Chapter 8
8. Delusion’s Evolutionary Role
The Role of the Social Hormones
The last chapter described two fundamental errors that, amplified by the spreading effects of narrative and the motivational effects of our reward systems, have enabled human delusion to spread and grow. Delusion, placed in this context, can seem little more than an unfortunate mistake of cognitive reasoning, or, alternatively, of how we have organised our social relationships. This chapter sees it differently. It views delusion as a means of constraint in complexity’s efforts to attain a productive, and yet sustainable balance in our world. This role, driven by the peptide and steroid social hormones, endows it with primordial power.
In chapter 6, a beneficial balance at the level of atoms and molecules was seen to be achieved through the action of entropic decay and exergy.
As foundational aptitudes of energy, they carry the most fundamental pressures for pulling apart and pulling together in the universe. Together they create the atomic and molecular bonds with which the structures of the universe are built.
The same two pressures were seen in chapter 5, to drive life’s complex adaptive systems. Here, however, the bonds affected are not those at the fine-grained atomic level. They are those at the level of relationship between living beings.
At this social level as previously seen, the steroids pull apart, the primary steroid being testosterone, and the peptides pull together, the primary peptide being oxytocin.1,2 As “social hormones”, they are the carriers of the pressures driving the complex systems of life.
Supporting this contention, the peptides and steroids are found to be present in all forms of life from animals and plants to fungi and bacteria.29,30 Predecessors of them are also found in eukaryote and prokaryote cells, being the microbial forebears of all life on Earth.31,32,33
Seen in this light it will be the balance attained between these two hormonal groups that has, in the past, enabled the productivity of life’s systems to beneficially grow. For this to happen, the pulling-together influence of peptides must, however, prevail.
Should the influence of the steroids do so instead, the situation will be very different. Their influence now the more dominant, life will begin falling apart. Delusion, in this situation, becomes normalised.
To understand why, a first need is to understand the workings of the primary pulling-apart steroid, testosterone.
Testosterone
Testosterone is carried in the bloodstream. Two attributes of it, cause two different effects.
The first is the level of testosterone that is persistent. High basal levels are associated with high sensitivity to threat, heightened latent aggression and an underlying urge for power. Low basal levels are associated with reduced competitiveness, and increased contentment with equality. These characteristics are persistent.
The second is the magnitude of the testosterone surges when a challenge is sensed. Their effect is to reduce fear, reduce empathy, increase mistrust, increase resilience to stress, and heighten motivation. The combined effect is to prepare the individual for conflict.3
For winners at the end of the contest, two further physiological reactions occur. One is a surge in levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. This stimulates sensations of thrill.
The other, some time later, is a further surge of testosterone, stimulating elation. These two, in males, result in a pattern of behaviour termed the winner effect.
Its symptoms include an increase in later aggression, an increased appetite for violent encounters, and a greater likelihood of winning them.4,5
Dopamine, although not triggering such effects, amplifies them. It achieves this in three particular ways, as a disinhibitor, as a sensitiser, and as a reward.6
As a disinhibitor it “disinhibits inhibition”.
At low levels we are inhibited. We are cautious, anxious and listless, and have little motivation. At moderate levels we have the interest for living involved and satisfying lives, and at higher levels we are more spontaneous. At higher levels still, we will be more impulsive with these reactions becoming less subject to our conscious control.
As a sensitiser dopamine changes the way the brain is wired.
Its surges mould the brain to be more sensitive to the stimuli that prompt them, encouraging our more spontaneous and less inhibited response to them.
And, as a reward dopamine prompts feelings of pleasure.
The enjoyment and contentment felt at moderate levels, sensitise our brains to everyday satisfactions and, in encouraging us to seek more, constructively habituate our behaviours.
By contrast, high level rushes, such as those gained from winning a significant sporting event, getting high grades in an exam, or securing a major business contract, will be thrilling. For most of us, such thrills are exceptional and euphoria at these levels cannot be regularly nor reliably reproduced. When they are, they will, however, be psychologically addictive.
Such addiction is recognised to correlate closely with the effects of cocaine.6,7 As with with cocaine, the powerful emotional response of craving is the counterpart to regular high level rush. It reinforces dependence.8 As this stage is reached, those on this path will find themselves focussing primarily on their addiction.
These developments are associated with a range of recognised psychological symptoms. They include:
- Heightened sensitivity to threat.9,6
- Increased aggression.10
- Arrogance and contempt.11,12
- Self-certainty.12,6
- Heightened self-confidence and increased risk-taking.13
- Dishonesty and hypocrisy.14,15,16,17
- Instrumental, “ends justifies the means” thinking.18,19
- Callousness and ruthlessness.20
- Selfishness.21,22
- Promiscuity.23
- Misogyny.24
From a psychiatric perspective, the pursuit of such thrills at high levels of risk and power, has been associated with further symptoms. They include:
- Messianic zeal,
- Conflating the self with a perceived higher cause,
- And losing touch with reality.12
They give rise to an acquired psychiatric disorder termed the hubris syndrome.
A question that emerges from these observations is, if those who gain high power are high on that power, and if the more power they exert the more addicted they become, does this mean that many, most, or even all of those exercising power at the highest levels will be driven by addiction?
The answer seems to be that, although some people are more susceptible to the effects of testosterone and dopamine than others, and the number of people who gain positions of absolute power are few, this, as a generalisation, is what it does mean.
This is not to suggest that those operating at high levels of power are all hubristic or megalomaniacal. It is, however, to recognise that these processes and these pressures apply to everyone scaling the slopes of power, with their effects becoming increasingly powerful and ever more difficult to avoid as the top gets closer.
These dynamics, it is proposed, supercharge the dynamics of delusion. They reinforce and magnify the outcomes of cognitive dissonance referred to in the last chapter, and they drive two further delusional processes, being power addiction and group-think.
Power Addiction
As with other delusions, delusions of power addiction are caused by fundamental errors of reason, particularly the reason/complexity fallacy, they are driven by the need for status achieved by winning, and they are rewarded by the brain’s reward systems with euphoria and thrill as if they are good. They are then reinforced by the addictive dynamics of the winner effect, and the thrills that surging levels of testosterone and dopamine provide.
Regularly repeated, such thrills are addictive. The outcome is a craving for them that demands further contests at increasing levels of risk and power.
This has the outcome that, if threats able to justify such contests are not readily available, they will be actively sought. As illustrated in Hitler’s preparations for World War II, they will, when needed, be fabricated, provoked, embellished or purposefully manufactured.25
Doing so fulfils two objectives. For those seeking the thrills of confrontation, it creates mini-thrills in preparation for the bigger thrills to come.
Additionally, among the broader population it causes concern that builds into fear. Fear causes surging levels of testosterone in the bloodstream, generating antagonism. It also generates motivation.
The latter is commonly directed to following the lead of those who identify and magnify the threat. This heightens their sense of power, prompting exhilaration and thrill, and it encourages them to devise and contrive more such threats.
Groupthink
Groupthink, when it occurs, exacerbates these effects.
Groupthink refers to the processes that occur in groups of competitive people, united by bonds of alliance in their cooperative endeavour against a perceived threat.
Alliance bonds are intensive and exclusive. Exclusive refers to the exclusion of those not in “our” group – we define “us” in the context of “them”. Intensive refers to the need for emotional bonding at high levels of thrill to counter testosterone’s tendency, at the personal level, for pulling apart.
Group-think intensifies extreme behaviour. The cause, it is perceived, is the competitive insecurity of group members. They, in over-anticipating the expectations of others, and prompted by their insecurity, state their support for an assumed but previously unstated norm, and in doing so, create it.
The outcome is to encourage group excess and increase the propensity for risk.26,27 It serves to heighten delusion and can heighten the megalomaniacal ambition of a group.
Cognitive dissonance then strengthens these effects. It reinforces self-delusion and amplifies its destructive intentions.
Outcomes extend to torturing and murdering opponents, starving citizens, looting the nation’s wealth and launching uncontrollable and genocidal wars.28
Seeking Sense
Each of these three processes, cognitive dissonance, power addiction and group think is caused, promoted or inflamed by testosterone. The reason/complexity fallacy is a product of its instrumental thinking, and the competitiveness it instils, prompts the urge for status, addictions to power, and the dynamics of groupthink.
Each process, that is, serves the role of pulling apart, in the trial and error journey towards maximum sustainable productivity. Responsibility for their outcomes lies, that is, at the level of universal principle rather than with the individuals caught up in them. They are minions.
Driven by intentions to do good, but in misguided ways, they are neither mad nor bad. They are deluded. These, as the study of cognitive dissonance has found, are potentials we all share. This, I suggest, puts the need to learn from these processes unavoidably with us.
So how can we learn? Where does responsibility for these outcomes lie? If not with the individuals, where?
The answer, I suggest, is in the pulling-apart culture we have inherited and endorse. It, in promoting testosterone fuelled behaviour, is causing us to pull apart.
This raises three questions. Where did this culture come from, and why has it emerged? And, where is it leading? The following chapters explore one specific outcome of our present trajectory. The first two questions we will return to in due course.