In comic books (and in the over-abundance of movies based on them), both heroes and villains alike are given origin stories. They offer the reader or viewer a peek into the character’s troubled past, setting the stage for present-day drama. A lot of characters have surprisingly traumatic back-stories, the more heart-wrenching the better. Some are orphaned in a horrific way, falsely imprisoned, or their dog is killed by a home invader. Sometimes they just fall into a giant vat of acid.
Regardless of the details, an origin story’s purpose is to explain that character’s motivations. Their beliefs and choices, justified or not, can be understood more deeply once you’ve learned their origin story. Often, characters you wouldn’t have connected with emotionally become more endearing once you discover their tragic backstories. It explains why they are the way they are.
With intentional empathy, our first task is to learn the origin story of the person or group that we’re trying to understand. Since all humans have the same ancient origin in common (sorry, evolution deniers), let’s begin there. Investigating humanity’s origin story is to ask the question: Why are we the way we are?
One of my favorite authors, David Eagleman says in his book, Incognito, “Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices. [...] There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behavior.” One of these competing representatives, who often plays an antagonistic role in our modern-day functioning is a guy I like to call “the inner caveman.”
The inner caveman represents a vital part of our humanity that has been passed down from millennia to millennia, keeping us alive with his primal instincts. Sigmund Freud called this primitive part of our minds the “Id”, an unconscious drive toward sex, aggression, and survival.
I picture the inner caveman as a rather unintelligent chap who likes to grunt his advice on how to solve our problems in the simplest way possible. He's impulsive, aggressive, and easily provoked because his only focus is on meeting our basic needs for safety, food, and shelter. Oh, and satiating our compulsion to procreate find things to dominate. I hate to say it, but he pretty much invented sexism and racism.
Unsophisticated though he may be, our inner caveman is the one who alerts us to our primal needs. In fact, he gets a lot of the credit for our survival as a species (so far). Unfortunately, his gloriously simple approach to life hasn’t adapted very well to the modern world. The threats and challenges that humans face have changed dramatically since the inner caveman was in his prime.
Today our survival relies less on hunting, mating, and defeating rival tribes, and more on our ability to communicate complex ideas and collaborate with other tribes. Humanity’s new survival strategy looks drastically different from the inner caveman’s. "Many woman, much meat, more war" isn't going to hack it anymore. Nowadays the inner caveman is often irritable, stubbornly trying to use his ancient strategies in a world that is exponentially more complex.
Fortunately for us, the inner caveman is capable of adapting. Even if it does take him a lot longer than we would like. The poor fellow has had a rough couple of centuries, what with women being allowed to speak, no one wanting to be slaves anymore, and things like violence and rape being generally frowned upon. Since we can’t just delete the inner caveman from our DNA, and ignoring him isn't working, we need to learn how to work with him.
Eagleman’s democracy of brain representatives I mentioned earlier symbolizes our ability to acknowledge the inner caveman’s impulses while also listening to voices of reason. No single representative, including the inner caveman, has control over our choices. That’s great news! When the inner caveman grunts for us to give in to our base instincts, other representatives (maybe our inner scientist, inner accountant, or inner nurturer) have the chance to offer alternative perspectives.
If you think you’re pretty good at empathy, you have either (1) learned how to negotiate well with your inner caveman, or (2) you’re completely delusional. False dichotomies aside, the truth is we can’t just deny that we have an inner caveman. No matter how hard we pretend, he still hasn't transformed into the hot prince at the end of Beauty and the Beast. He’s here. He’s queer-phobic. Get used to it.
Before we can collectively create a culture of empathy where we can start working together to survive, we’ve got to address the reality of our inner caveman. As long as we refuse to admit that we have a racist, sexist, warmonger fused into our DNA, we’re sabotaging ourselves. Ignorance keeps us stubbornly justifying our outdated intuitions. If we give ourselves permission to acknowledge that the inner caveman exists, however, we can start actively choosing not to be so swayed by his vote.
How do we accomplish such a thing you ask? Hint: It's what this blog is about. Stay tuned.
- Anna
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