An Ode to 2020

King Parikshit, according to a Mahabharata story was cursed to die of a snake bite in seven days. The king immediately isolated himself and quarantined himself in a safe palace. On the seventh day a snake, Tashaka,  converted himself  into a tiny worm and entered a fruit. The fruit then reached the palace and the king ate the fruit. The worm then changed into a snake, bit him and he died. 

2020 year taught us that a tiny virus can disrupt our plans though we have weapons of mass destruction, driverless cars and an  ego that could foolishly think we could protect ourself by building palaces to stay or walls around to protect us . 

Is there true progress?

Technological advances have changed our world and ourselves though no technology has in reality created more time for us . Because now we feel we have less time in our hands to do all what we want to do. Do you experience more free time now than what you experienced ten years ago? Have our fly overs and metro rail really reduced your commuting time if you compare it with the commuting time ten years ago? 

Our healthcare system and medical research has improved drastically resulting in miraculous  solutions to our health challenges. Still physical wellbeing and mental well-being remains one of the major challenges that we experience today. Does the overall physical and mental well-being improved when we compare it with the situation ten years ago? If you are looking for some data, this might help.  India had an estimated 1.16 million new cancer cases in 2018, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which said that one in 10 Indians will develop cancer during their lifetime and one in 15 will die of the disease.

You can see clearly if you reflect that while there are gigantic advancement in technology and science our fundamental challenges remains the same. Our planet is more polluted , wealth inequality has increased and religion is dividing people more than ever.  I am not a pessimist nor am I trying to paint a gloomy darker picture.  There is a so many positive things happening in the world, I agree. The song by Bon Jovi, the American singer, sog writer, philanthropist and actor expresses how I feel. 

The more things change the more they stay the same

The more things change the more they stay the same

Ah, is it just me or does anybody see

The new improved tomorrow isn't what it used to be

Yesterday keeps coming' 'around, it's just reality

It's the same damn song with a different melody

Jon Bon Jovi’s song was influenced by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a French novelist, critic and journalist who lived in the 19th century. While we say we live in a fast-changing world, and to an extend that is true, there are many things that remains same or resists change.  So, when we look around, we see that “the more things change, the more they remain same”. 

Who is the villain?

I think the villain is our brain and one needs to examine three parts of the human brain to explore why we are not able to create long term sustainable progress even after all our efforts.  These three parts are not, of course, independent entities and there is some overlap and a collective way of functioning. 

1. The Reptilian Brain: Humans share this with birds and reptiles. This part of the brain is in control of our innate and automatic self-preserving behaviour patterns, which ensure our survival and that of our species. Instincts of feeding, fighting, feeling and reproduction are influenced and controlled by this brain. So, defending territory, flight and fight responses, and aggression are based in this part of the brain, sometimes called the ‘unconscious brain’. 

2. The Emotional Brain: While self-preservation and aggression in the reptilian brain can create powerful emotions, the centre of emotions resides in the mammalian brain that humans share with other mammals. For instance, While rationally people know smoking is injurious to health, the positive feelings we associate with smoking most often overcome our rational thoughts. Many reptilian brain focus areas like self-preservation, fighting and reproduction are also related to strong emotional experiences. An easy way to differentiate them is to look at sex for ‘lust or reproduction’, and sex as an ‘emotionally bonding activity’. The first could be closer to the ‘primitive’ reptilian brain; the second closer to the emotional one. 

3. The New Brain (Neocortex): This part of the brain is responsible for abstract and rational thought, foresight, hindsight, insight, reasoning, decision-making and logical problem-solving. The neocortex can be the seat of consciousness. The neocortex is also involved in higher functions like motor commands, sensory perception, conscious thought, and spatial reasoning.

So, in an easy (although oversimplified) way, we could say the reptilian brain is our primitive, instinctive brain, the mammalian one is our emotional brain, and the neocortical one is our logical brain. 

So no matter how developed we become, there are still the cavemen like tendencies built into our psychological functioning because of these three parts of our brain.  So we prioritize short-term needs over long-term goals. The brain responds to short-term desires of satisfaction by releasing dopamine, a pleasure hormone that we crave more and more of.  Our emotional brain has a hard time imagining the future, even though our logical brain clearly sees the future consequences of our current actions. 

Short term gains over long term welfare 

Does this means we will always prefer short term gains? It is hard to predict. But as a pattern we can see that while there is development and progress, our short term focus and the reptilian brain continue influencing the world and like an invisible shadow posing serious threats to our on existence .  

So while we would have realised the importance of meditation and more people might know about meditation, we would depend on an app to do mediation. This way the instant gratification brain is happy feeling that one could get instant nirvana by plugging in an app in our ears or few minutes. So the marshmallow experiment is even more relevant in our times. Sorry, this article is already a long one for our instant gratification brain so I am not going to explain about the marshmallow experiment, allowing you to google. 

If you feel a undertone of pessimism in this article, I must say that is not intentional. I am a die hard optimist. Sitting in the bright sun in Dharasmshala, Himachal Pradesh, on the very first day of 2021,  this is what occurred to me.  Wishing you all a bright, long term thinking, 2021.