C.S. Lewis once wrote about natural law (well, to be honest, I think he wrote about it on several occasions). For Lewis, natural law was the internal moral system that humans deal with every day in every decision they make. Freud liked to discuss it in terms of the id battling with the super ego and being arbitrated by the ego. Natural law accounts for the consistency of national and international law: murder is wrong, taking what is not yours is wrong, cheating is wrong. Humans know this internally, though some manage to suppress it (for them we have jail). Lewis, of course, believed just like me that this natural law is a gift from God so that we may know how to govern ourselves. I would argue that this natural law is ingrained in our brains, the organ that performs the process of rationalizing.
I just read an article about rationalization in the brain, specifically in split-brained persons. For those not aware of what I write, split-brain persons have had the connections of their two brain hemispheres severed for medical reasons. These folks can still function in the world, they just happen to have slightly different functions. This particular article talk about how the right hemisphere can recognize an object or command and perform it, but not verbally name it because the language properties are in the left hemisphere. However, this article went further to say that when a command or object presented to the right hemisphere was acted out or physically identified, the left hemisphere verbally compensated for the phenomena it was seeing. For example, if the subject's right hemisphere was given the command "Eat," the subject would begin eating the food in front of him. When asked why he was eating, the subject would verbally reply "Because I'm hungry." The truth of that statement is not relevant. The fact is, the body is responding to a command that the left brain is not aware of. However, the left brain does observe the activity and comes up with a way of rationalizing it when presented with a stimulus in the form of a verbal question.
All that background to present my thesis. The author of this article, Michael S. Gazzaniga, uses this data collected by himself and several colleagues to say that in every persons brain the right hemisphere stores information that it may not share with the left hemisphere. Then some phenomena may happen and the left brain must rationalize it. An example Gazzaniga gives is this: say one morning you wake up depressed. You don't know why. Yesterday was your birthday. You had a great night with friends and family. You know you are loved and yet you are depressed. The right brain is communicating something to you. Your left brain rationalizes it: "Well, I am another year older. I'm not getting any younger. I haven't accomplished everything I wished I had by this age. That's why I'm down in the dumps. Yeah!" You experience something you can't explain, so you explain it anyway. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. Good, let's move on.
Gazzaniga further makes the claim that our brains are in constant confliction and change. Two things cause this. Our beliefs battle with our actions. When our actions fail our beliefs, says Gazzaniga, most often it is our beliefs that change to accomodate our actions. He gives a great example. Sam (no one in particular) firmly believes in the sanctity of marriage and monogamy. However, one night he and his friends are partying at the pub, Sam has a bit too much to drink, finds a pretty lady particularly attractive, and wakes up next to her the next morning. He knows something is wrong because his actions have betrayed his beliefs. Sam's next step is to rationalize that maybe marriage isn't so sanctimonious. Maybe monogamy isn't all it is cracked up to be. Gazzaniga claims that this happens because our brains "need to maintain consistency for all our behavior." I agree with this statement in part. If our brains did not maintain consistency of behavior, I firmly believe we would go clinically insane.
However, this statement and example provided conflicts with the gracious gift of God that is Natural Law. When Sam wakes up next to not-his-wife, he knows something is wrong. Yes, he rationlizes it. However, Gazzaniga does not address that big ape called guilt. I guarrantee that unless Sam has some mental deficiency that has managed to push guilt away (which is possible, mind you), he is feeling some major guilt. That guilt may drive him mad crazy. I have experienced this personally. We all have. When we do something wrong, we feel bad about it. Why? Not because our brain cannot fully rationalize the event, as if we were mentally definicient. NO! Because as human beings we are instilled with what is right and what is wrong, thanks to that forbidden fruit of the tree.
I do not deny the power of the rationlizing brain. But I would like to see psychologists in the line of thinking of Gazzaniga embrace the fact that humans feel guilt. Not everything can be explained away and rationlized into "nothing happened" or even "well, maybe I was wrong in my belief." However, this sort of thinking and embracing would acknowledge ultimate truth and deny relativity, which may go against Gazzaniga's beliefs.
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