The Instinct for Leadership
Instinct is the innate aptitude that causes a biological entity to respond reflexively to a given stimulus in a consistent way. Reflex reactions can be learned, as in marshal arts, be instincts are encoded in genes and include activities such as breathing, the craving for salt and fat, blinking when someone pokes a finger at your eye.
Like humans members of other species also exhibited behaviour that could be described as subservience, followership and leadership but, as these species did not possess neural architecture of complexity equivalent to humans we conclude that the behaviour most probably arises from some common, very ancient and therefore fundamental neural component.
Neurology has revealed that the neural process that triggers human response to external stimuli is in two parts. There exists direct pathway linking the sensory receptor to a part of the brain called the amygdale. This small almond shaped feature seems to be the place at which information is evaluated initially and a crude, course grained, match is made with neural patterns that accord with danger. The amygdale then triggers the behaviour of fight or flight, causing the release into the blood stream of the appropriate chemicals such as adrenaline. This is our instinctive reaction initiator. If no alarming pattern match is found the amygdale remains quiescent.
The same sensory information is, contemporaneously, being distributed to other regions of the brain that conduct a more ‘finely grained’ analysis of the input data, adding previously processed contextual information in order to identify precisely what is being sensed and instigating our considered response. We may regard this as our evaluative process.
An example of this two stage process at work is illustrated as follows. Imagine you are walking through the forest and on turning a corner you see a shape hanging from a nearby tree that looks like meter long piece of substantial rope. Your immediate reaction (in less the a second) is to stop. You feel a rush of adrenaline (tingling on the back of you hands) and prepare to take evasive action. Your amygdale has made a course grained match that the object might be a snake, snakes are potentially dangerous and best avoided rapidly therefore your instinct is to run away.
While this is happening your evaluative process examines the input data more thoroughly adds the context that snakes are rare in the forest and concludes that the object is only a distorted branch of a tree that has some visual characteristics that are snake like.
You relax and your brain instructs your body to stand down the alert and commence the process of absorbing the chemicals released by the amygdale’s primary response. This takes some time and explains why after one of these false alarm incidents you continue to feel the adrenaline tingle for some time afterwards.
You also feel the emotion of relief which is akin to happiness.
The distinction with other species is that, unlike humans, their instinctive reflex reaction is not cancelled by a secondary evaluative process. If you spook a heard of cows they will stampede even though further evaluation would enable the conclusion that there was no real danger. The cows do not possess the second order evaluative capability.
Even human’s close primate relatives such as chimpanzees that share 97.8% of human genes react to stimulus in this instinctive way even though they possess similar neural architecture. Work by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany indicates that the key difference between the brains of Homo sapiens and chimpanzees may lie in the way in which genes are expressed. Experiments appear to show that while both species exhibit similar gene expression in many other key organs in the brain gene expression in humans is significantly different to that of chimpanzees. It seems that this second order evaluative capability which appears to be a singularly human facility is a function not of a unique neural architecture per se but of a more complex feature of human brains constructed through more elaborate gene expression.
I am not a neurologist and therefore unable to elaborate on the charateristics of this differentiating feature but it does seem likely that the same feature accounts for the other, seemingly unique, higher order capabilities of humans such as complex language, abstract thought etc.
However in species that are able, of their own volition, to move within their environment, we can observe subordination, subjugation, followership and the recognition of a single individual as leader. It follows that these presentations probably rely on common neural architecture.
What then, if any, are the differences between subordination, subjugation, followership and leadership in humans? Or does it follow that a few are genetically predisposed to lead while everyone else is programmed to identify these individuals and to follow?
I believe that there is a key difference. It is that humans possess the capability to modify their instinctive behaviour by employing a second order evaluative process. Hence, while it may be true that all mobile species share certain instinctive reactions, there appears to be a hierarchy in the degree of second order (and higher) evaluative capability that can be applied.
In his book The Robot’s Rebellion Keith Stanovich discusses this area in great detail. He asserts that instinctive reactions, what might be called first order preferences, generated by what Stanovich calls ‘The Autonomous Set of Systems (TASS)’, are directed towards protection of the gene vehicle, the organism that carries the genes and on which their reproduction is dependent.
I t is proposed that second order (and higher) evaluative processes which are able to moderate instinctive behaviour are associated with the capacity of humans to become infected by memes .
Memes are an idea introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. The are defined as units of cultural information that have certain similarities to genes. The Oxford English Dictionary extends this somewhat by defining a meme as ‘an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially imitation.’ Stanovich defines a meme as, ‘a brain control (or informational) state that can potentially cause fundamentally new behaviours and/or thoughts when replicated in another brain.’
The key point is that memes replicate. They are passed from brain to brain by word of mouth, through text, through pictures or by imitation. A good example is gossip. A piece of information that the host is seemingly compelled to transmit to as many other brains as it can. During its transmission the original meme may interact with other memes to form a new meme that represents a distorted story that is more likely to be accepted by a recipient, thereby enhancing replication. The process of replication is analogous to viral infection of a population.
In neurological terms memes form a unique neural pathway and it is this pathway that memetic transmission is able to reproduce in the recipient brain. Moreover it is contended that these pathways are created in or accessed through that feature of neural architecture that is unique to humans. Hence the capability of humans to employ a second order evaluative process may be associated with the influence of memes.
The question not may be how do people acquire beliefs but how do beliefs acquire people?
It is interesting to note a dissimilarity between genes and memes. Genes use biological entities as vehicles and are dependent on them for replication. Indeed it is suggested that the primary function of biological entities is the efficient and accurate reproduction of genes. Memes, on the other hand, while they may also possess this compulsion to replicate are not entirely dependent on the replication of the biological entity which hosts them. They are able to replicate more rapidly and therefore with greater fecundity by employing a multimedia strategy of using both oral and written communication and the non linguistic route of demonstration and imitation.
It is possible that, through literature, a meme that reaches contemporaneous dead end, may enter a phase analogous to suspended animation until it is read again, enters a new mind and a new thread begins.
It has been hypothesised that mankind’s compulsion to invent more rapid broadcast communications methods is an indirect function our memetic complex’s implusion to greater replication through non interpersonal means.
So mankind, like many other biological entities, possesses genetically encoded instincts for subordination, followership and leadership but, unlike other biological entities mankind is able to moderate these through the partially controllable effect of memes acting singularly or, more often, in combination with other memes as a memeplex.
The rules of society are not genetically encoded but must be acquired as memes and it is our capacity to operate with memes that enables our complex society to function.
Humans are born with the genetic element intact and this remains unaffected by experience or learning but humans are born meme free and must acquire their memeplex through the process of living and mostly through interaction with other humans or the recorded works of other humans. The memes we acquire may vary in their dominance as they combine with or are overlaid by new memes. This is the process by which we develop new ideas and learn that our existing notions are incorrect or inadequate. We are, however, unable to return to a memeless state unless we suffer some catastrophic brain trauma.
Some of our strongest opinions and beliefs are such because their memes incorporate a self protection attribute that discourages us from adopting other memes that may contradict or dilute the importance of these memes. It is a form of memetic antibody which mirrors the immune system.
This process of meme acquisition begins at birth and it is the memes that we are infected by during childhood that endure for the longest time. These are received at a time when we have not developed the intellectual horse power to evaluate these critically. They take up residence unopposed and become our formative traits.
When eventually we develop evaluative capabilities they do not act on these formative memes as they are already established in our neural network. Often it is only through psychoanalysis, and then with difficulty, that these formative memes can be exposed to our critical evaluative capabilities.
When we are exposed through, education and training, to new memes it is very difficult for these formative memes to be dislodged from their dominant positions or to be modified to become new memes.
In considering the origins of leadership we may argue that if formative memes and followership establish a predisposition to subordination or followership then it is unlikely that the presentation of these memes will be easily disabled by exposure to new memes communicated during the process of leadership training.
So it is possible to suggest that it is these formative memes that determine whether or not an individual is predisposed to become a leader or a follower when exposed to the relevant situational stimuli.
****