By Dr Matt Qvortrup
The philosopher Plato, in the fifth century BCE called it Thymos. It was the feeling of range. Those who rebel against democratically elected leaders – whether military personnel or individuals who support a demagogue – are often animated by this feeling of Thymos, he said. But he did not have access, for obvious reasons, to fMRI scans. This is a scientific method of identifying – through the flow of oxidated blood – which parts of the brain get activated when presented with different views under the scanner. This is called neuropolitics. The part of the brain that gets activated is the so-called Amygdala, which is part of the so-called limbic system. It is an evolutionarily old part of the brain that we share with cats, bats, and rats. It is not a sophisticated part of the brain, but what is interesting is that many people who are driven by anger – such as those who rise up against elected politicians – reach in the same way to political developments as if they were confronted with a rattle snake.
This is the topic my new book The Political Brain. Drawing on both philosophy and neuroscience, it shows that Thymos can be explained by reference to the activation of the limbic system in the brain, and that this happens at the expense of activation of the parts of the brain whose activation is associated with cognition and reasoning.
For example, we know that under normal circumstances, individuals who are facing a rational choice – for example choosing between two candidates – utilise the so-called Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex and Dorsal Anterior Cingulate (these, if you wonder are, respectively, the front part of the underside of the brain and the frontal part of the brain at the bottom of the central sulcus, the broad fissure that divides the two hemispheres .
So, we have the capacity to think rationally. Indeed, we evolved to use these parts of brain to think. We need to be careful lest we go backwards on the evolutionary ladder.
Dr Matt Qvortrup is author of The Political Brain (CEU Press). He gained his doctorate at Oxford University and is one of the founders of the company NeuropoliticsAndMarkeing.com
Matt Qvortrup (2024) The Political Brain: The Emergence of Neuropolitics. Budapest: CEU Press.
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