"Friends" and "Others"

Brain research is revealing that we have have two different parts of our brain that we use to make decisions about people.  People that are "friends" we treat as individuals, we keep a little file on them in our head with identifying characteristics and decide how it is appropriate to interact with them based on that information specific to them and we may be predisposed to trust them.

But the part of our brain that has this capability can only handle about 150 or so "friend" files.  But we all, particularly in modern life, regularly encounter hundreds of people.  To make decisions about how to interact with these other people we have another part of our brain were we deal with "others".  The others catagory looks for distinguishing characteristics through which it can lump people together and draw conclusions about them.  We may sort by color, ethnicity, religion, where they are from. The varieties are endless - black, white, Asian, Nordic, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Republican, Democrat, New Yorker, Texan, Mexican - or even Giants fan.

Brain research is also discovering that we cannot make decisions without a preference by our emotions.  We couldn't buy underwear - we would stand at a department store frozen with indecision for days - in the absence of some emotional decision (I like black, or I like red, or - for me personally, the emotional decision that I don't care - it doesn't matter).

Historically the reason we have have a separate part of the brain for "other" categories is to create a link to our emotions to allow us to make a quick decision about someone or something.  Through much of human history the unknown could be dangerous or deadly.  Those who stood around contemplating how to react to an unknown could end up dead.  So we create categories - if we can categorize we have a basis for reacting quickly. Then we build knowledge about the category.  And if we have no category knowledge we are predisposed to be suspicious or cautious.

The science isn't there yet to confirm (to my knowledge) but I suspect one of the differences between the "friends" and "others" is the biochemistry and structural organization of our brains makes the "friends" area of the brain inclined more toward trust and cooperation and the "others" inclined more toward caution or suspicion.

Have you ever wondered how ordinary humans, with the same brain you have, can commit genocide?  How could the people of Germany have stood by and often helped in the extermination of the jews?  Or the people in Rwanda who slaughtered their neighbors because they were from a different tribe?

It appears the roots of genocide, and many other combative behaviors are found in this quirk in our brain organization.  Angry people pick a category to direct their anger at - and if the conditions are right they can use emotionally charged language to manipulate large populations perceptions to dehumanize a category.   In Rwanda, from what I have read, radio commentators played a big part in fueling the genocide with gossip and outright lies.

We are not immune in the United States.  Timothy McVie, the Oklahoma City bomber was an angry guy who became obsessed with destroying evil as his brain categories saw it.  Much of modern media is angry people railing against some category of "other" people.  In its worst manifestations an other category designation can trump the friends category.  Some sports fans will beat the daylights out of some other sports fan because he is wearing the wrong team colors.

If people understand the roots of our emotional tendency to create "others" categories for convenience will they strive to use the categories appropriately?  Will it inoculate us a little bit from people who want to use other people for scapegoats or to forward their personal ambitions?

I don't know, but its worth a try.  Spread the word.

America's Socialized Medicine system

One wouldn't know it from the health care debate last year but the United States has had a huge government run and payed for health system for decades.  The Veterans Administration Hospitals are the largest single hospital system in the United States.   According to a Fortune magazine article (May 11, 2006) the VA provides some of the best quality care in the United States at a cost of about $5000 per patient, whereas the private system the rest of us deal with costs about $6300 per patient per year.  So our wonderful "free market" medical care system is about 20% more expensive than the government financed and run bureaucracy and the bureaucracy also provides top quality care.

Remind me again why we "solved" the problem of people without health insurance with "mandates" that people buy private health insurance?