We all take notice when someone starts a sentence with the word ‘we’. This implies that the speaker thinks they are speaking for everybody. Where does this come from?
One of the key takeaways of neuromythography is that the ventral striatum is the locus of the world’s evil. I say this mostly seriously, but with a slight wink lest fools start contacting neurosurgeons for ventral striatum removal.
Terminology note: the nucleus accumbens (Nacc or NAc) is the principal nucleus of the ventral striatum. The ventral striatum definition typically also encompasses the ventral putamen and olfactory tubercle (OT).
Neuromythographic interpretation of panels A and B:
s32 (Dharma): s32 tracks value across domains. This includes deontological value. Dharma is the Hindu/Buddhist concept of personal values.
The study also found that right rostral VLPFC activation was inversely-related to projecting your own opinion as a group consensus, i.e. the act of controlling the ventral striatum-s32 activation above. The mapping of panel C is:
Right a47r(Magellan): tracking of paths explored, rejecting paths already deemed unsuccessful, and finding new promising paths
Right p47r(Strachey): Strachey invented the programming language concept of polymorphism, which involves using the same programming verb to mean different things in different contexts.
When this right VLPFC area is damaged, people are unable to imagine that other people could have different opinions from themselves.
This is just the latest in a long line of evidence tying the ventral striatum to political madness. No one ever achieves nirvana without controlling it.
Dr. Daniel Amen is a controversial psychiatrist who runs a successful chain of brain health and treatment centers. During the course of his work, his labs have accumulated perhaps the world’s largest collection of brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans. In 2017, Amen and team published an analysis of this data set that explored the difference between men and women.
Amen study of more than 46,034 brain scans: women are red, men are blue.
These SPECT images reflect regional blood flow in the brain, which serves as a proxy for overall brain activity. The study’s overall finding was that women have more active brains.
Here are some specific observations:
Women have more activity in the cingulate cortex and precuneus (the red areas in the above). This large group of zones includes brain areas associated with joy, sadness, concentration, shame, guilt, criticism, autobiographical stories, 3rd-party perspectives, character acting, self-history, self-reflection, and deciding that it is time to change strategies. This is a larger manifest of brain areas than I am willing to elaborate upon in this post.
Men have more activity in the anterior temporal lobes. The anterior temporal lobe zone includes areas
TGd (Pheme/Aesop) associated with knowledge of famous people/allegories
PeEC (OBJECT RECOGNITION/RECENCY/FREQUENCY) an area involved in object familiarity
TGv (Kandinsky/Alex Grey) associated with local and global properties, respectively, and represented by painters whose art exemplifies these concepts
TE2a (Pliny/al Kindi) Pliny wrote the first encyclopedia, al-Kindi was the polymath founder of Arab philosophy
TE1a (Tenjin/Aja) Tenjin, the Japanese god of scholarship, and Aja, the Yoruba goddess of zoology, botany, potions, and healing herbs.
Men have significantly more activity in Crus I and Crus II. These are the main parts of the cognitive cerebellum, and have functional connectivity with the main cortical associative networks. Crus II is assigned Chronos, the Greek deity of cyclic time, and left and right Crus I are assigned Postvorta and Antevorta, after the Roman goddesses of history and the future, respectively. This reflects the hypothesized roles of Crus I and Crus II in projecting thoughts and actions into the past and future, for error correction purposes, before validating a thought back to the cortex via the thalamus.
This maps rather easily to the psychology adage “women empathize, men systematize”. I have given the cingulate and precuneus a brief description here, and will elaborate in a future post.
As far as the question of innate behavioral sexual dimorphisms vs. socially-constructed gender roles, this one study cannot address this. I am interpreting the image based on its neuromythographic archetypes–archetypes that have been honed across thousands of neuroscience studies, and not fitted to this particular study.
This post is Part IV (final) of a series. Go back to Part III, or start over at Part I.
Retrospective
Neuromythography In Context
Mathematicians think in proofs, lawyers in constructs, logicians in operators, dancers in movement, artists in impressions, and idiots in labels.
Neuromythography offers an hybrid alternative to constructs and labels: archetypes representing artistic impressions that interpret neuroscience. This is something new, that was not possible until the past five years. We are explorers of a new frontier, endowed with a past heritage that could not understand the biological significance of their own prior explorations of the mythological world.
I have shown a series of archetypal personifications of real biological entities that exist in everyone. Yet left and right partisans each portray the other side as insincere. Academic scholarship has coined words such as “performativity”, “signifiers”, and “speech violence” to describe right-wing attitudes. Social psychologists claim to have proven that ‘conservative people’ are ‘authoritarian’, and at the same time resist submission to authority, without questioning the inconsistency of the constructs. Conservative pundits have coined words like “propaganda” and “virtue signaling” to describe left-wing attitudes, and persist in pathologizing the Other as unnatural or devil-inspired. Each of these denies the sincerity of the other side, perhaps as a rejection of the part of themselves that also holds these perspectives.
Meme Warfare and Propaganda
The right and left hemispheres prefer visual and verbal information, respectively. This is why you tend to see more creative right-wing memes and more elaborate left-wing manifestos, rather than vice-versa.
Conclusion
The duality that we perceive as “right vs. left” reflects dichotomies in our brains. These divisions include complementary neurotransmitters (oxytocin vs. vasopressin), complementary receptors (v1a vs. v1b), hemisphere lateralization (right amygdala vs. left amygdala), and vertical complements (dmPFC vs vmPFC). Each member of these dualities tend to vary together, resulting in the averaged appearance of a single right-left generalization. Within the interaction networks of these biological entities lie the various political ‘-isms’.
These potentialities exist in all of us, but at any time many people are lopsided towards one side or the other. Our upbringing, experiences, sex, and (to a lesser extent) genetic heritage tend to lean us towards one side or the other. Political rhetoric attempts to trigger us to become outraged at one side, and thereby join “the enemy of my enemy”. When one achieves mastery and balance, those who are enthralled with both sides become angered at them, accusing them of being ‘arrogant centrists who act above it all’. This is the price to be paid for awareness.
Earlier in this essay, I made the following claim:
Oxytocin is the energy of species progress and the Spirit of Community. Vasopressin is the energy of self-actualization, and submission to and rising up towards the Spirit of Dominion.
The erudite may observe parallels to this world vs. the next, species preservation vs. self-preservation, yin/yang, left and right, and so on. What I have done is show where the roots of these intuitive generalizations meander through the soil of of the brain, from neurotransmitters to receptors to the primitive brain nuclei to right/left hemispheres to the highest cortical areas, in all their organic messiness. But at the end of the day, awareness of these two fundamental energies as things to be balanced is the first step towards mastering them.
This post is Part IV (final) of a series. Go back to Part III, or start over at Part I.
This post is Part III of a series. Advance to Part IV, or go back to Part II.
More Stories
Conservatism, Johnathan Haidt, and the right DLPFC
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is the second-most expanded part of the human cortex due to evolution, next to the inferior parietal lobe. It is the part of the brain that may be most closely characterized as the center of ‘skeptical, logical reasoning’. Stimulation of the right dlPFC makes people more conservative, no matter what their usual political orientation is. The right dlPFC is skeptical, and pauses the rest of the brain to deliberate the future consequences of choices.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is known for his moral foundation theory, in which he articulated four additional dimensions to morality besides the usual utilitarian care/harm dimension that historically has been the fixation point of philosophers for the past couple of centuries:
Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation
Haidt’s own views were significantly modified by his research, as he found that the liberal point of view that divides morality into ‘utilitarian’ and lumps everything else into a deprecated ‘deontological’ category missed out on these nuances.
The deliberation and balancing of all of these moral dimensions is one of the many roles of the right dlPFC, whereas the left dlPFC seems to be more exclusively focused on utilitarian care/harm.
Risk Avoidance
A conservative archetype would be expected to avoid taking dumb risks. In fact, disabling the right dlPFC with targeted magnetic stimulation increases preference for risky choices.
A Contrast With Moral Neuropsychology
It is interesting to contrast my interpretation with that of academic philosophers who have come to a completely different conclusion. In a future article, I am going to contrast my interpretation of the neuroscience literature with that of social psychologists such as Joshua Greene of Harvard, who not surprisingly look for and find evidence for a ‘dual process theory’ of brutish, primitive deontological moral judgments and sophisticated utilitarian moral reasoning. Interestingly, Greene centers his utilitarian center in the left dlPFC and vmPFC, which is precisely where neuromythography centers utilitarian reasoning, but he simply attributes deontological reasoning to the amygdala, whereas the neuromythographic approach elaborates on the right-sided network that implements higher deontological reasoning.
The modern pathologizing of deontological morality is like historical attribution of manipulative care/harm moral claims to the devil. We ought to stop doing those things, and try to see things as they are.
The Radical Visionary: 10d and PCC
31a identifies that it is time for a change, and 10vd envisions possible communal futures.
The Orwellian Left 44d
The phenomenon of indoctrination is well-known. There is a particular language-related area in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, left 44d, that shows up across militant Jihadists, blatant dehumanization, and other sorts of indoctrination. This area is particularly trained by education. This is why control of education is an object of political conquest. 44d is assigned Orwell, to represent its role in receiving and internalizing propaganda.
The Problematizing Anterior Midcingulate
The ancient Jews described the satan (Hebrew: the accuser), who relentlessly accuses people of sins, and God uses as a prosecutor to test the faithful. The neural center of this problematizer is to be found in the anterior midcingulate part of the brain:
p32pr
Area p32pr is the center of cognitive dissonance and chaos. This is assigned the archetype Tiamat, the chaos snake. It lies above a24pr and p24pr, and spreads confusion to other areas of the cortex to make sense of. A distinction between right and left p32pr archetypes has not yet been made.
a24pr
Area a24pr has a right and left hemisphere archetype. The left a24pr is assigned Dike, the Greek goddess of justice. The right a24pr is assigned Phthonus, the Greek god of envy. a24pr also shows up in self-criticism, loathing, and scrupulosity. These assignments are made due to many fMRI studies that show activations in these areas under conditions of observations of norms violations and others receiving awards.
p24pr
Area p24pr is concerned with expectations of others and the violation of those expectations. It has not yet been personified as of this writing. It complements a24pr in modeling expectations of others while a24pr reacts to outcomes that differ from expectations.
This midcingulate area of the brain is active in shame, and in outrage at violations of social norms. It has been found to be more active in liberals than conservatives. It should be noted that these areas are critical of both others and the self.
The Partisan Instigator: a Partnership Between Zeus and Lucifer
nucleus accumbens (NAc)
To conclude our mythography, let us now look at the culprit at the bottom of all of this: the ventral striatum. The ventral striatum—particularly its primary component, the nucleus accumbens–is regarded as the reward center in neuroscience, but it is the root of “evil” in neuromythography. The ventral striatum is assigned to Lucifer, because in virtually every test of behaviors and attitudes regarded by religions as maladaptive, the ventral striatum figures prominently in the experimental outcomes.
9m
In the most extreme political partisans, area 9mdp in the dmPFC displays an average pattern representative of all members of a political orientation. An extreme partisan is not extraordinary, they are extraordinarily average with respect to their chosen groupthink allegiance. Area 9mdp is assigned to Zeus, the blustery, self-assured king of gods who threw lightning bolts at everyone who annoyed him.
This 9mdp-ventral striatum functional connectivity occurs in both left- and right-wing partisans. Is it any surprise that Lucifer loves stirring up both sides?
Many More Stories
There are many more stories to tell: the left and right insula, the left and right inferior parietal lobes, serotonin and dopamine, the parental hormone galanin, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and the lateral septum, all of which have bimodal profiles that generalize into the right and left spectrum. But let us now take a break here and wrap up in Part IV.
This post is Part III of a series. Advance to Part IV, or go back to Part II.
This post is Part II of a series. Advance to Part III, or go back to Part I.
Flidais vs. Cernnunos: Left Amygdala vs. Right Amygdala
So far we have only talked about two neurotransmitters, oxytocin and vasopressin, and their receptors. These components are embedded in certain brain areas, that have roles of their own, whose behaviors the energies and receivers modify. Let’s now talk about the amygdala.
Flidais, the Left Amygdala
The left amygdala is assigned to Flidais, the Celtic deer goddess, protector and caretaker of innocents. The left amygdala is associated with the experience of predation fear, affective empathy, enjoyment of horror movies, openness to experience, sexual variety, vicarious emotions, reading others’ eyes, and fear biting.
In a celebrated case, a woman whose right amygdala was damaged (and therefore only had a functional left amygdala) was gifted with hyperempathy.
Her empathy seemed to transcend her body — the woman reported feeling physical effects along with her emotions, such as a “spin at the heart” or an “esophageal unpleasant feeling” when experiencing empathic sadness or anger. She reported these feelings when seeing people on TV, meeting people in person, or reading about characters in novels, the researchers said.
She also described an increased ability to decode others’ mental states, including their emotions, the researchers said. Her newly acquired ability to empathize was confirmed by her family, and she performed exceptionally well in psychological tests of empathy, the researchers said.
Live Science
The left amygdala is the locale of the “High Priestess” type of mystic who can reach into people’s souls by staring deeply into their eyes.
Cernnunos, the Right Amygdala
The right amygdala, is conservative, righteous, contemptuous, suspicious, visual, brooding, but emotionally-restrained. To the right amgydala we assign the archetype Cernnunos, the wild horned Celtic nature deity who tamed beasts and protected them.
The right amygdala tends to develop over the course of one’s life and suppress the left amygdala’s tendency to lose its composure. Early life stress tends to accelerate this development; perhaps this is a correlate of ‘toughening up’.
The right amygdala appears to play a central role in the ‘conservative’ political orientation. The neuroscience literature often characterizes the right amygdala as being sensitive to ‘threat’ and ‘disgust’, and this has been used to portray the ‘conservative mind’ as primitive, irrationally fearful of threats, and sensitive to disgust. This is an unfortunate consequence of the political bias in the academic research community. A more careful reading of the literature establishes the right amygdala as being oriented towards pre-emptively acting against a threat (vs. the left amygdala’s inclination to experience threat), and that the right amygdala is a substrate for contempt rather than disgust (a subtle distinction that this study explored).
Male emotional experience is right amygdala-biased, while female emotional experience is left amygdala-biased (Canli et al., 2002; Cahill et al., 2004). Testosterone amplifies the right amygdala shift in males, while estrogen amplifies a right amygdala shift in females.
The right amygdala makes fast assessments of fear in others’ faces, while the left amygdala more thoroughly analyzes others’ faces to identify emotions.
The Energies and Receivers of the Amygdala
The right amygdala (Cernnunos) is more heavily innervated by vasopressin (Sancus) fibers, while the left amygdala (Flidais) is more heavily innervated by oxytocin (Guanyin) fibers. The right amygdala is also higher in v1a (Morrigan) receptors, while the left amygdala is higher in OTRs (Tara).
So although these three-and-a-half dimensions (left/right amygdala, oxytocin/vasopressin, v1b/v1a x OTR) are independent, they tend to cluster together. The average person observes this clustering as left/right and female/male average attitudes.
8BM vs. vmPFC: Control of Right and Left Amygdala
Another interesting story is that the medial frontal lobe has right amygdala- and left amygdala-aligned areas. These areas are not simply oriented towards the same right/left sides, but rather the lower part (vmPFC) controls the left amygdala, while the upper part (dmPFC) controls the right amygdala.
Activation of right 8BM with right amygdala seed during contempt
In this study of the neural correlates of contempt, seeding the right amygdala identified a functionally-connected region within the dmPFC called 8BM. In the Neuromythograph, left 8BM is assigned Aedos, the Greek god of reverence, modesty, honor, and respect. Right 8BM is assigned Diomedes, the Greek warrior from the Illiad who demonstrated the greatest honor and independence of mind. Right 8BM appears to be a seat of ‘free will’, and is engaged when an individual goes against the consensus view. 8BM highly expresses androgen (testosterone) receptors, indicating that testosterone ‘amplifies its voice’.
Aedos/Diomedes (8BM) complements Cernnunos (right amygdala), by holding him to honor codes, but activating him when honor demands it.
The Inner Child vs. The Base
The Inner Child
The striatum is a zone of the brain that neuromythography calls the Inner Child. It has several main subdivisions:
Caudate nucleus, head
Left: Zelus, the Greek god that personifies dedication, emulation, eager rivalry, envy, jealousy, and zeal
Right: Entheos, a Greek term meaning “the God within”, and the root word of ‘enthusiasm’. Deified for neuromythography.
Putamen
Left: Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth, comfort, habit
Left ventral: Menoitios, the Greek god of rashness
Right: Hephaestus, the Greek god of smithing and mechanical construction
The pallidum is a zone of the brain that neuromythography calls The Base. It has several components:
Globus pallidus external: Horme, the Greek god personifying energetic activity, impulse or effort (to do a thing), eagerness, setting oneself in motion, and starting an action
Globus pallidus internal: Atlas, the Greek Titan who tirelessly holds up the world
Ventral pallidum: Tanha, the Buddhist term for desires and wants
VPr: Erysichthon, a mythical Greek king whose addictive behaviors resulted in him eating himself in hunger
VPp: Nectar, the mythical sweet drink of the Greek gods
VPdl: Oya, the Yoruban goddess of changing desires
VPvm: Jugatinus, the Roman god who yokes couples in marriage
Striatum vs. Pallidum
The globus pallidus internal (GPi) gates the initiation of actions, sustains continuing actions and shows up in “conservative” resistance to risky actions. The GPi is assigned the archetype of Atlas, the Greek Titan who tirelessly holds up the world. Left/right distinctions for GPi have not been made yet, so Atlas is assigned both sides until they can be differentiated.
The striatum (Inner Child) and the GPi (Atlas) play out in the lifespan of all people. The Inner Child is enthusiastic, stubborn, idealistic, impulsive, and creative. It mediates early romantic love and enthusiasm for new lovers. Atlas is downstream of the Inner Child, and ultimately chooses what actions to take and stick with them. Atlas, in conjunction with vasopressin, has been found to be the key player in promoting pair-bonding for life in prairie voles and other species.
In the context of this essay, the head of caudate nucleus is aligned with the Spirit of Community, while the globus pallidus (including Atlas and the external component, Horme) is aligned to the Spirit of Dominion. This is because the “idealistic” caudate nucleus dominates the mind of the young, while the habitual putamen and the globus pallidus are more dominant by adulthood. This dichotomy shows up in the public space as intergenerational conflict.
This post is Part II of a series. Advance to Part III, or go back to Part I.
You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.
This post is part of a series. Advance to Part II.
Introduction
The terms ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ originated in the National Assembly of France during the French Revolution in 1789, when supporters of the king migrated to the right side of the legislative chamber, and supporters of the revolution seated themselves to the left side. When we study history, we can find that this dichotomy long predates the French Revolution: in ancient Greece (Sparta vs. Athens), in Rome (Optimates vs. Populares), in ancient Judaism (Sadducees vs. Pharisees), in Vedic India (the caste system, i.e. Sudra vs. the higher castes), and even in the social classes of the Qin Dynasty in China (landlord/merchant vs. craftsman/peasant). Philosophers have created their own descriptions: Marx’s famous bourgeoisie/proletariat dialectic, Nietzsche’s master morality and slave morality, and Crenshaw’s intersectionality all recapitulate the same polarized dichotomy.
There exists an entrenched academic view that politics is primarily a story about collective group power–the oppressor classes vs. the oppressed classes. This originated in the historical dialectic method of Karl Marx–“a ruthless criticism of everything existing”. Today, thousands of scholars are employed to critically read texts, recontextualize them in terms of a class power dialectic critical interpretation, and extract hidden class power subtexts from in between the author’s original words.
But this Durkheimian theory of social facts has never withstood the confounding evidence omnipresent in our discourse. For example, consider the prevalence of wealthy heirs amongst the most radical leftists globally, starting with Marx’s own benefactor Friedrich Engels. Or the wealthy patrons that supported Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s odyssey across Europe as he progressively wore out his hosts’ welcome. Consider the unironic use of the term ‘populism’, when the working poor inexplicably align behind a brazenly elite strongman who promises to restore righteousness. Marx contemptuously portrayed the ‘lumpenproletariat’ as fools unaware of what their opinions ought to be, anesthetized by the ‘opiate’ of religion designed by the elite classes. Something more sophisticated is going on than social theorists can explain.
History is littered with epochs in which humans are swept up into the madness of revolutionary and reactionary camps, and make uncivil war upon each other. Jesus Christ sidestepped and redirected an attempt to make him choose a side with his retort, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.’, yet comically strained attempts are still made today to retrospectively recruit Him into the fracas. J. Michael Straczynski’s underrated TV series Babylon 5 mythologized this conflict by imagining human history under the secret influence of two conflicting alien races, the Vorlons (who asked the question, “who are you?”) and the Shadows (who asked the question, “what do you want?”). He poked fun at it in one episode involving a race called the Drazi, who divided up into two warring ‘purple’ and ‘green’ factions every five years:
A failed attempt at mediation between the Drazi purple and green factions. From: Babylon 5
But where does this human impulse to divide up into honor and justice factions come from?
NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and collaborators have investigated moral values and political ideologies, and proposed a model where the left-wing is oriented around broad social connections, the right-wing is oriented around tight social connections, and libertarians are instead oriented around individualism. This feels like a fuzzy glimpse at truth, but the investigative tools available to the psychologist pretty much stop at these abstract nouns.
I propose that the real truth is this: these group perceptions only exist as emergent phenomena due to the common architecture of vertebrate brain, and the life experiences that leave their imprints upon that brain ‘wetware’. There exist no imaginary mass social constructs or historical forces, revealed by reason or the ritual torture and sacrifice of data. Political phenomena are emergent phenomena, not ersatz gods whose worship needs to be indoctrinated. If you can master this truth, you actually can choose your own reality, just as ceramic-jar-housed Diogenes earned the peerage of Alexander the Great. Wary of the dark creatures that await us, let us take a deep, dispassionate dive into the politiques and their critiques.
The Two Spirits
Oxytocin, and its lesser-known sibling vasopressin, are popularly associated with social bonding. They are far more subtle and sophisticated than that.
If there is an overarching claim that I am presenting, it is this:
Oxytocin is the energy of species progress and the Spirit of Community. Vasopressin is the energy of self-actualization, and submission to and rising up towards the Spirit of Dominion.
Let’s elaborate upon this.
Spirit of Community
Oxytocin
Species preservation
Promote parasympathetic nervous system
Left hemisphere
Feminine
Communion
Humanity
Affection
Verbal
Bottom up and detailed
Spirit of Dominion
Vasopressin
Species evolution
Control sympathetic nervous system
Right hemisphere
Masculine
Dominion
Family
Growth
Visual
Top-down and laterally-connected
Summary of the properties of the two spirits
Parasympathetic/Sympathetic
Oxytocin promotes the parasympathetic nervous system, while vasopressin controls the sympathetic nervous system. These autonomic nervous systems, that tend to oppose each other, have long carried the epithets of ‘feed and breed’ and ‘fight or flight’, respectively. Note that promote and control are not symmetrical operations.
Left Brain/Right Brain
Similarly, the left hemisphere promotes the parasympathetic nervous system, while the right hemisphere controls the sympathetic nervous system. This is similar to oxytocin and vasopressin, respectively, and each hemisphere tends to be more influenced by each energy.
Feminine/Masculine
Oxytocin plays a more prominent behavioral role in females, while vasopressin plays a more prominent behavioral role in males. However, oxytocin plays a critical supporting role in men in sexual attraction and parenting, while vasopressin plays a critical role in bonding and parenting in women. Everything here is shades and balance.
The left hemisphere is more critical to female behavior, while the right hemisphere is more critical to male behavior. Damage to the left hemisphere in females and right hemisphere in males is impairing, while the opposite is less noticeable. As this study of the relative performance on a psychological instrument called the Iowa Gambling Test concluded:
Men with right‐side lesions and women with left‐side lesions displayed moderate to severe impairments in social conduct, emotion, and decision making. Women with right‐side lesions and men with left‐side lesions showed mild or no impairments in all three domains.
Communion/Dominion
Oxytocin motivates reaching out into the world for sexual partners, while vasopressin motivates parental care and defense of the home territory and children. This is partly why we associate sexual liberalization and ‘family values’ with left- and right-wing; the other part, as we shall see later, involves the left and right amygdala.
Affection/Growth
Oxytocin and vasopressin modulate how we view child education. In a fascinating study, high oxytocin parents showered their children with validating affection, while high vasopressin parents showed their children new objects to learn about. Mothers tended to display the oxytocin parenting style, while fathers tended to display the vasopressin parenting style, but within-sex variations showed that the hormones, not sex per se, promoted the parenting behaviors. We see disagreements about these educational priorities play out in divisive school board meetings.
Oxytocin and Vasopressin Side-by-Side
Oxytocin promotes desire for communion with our ingroup, but importantly it also increases our resentment of outgroups, particularly those outgroup members who we believe are harming ingroup members. Oxytocin motivates us to reach out to people, and to wish to be a part of something greater than ourselves. Oxytocin makes us want to have families. Oxytocin output is increased when we are under chronic social stress. This is one of the sources of political polarization for both right and left. It is the foundation of patriotism, of internationalism, of ingroups and outgroups, and the Lacanian big Other.
Vasopressin promotes remembering individual people we meet and how we relate to them. It inspires territoriality, pair bonding, loyalty, self-defense, relative social dominance, and risky mission commitments (think of the ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, or the military espirit de corps). Vasopressin makes us want to protect our families. Vasopressin output is increased when we are under acute social stress. Vasopressin closes us off from strangers, but promotes the entanglement of self and close others as in family and friendship. Vasopressin mediates social hierarchies and the Lacanian little other.
Vasopressin is a masculine energy.
Shadow: Vasopressin is the gang hormone.
Men Are From Vasopressin, Women Are From Oxytocin
This ingroup vs. personal bond mediated by oxytocin and vasopressin, respectively, shows up in the perennial miscommunications between women and men. To a woman, the romantic ‘relationship’ is a distinct group entity that encompasses herself and her partner, the seed of a potential new little society of her own, that a woman is loyal to (vasopressin) and is concerned with nurturing (oxytocin), that is indestructible unless broken by emotional betrayal of the relationship (a female-specific oxytocin-mediated temporoparietal junction response). But for men, the romantic ‘relation’ is an individual bond (vasopressin), the primary source of spiritual healing and soul connection that a man reciprocates out of honor, that is indestructible unless broken by acts of sexual betrayal (a male-specific vasopressin-mediated hypothalamic response).
This will be covered in more detail in future articles.
Crowding is the Cause of Urban Left and Rural Right
Solitude increases vasopressin expression, especially in males. Overcrowding increases stress and oxytocin production, which helps organisms tolerate and even enjoy being part of a crowd. This is why urban areas are more left-wing, while suburbs and rural areas are more right-wing.
The balance of oxytocin and vasopressin also relate to young adults’ typical progression from expanding their social circles in their 20s (oxytocin) to withdrawing themselves into nuclear families (vasopressin) in their 30s and beyond. This is also part of why people tend to become “more conservative” as they age–high oxytocin is replaced by increasing vasopressin. Recognition of this shifting tendency as a phenomenon is why some more radically progressive leftists target the nuclear family for dismantlement.
Guanyin vs. Sancus
In neuromythography, oxytocin is assigned to Guanyin, the Chinese Buddhist goddess of affective empathy. Guanyin’s name means “Observing the Sounds of the World,” indicating her compassionate ability to listen for pleas of help so she can come to the aid of the needy. This represents oxytocin’s role in empathy and as the Spirit of Community.
Vasopressin is assigned to Sancus, the Roman god of trust, truths, sanctity, and oaths. This represents vasopressin’s role in self-actualization and rising up towards the Spirit of Dominion.
It should be obvious by now that neither of these complementary spirits is the correct one.
OTR, V1a and V1b Receptors
Neurotransmitters are only half of the story. Each neurotransmitter is received into a cell via receptors expressed on the cell surface. The type of receptor changes how the cell processes the neurotransmitter “message”, and the differences between these receptor types ultimately shows up in behavior.
There exist three cell receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin: the oxytocin receptor OTR, and two vasopressin receptors v1a and v1b. It is important to know that the two neurotransmitters oxytocin and vasopressin bind with all three of these receptors, so there are a total of six different potential effects.
Oxytocin receptors (OTR) are increased in alpha males and females, both as a result of parenthood and increasing social rank.
Vasopressin v1a receptors are increased in male rodents with each successive victory over an intruder. v1a receptors are increased in pair-bonded females, reducing their interest in finding new mates.
Vasopressin v1b receptors are increased in male rodents with each successive submission to an intruder. v1b receptors are increased in nursing females, and are necessary for normal maternal childrearing behaviors.
The Bruce effect is a phenomenon that occurs in rodents in which a pregnant female will spontaneously abort her pregnancy when exposed to the scent of a novel male. This effect is mediated through her v1b receptors, suggesting an instinctive response to the presence of a change in the local male hierarchy, or to a threat that lessens the likelihood of successful young-raising. This shines a new light upon male territorial defense against male intruders. The Bruce effect has been proposed, but is not universally accepted, in other mammals including humans.
v1a and v1b thus form an oppositional pair, with OTR standing on its own. Importantly, these receptors have fundamentally different behavioral properties in males and females.
Tara, Morrigan, and Mordred
OTR
The OTR is assigned to Tara, a complex Hindu/Buddhist goddess. The Buddhist version is known as the “mother of liberation”. The Hindu Tara has a taste for demon blood, but is maternal and breathes life into the world. She responds to the energies of Guanyin and Sancus.
v1a
The v1a receptor is assigned to Morrigan, the Celtic “phantom queen”. The Morrígan is mainly associated with war and fate, especially with foretelling doom, death or victory in battle. She incites warriors to battle and can help bring about victory over their enemies. The Morrígan encourages warriors to do brave deeds, strikes fear into their enemies. She responds to the energies of Guanyin and Sancus.
v1b
The v1B receptor is assigned to Mordred, the disrespected and rebellious son of King Arthur in the Arthurian legend. This represents submission, seething rebellion, and defense of the downtrodden. He responds to the energies of Guanyin and Sancus.
It should be apparent that v1a is the ‘oppression’ and v1b is the ‘oppressed’ motif. Or v1a is the ‘righteous’ and v1b is the ‘weak degenerate’. The interpretation may depend upon the current v1a/v1b balance of the interpreter. OTR is the group identification amplifier, that bonds us into ingroups, and calls forth Ares in the extreme.
A Simple Receiver Biopolitical Model
The international socialist is the amplification of v1b (Mordred) and OTR (Tara).
The nationalist is the amplification of v1a (Morrigan) and OTR (Tara).
The libertarian is the amplification of v1a (Morrigan) and v1b (Mordred).
The national socialist is the amplification of v1a, v1b, and OTR together.
This is of course a vast oversimplification, as it ignores the difference brain areas involved, and can be criticized as veering into a bad kind of biological essentialism. The key takeaway here is that these forces are to be balanced, not unbalanced.
This post is part of a series. Advance to Part II.
