The book attempts to explain how homeostasis, feelings, rationality and cultures are all intertwined and the order in which they are related might surprise common knowledge. To do this he shows how homeostasis and natural selection shape our bodies, brains and even cultures.

At first, there were simple organisms without nervous systems who exhibited extraordinary social behaviors such as bacteria. However, they did not feel or think they simply reacted to their environment through the laws of physics and chemistry. Eventually these organisms started to evolve and get more and more complex in their structures and simple versions of the nervous system started to appear. These were peripheral and played a simple role in analyzing the external environment and manage resources within the organism. For example, they could react to external contact and smells but they did not feel or taste things, it was a pure reaction.

So, how and why did organisms evolve into more complex and developed nervous systems? The advantages of being smart might be obvious these days but back then it was a risky gamble since the nervous systems demanded a lot of energy that could be spent on maintaining larger muscles or looking for food. Homeostasis can help us better understand which by definition is the tendency towards a relative stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes (dictionary definition). It happens that nervous systems help with this by better analyzing the external environment and better distribute resources which becomes a necessity as organisms get larger and more complex (scale matters). In this sense, it’s important to note that complex systems and processes originally appeared to server lower-level entities such as cells, something we tend to forget on a macro scale. It can be haunting for humans to realize that the self they know exists to serve our bodies and cells but that’s how we came to be. If then the system (or the self) transcends its individual components that’s another debate but the author thinks so. Personally, and a little off topic, I believe it’s a delicate relationship that works through balancing the roles and hierarchy of its components. The human body is an amazing system that works and has a clear hierarchy that makes its existence possible. But the nervous system (top of the chain) “knows” that this is an interdependent relationship and matters such as who’s more important are irrelevant. Ironically, this selflessness led to an extremely intelligent being who by nature of its intelligence had to possess an ego (more on that later when talking about consciousness) that has the capability of monopolizing or forgetting the nature of these interdependent relationships. Psychological disorders can be one side of this evolution, but so is sacrifice and self-actualization. Ultimately, by having a system that is self-aware we have expanded the limits of our existence by giving us the possibility of being pro-active instead of reactive only. If this were not the case, we wouldn’t understand or have the need to improve our lives. In this way, humans overcame the strict conditions imposed by the external environment by being aware of our internal needs and desires, and as importantly, change and adapt them.

We now have a better understanding of why we developed an ego but how did the body managed the transition from unaware to self-aware? There are two important processes here: internal images and the capability to give a quality to these images. On our way to become self-aware the nervous system started to map the internal state of the body in order to better manage resources and this culminated in internal images that can be visual, sound, smell or touch like. And then, by giving these images a quality (pleasant, unpleasant) it gave the organism an incentive or punishment for its actions or existing external factors. This is where feelings come from and they are our best way to understand homeostasis at work. However, the nervous system managed to transcend itself yet again by the development of rationality – our cognitive capability. It’s important to note this part of the nervous system developed later and it is there to serve our feelings. This is why we cannot talk about intelligence without mentioning feelings: rationality without the ability to feel would be misguided and ultimately useless. Whatever we do, we do it to feel better, and we do it with a purpose that always goes back to a feeling or emotion. Think of the difference between a computer and a person: a computer would never built itself and it does not have an incentive to create because it lacks this capability of feeling things. It is merely a tool, just like rationality. This is relevant in today’s society since we tend to dissociate feelings from rationality and only care about the latter which ironically goes against rational thought once we understand this. A quick note on the difference between feelings and emotions. Emotions are things such as hunger and excitement, are usually stronger in nature and demand from us immediate action. Many living beings possess this capability. Feelings are an evaluation of internal state of affairs and are usually more subtle but last longer. When you know that something is wrong but can’t quite tell what it is, that is a feeling. It’s homeostasis at work trying to tell you something.

To summarize, we become self-aware through mapping what’s going on inside the body by internal imaging and having a sense of quality associated to it. Regarding these images, there is a key concept in understanding the brain and the body that’s worth noting. The way the nervous system maps what’s going inside and outside the body depends on its senses (eyes, nose, ears, skin, etc.) and it evaluates them based on the signals these receptors send from the external environment. In other words, the way we feel and perceive things depend on these sensors since new information is absorbed through them. From this stems the concept of embodied cognition that states the way we feel and think depends on the entire body and not only the brain as is widely believed. If we were born with 4 eyes and no mouth our way of writing or tasting food would be a totally different experience. And this relationship goes beyond the senses, matter, muscles or the skeleton matter too (the substrates). For example, the difference between an extremely tall and muscular man compared to a short and frail one is not merely physiological, but also neurological and hormonal. They THINK differently because the nervous system thinks through the body in a constant exchange of information. If you gave the frail man a new, strong and healthy body he would also change from a neurological point of view, hence a personality shift, however subtle.

Being self-aware, that is the creation of a subject-object relationship is not enough for what we call consciousness. The final requirement is the full integration of internal images, feelings, memory and sensorial receptors. In other words, the brain creates internal images (influenced by the body and the nervous system) that come with an associated feeling, and then all of these are processed sequentially in the brain to give a flow to the thought process. This process is sequential but it’s not space dependent, meaning that various parts of the body are contributing to this stream of thoughts and there isn’t a region in the brain dedicated to this process. This is extremely complex as many layers of information are being processed in parallel from different areas and it’s hard not to marvel at the fact that we have a continuous and stable flow of thoughts despite the millions of computations and information exchanges. This final step then allows the system to create a self that sees and feels from his own perspective that can make use of all this information. Without subjectivity nothing would matter, and without full integration of these images we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the things we were feeling and seeing. And we are finally ready to enter the final topic of the books which explains how consciousness and its origins came to shape our cultures and civilizations.

Remember that feelings are a manifestation of homeostasis and those combined with rationality give rise to creative intelligence (food, weapons, medicine). And it’s not just the feelings relative to the individual but within the context of other individuals too (loneliness, empathy). Damásio sees socializing as a positive influence of homeostasis and violence as a negative one inherited from our primate ancestors that evolution couldn’t get rid off. He adds that culture is an answer that tries to eradicate violence. I strongly disagree with the author here, while I do see socializing as beneficial, violence isn’t exclusively negative hence why it still exists today. Without violence and aggression humans wouldn’t simply have survived and in fact it is one of the main arguments used to justify why Homo Sapiens triumphed over all other Homo species (we didn’t tolerate them). I am not saying that violence is always the answer but sometimes it is necessary, and condoning violence for the sake of non-violence is naive. Empires and civilizations ended because they lost the ability to defend themselves from the outside and the inside, and it’s documented throughout history that when a society becomes stable and prosperous one of the dangers is the weakening of men, especially its rulers. In addition, pre-emptive violence can avoid death and war at a larger scale, the same way predators in the wild control population of invasive species that destroy the environment (natural example). Knowing when to use aggression or diplomacy is the real challenge but I don’t agree that culture tries to eradicate violence nor should it be. Moving on, initially medicine wasn’t ready to deal with the soul’s trauma such as the loss of a loved one, violence or natural catastrophes and that’s where religion came from. The belief in higher powers gave meaning, comfort and hope not only in death but also in life by asking for protection. Lastly, Damásio quotes Marx “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” Remarkable how well Marxcaptured the connection between feelings, religion and the cruelty of biology. Another interesting idea given by the author is that justice and governance were made possible by the accepted existence of gods/God since now we had a higher power that was impartial, trustful and worthy of respect unlike individual whims and desires. It gave us an entity that larger groups could follow and cooperate around with. From this perspective, we understand why there were (are) so many wars based on religion, it’s not just about what god do people believe in but what values and morals do they follow. And if these are not compatible, then I will have to eliminate you. In my opinion, monotheist religions accentuated this attrition because now there’s only space for one deity and one deity only and by believing in other deities you were directly challenging the monotheistic point of view. Arts, philosophy and natural sciences were also born from homeostasis: they were driven by feelings and internal dialogues such as “why am I here?” or “why this sound does makes me feel something?” For example, certain sounds were associated with certain objects to represent their desirability, and humans slowly started to replicate pleasant sounds to create the first forms of music. That is why we can associate the cello (wood) with beauty and warmness or heavy metal with aggression. These associations pre-date Homo sapiens and are deeply ingrained within living beings and can evoke strong emotions – music is powerful and communicates with us on a very deep, primal level.

To conclude, what we call culture today began with simple organisms that showed effective socializing behavior under the imperative of homeostasis. Only millions of years later would we came to see culture as we describe it today through intelligent and creative minds, however always guided by individual or collective feelings and ultimately their master homeostasis. This almost “magical” evolution required many crucial steps:

  1. The mind had to represent two types of data: internal to the organism and external to it.
  2. Combine these two type of data into one perspective – the self
  3. Other tools, such as memory, language, symbolic thinking and writing.
  4. The apparently useless ability to “play”. It allows for creative thinking, actions and better planning.
  5. The especially developed ability of humans to cooperate with each other
  6. Culture begins with thought but it’s consummated through movement. Especially relevant are hands (writing, playing an instrument), vocal chords (sing, speak) or capacity to move large distances.
  7. Finally, the genetic machinery that standardized life within our cells and allowed them to replicate and give life to new ones.

Homeostasis main goal is for the living system to survive and thrive as an individual within his boundaries (family, friends, clan) but it does not care for larger systems such as countries or empires. As a result, it is only natural that conflicts arise since different races and cultures think and FEEL differently and expecting globalized harmony is expecting the improbable. The author’s solution to this problem is through better education in a titanic civilizational effort in overcoming Homo Sapiens limited scope of homeostasis. However, I do not think this is the right direction because the problem here is about scale and not homeostasis. We, as a species on this planet, have become too dominant and unchallenged, and unfortunately too powerful for our own safety. Human extinction is now a plausible scenario thanks to the advancements in nuclear or biological warfare. Small groups within very large organizations have a tremendous amount of power that can affect the rest of the population .We have simply become too big for this planet. Instead of taming this power, we ought to avoid it at all because although chances are low that we will cause our own extinction, it only takes one event, one bad decision to ruin everything and we cannot afford that risk. Global organizations and superpowers are simply too dangerous to exist and as nature has proven time and time again, it likes things to be small for a few exceptions. If there was a nuclear holocaust, virus, bacteria or cockroaches would be the dominant beings on planet earth; mammoth are extinct and all the larger dinosaurs too because they consumed too much energy for the food that was available; smaller beings such as ant have more biomass than all humans combined. We are talking about survival and not domination, and as a species we want to play the long game. I would rethink our society on a lower scale: instead of political power on a nation scale, we would think on a city scale; large multinationals vs small/medium local businesses; instead of obsessing over growth (GDP, wealth created) we would ought to look at other indicator’s for an organization’s success (some examples would be young people emigration rate, pollution markers, quality of life, etc.) We live obsessed with growth and more seems to always be the answer. We become pleased if we create more jobs, make more money, more fame, more friends, more likes and more things to buy. We are building larger and larger castles but the foundations are weaker and weaker and the downfall gets more spectacular each time. It’s something system thinkers know – no matter where you look, there are always limits to growth and be it nature or laws of physics, if we don’t respect that the entire system will collapse. The brightest and largest stars become the deadliest black holes to which not even light can escape.

 

Overall, this is a great book that I would recommend to anyone simply because you might take something useful from this information no matter your field or passion. And although I do not always agree with the author, his ideas make me think and form my own thoughts which I have to explain and justify and that’s when you know a book made you a better thinker. The author did a good job in explaining the beginning of the nervous systems to where it is today in what is an extremely complex field, and he made it accessible to a layman such as me. For that alone, I would recommend the book. In addition, he connects our biology to our current situation as a species and gives us great insights. However, I wish he had gone further on the debate on whether should a system serve its components or does the system as a whole transcends its individual components. It’s extremely relevant in this day and age where things are getting bigger and power is getting blurred. If centuries ago people were sacrificing themselves willingly for their country or religion, nowadays we don’t identify ourselves with anything bigger than ourselves, we are extremely selfish and living in a spiritual void. Should we die for our families or gods? How does homeostasis answer that? On an initial thought, we might think that our primal instincts tell us that MY survival is the most important thing and because of that we are inherently very selfish. But on further inspection, you might argue that ensuring your family/country/race survival at the cost of your own life would be more beneficial for you as a species since your genetic code would actually have a better chance of surviving. In other words, did we develop consciousness and altruism not because we are kind and have a soul but because are we slaves to genetic tyranny? The spreading of our genetic code is merely information that needs matter to express itself and replicate, and from this perspective we are the vessel of this information but we are not the information, just an expression of it. In the way a song can be played on a guitar or a piano, the song is just information but it’s through the instrument that it is materialized. However, instruments are fragile and will eventually be destroyed but the song will not, it is indestructible because it is information and not matter. Anyway, thoughts for a future essay.