Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Why? Because the violent physicality of basketball is transformed by touch. Teammates bump fists when the game begins. During the game opponents lean into each other, hand check to the hips, push forearms to the back and chest. Defenders bear-hug to stop a drive down the lane. Opponents slap rumps at a good play. There are high fives at the game’s end. The visible physics of basketball is incommensurably violent—bodies colliding at near-full speed. The language of touch in the pickup game neutralizes the aggressive intent of these actions.

How so? I asked my daughters about their first experience of another cultural form that revolves around touch—a pedicure. They had just luxuriated in one as a special treat with their mother. Here is their response:

       

NATALIE:        

It felt like comfort.        

DAD:        

Why?        

NATALIE:        

Because they massaged your leg. You sit in a chair and they massage you.        

SERAFINA:        

And they put pretty nail polish on perfectly. Except it stinks.        

DAD:        

So what did it feel like?        

NATALIE:        

It was kind of painful, the scraping of your nails. But the leg massage felt like vibrations in your back, like someone was humming.

The humming vibration in the back is how touch has evolved to spread goodness and shift people’s jen ratios toward higher, loftier values. Touch has been made more fragile by cultural forces that prevent people from coming into contact with one another. The leg massage (the real purpose of the pedicure) and all of our touch rituals (pickup basketball, haircuts, handshakes, rough-and-tumble play, pats on the back) trigger activation in the orbitofrontal cortex and the release of opioids and oxytocin. They trigger the activation of the vagus nerve, the nerve bundle in the body devoted to trust and social connection, which, when activated, indeed feels like humming vibrations in your back. And if we had precise enough measures, we probably would find that that incidental leg massage, not described in the ad for the pedicure, shifted the stress regions of Natalie’s nervous system—HPA axis activity—to more peaceful settings, and amplified her physiology of trust and goodwill, perhaps, one might hope, in a permanent way.

10Love

 

ON A COLD February weekend, my wife, Mollie, and I and our daughters, then 7 and 5, made the two-hour trip to Año Nuevo State Park, near Monterey, California. Our aim was to weather the winter storms to view the natural spectacle of migrating elephant seals on their way from Baja to Alaska. We were going in the spirit of Charles Darwin, seeking to study the social patterns of other species to glean insights about our own.

Gale-force winds prevailed. Whipping sheets of sand prickled the young families who gamely trudged on through swirling sand dunes. Failing to appreciate the youthful attention spans of half her audience, our park ranger guide droned on about alpha males, harems, mating rituals, ululations, gestation cycles, and migratory patterns. As we marched on, heads down, eyes shielded by hoodies, children burst into tears, soothing lollipops—last acts of desperate bribery—dropped into the sand.

At last we arrived at a little hill, a purchase, where we were to lie quietly to watch the beached elephant seals gathered below. We lay prostrate on the cool sand in a layer of warm air below the gusts, steadying our binoculars and cameras upon the elephant seals. The enormous 4,500-pound alpha male, heavier than the average SUV, guarded dozens of the females in his harem, each roughly a fourth his size. Occasionally the alpha male would galumph over to a female and flop on top of her. She was lost to view under the rippling gyrations of his fat. At the sight of this burst of passion, other males, poised on the periphery of the harem, would make their move, flopping toward nearby females. Such an intrusion proved more attention-worthy to the alpha male than the paramour below; in the only alacrity he was capable of, he would charge, blubber rolling, toward the intruder. Within ten feet of contact the alpha male would rise up, with weird trunklike snout, and ululate as loud as a corn thrasher. This pattern of rest, attempt at copulation, intrusion, and confrontation went on endlessly. No cuddling, no play, no frolicking, no snout-to-snout nuzzling or mutual gaze in sight.

Our guide rounded us up and led us down a path to the rolling Pacific Ocean to see whether we might spot baby elephant seals, born just a couple of months ago in Baja. Tiny elephant seals at play in the surf would rescue the falling spirits of my daughters. Instead, near the final dune we were to climb, off to the side of our driftwood-marked path, lay a dead baby elephant seal. Our guide explained: “On occasion the male elephant seal, following an ancient evolutionary instinct, will accidentally try to mate with a baby, often to dire ends.” For the rest of the tour, my daughters clung to me, heads buried in my shoulders.