Despite cultural changes in the Western World in the last 30 years, few women are genetically programmed to be heroic. Their hormones program them to nurture.
Men, obviously, attempt heroic feats, almost from Day One. The choice of heroism, however, comes from beliefs in the subconscious mind. One man goes to war, leads his troops right into enemy fire. Another leads a crowd protesting war. Both are hard-wired to act heroically in the face of opposition. It all depends on the given belief.
Here's some fascinating history to illustrate:
In 1945 six Bedoin camel drivers in Nacamedia, Egypt were digging for fertilizer and unearthed a skeleton and a large earthenware jar.
They smashed open the jar thinking it might contain gold, but what they found were 13 leather bound books.
These books were written on papyrus in the Second Century, bound in leather two centuries later. The Bedoins couldn't read in Coptic if they could read at all. One, named Mohammed Ali (no relation), took the books home in case they had some value. His mother used a few pages as kindling for her oven, so Mohammed moved them to another room.
Meanwhile word came that the man who killed Mohammed's father was nearby. He and his brothers killed that guy and ate his heart. It was a common practice in blood feuds.
Fearing the police would search his house, Mohammed gave the leather bound books to a local priest. The priest's relative could read Coptic. He realized that they had found the missing Gnostic Bible. This was the Bible condemned as false by Second Century writers, but had not been seen since.
This work, called the Namadic Bible, contained stories about Jesus and his twin brother, Thomas. Several tracts described the death and resurrection of Jesus as well as descriptions about the beginning of the earth.
To shorten a long story: Gnostic comes from the Greek word "gnosis" meaning "to know". Because Gnostics believed in a symbolic universe, their Bible had descriptions that were metaphors for reality. They did not claim them as historical fact.
Early curso de gnosis read the Gnostic books literally and condemned them as false. Wars between tribes believing varying creation and resurrection stories ensued.
So many wars continued year after year about the truth of things when truth lies in the subconscious minds of the beholders! Twenty-one centuries later, nothing has changed.
Moral of the story: as my former student concluded after reading philosophy for three years: "The value of truth is absolute, its nature subjective." And, as Wallace Stevens wrote,
"Twenty men crossing a bridge into a village are twenty men crossing twenty bridges into twenty villages. . ."
The biggest mistake people make using their native language with each other is assuming communication has occurred. We make that assumption without asking our audience or readers if they are listening at the same level of abstraction we are speaking from, let alone a similar belief system.
Understanding how we are hardwired may not stop wars, but as individuals, we can make better decisions for ourselves than we might have otherwise.
There are several programs available to help us discover more about our subconscious selves, our hardwiring, our divine spark.
Simply understanding the power of this hidden mind in all of us would be a major step toward easing conflicts.
Current brain research may just lead the world to permanent peace.
