To “Be Human Against All Odds” and be “Conscious of your own Triune Brains”
Meet Frederic Frank and Paul MacLean.
To Be Human Against all Odds was Frederic’s autobiographical narrative he began in 1914. He was five years old in neutral Holland on the border of Belgium. The 1st World War had begun. From the vantage of his home he witnessed the carnage of War.
Franck wrote: “From our neutral grandstand looking into hell, I watched the endless streams of fugitives trek past our windows, their children and a few belongings on their backs. The advance guard of the millions of dispossessed crowded the highways. I watched the trucks, the pushcarts, the horse-drawn hearses, and other improvised ambulances, each loaded down with still living heaps of flesh in the tatters of French, Belgian, and German uniforms.
“Who are they? Who am I? Aren’t they human like me? What is human?
“And so the riddle of the human versus the inhuman has accompanied me all my seventy-six years. Whenever it was taken for granted that we are human I felt the despair of my early childhood. That made me, for the rest of my life, violently allergic to all violence…”
The artist-philosopher-sculptor Frederick Franck will give us a comprehensive exposition of Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain hypothesis that every human on Earth evolved with three brains. MacLean was “Chief of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Health.” He developed a revolutionary model of the human brain. The model plays an important role in redefining literacy—and in assessing the state of health regarding our capacity to learn in the 21st century.
How Frederick experienced a panicky reptile and frightened mammal in a storm over the Pacific Ocean
At 76, Franck was invited to present a paper at the “First International Conference on Creating the Future of Humanity” in 1986. The Yoko Civilization Research Institute in Japan sponsored Franck. As he worked on his presentation he began to question the purpose his project. He wondered:
“Was there any point in projecting such a future? Could even the most ‘scholarly’ symposium pretend to write scenarios for ‘creating’ a human future, or even planning to create it, unless the gathering could first agree on what it really means to be human?
“All the great political and economic confabs of the past seventy years—Locarno, Geneva, Rapallo, Yalta, Potsdam—have been the origin of chains of disaster for huge masses of human beings. Had they not taken into account all contingencies except one: that it is sheer folly to plan for humans unless people are aware of and can agree on what being human is about?
“To ignore the criteria of being human…is to prepare for ultimate catastrophe…Here was my clue. I would speak on ‘The Criteria of Being Human.’”
In his presentation, Franck argued so persuasively for the need for such criteria that the second International Conference scheduled in 1989 was titled: “On the Criteria of Being Human.” He was surprised by his success but he felt something was missing:
“…from the moment I finished speaking I was distressed. I grew more and more aware of having left out what really mattered. I had not been able to supply a single example of a ‘practical way’ of bridging the enormous conceptual and linguistic gap…”
“I had a vague, gnawing feeling that once, years ago, I had caught a glimpse of a practical bridge across the abyss. Try as I might to recall it, the missing link seemed to fade from memory blocked forever. It was maddening.
“Over the Pacific Ocean the plane suddenly lurched. A voice crackled over the intercom: “Turbulence.” The stewardess, unsteady on black silk stockinged legs, scurried to check seat belts, holding on to backrests. A heavy object in the galley crashed to the floor. The 747 was bucking, jerking, plunging wildly.” Franck described what happened next:
“In the leaden silence that becomes almost audible in airplanes at moments when one swears never to fly again, never, never – in that infernal silence at thirty-seven thousand feet, some trigger point must have been touched. The block dissolved suddenly.”
“I saw in photographic detail: a square little magazine with an article on the evolution of the human brain as a ‘triune brain’ in which the surviving reptilian and mammalian components were not unemployed rudiments like our appendix, but were still functioning as highly active and alive constituents in our twentieth century brains.
“A panicky reptile, a frightened mammal and what I call ‘I’ were sitting here, locked inside this seat belt, miles above earth.
“While reading that article – it must have been in the early 70’s – the thought had flashed through my mind: ‘Voila!’”
In a crisis in a storm over the Pacific Ocean, Franck re-discovered a forgotten clue to what it was that distinguished humans from apes. Back at home Franck read every one of MacLean’s published papers. The two men corresponded.
When Franck went to Japan to address the second symposium in 1989 he brought with him MacLean’s proposal for a “practical bridge across the abyss.” The bridge was the first step toward a “contemporary biological criteria of what it means to be human.”
“MacLean stresses again and again,” Franck explained, “that the inherent prefrontal capacity for empathy and compassion, which he calls the empathetic circuits, can only reach their full operation after the hormonal changes of adolescence have taken place… Unless they are stimulated and encouraged at critical stages of development, they may never function.”
The latter half of Franck’s book To Be Human Against All Odds includes dialogues among participants, and questions and answers in response to his 1989 speech. Also included is a reply from MacLean to a question sent to him by Franck and a reprint of one of MacLean’s scientific articles.
He recounts a lifetime adventure in learning to see – to really see – the world not as we are taught to look at it, but as it really is, which is: alive, holy, and ignorant of human judgment.
Franck’s account of his search for criteria for what it means to be human led him step by step to MacLean’s path of empathy
“And so the riddle of the human versus the inhuman has accompanied me all my years. Whenever it was taken for granted that we are human I have felt the despair of my early childhood that made me, for the rest of my life, violently allergic to all violence…”
At 76, Franck was invited to present a paper at the “First International Conference on Creating the Future of Humanity” in 1986 sponsored by the Yoko Civilization Research Institute in Japan. As he worked on his presentation he began to question the purpose of the project he had agreed to participate in:
“Was there any point in projecting such a future? Could even the most ‘scholarly’ symposium pretend to write scenarios for ‘creating’ a human future, or even planning to create it, unless the gathering could first agree on what it really means to be human?
“All the great political and economic confabs of the past seventy years—Locarno, Geneva, Rapallo, Yalta, Potsdam—have been the origin of chains of disaster for huge masses of human beings. Had they not taken into account all contingencies except one: that it is sheer folly to plan for humans unless people are aware of and can agree on what being human is about?
“To ignore the criteria of being human, and moreover to take a still inhabitable earth for granted, is to prepare for ultimate catastrophe….
“Aha! Here was my clue. I would speak on ‘The Criteria of Being Human.’”
Empathetic Circuits Require Stimulation at Critical Stages of Human Development.
In his presentation, Franck argued so persuasively for the need for such criteria that the second International Conference scheduled in 1989 was titled: “On the Criteria of Being Human.” He was surprised by his success, but he felt that something had been missing:
“…from the moment I finished speaking I was distressed. I grew more and more aware of having left out what really mattered. I had not been able to supply a single example of a ‘practical way’ of bridging the enormous conceptual and linguistic gap…
“I had a vague, gnawing feeling that once, years ago, I had caught a glimpse of a practical bridge across the abyss. Try as I might to recall it, the missing link seemed to have faded from memory forever blocked. It was maddening.
Over the Pacific Ocean the plane suddenly lurched. A voice crackled over the intercom: “Turbulence.” The stewardess, unsteady on black silk stockinged legs, scurried to check seat belts, holding on to backrests. A heavy object in the galley crashed to the floor. The 747 was bucking, jerking, plunging wildly. Franck described what happened next:
“In the leaden silence that becomes almost audible in airplanes at moments when one swears never to fly again, never, never – in that infernal silence at thirty-seven thousand feet, some trigger point must have been touched. The block dissolved suddenly.
“I saw in photographic detail: a square little magazine with an article on the evolution of the human brain as a ‘triune brain’ in which the surviving reptilian and mammalian components were not unemployed rudiments like our appendix, but were still functioning as highly active and alive constituents in our twentieth century brains.
“A panicky reptile, a frightened mammal and what I call ‘I’ were sitting here, locked inside this seat belt, miles above earth where all three belong…
“While reading that article – it must have been in the early 70’s – the thought had flashed through my mind: ‘Voila!’”
In a crisis in a storm over the Pacific Ocean, Franck re-discovered a forgotten clue to what it was that distinguished humans from apes. Back at home Franck read every one of Paul MacLean’s published papers. The two men corresponded.
When Franck went to Japan to address the second symposium in 1989 he brought with him MacLean’s proposal for a “practical bridge across the abyss.” The bridge was the first step toward a “contemporary biological criteria of what it means to be human.”
“MacLean stresses again and again,” Franck explained, “that the inherent prefrontal capacity for empathy and compassion, which he calls the empathetic circuits, can only reach their full operation after the hormonal changes of adolescence have taken place… Unless they are stimulated and encouraged at critical stages of development, they may never function. “
The later half of Franck’s To Be Human Against All Odds he includes dialogues among participants, and questions and answers in response to his 1989 speech. Also included is a reply from MacLean to a question sent to him by Franck and a reprint of one of MacLean’s scientific articles.
The book is not so much about the triune brain model itself as about Franck’s lifelong quest for such a model. He recounts a lifetime adventure in learning to see – to really see – the world not as we are taught to look at it, but as it really is, which is: alive, holy, and ignorant of human judgment.
Franck’s account of his search for criteria for what it means to be human led him step by step to MacLean’s path of empathy.
Time for a decisive response: the Triune Brain model for diagnosing the Virus of Violence
HUMANKIND’S MOST URGENT TASK: BRIDGE INTRACRANIAL COMMUNICATION GAPS
Paul MacLean, Chief of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Health, developed a revolutionary model of the human brain. Called the triune brain, the model can play an important role in redefining literacy—and in assessing the state of health regarding our capacity to learn in the 21st century.
The model helps explain why humans remain stuck in a dysfunctional maintenance-shock learning mode long after its survival value is gone. It clarifies why the mystique of military power inevitably infects our mode of learning. It shows how communication gaps between three inter-cranial neurological command posts function like three separate brains encased in the human skull play. The communication gaps play a major role in the steady decline of human culture and the widening the human gap. In MacLean’s model the area represented by each of the three “brains” evolved over millions of years. In any emergency humans face, they compete with each other to “take charge.”
Each area of the brain represents a different level of mental development; a different stage in the maturation in our human-readiness to take responsibility for our own affairs. Each epitomizes a new phase in the capacity of humans to experiment with more freedom to do their own thing.
I first saw a report on the Triune Brain model in the November 1982 issue of the Tarrytown Forum for New Ideas. Subsequently, the Triune Brain model received attention in many relevant fields of science, philosophy, psychology, education, and religion.
The concept that humans think with three brain centers provided two important clues that help explain, at a deeper dimension of reality, conclusions reached in Limits to Growth and in No Limits to Learning.
The first clue is that humans feel far more about “new information” that plays an more important role than what they think about the “new information.”
Knowledge, no matter how important or far-reaching, is primarily assessed not for its rational meaning, but for its emotional impact. People tend to refuse to consider the validity of a new idea – no matter how good that idea is – if it is emotionally unsettling. And most new ideas are. The Triune Brain thesis suggests why that is so.
The second clue is that each of our three specialized inter-cranial “command centers” has its own agenda which determines how it responds to new information.
As a result of these conflicting agendas the way we collect and process new information in modern Western civilization often inhibits us from applying that information wisely. In crisis situations, ancient assumptions built into our maintenance-shock gut-response mechanisms almost guarantee new information will be misused.
If there existed a good communication system of neural pathways linking our three brains, the human gap could be bridged. In humankind’s present juvenile stage of maturity, inter-cranial communications between our three brains is hit and miss at best.
There are exceptions in which the neural connections necessary for good communications do exist. For thousands of years there have been teachers who have known and taught methods by which new neural pathways can be developed.
Robert Thurman was making this point when he suggested Western cognitive science had important lessons to learn from the old-fashioned mind-science developed in Tibet and India. Barbara McClintock made the same point when she said she learned and applied methods practiced by Tibetan Buddhist monks. But, she added, “I couldn’t tell others people because it was against the scientific method. This kind of knowledge is very different from that which we call the only way.”
The principles of “old-fashioned mind-science” are not limited to Eastern religions. Christians, Jews, and Muslims also have rich mystical traditions of meditation and compassion. They exhibit the same awareness of this very different kind of knowledge. For them mastering inner reality is given a higher priority than mastering and taking control over outer reality. They can make available to practitioners of Western science and religion the same methods for knitting together our understanding of material and non-material dimensions of reality.
How a neurological PATH OF EMPATHY can knit together our three brains.
In the 20th century, Western cognitive science gave us a different kind of knowledge about the great bulge of gray matter filling most of our skull. The great bulge, the neo-cortex, was divided horizontally into a right and a left hemisphere. Each hemisphere emphasized a different set of human characteristics. A rational analytical mode of thinking dominated the left side. An imaginative creative mode of thinking dominated the right. On the whole, the two characteristics complemented each other and made for a balanced lifestyle, unless a dysfunctional society overemphasized one mode of thinking over the other.
While knowledge about the two complementary lateral brains was upsetting when first reported, most people in Western culture have assimilated and find useful the idea of left brain and right brain thinking.
Knowledge about three complimentary vertical brains is still relatively new. As a result, this new knowledge, no matter how useful it could be, will be emotionally upsetting and rejected by many people.
The model could be especially useful for coming to grips with two major recommendations in the book No Limits to Learning. One is to redefine the meaning of literacy. The other is to come up with an alternative to the current maintenance-shock model of education.
The Triune Brain model also provides a deeper understanding of how humans become trapped in what Einstein called our prison-like delusion of consciousness. The delusion is reinforced when we shut out new knowledge because it makes us emotionally uncomfortable. Einstein’s two major recommendations for freeing ourselves from our prison were (1) widen our circle of compassion, and (2) embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Both Einstein’s recommendations coincide with Paul MacLean’s recommendation for bridging the communications gap between our three brains. MacLean suggested that meditative practices used by mystics for centuries can create a neurological “path of empathy” that can bridge the communication gap between our three complementary but radically different brains.
MacLean’s research focused on the great bulging neo-cortex, associated with our human analytical and creative skills, and on two smaller bulges of grey matter located below the neo-cortex. On a vertical scale downward, there was the much smaller bulge of the limbic system and below that the still smaller basal ganglia complex.
In 1990 MacLean published his findings concerning the independent agendas of each of these three brains in a treatise entitled The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleo-cerebral Functions.
The most ancient and smallest brain was the basal ganglia. MacLean described this brain as reptilian in character. Its functions were biological and physical. Its primary concerns were with territory, possessions, and physical space. In modern society, this brain tends to dominate in emergency situations. It takes over in a survival crisis such as war, or aggressive sports, or highly competitive fields of commerce and industry.
The next oldest and somewhat larger brain was limbic system. MacLean described this brain as neo-mammalian (our old horse brain so to speak.) Its functions were social and emotional. Its primary concerns were with status, hierarchy, decision-making, and legislation. In modern society, this brain tended to dominate in areas of governance, group relations, management, and maintaining social status.
The newest and largest brain was the neo-cortex. MacLean described this brain as humanizing in character. Its functions were conceptual, intellectual, and empathetic. Its primary concerns were with role models, ideas, and cultural and spiritual life. In modern society, this brain tended to dominate in areas of the arts, science, religion, and technology.
To make his point that all three brains were indispensable, even though often at odds with each other’s agenda, MacLean quipped that:
Allegorically speaking, when a psychiatrists asks his patient to lie down on the couch, he is asking him to stretch out alongside his old horse brain and his even older crocodile brain.
OUR MOST ANCIENT, LEAST HUMAN BRAINS GET OUR ATTENTION FIRST
When as individuals we need a psychiatrist, it is because our lives are in some way detached from reality. Detachment from reality is one definition of insanity. When our detachment is so severe that we become a threat to ourselves and to others, the rules of society say we can be locked up for our own protection and that of others.
The problem today is who should lock up whom when society itself is so detached from reality it represents a threat to itself and to others societies? Is it possible that in such a society the persons who are most sane will be the ones who will be locked up? What hope is there for a civilization that is in such a state of decline that its institutions and its values have become totally detached from reality?
From the perspective of the Triune Brain model, the problem can be described as follows:
In times of crisis the communication gap between our three brains becomes critical. That is because in an emergency situation the agenda of our most ancient old croc brain gets our attention first. When we feel threatened our old reptilian brain immediately takes command. Our old neo-mammalian brain charges in to plan strategies, organize the troops, and set up a rigid hierarchy of command.
In crisis situations our modern human brain vacillates. Its agenda, which would be to assess the crisis and weight options, is overwhelmed by emotional overload. For that reason, humans end up using the power of science and technology to carry out the mission of our two brains that are least qualified to lead. No matter how sophisticated our political and economic models of reality seem, they their function maintain an obsolete old way of thinking. Even religion and the arts are co-opted. Their function will be to rationalize a way of life that is no longer sustainable. As the human gap widens, we will delude ourselves into believing the creation of weapons of mass destruction is a rational and a necessary thing to do.
The book is not so much about the triune brain model itself as about Franck’s lifelong quest for such a model. He recounts a lifetime adventure in learning to see – to really see – the world not as we are taught to look at it, but as it really is, which is: alive, holy, and ignorant of human judgment.
Franck’s account of his search for criteria for what it means to be human led him step by step to MacLean’s path of empathy.
The empathetic circuits which give the big human brain its capacity for compassion could, if properly nourished, break the communications impasse between our modern brain and our ancient brains. For thousands of years the spiritual practices of the world’s religions have aimed at stimulating the empathetic circuits and human growth from an adolescent stage to full maturity.
MacLean and others believe spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and contemplation can stimulate inner growth of crucial neural circuits. By strengthening these empathic neural pathways we can dampen neurotic impulses of a skittish ancient brain inclined to overreact to anything it perceives as a threat.
MacLean’s model for methodically, intentionally stimulating pathways of empathy represents a new understanding of how we might bring our modern and ancient brains into harmony. If neural networks can be strengthened to span the “human gap” identified in No Limits to Learning, we would be on our way to solving the Consciousness Crisis—much in the same way Prokaryotes solved the Oxygen Crisis. Our greatest challenge would be to communicate this new knowledge to other members of our species as effectively as those pioneer one-cell bacteria were able to communicate their “new knowledge” to the rest of their species.
The empathetic circuits which give the big human brain its capacity for compassion could, if properly nourished, break the communications impasse between our modern brain and our ancient brains. For thousands of years the spiritual practices of the world’s religions have aimed at stimulating the empathetic circuits in human growth from an adolescent stage to full maturity.
MacLean and others believe spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and contemplation can stimulate inner growth of crucial neural circuits. By strengthening these empathic neural pathways we can dampen neurotic impulses of a skittish ancient brain inclined to overreact to anything it perceives as a threat.
MacLean’s model for methodically, intentionally stimulating pathways of empathy represents a new understanding of how we might bring our modern and ancient brains into harmony. If neural networks can be strengthened to span the “human gap” identified in No Limits to Learning, we would be on our way to solving the Consciousness Crisis—much in the same way Prokaryotes solved the Oxygen Crisis. Our greatest challenge would be to communicate this new knowledge to other members of our species as effectively as those pioneer one-cell bacteria were able to communicate their “new knowledge” to the rest of their species.
OUR MOST ANCIENT, LEAST HUMAN BRAINS GET OUR ATTENTION FIRST
When as individuals we need a psychiatrist, it is because our lives are in some way detached from reality. Detachment from reality is one definition of insanity. When our detachment is so severe that we become a threat to ourselves and to others, the rules of society say we can be locked up for our own protection and that of others.
The problem today is who should lock up whom when society itself is so detached from reality it represents a threat to itself and to others societies? Is it possible that in such a society the persons who are most sane will be the ones who will be locked up? What hope is there for a civilization that is in such a state of decline that its institutions and its values have become totally detached from reality?
This is the problem Donella Meadows identified and tried to solve. It is the problem Helen Wallace and the Iroquois Council of Grandmothers tried to solve. It is the problem Francis Bacon and Adam Smith warned us against. It was the problem Hilda Bernstein Silverman experienced when her “inner world” and her “outer world” no longer matched. It was the problem Raima Larter characterized as a bifurcation – a time of metamorphosis when one path ends and a new path begins.
From the perspective of the Triune Brain model, the problem can be described as follows:
In times of crisis the communication gap between our three brains becomes critical. That is because in an emergency situation the agenda of our most ancient old croc brain gets our attention first. When we feel threatened our old reptilian brain immediately takes command. Our old neo-mammalian brain charges in to plan strategies, organize the troops, and set up a rigid hierarchy of command.
In crisis situations our modern human brain vacillates. Its agenda, which would be to assess the crisis and weight options, is overwhelmed by emotional overload. For that reason, humans end up using the power of science and technology to carry out the mission of our two brains that are least qualified to lead. No matter how sophisticated our political and economic models of reality seem, their function maintains an obsolete old way of thinking. Even religion and the arts are co-opted. Their function will be to rationalize a way of life that is no longer sustainable. As the human gap widens, we will delude ourselves into believing the creation of weapons of mass destruction is a rational and a necessary thing to do.
A comprehensive exposition of MacLean’s Triune Brain hypothesis is offered by the artist-philosopher-sculptor Frederick Franck in his book To Be Human Against All Odds.
MacLean and Franck have provided a solution for an old way of thinking that has been keeping our species of Homo sapiens on a violent path of evolution toward extinction. The Path of Empathy uniting our human brains in a vertical linkage will be crucial for the wellbeing of every individual and for our species next evolutionary leap into a Higher Consciousness.
For many years I was a close friend and supporter of both Frederick and his wife Claske and their Marvelous nonprofit Pacem in Terris at 96 Covered Bridge Road, Warwick, New York 1090, Ph. 986-4329. E-mail www.frederickfranc.org. Give us your e-mail address & I will e-mail the annual “Shoestring vol. 51, May 2015” describing open air classic concerts to be played this summer.