Born to Be Good by Dacher Keltner

 

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life by Dacher Keltner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading Dacher Keltner’s Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life showed me a lot about what humans are missing out on while we’re sheltering-in-place, physically and socially distancing; why it feels so Gawdawful rotten, inhumane and boring. 

     AND why “face-to-face” on video platforms, six feet away and/or going for a stroll with someone masked are Way Better Than Nothing! “Touch…alters animals’ nervous systems,” (familially comforted/ “snuggled” mammals) in childhood “show reduced receptor levels of stress-related neurons in the brain” and a “more robust immune system” throughout adult life. Like certain smiles, laughing, gentle teasing, play, handshakes and compassionate nods and bows exhibited together with other humans; it triggers “the orbitofrontal cortex and the release of opioids and oxytocin.” IT FEELS GOOD!

Our more “civilized” methods of child care and social interaction, maybe dating back to Abraham and Isaac and before, may have increased our inter-tribal hostilities; but our “strong urge to share and to avoid hoarding,…” group grooming and play, systematically trading “calories for touch,” physico-emotional expression of generosity and sympathy “creates trust and long-term cooperative exchange” in spite of our “touch-deprived culture” and hostile media barrage, even before twitter accounts and COVID-19 restrictions.

     Keltner and his research associates posit that the vast majority of hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution and survival are built on interaction, collaboration and communication; gestures, facial expressions, negotiation and cooperation between us; and NOT primarily the “tool making,” resource hoarding or building permanent material structures ensconced in the historical record. “Tech” does not make us “human beings:” language, emotion and mammalian bonding and care-giving do.

     The universally primary social activity depicted on pottery worldwide is dancing together, not warfare or even the hunt. It may be ritual or celebrational, but HUMANS want to “play nice with each other” as the bottom line. (Or maybe women, dancers and elders unable to hunt made the first pots!) Being thrown out of “the pack” is the most dire of circumstances for human survival, since our collective brainpower replaces the fangs, size, reproductive proclivities and brute strength of the other animals. 

     And then there’s the vulnerable 6-month infancy our head size at birth requires. Our “rugged individualist,” isolated lifestyle is a social and biological aberration more than a triumph. It DOES “take a village” to raise a human child. LOVE LED US THROUGH THE FIRST 9/10 OF OUR EXISTENCE ON MOTHER EARTH. We can’t let fear, violence and hate screw us up. 

     I’d like to see Prof. Keltner start this book with the misadventure with his young family on the winter sands near Monterey, the elephant seals’ chapter 10, the one entitled “LOVE.” His story of the alpha males, where they lord over their females with bellows, grunts, clouts, rape and pure physical bulk. 

They not only attack any lesser males with the same and worse auditory abuse and physical violence; but accidentally-on-purpose expel and murder their rivals, alien progeny and their own neonatal young. 

     Eeewww. What? Too scary? Hey, in the “Survivor” “Mean World,” * that’s what SELLS, RIGHT? And that’s WHAT IT (a meaningful life) ’S ALL ABOUT, RIGHT? At least it would bring us up-close-and-personal into the contrast between his traumatized human family seeking knowledge / inspiration about mammalian “family relationships” and, elephant seals, lacking our human “orbitofrontal responsiveness,” exhibited a hostile biology (“science”) that played out before their wind,-sand-and-tear-swept eyes.     

We humans CHOOSE pro-social behaviors. We need “hanging out” together, hearing and telling each other emotionally moving multisensory experiences ("stories") to get and stay engaged. That’s what humans DO that has allowed us to survive and thrive. All of our technologies, tools and unique cultural mannerisms are secondary to neuro-emotional communication relationships.   

     Travel writers completely know that. Unfortunately, so do people like Steve Bannon and Joseph Goebbels, more interested in communicating images of power and force. The gripping image comes first. Biologically. We learn to cling, suck and climb. We need to latch on. Our bodies are wired not only for language, but our whole bodies are ancient sensory tools.

     Actually viewing the cold, dominant cruelty of a fellow human’s face, voice and body as he extinguished Mr. Floyd’s life, for example, MOVED us from distanced thought-talk about racism, power and police brutality to gut-knowledge (vagus nerve) and active physical and emotional RESPONSE.

Instead, Keltner starts with an abstract Confucian “complex mixture of kindness, humanity and respect that transpires between people,” data about greed and status-seeking in lab games, then 50 pages of “brief philosophical history” from Darwin to UCSF’s brilliant Paul Ekman charting facial gestures of bonobos and “Cro-Magnon CEOs.”
 

Meh… I liked the anthropology, but Keltner, the founding director of the Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, is short on tales in the first three chapters to draw us in to hear about “that deeply satisfying moment when you bring out the goodness of others.”

He has snapshots, snippets, like the part about his physico-emotional response to meeting and being in the presence of the Dalai Lama on a scholarly panel, but this was my third or fourth try at reading this truly wonderful book, and I only succeeded because I started at page 199 and then went back. 

True, I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician; but I have significant intelligence and a legendary attention span, especially for reading good books.
I feel for him. 

Guys have 7x less oxytocin, the “feelgood” neuropeptide than gals do. It's the "early attachment" regulator that stimulates interhuman relational behavior "evident in the merging of minds, heartbeats, and nervous systems of caretaker and young child" and the "pro-social nervous system" "felt in every moment of life, in the trust of a stranger, in the willingness to speak out and fail, in the devotion to a romantic partner in times of difficulty, in the sense of hope, and in the devotion one feels for one's own children..." "If it goes well, that early love is felt as the encouraging, not-so-invisible warm hand on your back as you move through life."

And if it DOESN'T go well...The conservative pundit on PBS News Hour’s coverage of the 2020 Democratic Convention couldn’t quite grasp the emphasis on empathy, all those odd (normal) (diverse) (non-cosmeticized) people casting ballots from every state. He kept asking what the “policies” and “issues” behind all this openness, diversity and inclusion were. He was truly puzzled. I felt for him, too.

Our evolutionary adaptational environment was “defined by 

an acute tendency to care, by 

highly coordinated face-to-face social exchanges, by 

the need to reconcile (differences with others) and 

the flattening of social hierarchies, by 

perpetually negotiated conflicts of interests, and by 

the emergence of the tendency toward sexual monogamy.” 

That's not what we hear about from the Western Expansionist "survival of the fittest" scientists, theologians and politicians who often misinterpreted Darwin's Origin of Species for their own reasons. Nor from "cave man" cartoon images. Nor from "me first" "alone against the world" bullies. Nor from conspicuous consumption, materialist marketers, corporations and "free marketeers" of all kinds.

Humans survived "evolution" by Sharing, Caring and Taking Turns. We really did...

Other chapters in Born to Be Good? 

SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST, 

EMBARRASSMENT, 

SMILE, 

LAUGHTER, 

TEASE, 

TOUCH, 

COMPASSION and 

AWE. 

For example:
“Embarrassment converts events (like)…social gaffes, offensive remarks, violations of privacy…into opportunities for reconciliation and forgiveness…It is in these in-the-moment acts of deference that we honor others, and in so doing, become strong.”

AAaaaaahhhhh….. I’m smiling. Relaxing. Letting down some defenses.
I feel better already…

*(see David Brooks’ NYT 27 August 2020 “Trump and the Politics of ‘Mean World’: A Four-day Showing of Apocalypse Now.”) (https://archive.vn/NJMyT   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/opinion/trump-republicans-2020.html )

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