising Trump sees Europe as a Foe. He can’t see eye to eye because what European leaders think and do makes no sense to him. It’s based on a different definition of “smart”. At the same time, Trumps actions have baffled, even horrified, European leaders for the same reason.