Rick Hanson

And it's also true that when people perceive social support, neurologically, you know,

Threat systems in the brain centered around parts of it, such as the amygdala, as Josh knows well.

There are two of these, but they're spoken of in the singular.

And other systems in the brain settle down.

So we have both of those.

And all of that is the result of the crucible of

evolutionary pressures and what confers selective advantages.

Mother nature doesn't care if we're happy.

She cares that we pass on genes that pass on genes.

And so it's amazing to realize, at least for me, I'm so blown away by this, that every primate species except humans, and there are hundreds of primate species, is organized around alpha dominance within their groups.

And between their groups, they're very aggressive and violent.

But within the group, they organize around alpha dominance, summarized as holding and controlling, holding food, controlling reproduction.

Humans, so that our brain could gradually triple in its volume, which requires an extended childhood, which requires extended care by mothers, motivated by compassion for their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who cannot live independently, right, which then requires

growing pair bonding based on compassion for the mommy-baby unit, which then requires tighter bonds in the village it takes to raise a child.

That process, which enabled and helped to drive the tripling in volume in our human brain over the last three million or so years, was driven and enabled a lot by the power of love, by the value of compassion and related pro-social qualities

in one-to-one relationships and then in the group altogether.

And humans uniquely then evolved a strategy called caring and sharing, compassion and justice inside their vans.

So that's our deep nature.

And we feel those two energies and drives today in the classic parable of the two wolves in the heart, one of love and one of hate, and everything depends on which one we feed every day.

It's haunting to appreciate how vulnerable we