Many anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers were averse to physically punishing or threatening children (Music, 2014; Narvaez, 2017, 2020; Ryan, 2019). Yet in post hunter-gatherer societies, and not very long ago, slave, wife and child-beating were allowed and legitimized and even promoted as a method for control (Gilbert, 2018). Even today, corporal punishment is https://thewingtalks.com/ still allowed in some countries. Altruism requires individuals to be prepared to make sacrifices to help people. Helping people that does not have a cost or can benefit you in the long term is questionable as to how altruistic it is (Colqhoun et al., 2020). Interestingly, therefore although helpful behavior has been observed repeatedly in young children Green et al. (2018) investigated how helpful they would be if there were a cost.

However, keep in mind that mentalities are co-regulating and therefore if individuals can start to process their own pain and their unmet needs to have been cared for, this might open up that social mentality. It does not open up unless those inner care receiving systems are worked with; trying to help them feel a sense of remorse or guilt when their own emotional pain systems are closed down may fail. The degree to which that is possible is the next major challenge in psychotherapy development and research (Cozolino, 2017; Gilbert, 2019b,c, 2020a). A central driving process of evolution is conflict (Buss, 2019; Wilson, 2019; Workman et al., 2020). Right now, many species are in conflict with us because of how we use them for food, experiment on them, even deliberately altering their genes, and driving others to extinction.

Using our new intelligence can change our social discourses and thereby over time change our phenotypes. They go onto discuss how paternal caring influences traits, such as anxiety in offspring, that impact on their survival and how paternal caring influences the epigenetics of their offspring. There is also increasing evidence that social contexts, particularly contexts of poverty and stress, can have long-terms epigenetic effects (McDade et al., 2019). Rightly or wrongly those favoring intense lockdowns have paid little attention to the epigenetic effects on children growing up in stressed families, social disengagement, and lacking education.

• For those who seek deregulation, Wilson (2019) notes – “show me a deregulated organism and I will show you a dead one” (p. 193).
• We need to come to terms with the fact that there have been many leaders in history that have changed the world (and us) for the worst and still are.
• This paradox, that vulnerability can become a strength, is at the heart of its power.
• Fear and anger are more easily triggered if one is concerned and vigilant that others are trying to take one’s resources away, compared to believing others will share theirs with you.
• Narvaez (2017, 2020) has written extensively on how the social contexts of human parenting and provisions of parents to their children are very different from today (see also Hrdy, 2009; Music, 2014; Ryan, 2019).

The basic story is relatively straight forward and one that many researchers agree on; it was the advent of agriculture that drove us a little crazy (Harari, 2014; Black, 2016; Gilbert, 2018). Our intelligence allowed us to recognize that rather than eat all our seeds, we could plant and cultivate them and could herd and cage animals. Resource availability spiraled but also, we became locked into areas of pasture, reliant on grown crops not gathered ones, letting go of the mobility and immediate use lifestyle.

Forgiveness can be a powerful step toward cultivating empathy, even in the face of disdain. Empathy does not mean excusing harmful behavior or abandoning our commitment to justice. Rather, it is about understanding the humanity of others, even when their actions are deeply flawed. As author and activist bell hooks writes, “Empathy is the heart of love, and without it, we cannot truly connect with others” (hooks, 2000). By seeking to understand the roots of disdain—whether it stems from fear, ignorance, or systemic conditioning—we can begin to address the underlying causes of division. Compassion-based conflict resolution is not about avoiding disagreements or compromising your truth.

Conflict Without Fear

Figure 4 illustrates how social and culturally endorsed and promoted resource distribution strategies impact on the social mentalities, including their physiological profiles and phenotypic forms. For example, consider caring behavior in hunter-gatherer groups, which were (commonly) child-focused compared to the factory workers of the 18th century. The variation in these two environments would have a huge impact on the maturation of a child’s brain and epigenetic profiles. Consider how competition and the propensity to develop highly narcissistic self-focused orientations emerge in competitive cultures compared to caring and sharing ones. Again, the social and ecological environments will have major impact on the phenotypes of competitive and caring behavior. This is important because these phenotypes will be regulating motives and competencies, turning some up and others down (e.g., compassion and empathy).

Step 1: Regulate Emotional Reactivity Before Trying To Solve Anything

One of the most salient issues was that we went from an immediate use to a storage way of living and that changed the drive system as well as raised issues of who controlled what was stored. And if I can store things for myself then maybe I do not need to rely on reciprocation quite so much. So, agriculture changed our hunter-gathering lifestyles of relative immediate consumption, reciprocity and status via altruism into stay put, create and store surplus and enable power hierarchies to control surplus. Humans themselves become trapped in completely new social ecologies (Mann, 1986), which in many ways have driven us a little crazy and we do not really know how to get out of the trap our minds are now caught in Gilbert (2018). The work-time demands of agriculture and the social consequences of it almost certainly changed our bodies, brains and phenotypes.

Healthy Conflict Begins Within

It is also important to consider that different economic systems and cultures privilege different personalities as well. Competitive cultures are fertile grounds for narcissistic and psychopathic personalities to prosper and gain power. Not only do they gain control of businesses and the media, but they then create social discourses that entice many into the control and hold way of living.

The fact is that left and right are now old tribal labels of little value. In reality we are having to manage two profoundly powerful resource regulation strategies that are operating at phenotypic levels. It is the management of brains and bodies too; and in particular the dark side of humanity. There is now considerable evidence that when we feel safe we are biologically different to when we feel threatened (Slavich, 2020). Whether picked up in childhood or from culture, threat drives right wing control and hold strategies.

By embracing compassion-based conflict resolution, we allow ourselves to heal relationships, grow from disagreements, and strengthen our connections with others. The tools of intuition, compassion, and wisdom provide a foundation for resolving conflicts in a way that supports both personal and collective well-being, especially for those of us navigating holistic, wellness, or spiritual living. This paper began by highlighting the realities of life; that all biological life forms are vulnerable to injury, decay and die. Human suffering is greater, because we know that we suffer, we know that we die, we know we can be in pain, we know that everything is impermanent and in a constant state of flux and change. As individuals, as societies and as a species, we need to seriously consider how we address the reality that biological life is about suffering and how this challenges us. A civilized society must first and foremost seek to address suffering and not cause it.

Rather, it centers on the idea that conflict can be resolved by building understanding, empathy, and connection between the parties involved. By viewing the other person through a lens of compassion, you make space for a resolution that supports mutual growth, healing, and respect. In a famous chapter called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel, Wilson and Daly (1992) explore how males can treat females like property and a usable resource. Anything people desire, like sex, can become an exploitable resource. However, with the nature of human sexuality (it can last much longer than most primates engage with it) the enjoyment of sexuality, the bonding and friendship of sexuality, all point to human sexuality being different in hunter-gatherer societies (Diogo, 2019). Bonobos too are matriarchal and use sexual contact quite differently, not as a resource, but as a way of dealing with conflicts and social bonding.

Practicing the compassion that you speak of has been a major challenge in the recent history of my life. I have learned that while I can do this with most issues, some of the more deeper and painful experiences I’ve lived through present seemingly insurmountable obstacles. This year, Slovic has been specifically applying psychology to genocide to try and tackle some of these issues. He states that “recognizing that we cannot rely only upon our moral feelings to motivate proper action against genocide, we must look to moral argument and international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention was supposed to meet this need, but it has not been effective.