Rapid technological progress has created some big problems
Use of powerful tools and weapons driven by our ancient survival impulses, paradoxically, now threatens our survival
Human technological progress has not been balanced by equally rapid cultural and social progress. This has created challenges that can only be met successfully by world-wide cooperation. Unfortunately, we must first confront a large, fundamentally human, obstacle: our brain’s inclination to divide the world into “us” and “them.”
At Good Wolf we call this B-Team Living. The B-Team approach is to see “us” as inherently more worthy and deserving than “them.” We possess a deeply engrained neurobiological impulse that screams out: “Do not cooperate with the enemy!”
At this moment, we can look to numerous areas in our world to see the tragic and devastating results of “us” versus “them.” We hear dire reports of global climate change, continuing crises of poverty and homelessness amidst affluence, an ongoing pandemic that refuses to loosen its grip in the context of unequal distribution of resources, and partisan demonization of opponents threatening social and political instability.
These tendencies are powerful. Fortunately, knowledge from the neurobiology of stereotyping and prejudice can guide us to recognize and reign in our B-Team behaviors, allowing us to live on the A-Team.
Neuroscience can help us to recognize that all of “them” are really “all of us”. Sign up to our newsletter and learn how!