On racism and reptiles

A lot of qualities that we call human are acquired through upbringing. Empathy, logic, attention span, manners, they all are introduced and nurtured in children. On the other hand, proper upbringing conditions, subdues or entirely wipes out many inborn qualities. But for social control, we would not consider incest, cannibalism or unwarranted aggression undesirable and repulsive.

It is the so-called R-complex, or the most ancient part of our brain, that we have inherited from the reptiles that is responsible for such primitive behaviour. Our conscious mind does not have control over most of its reactions as they need to be instantaneous for the sake of our survival. Take the flight-or-fight instinct. If we had to employ all the trappings of our civilised logical conscious mind to decide whether we should escape danger or not we would not stand much chance in times of danger.

As human society develops many behavioural patterns built in the R-complex become undesirable, even counter-productive. But they do not go away without an effort. For example, rage, originally a defense mechanism, is now treated in anger control therapy. It used to help our primate ancestors assert their status in the group but nowadays we have different ways to do that.

Xenophobia is another example. It used to be necessary to identify and assault an outsider for the sake of group's or individual survival. Anyone who does not look like us is by default an enemy and has to be attacked, according to the R-complex. However, in our more developed society this is by far and large not the case any more. Real danger comes now in different shapes but our atavistic brain keeps reacting the best way it knows how. Here lies the biological premise of racism. The reptile inside of us instinctively rears its ugly head, even though as developed humans we should know better.

Only relatively recently has it become widely accepted that xenophobia, which also includes racism, is undesirable and shameful. Only a rather small percentage or population has managed to overcome this reptilian urge to attack anyone who does not look or behave like us. Old habits die hard. Most success comes where more effort is involved. Without it, we will keep behaving like dinosaurs.

The neocortex, the most sublime part of our brain, should be able to see a fellow human being beyond superficial appearances. But it only develops through the effort of education. Philanthropy, "the love of human", that transcends races, religions and customs, needs to be developed and nurtured until we are truly more humans than reptiles in what we think and do.