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Neuroscience & Karma
to submission to a superior in the hierarchy of business or any part of social life. In either case, the individual must be prepared. 2. Mechanism for Fightor Flight-Origin of Aggression
It has been known for a long time that secretion of adrenaline by adrenal glands prepares the body for fight or flight. Quite recently several systems of aminergic nerve-cells and fibers in the brain bave also been found to be involved in aggressive and defensive actions by men and animals. We begin to see the connections between the programs of fear and anxiety that prepare us for trouble, and those of defense and attack with which we deal with it.
Anxiety, fear and aggression are necessary parts of life, vital to the continued existence of the individual and of the species. We characterize them as evil and wish they could be abolished, but they are the inevitable corollaries of the precarious and unstable nature of life. We cannot avoid meeting destructive conditions and we may need aggressive forces to protect ourselves from some of them. Certainly we can make every effort to minimize conflicts within our species. To do that, we shall need to consider what human attitudes and controls are required to regulate our reactions to each other in a growing population with limited resources. The programs for defense, if appropriately controlled, may yet be exceedingly useful. No one should deceive oneself into thinking that all groups of men are going to live contentedly without constraints. There are too many irequalities among us already and those wbo are deprived will seek for weiter conditions, which the privileged will deny them. There are certain to be conflicts. But proper and adequate development of man's innate capacity for peace and non-violence may, at least, help to limit and to contain them. 3. Criminal Aggression
There is evidence that some criminal psychopaths have a definite chromosome abnormality, with an extra Y chromosome (XYY). But the
1. Aminergic synapses are those at which the transmitter is a monoamine such as
Roradrenaline.
