I worked in Africa when I was young, and often got stopped by the police as I zipped around on a United-Nations motorbike. They wouldn't say why they'd stopped me, and my gaze would settle on their machine gun in the awkward silence. What was up?
"Give them money," people told me. "Everybody does it."
I got the same answer no matter who I asked. But I couldn't do it. Something in me resisted digging into my pocket for Central African francs to grease the palms of gun-toting traffic cops, regardless of what everyone did.
When my mother warned me not to follow everyone off the Brooklyn Bridge, I thought she was ridiculous. Everyone doesn't jump off bridges, so why did she fuss? But suddenly I felt surrounded by people destined to end up at the bottom of the river.
Bribes were just the tip of the iceberg. I was in Africa to work on a UN economic planning project. The project was at a standstill because the country's dictator withheld financial data. He ran the national treasury out of his pocket and asking nosy questions could land you in jail or worse. I went to work every day in a building full of economists with no work to do.
What frustrated me most as an eager young grad student was that no one acknowledged the reality of it. To fill my time I visited other aid projects, and learned that many were also at a standstill due to corruption. That's when I questioned the prevailing view that bribery is a harmless tradition. I could not "respect the culture" as expected, and decided this racket was not for me. I packed up and went home in search of a new career.
But I couldn't pack up and escape from social pressure to accept corrupt practices. As a college professor, I often stumbled on evidence that my students were cheating. Many professors looked the other way. "Everyone does it" was the unspoken consensus.
Something in me refused to go along. I was being paid to enforce academic standards the way a police officer is paid to enforce traffic rules. Tolerating cheating would be collecting my salary without doing the job. I wasn't going to be a shirker regardless of what others did. I cracked down on cheating in my own classes instead of waiting for everybody to change.
I did not like being around people who think there's a "right to cheat" when you're annoyed with "the system." Higher principles couldn't help me because they're often bent to rationalize cheating. I began exploring lower principles instead- the mammalian neurochemistry that drives our survival behavior.
Mammals evolved from reptiles by learning to live in groups. They didn't consciously choose that, of course. Individuals who stuck near others simply had higher survival rates, so natural selection created a brain that sought social alliances.
Mammals pay a high price for the security of the group. They submit to dominators to avoid injury. Wild chimpanzees are often missing a finger or an ear lobe due to conflict with a troop-mate. Yet mammals stick with their herd or pack or troop. People tend to cheat when they see others are doing it. Your mammal brain feels safe when it's with a herd. If the herd starts endangering itself, your human cortex can inhibit your mammalian urge to merge. In fact, that's why you have all those extra neurons. to end up in the jaws of a predator if they leave. They evolved brains adept at avoiding conflict.
We have inherited the limbic system that all mammals have in common. It releases happy neurochemicals when survival prospects improve, and icky neurochemicals when survival prospects are threatened. Contemplate isolation or conflict and those icky chemicals flow. Remain in secure social alliances and happy chemicals flow.
Your mammal brain is not on speaking terms with your cortex because it doesn't process language. Your limbic system doesn't tell you in words why it triggers neurochemical ups and downs. But it is always busy scanning the world for threats and opportunities to help you survive.
Every mammal has a cortex hooked up to its limbic system. The cortex is tiny in sheep and rodents, so their capacity to adjust old impulses to new information is tiny. They follow the herd and submit to avoid conflict because it feels good. Primates, by contrast, have a large cortex. They can inhibit impulses when experience proves it's in their survival interest. The primate brain is always analyzing new information and deciding whether to dominate or submit, whether to follow or take initiative.
Your cortex is three times as large as a chimpanzee's. You can bring a lot of information to bear on your social choices. Sometimes you see that honoring the mammalian impulse to avoid conflict and follow the group is your best option. Other times you see reason to go it alone and resist submitting.
Analyzing social dynamics at every moment is stressful. It would be nice have one principle to guide every situation. But your ancestors evolved extra neurons because social analyzing promotes survival. You inherited all those neurons to make survival judgements for yourself instead of just doing what everybody does. When you need to escape a herd that seems bound for harm, it's good to know your brain evolved for just that challenge!
Wondering what happened when the police stopped me in Africa? It's in my post When You Face an Open Palm
