MindSpinner

In snatches of spare time, I’ve started to read here and there about how our brains work. This afternoon, I took time to peruse “The proper study of mankind,” an overview of human evolutionary development by The Economist’s science editor, Geoffrey Carr (certain sections viewable only to subscribers).

There was much to fascinate.

Our brains are 6% smaller than those of Neanderthals, though we like to think modern human brains are simultaneously more complex - not that we have Neanderthal brains to study to confirm that, of course. I, for one, am guessing that Neanderthals had a lot to think about, just in order to survive from day to day. Plopping down on the couch in front of the tube or flat panel at the end of the day is not half so intellectually demanding as outwitting one’s prey and one’s predators, figuring out how to make tools out of natural materials, and learning how to manage in an environment without heat and air conditioning.

One question broached is simply the matter of why our brains got to be a lot bigger in proportion to our size than the brains of other animals. Researcher Terrence Deacon posits that the development of language enabled a complex culture which in turn required complex thought demanding ever more complex language, in a feedback loop.

Evolutionary social psychologist Geoffrey Miller posits that mental prowess attracts members of the opposite sex, that our brains are analogous to the male peacock’s gorgeous tail because good minds make us better mates endowed with survival advantages (these days, presumably jobs with good salaries). Thus, in our evolutionary past, bigger brains became a trait more likely to be passed on to offspring.

On the one hand, I find this a reductive explanation of the creative impulse and intellectual aspiration. I suspect that, were I the last human being on earth, I’d still write and create in order to count myself alive, though very sadly for lack of others to relate to. I’d have to reject “mate attraction” as the driving force behind the actualization of mental and creative potential.

Minds constitute one of a number of variables that factor into attraction. It seems clear to me that different people prioritize those variables differently. Some prize intellect and creativity, and some don’t. We look for those who unfurl the peacock tails we want to see, and who best see our own peacock tails of one kind or another. When there is an affinity between smart creative people, no doubt minds work doubly hard to make the connection as rich as possible. That’s true whether or not mating is at issue.

And that’s enough of that, because I’m tired of thinking of my mind as a batch of tail feathers.

One of research findings I appreciate most is the fact that human beings seemed to be hard-wired to collaborate just as surely as they are hard-wired to compete. They are riddled with altruism, and not just directed at their immediate relatives, as is the case with most animals excepting vampire bats, who are, as human beings can be, generous with others - until they feel they have been cheated. Like vampire bats, people have a sense of mutual fairness and object to rules of fairness being violated. Geoffrey Carr outlines the evidence:

Trust, and the detection and punishment of injustice, lie at the heart of human society. They are so important that people will actually harm their own short-term interests to punish those they regard as behaving unfairly. Another game, for example, involves two people dividing a sum of money ($100, say). One makes the division and the other accepts or rejects it. If it is rejected, neither player gets any money. On the face of it, even a 99:1 division should be accepted, since the second player will be one dollar better off. In practice, though, few people will accept less than a 70:30 split. They will prefer to punish the divider’s greed rather than take a small benefit themselves.

(”The concrete savannah“)

I’m giving that 70:30 split some thought. The limit of what we will accept in terms of unbalanced returns on investments, especially in relationships, clarifies much. It clarifies why relationships that once worked eventually cease working. It clarifies the work of continual mutuality that has to be done to keep relationships viable.