Reproduction of a fossil of a scarab, 1984, collection of the author's wife.
"Your physical, reptilian brain has the control centers for fear and aggression, our deepest and most primitive emotions. Killing prey, territorial defenses, sexual predation and ruthlesss self-interest are the legacy of our earliest ancestors...
The brilliance, the absolute triumph of mammals, is that we took the same chemistry, the same neurological wiring, and turned it around to create positive emotions. Reptiles run purely on negative reinforcement emotions. Mammals invented love, joy, pleasure, and play, all of which are enshrined in our DNA.
But the reptiles were doing pretty well with anger and agression. Why go further? What's the biological point of love or friendship, of being happy, sad, optimistic or enthusiastic? Why invest extra energy in building a whole new level of brain structures? The answer is, to work together.
Tile of a Lion. White Glazed Terra Cotta, Christmas gift from my wife, 2008
Nature hardwired our reptilian ancestors for their own individual survival. Apart from a drive to have sex, reptiles have no parental instinct. Most of them cheerfully eat their young, which is why they're programmed to lay eggs and get out of town before they hatch. Our limbic brain gives us two critical advantages over the reptiles. It lets us love our young and work in groups. (some people are better at this than others -- perhaps an indication of the development of their limbic brains -- CHE).
Bronze Lion on oak base. Going-away present from Occidental College, 1997
Luckily for us, although the limbic brain responds to both positive and negative reinforcement, it responds best to the chemistry of pleasure. We feel good about our offspring and about being part of a working group. (again, this is true for the most successful -- indeed, most 'human' of us -- but certainly not all of us). Back in nature, packs let us forage with a collective eye out for predators, hunt more effectively and share child-raising.
Clothespin from The French Laundry. Gift from the restaurant at my 40th birthday party there, 1999. Trophy commemorating my hole-in-one my first time on a regulation golf course, Sierra View Country Club, June 11, 1999.
Think of the physical reaction you have to anxiety. That's the limbic brain kicking your reptilian adrenaline into action, like a rider on a big, powerful horse with a mean streak. If the rider is good, he has a lot of control, but the horse will always be a bigger, stronger animal. If the rider isn't so good, or if the horse spooks, he can get thrown and the horse will take off without him. The same holds true for your primal instincts. If you work at it, your limbic brain can become a good, even great rider, but the horse will always outweigh you by a thousand pounds; you will never be as firmly in control as you would like to think. In practical terms, that means you will pay a steep physical price if you don't get the emotional structure of your life into fairly good shape."
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