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August
The Wolf of Hate "In my heart, there are two
wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate"
I heard a story once about a Native American elder
who was asked how she had become so wise, so happy,
and so respected. She answered: "In my heart, there
are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate.
It all depends on which one I feed each day."
This story always gives me a little shiver. It's
both humbling and hopeful. First, the wolf of love
is very popular, but who among us does not also
harbor a wolf of hate? We can hear its snarling
both far away in distant wars and close to home in
our own anger and aggression, even toward people we
love. Second, the story suggests that we each have
the ability-grounded in daily actions-to encourage
and strengthen empathy, compassion, and kindness
while also restraining and reducing ill will,
disdain, and aggression.
In my previous post, I explored some of the
basis, in the brain, of romance and love. In this
one, let's consider the dark side of bonding: how
attachment to "us" both fuels and has been nurtured
by fearful aggression toward "them." Acknowledging
the reality of the wolf of hate, and understanding
its origins, powers, and "food," are vital steps
toward restraining that wolf, and thereby making
our homes, workplaces, and world safer and more
loving places to be. (For more on this subject, and
how to nourish the wolf of love and tame the wolf
of hate, see my book, Buddha's Brain: The Practical
Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, from
which much of this post is adapted.)
The Evolution of Hate
Economic and cultural factors certainly play a
role in human aggression, whether in thoughts,
words, or deeds. Additionally, recent studies are
shedding light on the effects of biological
evolution, driven by the "reproductive advantages"
of anger, prejudice, and violence.
For millions of years, our ancestors were
exposed to starvation, predators, and disease.
Making matters worse, climactic ups and downs
brought scorching droughts and freezing ice ages,
intensifying the competition for scarce resources.
Altogether, these harsh conditions kept hominid and
human population levels essentially flat despite
potential growth rates of about 2 percent per year
(Bowles 2006). (It's not common to cite references
in blog posts, but this general subject is often so
controversial, for obvious reasons, that I thought
you might be interested in some of these
studies.)
In those tough environments, it was
reproductively advantageous for our ancestors to be
cooperative within their own band but aggressive
toward other bands (Choi and Bowles 2007).
Cooperation and aggression evolved synergistically:
bands with greater cooperation were more successful
at aggression, and aggression between bands
demanded cooperation within bands (Bowles
2009).
The result was ubiquitous and commonplace
violence. For example, most modern hunter-gatherer
bands-which offer strong indications of the social
environments in which our ancestors evolved-have
engaged in ongoing conflicts with other groups.
While these skirmishes lacked the shock and awe of
modern warfare, they were actually much more
lethal: roughly one in eight hunter-gatherer males
died from them, compared to the one in a hundred
men who died from the wars of the twentieth century
(Bowles 2006; Keeley 1997).
The Angry Brain
Much like cooperation and love draw on multiple
neurological systems, so do aggression and
hate:
• Much if not most aggression is a response
to feeling threatened-which includes even subtle
feelings of unease or anxiety. Because the amygdala
- the alarm bell of the brain - is primed to
register threats and is increasingly sensitized by
what it "perceives," many people feel increasingly
threatened over time. And thus increasingly
aggressive.
• Once the fight-or-flight sympathetic
nervous system (SNS) activate in consort with the
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA), if
you're going to fight instead of flee, blood surges
to your arm muscles for hitting, piloerection
(goose bumps) makes your hair stand up to make you
look more intimidating to a potential attacker or
predator, and the hypothalamus can trigger rage
reactions.
• Aggressiveness correlates with high
testosterone-in both men and women-and low
serotonin.
• Language systems in the left frontal and
temporal lobes work with visual-spatial processing
in the right hemisphere to categorize others as
friends or foes, persons or nonentities who can be
exploited, enslaved, raped, or murdered.
• "Hot" aggression-with lots of SNS/HPAA
activation- often overwhelms prefrontal regulation
of emotions. "Cold" aggression involves little
SNS/HPAA activation and draws on sustained
prefrontal activity; consider the proverb "revenge
is a dish best served cold."
Locked and Loaded Today
Our brains still possess these capabilities and
inclinations. They're at work in schoolyard
cliques, office politics, and domestic violence.
(Healthy competition, assertiveness, and fierce
advocacy for people and causes you care about are
very different from hostile aggression.)
On a larger scale, our aggressive tendencies
fuel prejudice, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and
war. Often these tendencies are manipulated, such
as by the demonization of "them" in the classic
justification for strong-father, authoritarian
control. But those manipulations wouldn't be nearly
so successful if it weren't for the legacy of
between-group aggression in our evolutionary
history.
What's Left Out
There's a Zen saying, Nothing left out. Nothing
left out of your awareness, nothing left out of
your practice, nothing left out of your heart. As
the circle shrinks, the question naturally arises:
What is left out? It could be people on the other
side of the world with a different religion, or
people next door whose politics you don't like. Or
relatives who are difficult, or old friends who
hurt you. It could be anyone you regard as less
than you or as merely a means to your ends.
As soon as you place anyone outside of the
circle of "us," the mind/brain automatically begins
to devalue that person and justify poor treatment
of him (Efferson, Lalive, and Feh 2008). This gets
the wolf of hate up and moving, only a quick pounce
away from active aggression. Pay attention to the
number of times a day you categorize someone as
"not like me," particularly in subtle ways: not my
social background, not my style, and so on. It's
startling how routine it is. See what happens to
your mind when you consciously release this
distinction and focus instead on what you have in
common with that person, on what makes you both an
"us."
Loving the Wolf of Hate
Ironically, one answer to "What's left out?" is
the wolf of hate itself, which is often denied or
minimized. For example, it makes me uncomfortable
to admit how good it feels when the hero kills the
bad guy in a movie. Like it or not, the wolf of
hate is alive and well inside each one of us. It's
easy to hear about a dreadful murder across the
country or terrorism and torture across the
world-or milder forms of everyday mistreatment of
others close at hand- and shake your head,
thinking, "What's wrong with them?" But them is
actually us. We all have the same basic DNA. It is
a kind of ignorance-which is the root of
suffering-to deny the aggression in our genetic
endowment. In fact, as we've seen, intense
intergroup conflict aided the evolution of
within-group altruism: the wolf of hate helped give
birth to the wolf of love.
The wolf of hate is deeply embedded both in the
human evolutionary past and in each person's brain
today, ready to howl at any threat. Being realistic
and honest about the wolf of hate-and its
impersonal, evolutionary origins-brings
self-compassion. Your own wolf of hate needs
taming, sure, but it's not your fault that it lurks
in the shadows of your mind, and it probably
afflicts you more than anyone else. Additionally,
acknowledging the wolf of hate prompts a very
useful caution when you are in situations- arguing
with a neighbor, disciplining a child, reacting to
criticism at work-in which you feel mistreated and
revved-up, and that wolf begins to stir.
When you're watching the evening news-or even
just listening to children bicker-it can sometimes
seem like the wolf of hate dominates human
existence. Much like spikes of SNS/HPAA arousal
stand out against a backdrop of resting-state
parasympathetic activation, dark clouds of
aggression and conflict compel more attention than
the much larger "sky" of connection and love
through which they pass. But in fact, most
interactions have a cooperative quality. Humans and
other primate species routinely restrain the wolf
of hate and repair its damage, returning to a
baseline of reasonably positive relationships with
each other (Sapolsky 2006). In most people most of
the time, the wolf of love is bigger and stronger
than the wolf of hate.
Love and hate: they live and tumble together in
every heart, like wolf cubs tussling in a cave.
There is no killing the wolf of hate; the aversion
in such an attempt would actually create what
you're trying to destroy. But you can watch that
wolf carefully, keep it tethered, and limit its
alarm, righteousness, grievances, resentments,
contempt, and prejudice. Meanwhile, keep nourishing
and encouraging the wolf of love.
References:
Bowles, S. 2006. Group competition, reproductive
leveling, and the evolution of human altruism.
Science 314:1569-1572.
Bowles, S. 2009. Did warfare among ancestral
hunter-gatherers affect the evolution of human
social behaviors? Science 324:1293- 1298.
Choi, J. and S. Bowles. 2007. The coevolution of
parochial altruism and war. Science
318:636-640.
Efferson, C., R. Lalive, and E. Feh. 2008. The
coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup
favoritism. Science 321:1844-1849.
Keeley, L. H. 1997. War Before Civilization: The
Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Sapolsky, R. M. 2006. A natural history of
peace. Foreign Affairs 85:104-121.
©2010, Rick
Hanson
* * *
As they say in Tibet, if you take care of the
minutes,
the years will take care of themselves.
Rick Hanson
is a neuropsychologist and author of
Buddha's
Brain: The practical neuroscience of
happiness, love
& wisdom with
Rick Mendius and Mother Nurture: A Mother's
Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate
Relationships. A summa cum laude graduate of
UCLA who received his doctorate from the Wright
Institute in Berkeley, CA, he founded the
Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and
Contemplative Wisdom, edits the Wise Brain
Bulletin, and writes a blog for PsychologyToday.com
as well as a weekly newsletter called Just One
Thing; his articles have also appeared in Tricycle
Magazine, Insight Journal, Inquiring Mind, and
Buddhist Geeks on-line magazine. He teaches
regularly at universities and meditation centers in
Europe, Australia, and North America, and has audio
programs with Sounds True. Rick began meditating in
1974 and has practiced in several traditions; he
was a board member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
for nine years and is a graduate of its Community
Dharma Leaders program. He leads a regular
meditation gathering in San Rafael, CA. Currently a
Trustee of Saybrook University, he was also
President of the Board of FamilyWorks, a non-profit
agency. He and his wife have two adult children.
www.RickHanson.net
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