The Lizard Brain

We start with the winning and losing and then dive into the Amygdala, the Limbic System, and the Prefrontal Cortex. But it's not about the science, it's about how to be human!

What is 2 Parachutes Podcast?

The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!

Scott: 00:03

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. I am one of your co hosts. I'm Scott Olson. I'm still a retired FBI agent and I live and work in the private investigator world. And I am right next to the other co host of 2 Parachutes Podcast, Sean Baker Garcia.

Shawn: 00:25

Hey, guys. Thanks for the intro, Scott. And as he said, I'm Sean Baker Garcia. I am a accidental CEO and security policy junkie. My nonprofit coalition, we work with partners at home and abroad to create and achieve hopefully some shared national global security goals.

Shawn: 00:46

And so that takes a lot of hard work and a lot of hard interacting at times. So, Scott, as a segue, you know, how are we here at 2 Parachutes Podcast going to do the hard work of interacting today?

Scott: 00:58

The hard work of interacting. I love that. And just as a final reminder, it just popped into my head, Sean and I have known each other for quite a while. We actually met while we were both assigned to US Embassy Baghdad. Sean was working for State Department at the time.

Scott: 01:15

I was working for the FBI at the time. And we are living in this world of talking about what it's like to be in the public discourse and how everybody who's involved in the public discourse can do a better job. And I think the topic for today that we need to sort of jump out of the aircraft and see where the wind pushes us is winning and losing. And winning and losing in the context of this continuing value or ethic that you and I have talked about a bunch and that we see in the common discourse, which is this mindset that seems to value fighting. We see it with politicians running for office.

Scott: 02:08

Personally, I see it all the way down to the granular level in relationships when an individual is in a relationship with another individual. More often than not, there's this concept of, well, if the relationship is important to you, you need to fight for this and I need to fight for that. And I really want to talk about fighting because my optic on fighting started when I was a prosecuting attorney years ago. I was a trial attorney. And one of the things that I quickly discovered is that when you go to trial, even if you think that you've got a winning case, the other side is going to trial because they think they have a winning case and everybody gets hurt.

Scott: 02:59

It transitioned to going into martial arts when when my son was a little boy and he was losing his mind because he was five and we needed to find an outlet for that. We took him to a taekwondo taekwondo studio and he actually told me one day when I was picking him up that it was really fun and I ought to try it. So when a six year old looks up at you and goes, dad, you really ought to try this. Okay, so now I I got my uniform and I'm going to Taekwondo class and then he started fighting in tournaments. I started fighting in tournaments and I I got a very granular education that when you fight, there's a winner and a loser but everybody gets hurt.

Scott: 03:45

And so when we take that concept and move it into the public discourse, I'm just wondering if fighting is the way we should process this and if there's a temper or some sort of context we can put to fighting, or if there's a better way in the public discourse than fighting. That shake anything loose for you?

Shawn: 04:08

It certainly shakes loose for the security policy junkie part of me, because part of that disciplinary field when I was in college is, you know, learning about, in the context of international relations, the concept of game theory, which is, you know, what you're describing reminds me of zero sum game theory, which I think, Scott, you're probably very familiar with that. But it's just that idea that my win is your loss, ergo the fight, right? And then what I would say is, is that mental model appropriate in today's world? You could look at it across economic, you know, or political or military defense strategy. In our immediate interest, though, is you raising the point that what has prior been relegated to this space or the realm of elite politicians, military strategists, economic gurus, is now spilling over into common public forum areas, spaces, and discourse.

Shawn: 05:26

So the question is, not only is this winning or losing mentality, which you can characterize as game theory zero sum strategic kind of approach? Or, you know, is it relevant in any of these spaces anymore, because of the interconnectedness of people and societies, whether we want to be interconnected or not, but also because the interconnections are a bit superficial. So they're creating outlier variables that look like they should result in a certain outcome, but they don't because of the nature of the connection. It would appear more meaningful and deep than it is. But it is still those dynamics and those access points, whether you're on social media platforms, or, you know, doing digital sort of, like, and commercial, you know, endeavors, it, they all, so I'm going into rabbit holes already.

Shawn: 06:29

Let me dial it back and just say, yes, I think that the topic is worthwhile. I think there are a lot of elements to this discussion topic. And I would love to hear where you want to first attack the hill, because there are different entry points to think about, you know, if you want to maybe even lead with an example of something to kind of give the rest of the listeners sort of an anchor to hold on to, to get through.

Scott: 06:56

Yeah, happy to do that. I love the direction because one of our strategic touch points for the 2 Parachutes Podcast is, you know, we we want to facilitate the hard work of interacting in the public dialog, and we know that it's hard. Yeah. And we need to dive into the reasons why it's hard. Yeah.

Scott: 07:20

But we also don't want this to be an academic process. We want it to be a practical process. Now practical solutions always have as at least a part of their foundation understanding and that requires some academics, but if you deep dive into the academic side of it, know, for the sake of learning is great, but it doesn't pay the rent, and that's where we get the ivory tower thing, and so we, you know, we want to take a trip into the ivory tower, but we want to be practical. We want to give people things that they can think about that will move them to things that they can actually do. And so with that as the context, I think about this concept of fight from sort of two different categories.

Scott: 08:17

One is asking the question, sort of why do we fight? Why are so many people saying, hey, yeah, let's fight. That's a good thing. That isn't happening in a vacuum. There has to be a reason for that.

Scott: 08:33

The other is, you know, I'm taking a pause so that I can articulate this as well as I'd like to It's to not render fighting wrong or obsolete so that we never fight. It's to recognize our humanity as homo sapiens, regardless of culture, that we're we're looking at some level at this necessity sometimes of fighting or the desire to fight. And my view is the productive way to go is to recognize that sometimes fighting isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it doesn't serve our purpose. And so for the example, I'm going to go back to one of my favorite ever things and thank you so much for triggering this memory. I was in college in the early 80s and in 1983, and I'm going to check this just to make sure, in 1983 NC State coached by Jim Valvano won the collegiate basketball championships, and they were huge underdogs, and they won by continuing to beat teams that they shouldn't beat.

Scott: 10:11

And I remember watching a interview of coach Valvano after the win, and while he was in the the joy of having won this thing and his players were excited, somebody asked him a question. I don't remember the question, but I remember the answer. And and he said, here here's the thing about basketball. He said, my my athletes need to understand that when they're playing the game, it needs to be the most important thing that they're doing. But after the game is done, even if they win and especially if they win, they have to recognize the relative unimportance of a basketball game.

Scott: 10:58

And I thought, a brilliant juxtaposition because that means, you know, go into the competition and and focus, focus, focus, but when that's over, understand that it's just a game. Now if we take that message and look at our world, all of a sudden now we see places where it is completely appropriately, completely appropriate to fight, whether it's a little league baseball game or, you know, popcorn or football or, you know, soccer. What are we doing? We're we're teaching our children the value of focus and hard work and risk and, you know, playing through pain and and all those things which would trigger a lot of debate. And again, it's 2 Parachutes Podcast, so we want the debate.

Scott: 11:51

But even with professional sports where there's a lot of money, at the end of the day, even though there's a lot of money, it's still just a game. And I think that this pours into, you know, the the gambling stuff that we're looking at as gambling becomes more and more broadly available due to the change in the law a couple of years ago. It's it's important in the moment, but it's relatively unimportant because it's a game now you compare and contrast and this is my question to you you compare and. Contrast something that at the end of it it's relatively unimportant to the things where at the end of it it is relatively important. If we have the Democrat party and the Republican party arguing something in the United States Congress, if we have the the Liberals and the Conservatives in whatever Western European government you want to pick that's your favorite, arguing about what law will be passed or what we're going to do.

Scott: 12:57

At the end of that, let's call it a fight, it actually matters. Because it's not a score on a marquee or a championship flag you get a raise. The outcome of that dispute affects people, and so it matters. And so I'm interested in your thoughts about not just fighting, but if we can categorize fighting into things that are relatively unimportant when that fight is done, versus things that are relatively important when that fight is done.

Shawn: 13:34

Love that so much. What you're describing right now, again, to restate it, are two primary questions. One, the question of the relative value or necessity of fight in society, and as a human trait. So the quick and dirty answer is, it's essential. Because there are going to be times in our very visceral, primitive, you know, animal existence where we're going to have to physically, intellectually, emotionally fight something, someone.

Shawn: 14:11

So yes, there is a place for it. It's not obsolete. I don't think that we, as human beings, will ever reach that sort of Star Trek utopian state where we're all living in perfect Well, and actually, fair enough, Star Trek didn't even achieve it. What they were showing or demonstrating is how to live with diverse types of humans in imperfect, you know, life realities where, again, it wasn't that they never fought. They fought all the time, even within that harmonious, you know, somewhat harmoniously achieved existence.

Shawn: 14:50

So the short answer is yes, we're going to fight, we need to fight, and our bodies, you know, are designed by, you know, the hand of God, or evolution, whatever, or both, right, to fight or flight. That's what it's all about. Now, when you take the next phase, which is, okay, let's just separate the fight part out, and then, you know, talk about what, where is fighting appropriate? That is a very interesting, and nuanced, and broad spectrum sort of topic to consider. The first thing that it made me think of, and I apologize for listeners if you listen to more than one episode, and I seem to, I think I bring this up a lot as an anecdotal thing.

Shawn: 15:39

Nothing triggers my amygdala response faster to fight than snagging my sweater on a door handle. Like, it is literally, I'm going to war with the handle. Like, I'm going to kill it. I'm going fight it, and it's going to die. That is the situation that my brain has decided, you know?

Shawn: 15:59

So obviously disproportionate reaction to the occurrence, and I will have to quickly move on with my day. Because that bothers me so much, I actually did a ChatGPT query the other day exactly asking that question. I'm like, ChatGPT, like, why do I get unreasonably angry when this happens? Because I've been wearing a particular sweater lately, and it's and it's just it I don't know. It's happening.

Shawn: 16:26

It's snagging me all the time. And and basically, what chat GPT gave as a response was that my amygdala is hyperstimulated, and it's over detecting the threat. And so if I have a chronic sort of condition of heavy stress in my life from the time I was a child to now, or even if I'm just in a particularly stressful period, like we're submitting proposals next week, that's going to be stressful for the next ten days, right? Those things can contribute to hyperstimulation of the amygdala, which then minimizes, you know, or sort of like, as I understand it, and I'm probably getting this wrong, so you know, the psychologists in the room and whatnot, or the brain people in the room can figure this out. But you know, it's sort of like you're at the risk of your prefrontal cortex, which is supposed to be regulating your responses and your reactions.

Shawn: 17:29

And the reason why I'm bringing this up at all is because I think that the disproportionate amount of rage that we are seeing in society right now has a lot to do with the fact that we are literally conditioning that amygdala response in our brain based off of the frequency and types of interactions that people are more and more becoming used to. You know, which is to say you're online, and you get into a heated interaction, or you're witnessing even. You don't even have to be an active participant just by exposing yourself to hateful or aggressive, angry, rage bait type content. Your brain is being shaped by that on some level. And so the more that we expose ourselves to those types of interactions, and consume them, the more we're going to, A, become susceptible to reacting in the same ways, over trivialize things that should not be triggering that level of rage, or we're going to fall victim to it in the sense that we are going to harm our own brains and our own mental health.

Shawn: 18:47

So I think it's a perfectly important question or topic to be discussing, because our goal here, as podcasters, with our little small slice of the online airwaves, is to figure out what can we do as human beings to just improve our own health and well-being among the two of us, of course, which is how it started. And then we said, Man, I wonder if others would benefit from this, you know. And then realizing that us talking about stuff like, exactly like this, is the type of thing that may in fact help all of you out there either better understand what's happening, or to arm yourselves with tools to improve your human interactions and connections. So that's where I land on it, Scott.

Scott: 19:37

Yeah, that's wonderful. And that takes us into, you know, what I am processing as, you know, the operator's manual for your brain, and this is the kind of the takes us back to the initial question which is you know why do we why do we fight, why does the concept of we gotta fight for this resonate across cultures with everybody, and I do think there's a reason, but there's a couple of flags that we need to get through first. The first is that just like it helps to understand generally how an internal combustion engine works, how an electric motor works, yeah, you got four tires and a gearbox and a steering wheel, understanding those things will make you a better driver of a motor vehicle, but it will not make you an expert on the engineering, the construction, and the finer points. But everybody still at least needs to know how to drive or needs to understand when they're looking at a Lyft or an Uber driver or a taxi driver that, okay, in my first twenty seconds of being in the car this person is going to be a safe driver. That's the practical aspect.

Scott: 21:09

So I'm going to throw some brain terminology at you, not because either one of us is a brain expert or psychologist or a therapist, but to structure the conversation so that we as operators of brains can have a little bit of structure. And so there are three components that interact and I'm I'm reading this great book it's called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I highly recommend it because it's it's really supercharged my you know online searches through chat GPT to understand this stuff. So you have the amygdala, which is the responsive brain. It's called the reptile brain or the lizard brain or the survival brain, but it is the fight or flight brain, and I will call it the responsive brain because I think it's a more descriptive term.

Scott: 22:06

Then you have the thoughtful brain, which is your prefrontal cortex, which is sort of your forehead. So your amygdala is at the base of your spine at the back of your neck, and that's the I'm going to survive this because I will fight or flight, and then you have the prefrontal cortex which is I'm going to think about this and make a more rational decision, Then you have the connector piece which is called the limbic system, which is in very general, criticize me because I'm describing this wrong terms, the limbic system is the way those two parts communicate. So it's I see a leaf fluttering, I'm gonna run because it may be the wind but it may be a lion, so I'm gonna run and once I run and I get out of breath I'm gonna stop and listen am I being chased by a lion? Does it sound like I'm being chased by a lion? Do I hear the wind?

Scott: 23:05

So we've gone limbic system, I've chosen flight because I don't want to fight a lion, I do something to protect myself, I create distance, Now I'm going to take the time that my prefrontal cortex needs to think about this. And so my opinion is the reason everybody resonates when a politician comes up and says I'm going to fight for fill in the blank. Everybody understands that because everybody's limbic system or everybody's amygdala says yeah, fight or flight, I get that. Let's fight because running away sucks and let's fight. The problem that I see in today's dialogue is that most people don't understand that as soon as you get through that immediate amygdala fight or flight decision, your limbic system is now open, but your limbic system is not automatic the way your amygdala is.

Scott: 24:07

Your limbic system is a choice, and running things through your slow brain, your prefrontal cortex, your reflective brain, not your reactive brain, your reflective brain, it takes discipline. And what I would propose is that that's at least in part what we mean here at the 2 Parachutes Podcast when we talk about the hard work of interacting. It is stopping and thinking about it. So you hear about a situation that's not in your city. You hear what's going on in Minneapolis with the ICE and local protesters.

Scott: 24:47

You hear what's going on in The Middle East between Hamas and Israel, and you have an immediate amygdala response. The problem that I see in the public discourse is there are so many people who have that immediate response, and then they communicate it, and they are not choosing either because they're actively not choosing to for their own personal agenda, or they don't realize, Hey, I've done my fight or flight. I can think about this now. I can be rational. I can collect facts.

Scott: 25:29

I can change my opinion. And that's how we get into this concept of I ran away but it wasn't a lion and so now I should be embarrassed because I ran away from the wind rustling a leaf. And as I extend the metaphor, what I suggest to people that want to do a better job of interacting in the public discourse and want to be thoughtful and be open to being convinced is to recognize that your opinion is always going to change when you have more facts, You cannot get facts quickly. You can jump to conclusions that will save your life, but you can't get facts. So we talk about the pause and people who are still in the fight or flight go, well, I don't need to pause.

Scott: 26:20

I need to survive and part of understanding how our brain operates is to understand when you hit that pause, you're no longer in danger. You may still fear but you're no longer in danger and I think part of the hard work is recognizing, Now, I need to go get some facts. Now, I need to think about this. Now I need to change my mind. And that's hard, but it also, I think, makes us better off.

Scott: 26:53

And I'm gonna push this back to you because one of the flags that I throw on myself is when I realize that I've said a lot of words, it's my time to be quiet. So what do you think? I mean, much So is shaking loose for

Shawn: 27:08

I think that was a great overview of the importance of self analyzing, like, does fight mean to me as an individual, as the listener? What does it mean in your life, and how do you exercise fight? It was a great, you know, sort of biology lesson, just, you know, kind of, or neurology lesson, just to hear, you know, kind of the way that you strung together the three systems of the brain is so confirming and important. It is essential for us as human beings, if we are to not actively contribute to our own sort of existential demise, to be good stewards of exercising that limbic and prefrontal cortex, you know, muscle. Because it's, the amygdala should be a muscle of last resort.

Shawn: 28:06

And right now, what we see is it being used as a weapon of first resort in almost all these sort of divisive interactions. And so I think the key takeaway for me, and hopefully, brothers, is just how do I, you know, I need to be more self aware and more deliberate about choosing to take a pause to give my brain time to soak in additional context and information, rather than just confirmatory amygdala response bias to jump on that grenade and just say, yeah, whatever it is that I'm seeing, I don't need to have the full information. I'm going to fight. I just want to fight about, you know. And that's a very seductive option that so many of us, myself included, fall victim to.

Shawn: 28:58

But not only is it dangerous for the immediate term, because you then make decisions that are not grounded, or judgments that are not grounded in facts, or at least the fullness of the context of a situation surrounding what may be facts. You also are atrophying the other muscle, like that limbic system process that I don't know much about, but it sounds like it needs deliberate cultivation to perform optimally. So, you know, so to me, this is huge. This is a huge I mean, on some level, I believe it's probably self evident, and most of us, if we took a hard look at ourselves and the world around us, this shouldn't shock anyone. Like, you know, it really shouldn't shock anyone.

Shawn: 29:54

But it's helpful to just take a pause in this forum, and state it clearly for the record, to say it's a choice we are making, and it's important that we start making different choices in the moment where it is not an immediate existential threat, you know? It's Bill Maher, the comedian, I guess he still considers himself a comedian. I don't know. He's kind of a pundit, But you he had been doing an interview that I saw recently with the journalist, Fareed Zakariah, I think is his name, and who's a really reputable, one of the few remaining David Brinkley's of our generation, doing good work out there in a sea of really bad work. But one of the things that Bill Maher had reflected on was that this over sensationalization of current events, yes, there are certain things that warrant a openly fight reaction and response.

Shawn: 31:05

Most of the time, it shouldn't probably come until the facts have been collected, and data has been gathered, and context has been revealed. But at the end of the day, reaction was, I stopped. After the first Trump administration, he said, did a lot of catastrophizing and reacting in the way that we're discussing. This time around, I don't do that anymore. Because the things I agree on that his administration is doing, I will talk about those things.

Shawn: 31:38

The things that I disagree with, if even violently disagree with, I talk about those things. But what I don't participate anymore in is that fight reaction that just throws fuel on the flames. And you know, he's like, I can't, because he said it's disingenuous. He's like, I live a very, very good life, a very, very good life in America, And I'm privileged to do what I do. I'm privileged at the comforts that I have, I'm paraphrasing, he didn't say all this, but the implication was that, you know, I can't be out there throwing Molotov cocktails, screaming oppression that I don't actually believe exists.

Shawn: 32:21

And I'm not saying, I'm not, this is not a value judgment on whether he's right or wrong. What I'm saying is that he was letting it take him down dark paths that I think he was like, this is not productive. It's not fruitful. And he is a thoughtful person, whether you agree with his positions, or stated positions or not. I do believe he is somebody who takes the time to pause, to actually figure out as close We'll never have perfect information, but you know, more of the information.

Shawn: 32:51

And then he has an opinion about it. But again, he does it in a way that I think is very accessible, to the point where even if I don't agree with him, I'm much more likely to listen to him because I don't feel attacked. And that limbic, or I don't know if that's limbic or prefrontal response, how he conducts his reaction and responses to really difficult, potentially existential issues, is doing more for humanity, I think, is contributing. So that's the direction I kind of went with it.

Scott: 33:30

Yeah. And I, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to try and change your mind on one thing.

Shawn: 33:38

Sure, sure.

Scott: 33:39

And, you know, this is part of what we do. Right? And I'm interested in what you think of my take on something that you said right up front, is that know that amygdala response isn't useful and so we need to find a way to you know, jump over it or not succumb to it.

Shawn: 34:02

Well, I think it's useful. I just think that what we're using it for is stuff like getting snagged on the doorknob. That's less useful, because what it does is it then dilutes that when it does come time to use that tool, you know, you've dulled it a bit.

Scott: 34:20

Right. And so my posture on this may be that I appreciate a fact differently than you do. And this is because I don't, I'm not an expert in how the amygdala functions, but my understanding of how the amygdala functions, that fight or flight response, it's not a decision, It is a reaction and so, it's going to happen and so, rather than putting the, am I going to go into my amygdala before the amygdala response happens, I think that a more productive way to operate the machinery is to recognize when you snag your sweater you're going to be pissed. But you can very quickly immediately go I'm just pissed because I ruined my sweater or ruined my sweater again or you know I really need to pee and it's trapping me from going to pee. Can see where the wide guardrails are and the two pairs of But it's it's very quickly recognizing and it's I think for me it's recognizing two things.

Scott: 35:35

One that that amygdala response is going to happen. Two, if you don't recognize it, it controls you and you never go down the limbic system to your prefrontal cortex. If you recognize it's happening, you have muscle memory, you have that brain pathway because you have this fight or flight. You're not being eaten by a line. You just snagged your sweater.

Scott: 36:01

You're annoyed, but now you're going straight down your limbic system to your prefrontal cortex, and you can detach yourself and go and do the important thing that you were intending to do. So I don't know if that

Shawn: 36:17

And makes sense to you or does it make again, the way I understood was just my average citizen online research, is that the amygdala is a sensitivity trigger. It's, you know what I mean? It's, again, it's some people may, it may be triggered faster in some people than in other people. That could be for a variety of nurture nature reasons. And so but yes, it is there by design, and we can't ignore it.

Shawn: 36:45

It is gonna happen. You know, the same way when somebody cuts me you know, runs a red light as I'm about to cross the intersection. You know, like, you're gonna feel that. And that is actually existential. It is.

Shawn: 36:55

Because that's a thing where it's like, you know, if I hadn't been keenly aware of my surroundings, can and does often result in catastrophes and fatalities. So now, the doorknob, maybe not so much. But you know, I think that what I was reading about was that somebody like myself, where I am naturally sort of wired, like, for anxiety potential, is that the, you know, that means that the amygdala is hyper stimulated. And it may be normal for me, it may not be normal, it doesn't, you know, I don't really know. But it just means that I need to, the lesson I take out of that is I need to be hyper aware of my reactions.

Shawn: 37:44

Because I may know what's happening in my brain and why, but nobody else does. And in a normal setting, where I might be, this is where people get like, what they call the resting bitch face, RBF. Yeah, yeah, Like, you know, I don't think people sometimes even realize it. I know for me, it can be like, my tone. Like, it changes, and I think it's all related to that trigger response, because something has been said that really, like, freaked you out, or scared you, or made you angry, or bothered you in some way.

Shawn: 38:19

And so for me, it's about trying to balance myself in those moments, especially the ones where they're like, 100% not, like, you know, existential. Yeah. Because over time, somebody like myself that's under constant stress, or feels like they're under constant stress, real or imagined, still manifests in the same way for the person experiencing it. You know, like, how do I better regulate kind of my reactions and things like that. But, yeah, no, totally, totally on board with your point.

Scott: 38:52

So I love all the things that you're touching on. I'm gonna try and pull these strings together, and it starts with, what you were talking about with Bill Maher and how he is recognizing that he doesn't have to respond that way and he doesn't have to communicate that way. I think that part of what we're seeing in the public dialogue, and I think that it is not just limited to what you get when you doom scroll, it's on all social media platforms. It's it's even in on news platforms going back, you know, to the to the nineties, I would say. Maybe even farther back.

Scott: 39:43

All of those stories are communicated in a way that is designed to get that attention fight or flight and I I don't think the intent was to freak everybody out. The intent was to get people to pay attention and the way that our brains pay attention is through the amygdala, through the fight or flight. It is not through the prefrontal cortex and I will offer this as evidence. If you go back to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and you look at Walter Cronkite when he announces to the nation that the president has been assassinated, He is he is sitting there profiled to the camera.

Scott: 40:28

He turns. He states the fact, you know, as of this time today, president Kennedy is dead. He stops. He turns away. He takes his glasses off, and he rubs tears out of his eyes.

Scott: 40:44

Mhmm. That is a fundamentally different method of communicating that tragedy than pick in the last thirty years, the announcement of of a violent death. It it's not that simple statement of fact and sadness. It is some variation that will drive that information into your amygdala. And so I think the reason maybe that we see a lot of this, you know, we gotta fight fight or flight, stressed out, stressed out, is that that amygdala response is a stress response.

Scott: 41:28

It's intended to be a stress response because it's driving action. The problem is that since most of our information seems to be in amygdala language and not in prefrontal cortex language, which is how I would describe Cronkite's sharing that Kennedy was dead. It's prefrontal cortex, he is dead, I am sad. Yeah, we're stressed out. We're feeling anxious because our entire life is what's going to kill me, what's going kill me, what's going to kill me, what's going to kill me.

Scott: 42:06

And so what's the answer? What's the practical advice? I think the practical advice begins with recognizing that we are hardwired through the amygdala to respond this way, but after the initial punch, we don't have to stay that way. We don't have to see something that makes us respond, oh, that's bad, and then two days later go out to an intersection with a bunch of equally outraged people and wave a sign around. We can do that if we think that that is going to actually render the change that we want, but what I see is people that are still in their amygdala and they are shouting their fear that is driving their anger and they're not going through the limbic system to collect more facts, to think about stuff in their prefrontal cortex, and then have an opinion about what we're going to do.

Scott: 43:13

And I think that matters and this is going to make me pull us back to the beginning of this, it matters because this isn't a sporting event. This is how people in our communities, in our country, and in countries around the world live.

Shawn: 43:32

And coexist, yeah.

Scott: 43:33

And if our amygdala is trying to solve those problems, it's going to pick a winner or a loser, and the problem when you have a loser is that loser feels bad and comes back stronger the next time. And that's a prefrontal cortex decision. I was treated poorly and therefore I am going to seek retribution. That is not an amygdala response, in my opinion. That is a prefrontal cortex response, and history is replete with it.

Scott: 44:13

The biggest one is the armistice in World War One is what led to World War Two, because, you know, Hitler's rise was in no small part based on his outrage that he was able to curate across the the German public that we had been treated badly in World War one, and we're gonna get ours back. And that's an oversimplification of both the end of World War one and the beginning of World War two. But it it makes my point that it's not it's not a sporting event. It's not something that is relatively unimportant when it's over. Every legislative battle that we're arguing about right now is important after the vote.

Scott: 45:04

What do you think?

Shawn: 45:05

Well, I just think that what I am going to walk away from this conversation feeling is that, A, while I believe that amygdala reaction is necessary and important, I think in today's society, we not taking we need to take a little bit more accountability and responsibility for how we respond to basic information, and how we consume things. And you know, it might be that it's not as bad as it seems like it is. It's also really hard to get a sense, because once you're caught in an algorithm loop where you're getting a bunch of clickbait, it's really difficult to break out of it. And I actually, there's a part of me that does feel like it's sort of inflated artificially, because I think there's mostly people just living their life as they've always lived them. Now down the road, I see that changing as we get further and further away from a world that didn't know technology in the way that the current generations know it.

Shawn: 46:15

I think it will become more likely that some of this will, that angry online interaction, you know, will potentially result in increased violence in communities. You know, it's like rage sensitivity will increase, and coping skills will decrease kind of commensurately, which I think is a recipe for community and societal disaster. So hopefully, smarter brains than mine are working on sort of anticipating, from an anthropological perspective, how do we manage this new human sort of inter- weaving of technology into human interaction. Yeah. So it's going to be, what's the hard interaction of humans?

Shawn: 47:07

How do we do that? I think you've given us some amazing tools and things to think about. But then there's also going to be the question of, and this is probably for a separate conversation, you know, weaving in technology in its myriad forms and formats to become sort of integrated into human interaction, in a healthy way. You know, going back to full circle to the introduction where I talked a little bit about my nonprofit organization, it's, you know, how do we, as humans, interact in a way that is going to produce not just survival, but strivability.

Scott: 47:48

Yeah, and I think, you know, maybe we call this the Bill Maher rule. Maybe we call it something else. But I think that it's recognizing that a lot of the outrage that's out there is, know, whole or in part, an amygdala response, which is a legitimate hardwired response that can't be fixed because it doesn't need to be fixed. It's it's the way we are, but it's, you know, it's to understanding that, you know, most cars have four wheels. You know, some have three wheels, some have two wheels, but most cars have four wheels, and so you are going to be dealing with a mechanism that has four wheels.

Scott: 48:28

You're dealing with a mechanism that makes mechanism that has an amygdala, and and some are very robust in their response, some are are minimal, but it is there. But what we can do in the public discourse is not just try and you know tamp down the anger and tamp down the fear. But understand that if somebody is is still caught in that tidal wave of amygdala response, there are things that the people around them, the people that are interacting with them, can do and be creative to help somebody through that amygdala response into the limbic system and into the prefrontal cortex. There are great people out there that talk about how you can ask questions or make comments that get people to stop and think. Those things are great.

Scott: 49:20

I think the other thing that I was really fascinated to learn as I was doing my prep for this episode is that the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex do not develop at the same rate. So your amygdala becomes fully functional within the first twelve, maybe fifteen years of life. Little kid doesn't understand the threat of crossing the street. That's how you tell little kids look both ways. The average 15 year old might ignore the threat, but they understand the threat.

Scott: 49:56

If they get nearly missed by a car, they're going to have that fight or flight response. The prefrontal cortex, according to what I found as I was doing a bit of research, the prefrontal cortex does not become fully developed until your mid-20s. And so when we have kids that are doom scrolling, they are having their amygdala hammered, hammered. It fires, it fires, it fires, it fires, and it doesn't go to the limbic system into the prefrontal cortex because that's not there yet. And so I think maybe part of what we're seeing that's different is the online world, the digital world over activates the amygdala to the point where when the prefrontal cortex is available, there isn't a natural pipeline through the limbic system, because what that young person is used to is the amygdala firing, firing, firing, and that's the end of it and so it takes a lot more work to develop that and maybe maybe that's what we need to do as we come to the Bill Maher level of understanding is it's not just asking our news programs and the people in our discourse to be mindful because some will and some won't, but to understand that when we are interacting with a person and we see that person is struggling with an amygdala response.

Scott: 51:35

I mean, I had a good friend a few years ago who was either happy or terrified. Nothing in between, not a little nervous, it was this event happened and it terrified me, or that event happened and I was fine. And that I understand now may be an amygdala response more than anything, and a learned amygdala response, there's no gradation of fight or flight. So I don't know if that resonates with you at all.

Shawn: 52:04

Yeah, no, I think it's coming to a natural conclusion of the discussion topic because, you know, at the end of the day, it's just how are we pursuing life affirming, humanity preserving, interaction skills, and a lot of that starts with the brain, you know? And what we, and as you like to say, the wolf that we feed, you know? And it's, know, again, it's the brain is a muscle, just like any, or you know, any other thing in your body that it is, and it needs exercising in different ways. And so if everything is a crisis, or if everything's a fire, then it makes it very difficult as humans for us to legitimately decipher when something rises to the, like, level of genuine existential crisis versus minor inconvenience.

Scott: 53:03

I love that. I mean, that's, and that's, you know, you bringing the security world into the common parlance. You know, as I've lived in the security world as well, if everything's an emergency, then nothing is. Yeah. You know, Part of that is how you're prioritizing things, but part of that is your lizard brain going, hey, this is an emergency, this is an emergency, and all of a sudden you're in an operations center somewhere and people are hollowed out, not because they haven't slept or haven't eaten, but because they're choosing not to sleep and eat because they're worried about the next thing that might be a problem.

Shawn: 53:45

Well, therein lies the conundrum, which is the more stressed and triggered you are by things, the worse off your health becomes over the long run because, you know, sleep becomes more difficult. It gets dysregulated. You're, you know, you start to see higher levels of physiological sort of damage being done, because you're not getting proper mental, emotional, or physical, you know, health and well-being practiced. And so, I think that it's all very connected in terms of like, you know, it'd be ironic that like, you know, if you're operating on amygdala full time, twenty four hours, you know, if your amygdala is your personal, what do they used to call that? The talk.

Shawn: 54:32

Do you remember that? TOC.

Scott: 54:35

Don't remember that.

Shawn: 54:36

Was where all the, like, security guys, their operations center.

Scott: 54:40

Oh, know what I tactical operations center.

Shawn: 54:42

Yeah, there you go. That's what it was. I knew you'd remember that. Yeah. So, you know, if your brain is a twenty four hour a day, seven day a week talk, you know, over time, that's gonna degrade.

Shawn: 54:55

You know, you'll cut your lifespan short in the end. Yeah. So the thing that you're stressing out about to keep you alive is ultimately gonna kill you one way or the other. It's either gonna get you by, you know, creating sort of manifesting in physical ailments, or emotional and mental ailments, or it's, you know, or you aren't stressed, you know, something else is gonna take you out. I don't know.

Shawn: 55:18

Maybe we're all just gonna die, Scott. I think that's the moral of this story.

Scott: 55:21

Well, I got some news for you. We all roads lead, You know. Yeah. No. So my my ask to the to listening public is if you know when you're when you're on social media and and you see somebody in their amygdala doing the fight or flight, name calling, just call it out.

Scott: 55:43

Dude, get out of your amygdala. Yeah. You know, dude, get into your limbic system.

Shawn: 55:48

Yeah. So, we'll hug for everything. Limbic hugs for everybody. Like, you know, that's, yeah. I'm I'm so I'm down for that.

Scott: 56:00

Fantastic. Well, I think we're coming up on our hour. Yeah. And yeah, I really appreciate your your your optic on all this And

Shawn: 56:11

I'll take that one step further. I appreciate your brain, Scott.

Scott: 56:19

Look at you. I think that's going to be the last word for today. Yeah. Thank you everybody for listening, and we will see you on the next episode.

Shawn: 56:26

Thanks, everybody.