I just had a short nap, (late to bed last night), and woke up reflecting more on the nature of the lizard brain. I think the whole key is that it tends towards pathology when it functions alone, but towards creativity when harnessed by the higher mind's faculties.
One thing I am speculating about (and there are good theoretical reasons for this) is that the lizard brain has to do with envisioning wholeness. In fact, this may be behind its projective mechanism. It unreasoningly fills in the gaps that are missing with empirical evidence -- especially in terms of that hoary chestnut issue of "identity". So where as we, as human beings, do not embody anything like an internally consistent or even self-consistent identity, a lot of the time, lizard brain, with its primitive (but also "artistic") consciousness posits that we do.
Lizard brain sees wholeness, then, where none empirically exists -- and it is just a step away, in that case, from positing "essences".
You can imagine, therefore, what it means when lizard brain becomes unhinged from the higher mind -- as is sometimes inclined to happen, especially with people, or even whole communities, under stress.
In other words, essences are projected, and imagined to pertain to individuals or groups "out there" when particular communities are under stress. This is a case of seeing self-consistency in others (a kind of "wholeness" where there in fact isn't any). In fact, whole groups -- such as "women" or "[insert ethnicity here]" -- can be seen as sharing the same essence, according to this vision, making them into some kind of self-consistent whole.
So much for the pathological side of lizard brain. I insist, however, that it is very wrong (and also pathological) to try to divorce ourselves from a functioning part of our brains. It is difficult to realise that we must work alongside lizard brain, because we are often trained to think it terms of purity and impurity, and therefore in terms on excising whole putatively "negative" aspects of ourselves, when the proper path is towards integrating them.
It has suddenly struck me how the lizard brain types get you sucked in to playing their game and conforming to their wishes. They employ your own lizard brain against you, in its artistic (non-pathological) drives to see them (the pathological lizard brain types) as 'a whole'. Wanting to perceive the other in this way (as a whole being) is not only creative and generous, but also has to do with our will to power, for we desire to "see" the other in order to enjoy him, but also to conquer him through our knowledge. We desire this form of relating (non-pathologically) because it is pleasurable.
But this is how the pathological lizard brains get us sucked in. I think that deep down, they know that they are not a whole, and that they can never be a whole person (in the different sense of being satisfied with their own inner resources, as the basis for an inward sense of identity, that doesn't rely upon others to "make it complete/true"). Somehow they manage to get us to engage with them -- with our idea of them -- by being disruptive, and by drawing attention to themselves. And somehow by giving them our attention, we create an image of their wholeness in our minds that the pathological ones can enjoy and feel gratified with. (Well, we all do this to some degree -- try to live our lives through the perceptions of others -- but I am talking about cases where people are extremely disruptive, and why that is.)
There are obviously some loose ends to all of this, for instance, concerning why the pathological ones cannot generate their own satisfying sense of wholeness, since they rely so strongly on the lizard brain for everything. It seems that what they lack is an emotional life that is in any way nourishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment