As some happily celebrate the birth of their future king, others moan that “it is just a birth” and can’t understand what “all the fuss” is about. They wonder: is this feudal backwardness or mass hysteria?
I ask: could it be something else?
I made these observations:
The crowd of well-wishers who gathered in this sizzling hot evening of July 22nd 2013 near the gates of Buckingham Palace in London, UK, mostly reunited young or quite old people as well as “simple” people. Their common feature was that they seemed truly happy. How do we explain this?
I found the answer in how our brain functions, which, optimally, mirrors how nature functions.
My conclusion: these people are simply healthy.
In Nature, if we take a modest daisy we can observe, as with many other flowers, that the petals are reunited in its center. In most plants, this center will generate the new seed or fruit. What is the analogy with the brain structural and functional organization?
Our vision and understanding of the world, we have to admit, is very much a product of the evolution of this brain. The more we develop the model which is etched in nature, the more we should come nearer to what nature intended us humans to become. It implies that there were times when our brain was not as developed as it is now. Indeed, as a group, we used to relay more on some primitive structures than onto the latest developed. Wars ensued. Our perception, discernment and analysis of the world mirrored the qualities of these structures: we were thinking in quantifiable, measurable, territorial units. Everything was separated, binary, weighed and priced.
What does it means for our perception of the world around us now? Well it means that before we tended to see and organize the world around us as a hierarchy of different layers and piles with the top one dominating. But nature is more of a spiral.
We came to see the monarchy as this top and, not being able to compete with it, some had its head cut off. We replaced this with “the rich people”. With our brain evolving though, we are now heading for a flower vision, more spectrum style, with a center from which and towards which all emanates: a common vision. One world weaved by the multiplicity of cultures towards a common goal: to express the perfect model expressed by the natural world order.
The common feature of these well-wishers, as we said, is that they seemed truly happy. In brain research, study of anhedonia (impossibility to feel joy or pleasure) and its often associated major depressive disorder (MDD) has revealed that in normal people we find an activation of the medial prefrontal cortex in situation of pleasure[i] while patients suffering from depression or anhedonia had no activation there. This aspect of the brain has also been associated with personal identity[ii]. Therefore, the middle of our individual “flower” is our personal identity. When this identity is mirrored, it creates pleasure. If the middle of your flower is economy then only money matters will create pleasure. Restricting human identity to money matters generates dissatisfaction and nails the individual to time and space. Human dignity is lost.
The link here with the well-wishers is that they personally felt happy through this birth. Interviewed though, they struggled with rationalizing why they felt happy. What they felt is not empathy but personal pleasure. Why? If we remember the coronation of Elizabeth II, when the crown was lowered on her head making her a queen, the nearby assembly would place a small crown, or coronet, on their own head. Indeed in the future as it was symbolically understood in some cultures in the past, this identity will be viewed as shared by all, it is the center of the flower as nature intended it to be. We need models to awaken our own identity linked to eternal and to universal elements. It is a unifying factor in which we all partake. In some tribes, even if the people were poor and hungry, they would intuitively take good care of fattening their king for the same principle. They partook in it. Of course, a mind which relays more on old brain structures remains clueless about this ritual as its vision is reduced to a strictly horizontal, punctual, objectified hierarchy. Tenants of this point of view will be mostly irritated by the joy of others and appalled by the money spent in celebrations. Curiously, they might spend fortunes on stadiums or money markets. Depress people have lost their identity and people who can’t feel pleasure have a limited identity.
In the course of the maturation of the brain, as in society, the structures associated to analysis (21-28 years old) mature before those associated to identity. Indeed, those latter ones need the contribution of some structures developed in social contexts (28-35 years old). Therefore as society and considering the evolution of our brain, we have first put as sole center of our society, of our flower, the economy associated to this analytical aspect of the brain. We are now faced with a hybrid monster oscillating between horizontal layers with the economy as top layer or a daisy like society with economy as the center for sole identity. If we project this model on the brain, it is as if the analytical brain aspect, with its dominant prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the center of the brain. However, research shows that in healthy people, this is not the case. Although an important structure, the prefrontal aspect is only expressing the result of what is happening elsewhere in the brain. Undermine the development of other structures and this aspect will not function optimally. Paranoia is an example of this: a correct rationalization albeit on a false basis. The brain structures act as a collectivity, the PFC only expressing the result of the contribution and interactions of all the other elements.
There was always an intuitive movement through the ages towards this model of nature. With the development of our brain and the technical advances which allow us more refined research on it, we can now reveal a new model for this brain and a corresponding new model for society. It could allow personal identity for all and annihilate this wave of depression. It could inspire us with ways to escape the monetary slavery we all have to submit to. It could bring peace and joy back into our lives. The new book “Isis Code”[iii] reveals and describes this new model for the brain and for society and names it the LIFE biosystem.
[i] Neural response to pleasant stimuli in anhedonia: an fMRI studyMartina T. Mitterschi¡thaler, Veena Kumari, 1,2 Gin S. Malhi,3 Richard G. Brown, 2 Vincent P. Giampietro, 4 Michael J. Brammer, 4 John Suckling, 5 Lucia Poon, 6 Andrew Simmons, Christopher Andrew and Tonmoy Sharma 7,C A Neuroimaging Research, Department of Neurology; 1 Section of Cognitive Psychopharmacology; 2 Department of Psychology; 4 Brain Image Analysis Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London,UK; 3 School of Psychiatry,University of New SouthWales, Sydney, Australia; 5 Brain Mapping Unit, University of Cambridge,Department of Psychiatry, Addenbrooke’s Hospital,Cambridge; 6 South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London; 7 Clinical Neuroscience Research Centre, 7 Twisleton Court, Priory Hill, Dartford, Kent, DA12EN, UK
[ii] `When we experience a joyful emotion or maintain a positive attitude, there is a decrease in the activation of the sympathetic nervous system then inhibited by the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex and right hemisphere of the feminine polarity. Th ere is also an enhanced parasympathetic nervous system activity. As well, the brain’s alpha rhythm synchronizes to heartbeats, and abetter entrainment between all the physiological oscillatory systems can be observed.Isis Code p.269 see also the research of Antonio Damasio.
[iii] Page, Ariane “Isis Code, revelations from brain research and systems science on the search for human perfection and happiness”., iUniverse, 2013
Nature's Code - Le Code de la Nature 