One day, after a talk I had given on altruism, a person in the audience got up and said in an irritated tone: “What are you hoping for by encouraging us to cultivate altruism? Look at the history of humanity! It’s always the same thing! An uninterrupted succession of wars and suffering. That’s human nature, you can’t change anything about that!” But is this truly the case? We have seen that cultures can evolve. But can the individual change? And if he can, does this change have an influence on society and on succeeding generations?
True, our character traits change little, so long as we do nothing to improve them. But they are not frozen in place. Our basic traits, which result from the combined contributions of our genetic heritage and the environment in which we grew up, make up only the foundation of our identity. Scientific research in the field of neuroplasticity shows that any form of training leads to a reconfiguring in the brain, on both the functional and structural levels.
Society and its institutions influence and condition individuals, but individuals can in turn make society evolve and change its institutions. As this interaction continues over the course of generations, culture and individuals mutually shape each other.
If we want to encourage a more altruistic society to develop, it is important to evaluate the respective capacities for change of both individuals and society. If humans have no ability to evolve by themselves, it would be better to concentrate all our efforts on transforming institutions and society, and not waste time encouraging individual transformation. That is the opinion of the French philosopher André Comte-Sponville. His arguments get to the heart of the debate:
You tell me that if we don’t transform people first, we cannot transform society. We have behind us two thousand years of historic progress that prove the opposite. The Greeks were all racists and slave-owners; that was their culture. But I don’t feel as if I’m better than Aristotle or Socrates simply because I’m neither a slave-owner nor a racist. So there is a progress of cultures and societies, but not of individuals as such. If someone says today, “He’s a great guy because he’s not a slave-owner,” that’s idiotic, since that person isn’t that way for no reason: it’s his culture that’s responsible. Today, a person who is neither a slave-owner nor a racist is simply someone of his time.
If we had waited for humans to be fair so that the poor could get medical attention, the poor would have died without any care. We didn’t wait for humans to be fair, we created Social Security, taxes, a State governed by laws. So I think that the whole art of politics is to make selfish individuals more intelligent, which I call “solidarity” and which Jacques Attali calls “self-interested altruism.” It’s a question of making people understand it’s in their own interests to take account of others’ interests. It is in our own interest, for instance, to pay taxes.
I don’t at all believe in the progress of humanity, but I believe very much in the progress of society. Therefore, if you count on individual altruism to avoid economic crises, unemployment, poverty, then I won’t follow you at all in that line of reasoning.
In order to reconcile altruism and selfishness, politics were invented, which is a way to be selfish together and intelligently, rather than stupidly against each other.
The person who best expressed the relationship between mass selfishness and the celebration we all make of love and generosity is the Dalai Lama, who said in a nicely worded phrase: “Be selfish, love each other.”1 This is a phrase I quote very often, because it is extremely profound, and because it links eudaemonism to altruism: “If you want to be happy, love each other.”2
Listening to these words, I remained perplexed and, at the time, without a convincing reply. But, upon reflection, transposed into biological language, André Comte-Sponville’s argument—human beings themselves have not changed—comes down to saying that the human species has not changed genetically in two thousand years. That’s true for the majority of our genes, which is not surprising if you think that it generally takes tens of thousands of years for a major genetic modification to affect a species as evolved as the human species. The genetic predispositions that influence our character traits are thus almost the same today as in Aristotle’s time. The Dalai Lama agrees with this when he states that there is no basic difference between men and women today and those in the Buddha’s time, no more than there is any basic difference between Easterners and Westerners: “We all share,” he often says, “the same human nature, feel the same emotions of joy and sadness, benevolence or anger, and are all trying to avoid suffering. Thus as human beings we are basically the same.”
But that’s not all. The scientific discoveries of recent decades show that our genetic heritage, influential as it is, represents only a starting point that predisposes us to showing certain dispositions. This potential—and this is a crucial point—can then come to expression in multiple ways under the influence of our environment and by what we acquire through the efforts we make to train our minds or physical abilities. Thus, it is more appropriate to compare our genetic heritage to an architectural drawing that might be modified as the construction progresses, or else to a musical theme on which a performer improvises.
The plasticity of the brain plays a large role in our capacity for individual transformation. For a long time, an almost universally accepted dogma in the neuroscience field stated that once formed and structured, the adult brain doesn’t produce any more neurons and changes only through decline with age. It was thought that the organization of the brain was so complex that any important modification would cause major malfunctioning. According to one of the great specialists in neuroplasticity, Fred Gage at the Salk Institute, “It was easier to believe that there was no change. That way, the individual would remain pretty fixed.”3
Today we know that this doctrine was completely wrong. One of the major discoveries of the last thirty years concerns “neuroplasticity,” a term that takes into account the fact that the brain changes constantly when an individual is exposed to new situations. The adult brain in fact remains extraordinarily malleable. It has the ability to produce new neurons, to reinforce or diminish the activity of existing neurons, and even to attribute a new function to an area of the brain that usually carries out a completely different function.
Research carried out on people who are blind has demonstrated that the region of the brain normally dedicated to vision (“visual area”) was taken over and used by hearing, in addition to the normal auditory area, which allows nonsighted people to have a much more precise perception of the spatial localization of sounds. Similarly, among the deaf, the auditory area is mobilized to refine vision, which allows them to have a peripheral vision and an ability to detect movements that are much superior to those of hearing people.4
In 1962, Joseph Altman at MIT showed that new neurons were constantly forming in adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs.5 But these discoveries were so revolutionary that they were ignored or derided by the leading authorities of the time. In 1981, Fernando Nottebohm established in turn that among canaries, who create a new repertory of songs every spring, two encephalic regions linked to this learning increased respectively by 99% and 76% in volume, or neuronal mass, compared to the previous fall.6
In 1997, Fred Gage placed rats alone in an empty box for a month in which they had nothing to do except eat once a day. Then he transferred them to a veritable Disneyland for rats, with tunnels, wheels, pools, and various climbing elements, as well as other rats to keep them company. The repercussions of this transfer on their brain were surprising. In forty-five days, the hippocampus,7 the area of the brain associated with learning new skills, increased 15% in volume, even among the older rats, going on average from 270,000 to 317,000 neurons.8
It remained to be demonstrated that such a phenomenon could occur in humans. By injecting into the brains of patients a chemical composite that allows for the tracking of the evolution of brain tumors and then examining the brains after the patients had died, Peter Eriksson, a Swedish researcher, discovered that new neurons had recently formed in the hippocampus. It became clear that, until one dies, new neurons continue to form in certain regions of the human brain (up to 1,000 a day).9 As Fred Gage emphasizes, “This is occurring throughout life. The finding brought us an important step closer to the possibility that we have more control over our own brain capacity than we ever thought possible.”10
In the case of Fred Gage’s rats, they reacted to a new situation in which they found themselves involuntarily placed. Scientists speak of an “outer enrichment,” which is semi-passive. But one can also actively and voluntarily train the mind to develop specific abilities. Here, too, research has highlighted transformations of the brain in people learning to juggle or play chess, and in athletes who train assiduously. Among violinists, the regions of the brain that control the movements of the fingering hand develop as they learn. Among musicians, those who began their training very early and continue it over many years show the greatest modifications in the brain.11 We even know that among London taxi drivers, who have to memorize the names and locations of 14,000 streets, the hippocampus is structurally more voluminous in proportion to the number of years they have been working.12
Finally, we can thus envisage the possibility of an “inner enrichment” by an effort of mind. During the practice of meditation, notably, nothing changes in the outer environment. But by training one’s mind, the meditator carries out a maximum inner enrichment. Research in neuroscience carried out over a dozen years in which I myself have taken part shows that attention, emotional balance, altruistic love, compassion, and other human qualities can be cultivated, and that their development is accompanied by profound functional and structural transformations of the brain.
Along with neuroplasticity, a second mechanism allows individuals to change: epigenetics. In order for a gene, which we have inherited from our parents, to be active, it must be “expressed,” that is it must be “transcribed” in the form of a specific protein acting on the organism bearing this gene. But if a gene is not expressed, if it remains “silent,” it’s as if it were absent. Recent advances in genetics have revealed that environment can considerably modify the expression of genes by a process called “epigenetics.” This expression of genes can be activated or deactivated under the influence not just of external conditions, but also of our mental states.
Two monozygotic twins, for instance, who have exactly the same genes, can acquire different physiological and mental characteristics if they are separated and exposed to dissimilar living conditions. In scientific terms, one would say they are genetically identical but phenotypically different. Similarly, a caterpillar and a butterfly have exactly the same genes, but they are not expressed in the same way, depending on the times of the insect’s life.
These modifications in the expression of genes are more or less lasting, and in certain cases can even be transmitted from one generation to another, even though there are no changes in the DNA sequence of the genes themselves. These discoveries have truly revolutionized the field of genetics, since hitherto the very notion of transmission of acquired traits was regarded as heresy.13 The influence of external conditions is thus considerable, and we know today that this influence has repercussions all the way down to our genes.
A series of famous experiments carried out by Michael Meaney and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal dealt with newborn rats possessing genes that predisposed them to strong stress and anxiety. During the first ten days of their lives, these rats were given to mothers selected for being extremely caring with their young: they constantly licked them, groomed them, and were in physical contact with them as often as possible. The team established that after these ten days, the expression of the genes connected to anxiety was blocked, and the genes were not expressed for the entire lives of the rats.14
On the other hand, genetically identical baby rats that were given to ordinary mothers who did not give them this supplement of maternal love became fearful and anxious for the rest of their lives. The level of stress at adulthood does not depend, then, on genetic heritage, identical here for everyone, but on the way these baby rats were treated during the first ten days of their lives. Thus, our genetic fate is not engraved in stone.
Following this, Michael Meaney, Moshe Szyf, and other researchers undertook studies on human populations. We know that children who have been severely abused are 50% more likely to suffer depression at adulthood.15 Research showed that the mistreatment to which these children were subjected set off epigenetic modifications that lasted long after the period during which they were abused. Researchers especially observed lasting modifications in the expression of genes involved in the production and regulation of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. Among these individuals, the level of cortisol remained chronically high, even if they were in good health and no longer experiencing abuse.16 The fact that they often suffered multiple episodes of depression could thus be explained by a persistent vulnerability associated with epigenetic modifications in their neurons at the time they were victims of this abuse.
Could training the mind to cultivate positive emotions lead to epigenetic changes? Studies undertaken at Richard Davidson’s laboratory in Wisconsin, in collaboration with the Spanish geneticist Perla Kaliman, show that within a day, meditating for eight hours on mindfulness, altruistic love, and compassion already induces major epigenetic modifications.17 We can glimpse here the possibility of an epigenetic transformation of an individual that is due not just to the influence of environment, but also to a voluntary training in cultivating basic human qualities.
Let’s reconsider in light of the experiments described above the arguments advanced by André Comte-Sponville. It seems that a simultaneous transformation of cultures and individuals is possible. Children who grow up in a culture where altruistic values prevail and where society encourages cooperation will change not only in momentary behavior but also in their general attitude and mental dispositions. They will be different, not just because they will conform to new cultural norms and new rules set by institutions, but because their brains will have been shaped differently and because their genes will be expressed differently. Thus, a dynamic process of mutual influences will continue over the course of generations. As Richerson and Boyd, specialists in the evolution of cultures, stress:
What happens to individuals (for example, natural selection) affects the population’s properties (for example, the frequencies of genes).… The frequency of cultural variant, a population property, affects its probability of being imitated by individuals.
Individuals seem to be hapless prisoners of their institutions because, in the short run, individual decisions don’t have much effect on institutions. But, in the long run, accumulated over many decisions, individual decisions have a profound effect on institutions.18
In the final analysis, it is individuals who put totalitarian regimes in place, and other individuals who overthrow them to establish democracy. It is individuals who have perpetrated genocides when they dehumanized their fellows, and it is other individuals, sometimes the contemporaries of the former, who promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Despite immense progress in the fields of democracy, women’s rights, human rights in general, justice, solidarity, and the eradication of poverty and epidemics, much remains to be done. It would be regrettable to neglect the role of personal transformation in facilitating further changes. One of the tragedies of our time seems to be considerably underestimating the ability for transformation of the human mind, given that our character traits are perceived as relatively stable. It is not so common for angry people to become patient, tormented people to find inner peace, or pretentious people to become humble. It is undeniable, however, that some individuals do change, and the change that takes place in them shows that it is not at all an impossible thing. Our character traits last as long as we do nothing to improve them and we leave our attitudes and automatisms alone, or else let them be reinforced with time. But it is a mistake to believe they are fixed in place permanently.
We constantly try to improve the external conditions of our lives, and in the end it’s our mind that experiences the world and that translates this perception as happiness or suffering. If we transform our way of apprehending things, we automatically transform the quality of our life. And this change is possible. It results from training the mind, which is also called “meditation.”