How many times today have you done something without using your mind? Once? Three times? Five times? None at all?
Whatever your answer, it probably doesn't make sense.
A lot of the decisions you made today, you made them completely unreasonably. Without even a grain of common sense. Through your reptile brain.
Deep inside you there is still a remnant of reptile. In your body, perhaps. But I know less about that. I know more about the brain. In you there is still a part of the reptile brain. It's there stubbornly. As soon as you are confronted with sensations or stimuli such as sounds and movements, or heat and cold, or possible threats via the news reports, the brain switches straight to that original part. So to speak: the factory settings.
The reptilian brain makes a decision very quickly. With that it can choose between two rather basic and especially unreasoned decisions. Namely decision A or decision B.
Decision A is rapprochement. Decision B is avoidance.
Approach: we approach. We investigate the matter. The case, the problem, the man or woman or the group of people. We taste or smell.
Avoidance: We run away. We close the folders or turn down the offer. We run away from the danger or quickly walk back to our car. We say goodbye or we didn’t come close at all. Sometimes we leave a tail.
Intelligence has it all nothing to make.
But it is there: that intelligence. Reason. Fortunately, evolution gave us a large prefrontal cortex. That is the crown jewel, you could say. And it is our consciousness, fed by – indeed – our intelligence. In one person, that nutrition is richer than in another, and that is good. There is much to write about that too. But not now.
Through consciousness – the prefrontal cortex or cortex praefrontalis
– we can analyze, reason and explain. It gives us insight into ourselves. We seek an explanation for something we do instinctively. Also deceptive, by the way. And also much to write about.
These different parts of our brains need each other very much. They reinforce each other. The ratio cannot function without the decisive advice of the reptile.
The hidden part in us is and remains a reptile. Beautiful, but we have come a long way in the meantime. Yet we very often do the unbelievable.
We give in to the nagging, whining and slightly stupid reptile in us.
We know very well that we must share, control, decide, move, reform, improve, engage or even walk away.
But we avoid. We flee or freeze, succumb to temptations. We seek rapprochement with something we shouldn't be.
Who the reptile brain too much space, who chooses primitive comfort. The path of least resistance. Short-term solutions.
Perfectly doable for a reptile.
But we have evolved into real people. That promotion gave us responsibilities.
Easy solutions create a difficult life.
The hardest decisions in your life hurt the most, but they ultimately make life better.