Scott Free Thinking

Evolutionary psychology says that based on what has come before us in the evolutionary history of mankind, people’s thoughts are conditioned accordingly. Now, if you sit down at just about any college or university in virtually any psychology class you’re going to be told one thing: you should never adhere to only one school of thought or one single theory to explain everything you see in front of you in your world. The full truth is bound to lie in a mix of different theories and factors.

We should not let ourselves get caught up in the terminology. In my Introduction to Social Psychology class the other day I noticed a lot of people were talking about a number of different mental disorders as though they were actual medical conditions. Granted, some of them are and some of them result from “biochemical imbalances,” but it is important to remember the underlying governing rule of subjective reality and on that note, fully subjective perspective. Anyone’s mode of thinking is going to dramatically affect them to be in either an unhealthy or healthy state.

‘Depression’ or ‘bipolar disorder’ are diagnoses. They are not defining columns of principle to identify a person. The same applies to anything else, be it schizophrenia, alcoholism, or attention deficit disorder. All of these words and phrases are terminology to label sets of characteristics, they are not all you need to medicate anyone or solve any particular problem.

Having said that, let’s think about another fact: parts of our brain influence our thinking based on the size of certain regions, as well as the blood flow to those individual regions. Brain scans are not going to tell us everything there is to know about a solution to a mental or neurological problem, but they have told us where certain problems are taking place within the brain. Serial killers have been shown to have different levels of blood flow to certain regions of the brain than those who are more peaceful and compassionate.

Blood flow and electrical activity are not everything; they have also found that the size of a brain can make a difference. For example, while there was nothing particularly different with Albert Einstein’s brain at a fundamental level, they did notice that his frontal lobes were slightly enlarged. This could have possible allowed a slightly higher than average excess of conscious activity to be processed simultaneously. Research in gender identification has revealed that a certain portion of the brain’s size appears to make people act more feminine or masculine, as well as identify themselves inherently as male or female.

Through evolution we know that we’ve come to be a certain version of ourselves that has remained constant for what they believe to be around 220,000 years. That is, approximately 220,000 years has passed by since the last version of homo sapiens, whomever our evolutionary ancestor may be. If different regions of the brain can form different sizes and function in different ways through evolution, then it’s a logical assumption: wouldn’t that be the thing that, after millions of years of evolution, has come to completely govern our thinking?

I believe the answer is no, because of the vast influence for human beings to mentally adapt and change. It has also been proven that if you put certain people in certain situations that the “power of the situation” will completely overwhelm their pre-existing sense of self and they will act accordingly. They say this is one of the ways in which Nazi Germany seemingly brainwashed much of its military populace. We’re just soldiers and we’re just following orders, we do not control this. The fact of the matter was that they did control it by their own personal actions. The only way a guy like Adolf Hitler can ever gain power and kill millions of people is if someone actually lets him do it via orders.

But soldiers at that time were performing a role, and most did not even realize how insanely violent they were actually being, or have the capacity to develop empathy for the “undesirables” they were getting rid of. On the other hand, rare individuals can override the situation by using their own philosophies and personal beliefs. One of the most signature examples of this is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The fact remains. Everyone has a choice. And while we can prove that we can condition and train ourselves to be absolutely terrible creatures we have also proven that we can condition ourselves to do better. Athletes can visualize themselves doing better at their sport and then make it so. Students can gain confidence on tests and study using a variety of methods and increase their score. We know that we can all work on every single aspect. All it takes is learning, not some sort of passive evolution we have no control over.