Excerpt #3: The Criticality of Identity and Values & Beliefs?

  There's a sense in which it wasn't people who blew up the 'twin towers' of New York's World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001; it was Values & Beliefs.
   The Values of the hijackers were drawn from their particular brand of Islamic fundamentalism and perception of the United States of America as the 'Great Satan'. From these Values flowed the Beliefs that they were all on a holy Jihad and that all 'infidel' Americans were legitimate targets.
   And the Identity the hijackers had? We can't possibly know for sure; but most likely they saw themselves as holy warriors and martyrs - buoyed up by Beliefs about the rewards a warrior killed in battle in the name of Allah will receive in Heaven.
People will fight - and sometimes even die! - for the Values & Beliefs their Identities hold. People will rarely fight over Skills & Knowledge per se.

  Some of what Robert Dilts has written about neurology may be vulnerable to criticism; but his attribution of brain activity when talking about the levels of Values & Beliefs and Skills & Knowledge is very revealing.

  When someone is functioning at the level of Skills & Knowledge, the primary area of electrical activity in the brain is in the cortex. Stimulation from the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) is especially strong in the part of the frontal lobe associated with intelligence and planning -- see Fig 1.
   In other words, cognitive/intellectual processes are at work. We are thinking!
   However, when it comes to Values & Beliefs, there is even stronger activity in the limbic system - especially the amygdala (associated with emotional memory) and the hypothalamus (associated, amongst other things, with involuntary physiological reactions to emotional arousal - such as increased heart rate, perspiration, blushing, larger pupils, etc) - see Fig 2.

  In other words, we feel things - both emotionally and physically - at this level!
   Hans Eysenck found that, when the limbic system is highly aroused, the normal separation of its activity and the activity of the ARAS in stimulating the cortex breaks down. Effectively, limbic system activity triggers ARAS activity. In other words, we can think without feeling; but we can't feel without thinking.
  Thus, Dilts finds that argument at a level of Values & Beliefs (limbic system and cortex) will produce a much stronger emotional reaction than debate at the level of Skills & Knowledge (cortex only).
   Joseph LeDoux has shown that, if the amygdala is stimulated very strongly very quickly, it will initiate action before the cortex has even had time to think about it. Which is why, in extreme circumstances or under great provocation, people will 'act without thinking'. Such is the power of Values & Beliefs!

   So, to link this to the discussion of schemas and memes in Chapters 1 and 2, we are now differentiating levels of schemas. Schemas which are simply Skills & Knowledge have less influence than those schemas which are Values & Beliefs. Since Values & Beliefs relate to sense of Identity, the schemas of Identity - the selfplex - must be the strongest of all.

  Whilst change at any of the Neurological Levels can impact on the whole, the Identity in the selfplex is the most powerful of all in this hierarchy of levels. Identity can cross Environments - sometimes with unwelcome results, as per our Street Tough in the classroom. It can also tie people to Environments which support it. Thus, the Senior Manager who has to work late at the office and, in part at least, the Son who finds it difficult to leave his parents' home. (And the 'Psychology Guru' who can't leave off writing his book to watch television or take his wife out!)
   For us to adapt successfully to a changed or different Environment, we must feel - activity in the amygdala causing the hypothalamus to produce physiological reactions - as well as think different Values & Beliefs in a different Identity. Simply knowing the Skills & Knowledge for the appropriate Behaviour is usually not enough.
   Which is why so often people don't behave as they know they should. They may well have the Skills & Knowledge; but the Identity is not matched properly to the Environment. Consequently the Values & Beliefs do not produce the Behaviour which is appropriate.
Hence, our hypothetical 15-year Street Tough may well know how to behave in class. However, if he doesn't feel like a Student, he is unlikely to be one. Likewise, if our Manager at work doesn't feel like a Lover in the partner Environment, then his Values are not likely to be partner-focussed.

  Thus, the unhelpful schemas most difficult to dislodge are at the levels of Values & Beliefs and, especially, Identity, with their emotional (limbic system) component.