What Particular Discovery of Science Has Changed the Way You Think About Ourselves and the Universe?

A reader asked me the question above, to which I reply:

Our brains seem to be “wired” in such a way that our political philosophies and other aspects of our character and belief systems are not entirely under our control.

About 10 years ago, I heard a presentation on the results of a university study in which subject participants were hooked up to electronic sensors that monitored the activity in various parts of their brains while they were shown photographs of innocuous things like kittens, puffy white clouds, and the beach, along with occasional photos of things that are potentially dangerous, perhaps an angry dog, a rattlesnake, or a tarantula.

There was a profound difference in brain response between self-described “liberals” and “conservatives.”  In particular, the amygdalas, the part of the brain that deals with “fight or flight,” emotional responses including fear, anxiety, and aggression, in the latter group were far more active in response to potential danger than the former group, suggesting that conservatives are somehow “programmed” to have more violent responses to potential harm than liberals.

Additionally, we all naturally gravitate toward data points that corroborate what we already believe.

To me, this explains why conservatives, especially those of the present day, stir themselves into a frenzy with Fox News and Newsmax, while the rest of us content ourselves with the New York Times.

The novel of author/philosopher Ian McEwan “Saturday,” albeit fiction, takes this subject on in a deep and fascinating way.