LSP53: Why the Practice of "No Right and No Wrong" Hurts Your Brain and Damages Your Empathy

The dispute began with this small saying posted over a photo: "Forgive people in your life, even those who are not sorry for their actions. Holding on to anger only hurts you, not them."

The first person to reply didn't want to talk about forgiveness or holding onto anger. He wanted to dismiss both of these important emotional and spiritual issues by playing the trump card of "non-judgment." So he said, "I would suggest that learning and practising NON-judgement would eliminate any and all need for forgiveness and lead to a more loving and peaceful world."

His definition of "non-judgment," as revealed by a later comment, is this: "These days, I tend to ask myself just one question about any event that I see - 'Would I like to see that in my autobiography.' NO judgement of 'right' or 'wrong', 'good' or 'bad'. It just IS and it is up to me to decide how to respond - or not respond."

A forgiving brain reminds me of this modified photo of the Lady Chapel ceiling at Westminster Abbey, London, England. Forgiveness is strong and orderly, but also organic, layered, and subtly interconnected. Photo credit JAT 2023.

 
He was not all pleased with my first response to him, which went like this: "It's true that those who practise non-judgment see no need for forgiveness. It's also true that those who practise non-judgment believe firmly that this will lead to a more loving and peaceful world. However, there's no evidence that non-judgment actually creates what it claims to create. What it seems to create is rampant narcissism, self-entitlement, morality that's "convenient" and changeable depending on the circumstances, and a diminished sense of personal responsibility."

Among other things he said to me, he demanded backing for my comments. So although it's unlikely anything I offer in the way of research will interest him, I decided this would be a good time to talk about why the current practice of non-judgment (as defined above) is harmful to the brain and why it leads to widespread narcissism, self-entitlement, fluid morality, and a diminished sense of personal responsibility.

First, I'd like to make it super, ultra-clear that when I'm talking about the practice of non-judgment, I'm not in any rejecting the practice of trying to see your fellow human beings through the loving eyes and ears of kindness, compassion, inclusiveness, and equality before God. Obviously, it's a good thing to try to see the best in everyone. And, obviously, it's a good thing to help others on the difficult and confusing journey of trying to be the best self one can be as a human being.

The spiritual practice of non-judgment, wherein nothing is deemed to be either "right or wrong," "good or bad," is the specific practice I'm objecting to. According to this belief system, things just "are," and you're not supposed to have an opinion about them one way or the way. 

You may decide that a particular choice isn't a good one for you -- for example, you may decide not to copy the choices of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock -- but you're really not supposed to have an opinion one way or the other on what Paddock did. As teachers such as Neale Donald Walsch and Eckhart Tolle would have it, Paddock was following a false mental construction or offering resistance to life. No one who has accepted the teachings of non-judgment would want to do such a violent, unloving thing, say these teachers. But now that he's done it, there's no need to forgive Paddock, because in order to forgive him, you'd first have to decide his actions were immoral. And that would be a judgment.

So yes . . . it makes perfect sense within the non-judgment belief system to say that forgiveness isn't needed.

Unfortunately, the brain science says otherwise.

The human brain is a vast assortment of neurons and glial cells and networks of connectivity and neurotransmitters and so on, with current estimates of the total number of neurons now standing at 86 billion accompanied by about an equal number of glial cells.

For many decades in the twentieth century, the belief that the adult brain couldn't grow new neurons was scientific dogma -- and vigorously defended dogma, at that. Despite some early evidence to the contrary, it wasn't until the late 1990's that researcher Elizabeth Gould was able to convincingly overturn this longstanding tenet of neuroscience. Today, a mere 20 years later, no reputable researcher would deny the brain's remarkable ability to reshape itself by building new neurons, building new networks, and dismantling cells and connections that are no longer needed. The umbrella term for this malleability is neuroplasticity and the process of growing new neurons is called neurogenesis.

The important point here is that until doctors and other medical professionals began to understand the full potential of neuroplasticity, many of them based their practical care decisions on false beliefs about the brain. Patients who could have benefited from care regimens designed to encourage the brain to repair itself were instead being told nothing could be done. Patients in need of neurological help didn't receive the therapy they needed, not because of a lack of care and concern but because of a lack of proper understanding of how the biological brain actually works.

The same thing has been happening in spiritual and religious circles. Certain beliefs and spiritual practices are being recommended in the well-intentioned belief that such practices will help people create a more loving and peaceful world. But if these practices interfere at a biological level with the brain's ability to exhibit traits such as empathy, altruism, gratitude, forgiveness, trust, love, and sense of meaning, then we need to be honest about these practices and revisit their usefulness for those who seek healing and deeper relationships with themselves, each other, and God.

Fascinating new research supported by the use of brain scanning technologies has revealed that the brain contains multiple networks -- like highly specific paths or roadways -- that connect certain regions of the brain to produce specific human traits. New networks are being suggested and theorized about all the time, so it's not possible for me to include a comprehensive list, but we now have data to point to the default mode network; the interoception network; the salience network; and the theory of mind network, to name a few. Networks aren't separate from each other and tend to overlap at certain key "hubs." But without these networks, we wouldn't be able to process, regulate, and put into action the complex thoughts, emotions, memories, skills, and perceptions that make us human in a broad sense and also in a unique individual sense.

The brain's networks are so complex that there's always a struggle to keep them in balance. Sometimes an area of the brain is overactive (which affects any networks the area is connected to) and sometimes an area is underactive (which also affects any relevant networks). In addition, entire networks can become dysfunctional, which can become quite serious from a medical point of view because of demonstrated links to specific neurological and psychiatric disorders. The dorsomedial default network, for example, which is supposed to help the brain regulate pain perception, self-knowledge, empathy, and person perception (among other traits) is implicated in a number of major disorders when the links in the network become damaged or are shown to be metabolically overactive or underactive.

In other words, when a network is working in balanced and healthy ways, we can expect to see outward signs of that inner healthy balance. When a person's dorsomedial default network isn't suffering from the insults of illness or injury or genetic factors, for instance, we can expect to see a person who has empathy for others, appropriate responses to pain, and no significant social and communication abnormalities. But with damage to this network comes suffering. Depression, autism, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder have all been linked in various ways and in varying degrees to dysfunctions in this network.

And then there's the brain network involved in making moral decisions. Yes, I'm afraid to say there really is such a thing. This network, which uses the temporal-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the middle temporal gyrus (as well as a few other regions), uses the same brain areas that are involved in both theory of mind and empathy. The health and the interconnectivity of these brain areas determines your ability to make moral decisions, your ability to empathize with others (an emotional trait), and your ability to process the more abstract and cognitive aspects of social skills (theory of mind) -- all three at one time. These three important aspects of humanity are interconnected and, despite what you've been told by certain spiritual teachers, can't be biologically disconnected from each other. Nor should you want them to be. These traits reinforce each other and lead to wise decisions that balance both your emotional reasoning skills and your cognitive reasoning skills. It's win-win when you balance your heart and your mind.

If, on the other hand, you train your brain through the practice of non-judgment to ignore your natural, built-in, hard-wired ability to make moral decisions, you'll be rewiring your brain. (It's the use-it-or-lose-it aspect of neuroplasticity, which allows you to change your brain architecture over time through the repeated application of certain free will thoughts and practices.) Unfortunately, this will also impair your brain's ability to feel empathy and your ability to process the cognitive aspects of your relationships, since both of these traits rely on the brain areas harnessed by moral reasoning -- the areas you just intentionally hacked to bits. Lack of moral reasoning and lack of empathy go hand in hand. And it should go without saying that a person who has lost the ability to feel empathic care for others becomes, at the very least, narcissistic, self-entitled, and unable to override his or her own emotional egocentrism.

And, for those who still don't believe forgiveness is necessary, the neuroscientific evidence gets worse. Several recent papers on the neuroscientific basis for forgiveness reveal that granting forgiveness activates the same brain areas as moral cognition, empathy, and theory of mind social reasoning. In addition, there's evidence that the practices of gratitude and altruism, with their links to moral choices and actions, also use some of the same brain areas.

Like the unfolding of individual blossoms on a single orchid stem, the brain's ability to manifest certain soul-based traits such as morality, empathy, and forgiveness depends on a small number brain regions that are linked to each other and produce these traits in sequence. Photo credit JAT 2022.

So there's no getting out of it. You're born with a brain that comes with its own internal software packages for morality, empathy, social cognition, forgiveness, gratitude, and altruism, all of which are biologically intertwined and all of which help you be the most loving person you can be as a human. The trick to not losing any of these desperately needed traits is to treat them as a "package deal." Each time you practice one of these spiritual skills -- which means you're activating and strengthening specific brain areas -- you make it easier for your brain to navigate the other skills in the package.

It's the package as a whole that gives us the tools we need to bring love and peace into the world. So do your spiritual brain a favour. Strengthen the best attributes of your brain so you can go out there and make a difference in the world. Learn from the mistakes made by people such as Stephen Paddock, find the courage to forgive them, and then take the time to teach yourself and others how to be the person you really want to be.

You'll be surprised at what you can do when you learn to use your brain wisely.