Resumé by Tim Robinson of a conference given by Sébastien Bohler, hosted by Ilios Kotsou of Émergences, Brussels, 13 April 2023
Here’s a resumé of a conference by Sébastien Bohler that I went to recently. Bohler is a doctor in neurosciences, a graduate from the prestigious French ‘Ecole Polytechnique’, and is editor-in-chief of the French publication ‘Cerveau et Psycho’. He deciphers human behaviour through psychology and neurobiology. He’s the author of a number of books that have done quite well in the French-speaking world, but none have been translated into other languages (yet). As I think Bohler has ‘ideas worth sharing’, here are the highlights of the summary he gave of his work, especially for those who don’t speak French.
Summary: The problem is that homo sapiens’ brain is not prepared for the situation we are going through. It has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to survive in the short term by seeking food, sex, power and information, without a priori fixed limits. Today it’s endless appetite for these basic desires continues, but this behaviour is now suicidal. How do we change these hard-wired brain circuits that make us want everything, right now, with as little effort as possible and in unlimited quantities? Bohler offers several paths, including consciousness, cooperation and the search for meaning, which is also anchored deep in our brains and could counterbalance our more basic needs.
Bohler began his research into the role of our brain in the climate crisis when he became aware of his own contradictions, being concerned with the climate crisis but at the same time having a personal carbon footprint of 10 tonnes per year, while this should be at most 2 tonnes per person to limit warming to 2 degrees. The paradox is that on the one hand our brains have developed over millions of years to become one of the most complex things in nature – with 86 billion neurones and a million billion connections – enabling us to do amazing things such as build pyramids and reduce infant mortality. And on the other hand our brains are too stupid to take the action needed to ensure our own personal wellbeing and survival as a species. He examines this contradiction or ‘design fault’ in his book “The Human Bug – Why our brain pushes us to destroy the plant and how to stop it” (2019) (“Le Bug humain – Pourquoi notre cerveau nous pousse à détruire la planète et comment l’en empêcher” Éditions Robert Laffont 2019).
So where in our brains are things going wrong? Our brain is structured in layers, like an onion, with the outer layers having developed most recently and the inner ones being those that developed earlier in our evolution. The outer folded layer of the human brain – the cortex – is the seat of our intelligence and has developed over the last tens of thousands of years, very recently on an evolutionary scale. Below the cortex lies the striatum which almost looks like an alien, but in fact is much worse.
It developed much earlier in our evolution, hundreds of millions of years ago. Rather than intelligence, the striatum produces desire and motivation. It encourages us to repeat certain actions and behaviours that help us survive by rewarding us with the neurotransmitter molecule dopamine. These five behaviours are:
- Eating. Our brains have evolved to reward us when we eat as much food as we can when we find it, as quickly as possible. For most of our existence we never knew when we would find our next food and in what quantity. When we found it we had to make the most of it quickly, in case a stronger competitor turned up and took it from us. As we only learnt how to store food recently, this meant eating it on the spot and before it went off.
- Having sex. Our striatum rewards us when we have sex simply because this is how we make copies of our genetic code and ensure that it is passed onto the next generation. And to have the most chance of our genes surviving, we are driven to have as many sexual relations as possible. While this is true for males and females, Bohler explained that males are more prone to this stimulus simply because the more they have sex the more they can reproduce their genes, whereas females can only do so at the rate at which they can have offspring.
- Being the boss. Any behaviour that results in us increasing our social status is also rewarded, as it invariably gives access to more food and more sexual partners. As with food and sex, there is no limit to the desire to ‘move up in the world’ – we are rewarded for all increases in our status.
- Making as little effort as possible. To survive all living organisms need to at least take in as many calories as they expend – and if possible have a surplus to make it through hard times. This dates to the first simple life on Earth. We are therefore hard-wired to take the easier option when we have a choice and seek more efficient ways of doing whatever we have to.
- Finding information. Surviving is easier when you can decipher the information present in your surroundings. Being able to tell if a track was left by a potential prey or predator may be a matter of life or death.
Until recently, this has been a very successful strategy. These behaviours have helped humans (and our ancestors before us) not only survive but also thrive to become the dominant predator across most, if not all, of the planet. So, what’s the problem?
The formidable intellect of our cortex has enabled us to make tools of increasing complexity, which in turn led to the agricultural, industrial and most recently the digital revolutions. This has dramatically increased our access to ever greater quantities of food.
The snag is that our brain’s striatum is not programmed to limit the five behaviours it encourages us to repeat. It simply hasn’t had the time to adapt to a radically changed environment. For most of humanity food is plentiful: Bohler gave the example that according to the World Health Organisation, 2019 was the first year during which more people on the planet died of obesity than hunger. Scarcity of resources was the main problem humans had to overcome – until very recently when this was replaced by excess as being our main challenge. But our striatum – the main driver of our desires – can’t deal with excess, only scarcity.
The same applies or the other four behaviours. We are now able to satisfy our sexual desires at will: humanity now watches 136 billion pornographic videos per year, which equates to one third of Internet traffic, which as a whole generates more greenhouse gas emissions that air travel.
But how can the desire of 8 billion people for increased social status be satisfied? They can’t all become the boss. The solution we have come up with recently is social networks. Experiments scanning the cerebral activity of participants have shown that receiving likes on social media increases the flow of dopamine and losing them decreases it. Our behaviour starts to resemble that of drug addicts. As soon as we lose what we crave, we do all that we can to get it back again. Owning a prestigious car, the latest mobile phone or the latest fashion items are other ways we can raise our status in the modern world.
Today we have a multitude of gadgets that help us save as much effort as possible, such as remote controls or voice-assisted devices. It can’t be denied that labour saving devices have also had positive effects, such as the washing machine to name but one.
Regarding the fifth desire – access to information, we increasingly are in an age of ‘infobesity’ (a term coined in the 1990’s): rather than having to search for and interpret rare signs in our environment that could be beneficial for our survival, today we are surrounded by, and willingly consume, ever increasing volumes of information.
So, why can’t we change? Why can’t we be satisfied with what we’ve got when it (often clearly more than) meets our needs?
The first reason is a process that Bohler described known as ‘hedonistic habituation’. If a researcher gives a subject a new mobile phone there will be peak in the release of dopamine. If the same measurement is made with the same subject and phone after 2 weeks or 2 months, the level of dopamine will be lower as time passes and eventually stop. This is why people quickly get used to and then become indifferent to something that highly motivated them when they first had it. And then they want to replace it with something they consider better.
Our brains are hard wired to behave in a way that drives consumption, growth and inflation. Many of us are aware that this cannot continue. In its latest report the International Panel on Climate Change states simply that today’s temperatures that are the hottest ever for us will be the coolest ever for our children. The need for urgent change that some feel comes from their cerebral cortex – the seat of intelligence in our brains. However, desires, as already explained, come from our striatum that has no notion of the future – only the present. This is the ‘temporal devaluation’ described by Walter Mischel following his experiments at Stanford University in the 1970’s: a child was told that s/he can eat the marshmallow in front of her/him right away, or if s/he waits 10 minutes s/he’ll get a second one and can east both. 80% of the children tested gave in an ate the one marshmallow before the 10 minutes are up.
These experiments have been repeated with adults with the same results: we are pushed towards instant gratification. In his book ‘Social Acceleration’, Hartmut Rosa describes how since the industrial revolution all facets of our society have followed similar, ever faster, trajectories.
Bohler explained that the cortex is connected to the striatum via groups of cells that enable it to control its desires. This is what enables a fifth of the children to pass the marshmallow test. However, with prolonged instant gratification it has been observed that these connections become weaker. This creates a negative feedback loop with us giving in to instant offers more easily which further reduces our ability to wait for what we want. So, rather than getting a delivery in two or three days, we click the ‘next day’ option whether we need it that quickly or not. However, our current situation requires us to do exactly the opposite: reduce our consumption and be fulfilled with sobriety.
How can we reprogramme our brains?
By making use of a much-undervalued capacity we have: ‘consciousness’. This can be seen in action with the practice of eating in full consciousness, by taking the time to concentrate the food in front of us and actively savouring its appearance, smell and taste. On the contrary, by eating while looking at a TV, phone or computer screen the average calorie intake increases by 40-60%. Christophe André describes this in his experiments with subjects taking great pleasure in eating a single grape. The practice of mindfulness helps people develop this capacity to savour the moment.
Some people ask Bohler that if the problem is the striatum, why don’t we simply remove it? It can happen that after a stroke the striatum can be damaged. People this happens to can still communicate and reason in the same way as before, however something subtle has changed. If you leave a plate of food in front of them they won’t touch it. If you ask them to taste the food they agree that it tastes good. However, their desire to eat has gone because without a properly functioning striatum they do not get any reward for eating.
What other options are there? Recent research by the University of California has shown that simply being curious, for example by learning the names of trees or the constellations in the night sky, releases dopamine. We get real pleasure from sharing knowledge and the wonder that this creates. In addition, the release of dopamine enables the hippocampus, the region of the brain that stores our memories and learning, to do so more effectively.
The third option is through altruism. Experiments by Zürich University in 2019 showed that when someone is given 100 Euros and they give half of it to a stranger they experience a release of dopamine. It’s also interesting that out of the women who took part in the experiment two-thirds had a release of dopamine when they gave 50 Euros away. While two-thirds of the men taking part had a release of dopamine when they kept all 100 Euros. This was hotly debated in the scientific community. It might have something to do with the biological differences between men and women, but the favoured explanation is that in our societies, nearly all of which are patriarchal, girls are congratulated for being empathetic and caring, while boys are told that they should stand up for themselves and not let others get ahead of them. In both cases, the child is rewarded – showing the flexibility of our brains that adapt to the norms of the society around them.
So, how can we adapt the current social norm based on individualism and consumption, to one that is more appropriate in the present climate crisis?
Bohler described that he was in Paris when Notre Dame Cathedral burned, and he noticed the reaction of people around him, who were devastated, in tears or panicking. Surely this should not be the case in a material world, in which spirituality has no place? In fact this was a clear example that there is a part of us that is still connected to something more than our basic desires.
Bohler describes what he imagines what the life of one of the thousands of people who built Notre Dame might have been like and how their striatum would have responded. Life was hard, sex was restricted, social status not easily improved and information hard to come by. However people lived their lives, and we cannot assume they were less (or more) happy than we are as we simply can’t know. How did they cope with an under-stimulated striatum?
In fact their situation is the opposite of the child with the marshmallow. Instead of a reward right away, the goal they wanted to reach was in the very long term: by taking part in the construction of the cathedral that they would possibly never even see finished (it’s construction took 182 years), they might have believed they were saving their souls in the afterlife. Life on Earth was not fun, but it was followed by something much more motivating. They also had clear instructions of how to reach this goal: precise texts, depictive works of art and a structured social order. This shows that humans are not only motivated to satisfy the five basic desires: there is something deeper. This has been studied for the last 15 years by a discipline called ‘existential neuroscience’ which looks at how the brain responds to questions such as: ‘Why am I here?’, ‘What happens after life?’, ‘What kind of a life is worth living?’.
Questions relating to meaning activate the anterior cingulate cortex – a region of the brain between the two lobes of our brains. These questions can be put into three categories: the meaning of oneself, collective meaning and the meaning of the world that surrounds us.
An Ipsos survey from 2020 in France showed that half of a representative sample had a conflict of values at work. ‘What I do has no meaning.’ ‘My job is not aligned with who I am or the way I see the world’. Bohler gave the example of a person who is concerned by a documentary s/he watches one evening about the ‘great Pacific garbage patch’ consisting of tiny particles of plastic covering more than a million square kilometres. The next morning the person returns to work at a company that produces plastic bottles. The stress that the person feels is referred to as cognitive dissonance. The anterior cingulate cortex emits an electroshock – an ‘error signal’ – which results in the release of the stress molecules cortisol and noradrenaline. The person then knows that something is not right, however might not be able to put their finger on exactly what. If this continues the stress becomes chronic, leading to burn out, depression or ultimately suicide. Hence, lack of meaning is a public health issue.
Regarding collective meaning, existential neuroscience studies have shown that when a group of people do and say the same things at the same time this has a calming effect on all of them, reducing their levels of stress hormones. This ‘group effect’ gives individuals the feeling that their social group is coherent, even if as individuals they may feel insecure. Collective rituals are now understood to have emerged early in our evolution and served to stabilise our social groups. Recent studies have shown that ‘moral religions’ follow one or two centuries after the emergence of these shared rituals. In this way, cultures have found the antidote to the stress of our existence by formalising myths and beliefs about our creation, purpose and meaning. A myth protects and stabilises those that share it.
On the other hand, if individuals are not able to make sense of the world around them, their cingulate cortex will not be well. We search for the meaning that we seek and if nothing else is available we can find them in conspiracy theories, because for these everything has meaning – nothing happens by chance, everything is intentional and there is no doubt. And in a highly complex world, a simple explanation is very attractive.
A recent study on five continents asked people to what extent they understood the society in which they live. They were then asked to what extent they would favour an authoritarian regime to take over. The results showed that there was a direct correlation between the two: the less people feel that their society has meaning and can be relied on, the more they are attracted by the idea of totalitarianism. Bohler sees this as another outcome for a world that is impossible to make sense of.
There is a final reason why it’s now so important to restore meaning: the harder meaning is to find, the more people behave in a consumeristic way. We tend to protect ourselves from a threat that we find it hard to identify with impulse buying or status symbols. Conversely, the more we perceive meaning in our lives and societies, the less consumeristic we are.
Bohler summarised how we can rebuild meaning with the following slide:
- Shared views of the world:
– Having a shared description of the world around us;
– Pedagogy;
– Collective narrative;
– Share vocabulary and references. - Stable and coherent life choices:
– Projection, protection, stability;
– Values, desires, personality;
– Taking stock of our lives. - Shared social codes, rituals and morals:
– Having close relations with others;
– Synchronicity: doing the same things at the same times with others;
– Shared ethics.
This is the focus of his book “Where is meaning? Discoveries about our brains which could change the future of our civilisation” (“Où est le sens ? Les découvertes sur notre cerveau qui changent l’avenir de notre civilisation” Éditions Robert Laffont 2020).
Bohler finished with the following images of our wonderful planet and wonderful brain with the question: why is the latter so bad for the former? Perhaps there is a way to reconcile them both.
In the Q&A session that followed I asked Bohler what kind of kick up the backside humanity needs to finally take action? During the Covid pandemic there was much talk of ‘building back better’ and ‘rebuilding the future’. That already seems to have been forgotten and we’re straight back to business as usual. Do we really need hundreds of thousands, millions or tens of millions of rich white people to die before we start making necessary changes? Bohler replied that the pandemic was like someone on a diet: as soon as it’s over the kilos come back on again. Rebound effects are well known in psychology. During the pandemic it seemed that we were changing our habits for the better. When asked by journalists what he thought, Bohler said that if you put the striatum in a cage, all is fine, but just don’t open the cage again, because it won’t be happy at all! Just after the height of confinement in France, in June 2020 a major car manufacturer had an advert saying: “For two months your instincts have been put to sleep. It’s time to wake them up.” This is a great way to sell cars. That being said, the pandemic did show that we have a prefrontal cortex and are capable of forcing ourselves to do something that isn’t fun. Our elected representatives need to start making the difference between what we need to live decent lives and what is superfluous. We should also face up to a basic fact: it is very easy to simply not offer certain options or products. We should not only regulate products on the market but before launching new ones think if they are really necessary.