Think like the animals

Our brains evolved not to reason and ask why but to do or die. Unbeknownst to us, our brains perpetually scan the environment for danger. A car crosses the double yellow line on 518, for instance. It’s headed directly at your vehicle, and you immediately react to avoid collision by steering out of the way. Now, imagine you use your logical, linear, rational brain: Here comes a car, crossing the double yellow line. Its approximate speed is 55 mph. I believe it’s approaching at about a 45-degree angle, and I would estimate the time of impact…

Guess what. There is no time for rational thought. That car is no different to today’s brain than the striped, fanged yellow movement in the bushes was to our ancestors’ brains. If your ancestors had not reacted to avoid harm — well, you would not be here to read this.

This is part of our evolutionary adaption (life on the planet started roughly 3.5 billion years ago; mammalian ancestry about 680 million years ago): these adaptions are inscribed in our DNA. Today, we take threats to our sense of well-being to a level of abstraction beyond anything our ancestors would have been capable of or even imagined. Our supervisor at work frowns at us, and we have job instability; interest rates rise, and our credit-card debt will spike; our payments increase, and we worry about our general financial well-being.

Science calls this our negativity bias.

Donald Trump is elected president and a large portion of the developed world becomes anxious, stressed, and out of balance. Stoic philosophers suggested that when this occurs, we need to return to equilibrium as quickly as possible. This is also what Mother Nature teaches us. A stalking lion leaps onto the zebra’s back. Somehow the zebra escapes with scratches and, without thought, returns to homeostasis (equilibrium). The animal’s blood pressure comes back to normal, adrenalin and cortisol levels lower, and in minutes the zebra’s back to grazing.

Humans don’t do this. Instead, we tell ourselves a story. Our narrative goes something like this: What if Zelda sees these scratches? She’ll think I’m having an affair. My God, if that lion had been successful, who would care for our children? Our neurons create feedback loops (think of a hamster in a circular treadmill) in which previous negative memories are recruited with each cycle. Because neurons that fire together wire together, we create our own highway to hell.

What can you do to get off this treadmill? Pause. Become aware that you are out of equilibrium and ask yourself: What can I do, however small, to move back to equilibrium? As philosopher, scientist, and psychologist William James said, “All life is but a mass of practical, emotional, and intellectual small choices systemically organized for our greatness or our grief.” Choose wisely.

I voted for Hillary. After witnessing the results, I realized the enormous extent to which the U.S. population is out of equilibrium. So rather than add to the blame, I am writing this as my small step back toward balance.

Chapin is a resident of Ranchos de Taos.