Basic idea: Humans have space in our behavioral memory allotted to what amount to programmable instincts. We are like birds in that we can feel the need to nest or mate, but unlike birds in that the precise nature of our instincts can be made to adapt, in real time, to current circumstances. We call these programmable instincts “habits”.
A culture is the sum total of the habits of a given group of people who have bonded together to some greater or lesser extent. How such habits form is a formally complex process which is not replicable, but which is comprehensible, as a series of responses which are more and less effective to the problems of human life as they relate to confusion about the nature of life and the world, the concrete problems of physical survival, and the social problems of how to make group decisions and how to concentrate or distribute power to either optimize happiness on one pole, or safety–or perceived safety–on the other.
This means that who we “are” within a cultural context is a set of habits we did not invent, do not understand, do not execute consciously for the most part, and which confine us in important ways, while also allowing us to belong to a protective social order and to meet our needs for community and interpersonal connection.
I propose that for habits we can substitute “dharmas”. Now, I am a bit fuzzy on the Buddhist use of the word, but it is clearly applicable to Hindu notions of place and duty. As I understand the Buddhist use of the word, they include a roughly Hindu notion, but also use it to refer to what exists, the bits and things floating around, understood abstractly. Here is one selection:
Mahayana texts sometimes use the word dharma to mean something like “manifestation of reality.” A literal translation of the Heart Sutra contains the line “Oh, Sariputra, all dharmas [are] emptiness” (iha Sariputra Sarva Dharma sunyata).
Very basically, this is saying that all phenomena (dharmas) are empty (sunyata) of self-essence.
You see this usage also in the Lotus Sutra; for example, this is from Chapter 1 (Kubo and Yuyama translation):
I see bodhisattvasWho have perceived the essential characterOf all dharmas to be without duality,Just like empty space.Here, “all dharmas” means something like “all phenomena.”
To be without form is to be without habits. Physiologically, psychologically, this is very, very hard.
Duhigg talks about habits as constituted by a trigger, a behavior, and a reward. They are conditioned responses, in other words.
Here is the thing: the trigger is most often a feeling of some sort. A feeling flashes before your inner eyes–perhaps so fast you don’t even feel it any more–and you find yourself doing something which seems logical, but you don’t know why. Having done it, you feel better. Not doing it elicits all sorts of bad feelings, notably craving.
Craving–the Buddhist Tanha–is the word Duhigg uses, and it first occurs in the case of monkeys who were more or less addicted to blackberry juice. Once they got the jones, all they wanted to do was get more juice. Their brains were rewired.
One can easily look at the Buddhist spiritual path, particularly, as oriented around nothing more or less than superior mental health. Logically, if we can learn to avoid constant cravings, if we can learn to deal well with uncertainty and change, then we will be happier all around.
Within Kum Nye, the whole point of the thing is to feel what you are feeling, to find what is hidden, to find what slithers around in the darkness, or in the periphery of your vision, or which moves so fast you think you are imagining things. All of these things lead, ultimately, to habits which have cravings associated with them, and following unfreedom and behavioral compulsion. If you stop to feel, you automatically stop the looped behavior. If you give that feeling freedom to breathe, it can go anywhere it wants, which makes you more authentic and more intuitive.
Returning to this conception of culture, Duhigg offers what to me was a good analogy (although of course I am extending it much farther than he did). Researchers watching mice learn a maze noted that the first time they walk it, they are hypervigilent. They proceed slowly, sniff everything, look at everything, pause often, and generally expend a lot of energy. After they have completed the maze a few times, they go faster. Eventually they run immediately to where the cheese is.
Living within a culture is like this. It takes a bit to become acculturated, but once you have, many things, many behaviors, happen automatically. You celebrate the 4th of July by grilling out. You celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree and gifts. The details both vary by culture and define that culture.
With learned/conditioned behaviors, you get dopamine reinforcement, which is something Duhigg did not know about, or chose not to discuss. Dopamine is an inherent reward for a given behavior. It is the completion hormone (is it a hormone? Neurotransmitter? I’m not sure), at least as I understand it.
Living within a culture is living within known bounds is living within a maze you understand and know how to get rewards out of. Culture is in some respects a dopamine dominated system, and an organized method for getting behavioral reinforcement.
That comprises most of my notes. Some of the ideas I had don’t fit neatly here, and I don’t feel like making a follow up post.
But there are some very interesting ideas here. I do believe in the afterlife. I do believe we go on. But it is also possible, I feel, to dumb Buddhism down to a concrete method for developing mental health here, now, before we go anywhere at all, and one which works even if you are a materialistic fundamentalist.