The Intertwined Brain
‘what we are born with is what worked best for the last 50,000 human generations’ (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence , p5) In Emotional Intelligence Goleman discusses what happens when ‘passions overwhelm reason.’ Our reactions to the world around us have evolved over time. These ‘automatic reactions’ are extremely important in dangerous situations. Reactions that don’t always make logical sense, such as the two parents that gave up their lives to rescue their daughter in a train crash; but it could be argued biological and emotional sense. They saved her to protect their genes, as Dawkins might say, and the way this decision was reached was through love. Goleman called emotions ‘impulses to act’, determined by biological and cultural acts: unconsciously when you feel tenderness or love towards a person the body undergoes a relaxation response ‘a general state of calm and contentment’; and how we display this emotion is also determined by our culture. In this...