Jack Lewis, neuroscientist: “A minimum of deadly sins is perfectly healthy and morally appropriate”

The neuroscientist Jack Lewis, in an image provided by the author.John Clark

Jack Lewis is a popular neuroscientist born in London 46 years ago and trained at the University of Nottingham and the German Max Planck Institute.

Lewis has focused on the cerebral determinants of human behavior to write

The Science of Sin

, recently published in Spanish by Pinolia.

The so-called capital sins, present in the majority religions, have served as a guide to unravel how and why we succumb to temptations.

He does not avoid their character as tools of social control, like a primitive criminal and civil code, but he defends that they are also responses that have guaranteed our survival: “The seven most common human temptations are a perfectly acceptable, if not totally necessary, part of our repertoire of behaviors.

“If they were completely suppressed, it is very possible that our species would not survive.”

Ask

.

Due to our brain configuration, are we born sinners or predisposed to sin?

Answer

.

For a species as intrinsically social as

Homo sapiens

, equipped with incredible brain networks that allow the vast majority of us to intuitively understand how others feel, facilitating the development and maintenance of healthy social bonds, I would argue that the default predisposition is not to sin.

If the social environment in which a person is raised fails to

exhibit clear evidence of how much more can be gained by pursuing prosocial outcomes over personal gain, then the resulting antisocial behaviors are more likely to fall into the category of sin.

Therefore, in my opinion, a sinner is made, not born.

Our predisposition is to learn the benefits of acting fairly in our dealings with other people around us.

This has always been essential for the survival of members of our species.

Being an accepted part of a group always leads to better results than going it alone.

Team players, who benefit from the social cooperation of others, live long enough to pass on their genes.

Those who are shunned by their community due to extremes of antisocial behavior generally do not.

Q.

But you describe in your book brain functions related to the response to temptations...

A.

The brain seems to generate psychological and physical sensations of distress.

Whether or not an individual responds to such feelings in a way that leads to harm to his or her social relationships dictates whether the religion considers him or her to have sinned or not.

The default setting is to be successful in learning to manage these feelings without causing rifts in our relationships.

We don't always get it right, but we tend to get better at it as we get older and wiser, allowing most people to maintain membership in a cooperative group.

It is common for a person who feels hurt by another person's comments or actions to lash out in some way with words or actions.

Those who can resist the temptation to respond in this way to such negative feelings have generally learned to do so from others who set good examples and thus demonstrate the long-term benefits and from a lot of practice imitating these behaviors to personally experience the benefits.

Those unable to restrain themselves in this way have generally grown up in an environment where role models set a poor example and/or simply did not get enough practice developing the relevant brain circuits.

Q.

Sins are a tool of social control (you have written that “the gods are very useful when it comes to imposing codes of conduct on a large scale”) and also key to our evolution.

Where is the limit between a beneficial and a harmful drive?

R.

_

This limit could be described in very simple terms: finding the balance between maximizing personal benefit without seriously upsetting your community and ostracizing yourself.

A minimum of greed, lust, gluttony, pride, envy, anger and laziness is perfectly healthy and morally appropriate.

It is only excess that inevitably leads to antisocial results;

hence the warnings against this type of behavior and the prohibitions included in various religions.

Everything in moderation is applicable here, as in other aspects of life.

Excess inevitably leads to antisocial results;

hence the warnings against this type of behavior and the prohibitions included in various religions.

Q.

You write that if everyone resisted the seven temptations, there would be less social friction, more cooperation, and therefore everyone would win.

How to resist?

R.

Practice, determination and optimism.

The enormous amount of evidence supporting the concept of neuroplasticity—even in adulthood the human brain is capable of strengthening certain connections, weakening others, and thus slowly but surely changing our behavioral repertoires—suggests that, if If we practice emotional self-management regularly (daily), intensively (pressuring ourselves) and long-term (sustained), we can develop the brain areas that give us more control over excessive levels of activity in our dACC [acronym in English for the cerebral cortex]. anterior dorsal cingulate, the brain region linked to cognitive and emotional control].

In other words, we can all take steps to develop the habit of looking at our emotional distress more objectively.

This alone makes it more likely that, rather than responding in an antisocial way, we will choose a prosocial way.

For example, if someone offends us, instead of responding with anger, we can think about pain and anguish.

what could

be suffering, that is, contemplating how hyperactive your dACC might be, causing you to behave in an unpleasant way, and therefore changing feelings of anger to sympathy.

This is certainly not easy, but with practice we can improve to the point where, instead of being impulsive and blurting out a response or planning our revenge over a longer period of time, we can channel our energies into empathizing with their suffering.

Everyone suffers, we only differ in degree.

From that point of view, we can direct our behavior towards the only thing that really matters: achieving a prosocial outcome.

Nurture social connections instead of destroying them.

Everyone suffers, we only differ in the degree

Q.

Do social networks create narcissists, arrogant people?

A.

Not always, but they can certainly fan the flames of incipient narcissism.

It depends on how you interact with social media and who you follow.

If you binge excessively on narcissistic or angry people, then this daily exposure will modify the circuitry in your brain to normalize the types of behaviors they exhibit.

Human beings are natural imitators and often copy the behaviors of people with whom we interact regularly;

often without even realizing we are doing it.

If, on the other hand, you follow inspiring, fascinating and thoughtful people who are altruistically motivated to share a positive perspective on art, life, sports, humanity, culture, then daily exposure will modify the circuits of your brain of different way.

It will normalize

these

messages and ideas, encouraging the imitation of non-narcissistic behaviors and a more positive view of humanity.

We humans tend to follow the crowd.

We truly are herd animals.

Today, with social media, whether we realize it or not, we all have the power to select exactly which crowd we allow to influence us on a daily basis.

It all comes down to being vigilant in finding the right people to follow on social media and evicting the bad apples from our

feeds

.

More information

This is how your toxic relationships manifest themselves on networks

Q.

Cortisol impairs gluttony self-control.

Can there be a chemical solution, like Ozempic?

A.

Ozempic may suppress appetite, but gluttony is much more than just eating.

It involves ingesting excessive amounts of a substance through the mouth.

So a glutton taking Ozempic might eat less food, but does it help moderate their drinking or drug consumption?

High cortisol in our system makes us feel stressed and stress drains our ability to suppress immediate gratification.

Many forms of immediate gratification temporarily lower cortisol only to have it rise, increasingly, later.

Chemical methods of reducing appetite or stress are sometimes effective, but most chemicals we put into our system often have unwanted side effects.

Medications give with one hand, but take with the other, so non-chemical routes to managing high cortisol levels are often more sustainable and preferable overall.

The best way to reduce cortisol is to engage in social interaction with people you find easy to get along with, exercise regularly, enjoy nature, and, perhaps most importantly, practice some form of meditation, whether focusing in breathing or getting lost in the flow of a good book, a craft or music.

It is extremely effective in managing stress and the many potentially negative impacts of stress.

Q.

On lust: Does porn develop a preference for the fake over the real?

A.

On pornographic websites everything is accessible with one click.

A type of pornography that, at first, seems unpleasant, may not seem so unpleasant if you return to it.

Several exposures later, perhaps weeks or even months later, the response may have changed from mild aversion to something enticing.

Before you know it, a person may find themselves actively seeking out a form of pornography that has become desirable, despite finding the initial experience a bit unpleasant.

This could start with women with grotesquely enlarged breasts or men with intimidatingly large penises.

After a while, responses to these oversized sexual stimuli can go from unpleasant to arousing until they are ultimately considered boring and the porn consumer is likely motivated to see what else is out there.

And so, the cycle continues.

It does not necessarily lead to a preference for the fake over the real, but

it is

likely to lead to a sexual interest in phenomena that are not easily offered by the partner.

Porn does not necessarily lead to a preference for the fake over the real, but it is likely to lead to a sexual interest in phenomena that are not easily offered by one's partner.

Q.

Are we slaves to the brain's response to sexual arousal?

A.

Feelings of sexual arousal are beyond our control.

They are an automatic, physiological and chemical response.

However, acting on those sexual feelings is very much within our control.

We may be physiologically ready for sex, but we choose

not

to act.

Taking a cold shower or thinking about a naked elderly relative are popular methods for taking decisive action to reduce sexual readiness.

Q.

Greed is not instinctive, but requires a certain degree of conscious deliberation.

Can greed be taught?

A.

Greed can certainly be taught.

There are all kinds of convenient narratives that people can tell themselves (and their children) to justify the disproportionate control of resources enjoyed by the rich compared to the poor.

Q.

Regarding envy, he assures that, from the point of view of evolutionary psychology, enjoying the misfortune of a superior makes sense.

As?

A.

Schadenfreude

, the joy derived from the misfortune of others, probably evolved as a mechanism to strengthen social bonds

.

Those we perceive as superior to us, in some way, often have greater power or influence over others than we do ourselves.

Those who have power over others are usually a minority: the manager, the leader, the celebrity, the despot... When a large number of people who share the feeling of being at a disadvantage compared to those who have greater power simultaneously feel happy because their superiors fall from grace or suffer shame, the feeling that they are in this together is reinforced.

They may not have the power and wealth of the people they envy, but at least they have each other.

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