Ahaa! Why didn’t we understand from the start! It was right in front of our noses the whole time. It was merely centuries of religious and scientific traditions that hindered us in seeing the truth: that feelings control our lives! Scientific research shows as well that the same thing applies to a number of other life forms on earth.

- It is a paradox that the ancient limbic, non-verbal parts of the brain, function as the sanctioning apparatus for the concept-dependent ideas that arise at any given time in the evolutionary youngest part of the brain: the neocortex, says the neuropsychologist Paul D. MacLean. Who is it that possesses this knowledge?

Shouldn’t it contribute to a drastic change in humans beings’ view of themselves and of other living creatures on earth? Is this a widespread understanding that humans have of themselves, or is it knowledge reserved for scientists?

Depending on certain stimuli, the instinct-switch alternates between what Børresen calls hunter sensibility and physical empathy for other living creatures. The «switch» was perfectly adjusted to humans beings’ original condition as hunter and gatherer, yet as our way of life has changed, the instinct-switch became out-of-order. The hunting instinct has gone astray.

Dr. Børresen substantiates her theory with material from diverse scientific disciplines.

– One of the messages that my two popular science publications promote is that we are intellectually handicapped if we do not take into consideration the 90% of our brain capacity that functions nonverbally and nonlinearly, says Børresen. The first to make headway in researching animal behavior were anthropologists, and the pioneers in studying communication between animals and humans, were musicians. As an artist and musician, you must be able to empathize.

At no point in the evolution of human beings has verbal communication played the greatest role in communicating.

TUG K: One of the things I find most exciting in the book is the incident with the whale; when a forty-ton humpback whale places his seven-meter-long breast-fin in the hand of the photographer. It is beyond all of our ordinary notions of what communication is about, and what other creatures are capable of. How do you view the use of such stories in the context of research?

TUG IM: Darwin collected many such stories?

But this material was dismissed by modern behavioral scientists who claimed that, no, our modern, sensitive, emotional apparatus was something that came into existence during the middle ages. Yet the neuroscientist MacLean claims that Darwin was right, and documented emotional life is much older than intellect!

TUG K: During the fifties, MacLean developed the theory of the triune brain. He shows that the human brain consists of three main parts; one outside the other. At the center is the Salamander brain (the R-complex) which all land animals have in common and which has to do with reproduction, food, and comfort. Enveloping it is the Limbic cortex, which is found in all primitive mammals and which encompasses memory and nurturing among other things. These two parts of the brain together make up the ancient part of the brain and are surrounded by the Neocortex (the youngest part of the brain) which functions as the center for the senses and increases the potential, among other things, for problem solving, learning and detailed memory. MacLean is looking for the source of human feelings. He finds that the ancient, nonverbal part of the brain functions as a sanctioning apparatus for all of the concept-dependent ideas which arise in the neocortex. Not one experience, word, idea, concept, nor any strictly external thing or phenomenon which is registered in the neocortex can exist in the conscious before it has paid a visit to the old brain (?) and has had an emotional aspect, even the most modest, attached to it, he claims. We find this very interesting. But how is this knowledge put to use?

B: – Yes, it is exciting. And art is also situated in the old brain.

TUG K:/TUG IM: Is the art of painting also localized?

It is fantastic to be able to engage people in a discussion and to show them how rich life is, both our own - how salamander-like we are - and how many of these fantastic qualities we share with other animals.

Suddenly we discover we have relatives! We who have felt so lonely, since the age of Enlightenment. To promote this theory is rather important as it gives us enormous insight into ourselves. It explains among other things this strange fact that humans are both Thomas Quick1 and Mother Theresa, and that we are so all of the time.

And the distance between these two extremes is short.

When we see ourselves reflected in another individual it is easy to feel empathy, but if we do not see ourselves in another, it becomes more difficult.

In the book, THE ART OF BEING TAME. PEOPLE AND ANIMALS DURING 18000 YEARS (Gyldendal, 1994), I write about racism among hens. When a brown hen enters a flock of white hens, many of the hens refuse to «talk to» the brown hen because they believe it belongs to a different species.

To have a different skin color, fur, eye color, cultural behavior or language is enough. Racial hatred is proof of this. I would not call it racial fear, because I believe it is a question of the instinct-switch.

They are different, they speak differently, smell different, have other habits and give the «wrong» answer to my questions.

We provoke contradictory feelings in each other by simply behaving differently. The history of evolution shows that the creation of species often occurs when individuals live side by side for millions of years without mating, while it takes just as long for the genes become so different that they no longer can mate with each other.

They can indeed live geografically almost overlapping each other and yet evolve differently for several million of years, because the sosiology and customs surrounding the act of mating and flirting has changed.

When social factors can be so decisive, it signifies of course that it is a very potent release or stimulant for the instinct-switch.

As different as the human races are today - we have not used more than 100,000 years to accomplish it - reflects that there has been little mating across cultural borders.

Had this practice been allowed to continue for a few million years without the interference of modern communication, Africans and Europeans would have become two different species.

But it would have taken millions of years before it became genetically possible.

TUG K: What about the instinct-switch’s function in today’s society?

TUG IM: You choose to popularize the results of your research. How do your colleagues respond to this?

I describe among other things the behavior of the chimpanzee that performs this ritual down by the waterfall.

It was registered but not published.

They were not sure how to convey it, so it was a popular science book that published it instead. We are far behind in conducting this type of research here in Scandinavia.

In Cambridge, it was I who was the great reductionist in a scientific forum, so British scientists are very open to the idea of animals’ «spiritual characteristics». Whereas in America they have slid into a combination of sentimentality and cynicism, when they in total earnestness confirm their cat, while simultaneously giving silent approval to slaughter houses. If I were to take up a crusade, it would be against this type of cynicism and sentimentality that is the result of repression of feelings and of one’s own physicality.

Animals are not human, and we must therefore not be anthroposophical but theosentrical in our relations with animals.

The animal’s own qualities and conditions should form the basis for our relations to it. You must not turn a cat into confirmation candidate. Allow it to be a cat.

TUG IM: Has the fact that British scientists are not so reductionistic in their view of animals had any consequences for animal breeding in England?

If there is one place in our society where the instinct-switch has really gotten stuck, it is in agrobusiness. You find a self-perpetuating circle here where animals have no contact with humans, and thus have no experience telling them that humans are any more personal than a passing train.