Cultural Discernment

Brennan focuses her book on establishing the transmission of affect, in response to a world she perceives as being under the dark cloud of a “foundational fantasy” whereby we misconstrue ourselves as being discrete.  While this would seem to support a view that we should uniformly embrace and value this transmission, she offers some advice in Chapter 6 that runs counter to this assumption. 

In her section on “Cultural Discernment” (p123), Brennan describes how “religious codes and codes of courtesy” (122) serve “as means for discerning and resisting the transmission of affect and responding to another’s affective states in ways that would help dissipate negative and disabling affects….” (123). Expecting the final chapters to be a further development of the different means of entrainment (other than olfaction), I was quite surprised to see Brennan introduce a new theme.  

Whereas she spends much of the book talking about the foundational fantasy, and its ill-effects, she seems to want more than a mere recognition that we are wrong about our discreteness. She posits that we have created a world in which “humankind… works against life rather than for it (162).  She offers an explanation of how opposing forces are at work when we decide either to perpetuate the “dumping” of negative affects, or to break the chain. In her words we either “live in the unreal but three-dimensional world of the negative affects”… or “live instead in the energy of life” (163).  These opposing forces are our self-interested (though often self-sabotaging) egos versus our religious codes and codes of courtesy(or more generally, our empathy and compassion). “When the code is strong enough to override the impulse…the impulse is refused.” (123).

In my mind, this conjured up the classic image of a person with an angel on one shoulder, a demon on the other.  The angel “is open to others in a way that wishes them well and would dissipate their anxiety or sorrow if [it] could.” (123), while the demon, under the guidance of the fearful ego passes each negative affect onward in a vain attempt at self-preservation (or preservation of the identity and its supposed distinctness).

I agree with a lot of what Brennan is saying here. I think most humans are motivated essentially by fear and love. Our fear, manifested in anxiety, anger and hatred, constantly wants us to treat other people badly—to judge them, feel superior, use them as means to our ends, etc. Our love manifests in compassion, whereby we treat others well—calm them down when they’re angry, give them our attention when they need it, etc.  Fear can be a much stronger motivator than love, and thus self-interest is easy to slip into. Ironically, though, those who are most susceptible (and give in to) self-interested fear tend to end up being miserable people, while those motivated by compassion seem to be happier. Brennan tells us that we can “undo” the demons that are “familiar affective patterns”, “refuse them entry” and try and convert them “back into living energy. They only gain their power “when we see them, hear them, think them… and grant them admission” (164).