"Consciousness should not be confused with intelligence. In its elemental form, namely raw feeling, it is a surprisingly simple function shared with all mammals and fishes."
Mark Solms - world renowned neuroscientist
100,000 years of evolution in a glass of wine
Mark Solms is undoubtedly a brilliant and creative neuroscientist who has stepped out of a safe bubble and carved his own pathway to discover the source of consciousness.
For those with a deeper interest in this subject watch the video or read the book.
For purposes of this short article I have taken the liberty of using a glass of wine as a model for understanding his original thinking. (This worked for me, so hope Mark will have no objections.)
What Mark discovered is genuinely groundbreaking. For many decades the accepted wisdom was that human consciousness was unique to our specie and residing in various parts of the brain such as the neocortex.
His work showed this to be false. He discovered that feelings are extremely primitive and reside largely in the brain stem, far away from our logic and thinking centres. Further that all mammals also share this part of the brain. That is, they can feel.
Next he defines consciousness as a feeling. If you feel something you are conscious. If not you are unconscious. Straightforward. For example you can feel hunger without any intellectual comprehension behind the feeling.
And now for his important breakthrough. Feelings come first. Before the thinking. Before the rational and language part of our brain kicks in. Logic is at the end of the queue.
Let's take this to our wine glass.
Think of the wine glass stem as your brain stem, your primary generator of feelings. You have absolutely no control over this. Feelings simply shoot up the wine glass without any input from yourself.
When they reach the goblet the feelings bifurcate. Left if negative and right if positive. The strength of the feeling will determine the height of the wine in the glass. A very strong feeling will be close to the rim, whereas a weak feeling will stay close to the base of the goblet.
In basic terms we avoid negative feelings and move towards positive feelings. The stronger the feelings the more motivated we are to act.
This explains everything. From the flying spaghetti monster and QAnon to conspiracies and anti-vaxxers
Everything starts with our hidden spring. A random feeling emerges, we are conscious of it, and then choose to do something about it.
What matters here is that everything starts with a feeling and not a rational or intellectual thought. Brand managers are well aware of this. Car designers work hard to generate a primal feeling of perhaps lust and power in potential customers.
They know that strong positive feelings will press the 'buy' button.
And this explains everything. Imagine our wine glass. We have negative fears about death and disease, loneliness, competence etc. Our first actions therefore will be to move away to find opposite and high energy. We may find this in sport, partying, drugs, sex or even cosy belonging groups such as QAnon or even the Flat Earth Society,
What matters here is the high positive feelings and energy that joining these groups may generate.
However understanding science more deeply may generate moderate or even negative feelings. Why bother? Much warmer feelings with my QAnon buddies.
In effect it is impossible to have an apparently logical discussion with anyone. It's always about the deep and primitive well of feelings. Even the passionate scientist will be driven first and foremost by his/her own feelings. As much as we like to imagine that our beliefs, actions and behaviours are driven by our own clever logic, we may be deluded. It is our deeply evolved and unique feelings that are driving us.
Why does this matter?
It matters because most discussions, arguments and debates that may sound logical, are not. They are driven by a mass of deep feelings, all of which are pre-language. To retain our sanity we create imaginary 'boxes' from religions and economic systems to a belief or otherwise (remember science doesn't matter - its your feeling that controls you) in climate change, or how to bring up children or even how to hold a knife or fork.
The leadership gremlin
We live in a complex and hierarchical world from biology to human systems and organisations. This means we need different types of leadership capability at every level. If you are a student of the organisational game you will be aware of highly emotional gobbledegook written and spouted about leadership every day.
Well, if we accept Mark Solms work, then there is a logic behind all of the new age woo woo being injected into organisations. It's all about managing the uncontrollable feelings springing from each person's well.
In support of this we have some important evidence. We have conducted many thousands of 360 assessments over several decades and one factor that stands head and shoulders above all the others in differentiating effective from ineffective leaders, is the following:
"He/she is the type of person people want to follow."
And here is the paradox. There is no way of knowing why people think that someone is worth following or not, for one simple reason. It's pre-language. It's a feeling. And just like the car we like, we do our best to sound logical about our choice, talking about drag coefficients, cylinders and horsepower, when basically we know we are pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.
So now you know. The next time HR gives you a list of logical sounding leadership competencies think carefully. It's quite possible none of these things actually exist in the first place.