Brain Study pt.10 Direction and Drive: Life Conflict (t or d?)

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This one's a longy...bn

 

Direction and Drive: the Conflict of Life

A very large percentage of the brain, perhaps more than 90%, is

required for body maintenance (heart, respiration, etc.), information

gathering (sensors and data preprocessing), memory, and motor control

(legs, arms, etc. post-processing and command translation). These

together describe the physical abilities and limitations of the

individual. The senses determine the amount and quality of current

environmental information. The physical construction and mobility of

the body determines the behavioral capability and capacity of the

individual.

 

But man's behavior goes much deeper. It is the balance of the brain

which provides much of what becomes behavior.

 

The simple organism shown in figure 3 did not need an impetus to do

what it should do and its guiding mechanism did not provide decision

conflict, the basic element of 'intelligence' in animals. In this

simple animal, the sensor gave not only information but also supplied

it in such a way that it provided the command signal required to

satisfy the error in that information. Implicit in the sensor's data

was the command to do a specific thing about it. These are referred

to as reflex actions, actions taken in direct and immediate response

to a given sensor input. The blink of the eye to prevent injury to it

when something moves toward it is an example. The jerk of the hand

away from something hot is another.

 

As organisms, and their perceived environment, became more complex,

animals developed a repertoire of actions. The decision on which to

do became necessary before the command could be issued on what to do.

There were conflicts in the environment and often there were choices

which needed to be made. As multiple requirements grew, the central

decision matrix gained terms to be considered.

 

The first drives (instincts) developed in genetically specified form

were the ones that concerned body functions. Safety, food, sex, and

care of young are some of the focal points, all under the general

heading survival. Decision conflict was the method which developed as

the result of evolution.

 

The decision conflict between safety and food was probably the first

developed. Before this decision conflict developed, the animal always

sought food. As predators developed around them, those whose only

function was finding food continually blundered into disaster. The

idea of survival or safety had not been developed. The first animal

which moved around as it sought food but changed directions rapidly

when a moving shadow appeared, tended to survive better than those

that doggedly stayed on path regardless of movement around them.

 

Whereas before, the signals from the senses were translated directly

into commands for motion and eating, now this translation depends to

a certain degree on a new factor. We call that factor fear. The

emphasis is hunger, the conflict is fear. As long as the hunger is

greater than the fear, the animal forages. When the fear emotion

exceeds his hunger, the animal will flee. The animal is no longer

ever completely comfortable, since it lives in a constant decision

conflict between hunger and fear. Under a comfortable environment,

the fear is small and the appetites may be attended to. Under a

stressful environment, the two are balanced, and the animal is

extremely uncomfortable, barely able to decide whether he wishes to

eat, or to be eaten. This, historically, has been the position of

man, constant fear and constant hunger, each ebbing and flowing with

the experiences of the day. (Investors on the stock market play the

same game today.) The modern attitude of mental conflict avoidance,

espoused by modern psychologists and philosophers, is a perversion.

TGIF is a death mantra. Man needs that inner conflict, it is the

essence of his life. His value, then, lies in his unique solution.

Without conflict, what difference does a solution make? Who cares?

 

The forage/danger conflict along with the fear function which

regulates the balance between those factors is one we see often. Feed

a wild animal or bird in your back yard and you will enslave him.

Your backyard becomes a foraging location of relative safety and some

constancy, neither of which exists elsewhere in his habitat. The

forage/danger ratio becomes quite desirable in his decision matrix

and the animal will strive to enjoy it. Feed the animal a constant

amount regularly, and the crowd will increase as others gather for a

handout. As the crowd grows, the food for each shrinks. The crowd

will continue to grow even when the amount of food available for each

approaches a starvation diet. Soon, it's a battle royal between

competing animals. A similar process exists in human welfare systems.

All welfare systems, regardless of the species involved, will tend to

grow without limit. It is natural that they do and the growth should

be expected.

 

Evolution then favored three kinds of changes to the animal:

 

Instincts which provide for problem avoidance: If the animal became

more adept at identifying his danger so that he more often fled when

he should and less often fled when there was no need, he had more

time to find food and tended to survive better. This was gained by

developing a fixed mental sensory image which more closely resembled

the danger, so that sensory input could be compared and the decision

could more easily be made between danger and no danger. The actual

sensory image, in this case, was compared with the genetically fixed

(instinctive) memory pattern. The amplitude of the output signal

(fear) was in direct proportion to the degree which the two matched.

Instincts which favored problem solving: If the animal became more

adept at identifying his food, he became more efficient in his

foraging and made better use of the time he was not fleeing from

danger; therefore he tended to survive better. The food image was

developed in the same manner as the danger image above: an image in

fixed memory (actually composed of many images related to the senses)

to which the sensory image could be compared.

Instincts which caused the organism to be more dynamic: If the

decision matrix became more sophisticated so that the flee or eat

decision was brought into sharper focus, the animal wasted less time

in fleeing without diminishing his safety from being eaten and

thereby became more efficient in the use of his time. This was done

in part by developing a hysteresis in the decision mechanism which

diminished the fear, even though danger was allowed to be recognized

as being present, until the danger reached a certain threshold. Thus

bravery was born, the instinct which allows function in the face of

danger.

Once these three trends (natural occurrences of behavior modifying

instincts under the selection process) became established, all of the

modern higher animals, including the human, became probable. These

three instincts become more adept with time, and many new instincts

grew from these. Where are these various instincts located? Most

sensory and motor signal processors contain that portion of the

instinct which effects them in the analysis of their requirements. It

is believed that the central portions of the instinct set reside in

the frontal lobes.

 

Chance mutations when life was young developed the sexual animal. The

prior cell division method of reproduction had resulted in great

stability in the various forms of life. The sexual animal provided

more variations, to try out against the environment, than the asexual

reproduction could provide. Most variations were worse and quickly

died out but some were improvements and these tended to survive by

crowding out the asexual animal. In the beginning, sex was for the

purpose of reproduction. Early animals had no notion of reproduction.

Sexual drive was provided genetically (another instinct). Those who

engaged in a lot of sex had a lot of offspring and therefore tended

to thrive as a species. The others tended to disappear as a species.

The selection process favored a strong sexual lust, in most species.

It became so strong in many species that it transcended food and even

danger. Increased sexual drive tends to be intensified by the process

of evolution, to a point. If it becomes too strong, it creates

problems which in turn may be so serious that the continuation of the

lineage is harmed. In that case, the evolutionary process will tend

to eliminate those species with lusts which are too strong. Lust

becomes another factor in the decision matrix.

 

If a species has so many offspring that sheer numbers provide the

species continuation, then the parent is quite casual toward them.

Plants follow this path, with some plants providing millions of seeds

each year with the hopes that in their lifetime at least one of those

will live to bear seeds also. Rabbits are known for this approach.

Male mammal sperm also follow the route that success depends on large

numbers. Other animals, such as the human, dolphin and elephant, bear

only a few young which require lengthy care to become adult and have

their own offspring. These offspring require lengthy personal care,

in turn requiring a great attachment between parent and young. Those

parents who do not have this attachment, do poorly in raising their

offspring and their genetic lineage tends to die out. Those who have

great attachment are more successful in raising their young and their

lineage tends to prosper. Thus parental love became an instinctive

driving force in the decision matrix and now competes (conflicts)

with all selfish instincts. Since this instinct was developed during

tribal conditions where the intermingling of cooperating families was

necessary, parental love in the human extends to all children, and in

fact, somewhat extends to the young of other species. Almost everyone

loves a puppy.

 

What is the extent of the development of neural behavior mechanisms

(how many instincts are there?) in the brain? It is not that simple.

Take the one we call parental love for example. It, like all

instincts, invokes an emotion when triggered. Usually it is triggered

by a sensory input: we see a child, we smell the characteristic odor

of a baby, we feel the softness of their skin, we hear it gurgle in

baby laughter. These sensory experiences are decoded in the various

sensory control areas. There is no central location for the instinct,

it is distributed but inter-linked. And the instinct itself is not

discrete. We categorize instincts, as we do almost everything whether

the process fits or not, as a means of segmenting knowledge for ease

in communication and understanding. Segmenting instincts in the human

mind is an intellectual aid but does not reflect physical condition.

The instinct of compassion, for example, is an instinct developed

under tribal conditions for the purpose of sharing tribal goods

(which enhanced the ability of the tribe to survive). Its roots are

in parental love (care for the helpless child). So where does one

leave off and the other begin? Instinctive man is a skull full of

lumpy instinctive stew.