Europe is in crisis. It has been in crisis for seven years, and while its inhabitants continue to calmly go about their daily lives it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that behind the scenes, the joints and hinges that hold the Continent together are under great stress. In 2008, the global financial crisis put an end to the dream of everlasting prosperity, and 2011 saw the arrival of financial panic on Europe's shores - a panic that has continued its disruptive work in Greece for much of this year. Now, unprecedented quantities of immigrants are arriving in the Continent, further complicating the picture and putting even more stress on the bonds that tie the European Union together. The union is under threat, as so many political constructions in the annals of human history have been; some have survived their ordeals, others have succumbed. To discover which fate might await the European Union, perhaps it is useful to break the institution down to the most basic building blocks that make it up: Europeans themselves.
The Evolution of the Human Mind
In his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution, American neuroscientist Dr. Paul MacLean outlined his theories on the evolution of the human brain and how its chronological development affects the thinking process in modern people. MacLean divided the brain into three sections - layers that had been added over time like sediments of rock. The basic core he dubbed the reptilian brain, and this was where the deepest-seated instincts and urges resided. Self-preservation, reproduction, territorial behavior and other such primal imperatives were found here, and thus it had the closest relationship with the rest of the body. Layered on top of this reptilian base was the mammalian mind, which was the source of emotions. With mammals becoming social animals, their brains needed to gain more of an understanding of interaction with others and so developed the ability to empathize and nurture. The top and final layer was the human brain, which evolved through primates' use of their dexterous fingers to shape and create tools and continued developing until it was capable of tackling concepts such as the existence of other dimensions or of structuring a synthetic asset-backed security.
The idea is that while the latest, "human" layer is the part with which we think, and is thus responsible for our self-awareness, the older parts still shape our actions; the mammalian brain tells us how we feel about things, while the reptilian brain emits urgent warnings and directives. MacLean's theory was popular for a time, but as the actual mechanics of brains were studied in more depth, his scientific assertions came to be devalued. Whether or not the science fully holds water, the philosophical thesis remains appealing. Overlaid onto geopolitics, this structure of the mind - with basic urges ultimately holding sway over high-minded ideals - can be seen everywhere. With geopolitics being at its essence the interactions of people on a grander scale and within constraints, this would only be logical.
The Hierarchy in Action
The reptilian self-preservation instinct has of course shaped human behavior throughout history. Capitalism harnesses this urge; to acquire the food and shelter needed to survive, money must be earned, and the more money is accumulated, the more distant reptilian fears become. Nationalism, meanwhile, is a meld of the reptilian and the mammalian - a combination of territoriality and a wolf-pack mentality. The framework of nationalism can then have all manner of human ideals laid on top of it. Values such as human rights, freedom of speech and an abhorrence of torture arrived in Western society, but only after reptilian and mammalian values had already shaped the world.
In the world of politics, the mammalian mind seems to be making a comeback. U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has polled unexpectedly well in advance of the Republican Party primaries, and British politician Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected leader of the opposition Labour Party. The political intelligentsia has discredited both men's policies - Trump's because of their simplicity and inconsistencies, and Corbyn's because he appears to be resuscitating socialist ideas blamed for bringing hardship to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. But party electorates seem to be looking beyond the intellectual ideas and more at the candidates themselves, and seeing something they like. In a modern world of media relations training and public focus groups, this might be the electorate listening to their mammalian minds and embracing the authenticity of Trump's straight talk and Corbyn's down-to-earth decentness. Of course, neither candidate is actually close to real power at this stage, meaning voters have some space to indulge these feelings. As the stakes rise with the approach of elections in both countries, reptilian fears, aided in this case by a dose of human rationality, can be expected to focus the public mind more on realities, and these two candidates may see their support wither.
On a larger scale, the hierarchy of urges might also be used to explain the triumph of capitalism over communism. In 1917, reptilian fears of death, either through starvation or on World War I battlefields, drove Russia's peasantry and intelligentsia to rise up and overthrow the government. The new government was based on the idea that all should work for the good of the system. This notion appealed to the idealistic upper minds of Russians, who had long labored in a deeply unequal czarist society. The problem was that it did not cater to their reptilian minds, since it broke the link between work and survival. That link then had to be replaced by a state threat - instead of, "Work or you'll starve," the threat became, "Work or the state will kill you." Thus, fear and ideology became the twin pillars that held up the Soviet Union, particularly in its early decades. The end came when the relative success of the capitalists combined with the diminished fear of the czars to finally discredit the Marxist ideology. But even though it was the ideology that ultimately crumbled, in truth it had been fear that held the Soviet Union up for 70 years; the problem was that the fear could not be sustained without the ideology to justify it. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, meanwhile, the capitalists were having their reptilian requirements met in a way that was hard-wired into the system, ensuring that the system's relevance could not fade or be eroded by time.
