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: \u201cIn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story always gives me a little shiver. It\u2019s 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\u2014grounded in daily actions\u2014to encourage and strengthen empathy, compassion, and kindness while also restraining and reducing ill will, disdain, and aggression.<\/p>\n
In my previous post<\/a>, I explored some of the basis, in the brain, of romance and love. In this one, let\u2019s consider the dark side of bonding: how attachment to \u201cus\u201d both fuels and has been nurtured by fearful aggression toward \u201cthem.\u201d Acknowledging the reality of the wolf of hate, and understanding its origins, powers, and \u201cfood,\u201d 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\u2019s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom<\/em><\/a>, from which much of this post is adapted.)<\/p>\n The Evolution of Hate<\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u201creproductive advantages\u201d of anger, prejudice, and violence.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n The result was ubiquitous and commonplace violence. For example, most modern hunter-gatherer bands\u2014which offer strong indications of the social environments in which our ancestors evolved\u2014have 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).<\/p>\n The Angry Brain<\/strong><\/p>\n Much like cooperation and love draw on multiple neurological systems, so do aggression and hate:<\/p>\n \u2022 Much if not most aggression is a response to feeling threatened\u2014which includes even subtle feelings of unease or anxiety. Because the amygdala \u2013 the alarm bell of the brain \u2013 is primed<\/em> to register threats and is increasingly sensitized by what it \u201cperceives,\u201d many people feel increasingly threatened over time. And thus increasingly aggressive.<\/p>\n \u2022 Once the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activate in consort with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA), if you\u2019re going to fight instead of flee, blood surges to your arm muscles for hitting, piloerection<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n \u2022 Aggressiveness correlates with high testosterone\u2014in both men and women\u2014and low serotonin.<\/p>\n \u2022 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.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cHot\u201d aggression\u2014with lots of SNS\/HPAA activation\u2014 often overwhelms prefrontal regulation of emotions. \u201cCold\u201d aggression involves little SNS\/HPAA activation and draws on sustained prefrontal activity; consider the proverb \u201crevenge is a dish best served cold.\u201d<\/p>\n Locked and Loaded Today<\/strong><\/p>\n Our brains still possess these capabilities and inclinations. They\u2019re 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.)<\/p>\n 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 \u201cthem\u201d in the classic justification for strong-father, authoritarian control. But those manipulations wouldn\u2019t be nearly so successful if it weren\u2019t for the legacy of between-group aggression in our evolutionary history.<\/p>\n What\u2019s Left Out<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a Zen saying, Nothing left out<\/em>. 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n As soon as you place anyone outside of the circle of \u201cus,\u201d 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 \u201cnot like me,\u201d particularly in subtle ways: not my social background, not my style, and so on. It\u2019s 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 \u201cus.\u201d<\/p>\n Loving the Wolf of Hate<\/strong><\/p>\n Ironically, one answer to \u201cWhat\u2019s left out?\u201d 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\u2019s easy to hear about a dreadful murder across the country or terrorism and torture across the world\u2014or milder forms of everyday mistreatment of others close at hand\u2014 and shake your head, thinking, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with them?\u201d But them is actually us. We all have the same basic DNA. It is a kind of ignorance\u2014which is the root of suffering\u2014to deny the aggression in our genetic endowment. In fact, as we\u2019ve seen, intense intergroup conflict aided the evolution of within-group altruism: the wolf of hate helped give birth to the wolf of love.<\/p>\n The wolf of hate is deeply embedded both in the human evolutionary past and in each person\u2019s brain today, ready to howl at any threat. Being realistic and honest about the wolf of hate\u2014and its impersonal, evolutionary origins\u2014brings self-compassion. Your own wolf of hate needs taming, sure, but it\u2019s 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\u2014 arguing with a neighbor, disciplining a child, reacting to criticism at work\u2014in which you feel mistreated and revved-up, and that wolf begins to stir.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re watching the evening news\u2014or even just listening to children bicker\u2014it 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 \u201csky\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll explore how to do this in the next several weeks worth of posts on this blog.<\/strong><\/p>\n References:<\/strong><\/p>\n Bowles, S. 2006. Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism. Science<\/em> 314:1569-1572.<\/p>\n Bowles, S. 2009. Did warfare among ancestral hunter-gatherers affect the evolution of human social behaviors? Science<\/em> 324:1293- 1298.<\/p>\n Choi, J. and S. Bowles. 2007. The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science<\/em> 318:636-640.<\/p>\n Efferson, C., R. Lalive, and E. Feh. 2008. The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science<\/em> 321:1844-1849.<\/p>\n Keeley, L. H. 1997. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n Sapolsky, R. M. 2006. A natural history of peace. Foreign Affairs<\/em> 85:104-121.<\/p>\n ****************<\/p>\n Rick Hanson, Ph.D.<\/strong>, is a neuropsychologist and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom<\/a>. A summa cum laude<\/em> graduate of UCLA, he teaches at universities and meditation centers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His work has been featured on the BBC and in Consumer Reports Health, U.S. News and World Report, and other major magazines.<\/p>\n Rick\u2019s most recent book is Buddha\u2019s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom<\/em><\/a> (with Rick Mendius, M.D.; Foreword by Dan Siegel, M.D. and Preface by Jack Kornfield, Ph.D.), which has been praised by numerous scholars, therapists, and teachers, including Tara Brach, Ph.D., Roger Walsh, Ph.D., Sharon Salzberg, and Fred Luskin, Ph.D., and is being published in nine additional languages. An authority on self-directed neuroplasticity, he edits the Wise Brain Bulletin<\/a>, and his articles have appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind; his Your Wise Brain blog<\/a> is on Huffington Post<\/a>, Psychology Today<\/a>, and other major websites. He has a chapter \u2013 7 Facts about the Brain That Incline the Mind to Joy \u2013 in Measuring the Immeasurable<\/em><\/a>, as well as several audio programs<\/a> with Sounds True. His first book was Mother Nurture: A Mother\u2019s Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships<\/em><\/a> (Penguin, 2002)<\/p>\n Rick is currently a trustee of Saybrook University. He also served on the board of Spirit Rock Meditation Center for nine years, and was President of the Board of FamilyWorks, a community agency. He began meditating in 1974, trained in several traditions, and leads a weekly meditation gathering<\/a> in San Rafael, CA. He enjoys rock-climbing and taking a break from emails. He and his wife have two children. For more information, please see his full profile<\/a> at www.RickHanson.net<\/a>. You can find him on the social web at http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BuddhasBrain<\/a> and http:\/\/www.YouTube.com\/BuddhasBrain<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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: \u201cIn my heart, there are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. 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