Postmodernism goes against our brain structure
This week as I read, Explaining Postmodernism, by Stephen Hicks, I kept thinking about the brain and our emotions. Please bare with me as I discuss how our brain, emotions, and immune system are connected by God and how this goes entirely against most of what postmodernism postulates.
Anterior Midcingulate Cortex (aMCC)
There’s a brain structure called the anterior midcingulate cortex. When people do something, they don’t want to do like add an extra hour of exercise per day or per week or when people are trying to diet or lose weight by resisting food, this brain structure grows bigger. When people do anything (and this is the important part) that they don’t want to do, this brain structure grows bigger. It’s not about adding more work. It’s about adding more work that you don’t want to do. When this happens, this brain area gets bigger and here’s what’s especially interesting about this brain area. The anterior midcingulate cortex is smaller in obese people. It gets bigger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes. It’s especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as someone who overcomes challenges.
To strengthen this area, we need to continue to invest in things that are hard for us…things that we don’t want to do. It’s this part of the brain that gives us resilience.
The Emotional System And The Immune System
Our Emotional System has the role of allowing in what is nurturing, loving, and healthy and to keep out what isn’t nurturing, loving, and healthy.
What’s the role of the Immune System? To keep out what is unhealthy, unwelcomed, and toxic and to let in what is nurturing and healthy. The immune system is called a floating brain. It allows in nutrients, vitamins, and healthy bacteria, while keeping out and destroying toxins and unhealthy invading organisms. The immune system and the emotional system have exactly the same role.
God has designed the aMCC to help us become resilient in times of difficulty. When this area of the brain is strengthened our ability to do the hard things in life are also strengthened. But the aMCC is also connected to our Emotional and Immune Systems. When we are not critical thinkers we can allow distorted thoughts, depressed thoughts, and/or anxious thoughts to impact our emotional state, which in turn impacts our immune system. Jason Swan Clark comments on this system in his March 7, 2024, blog, “Once we know how and why we think and feel, we can accept those things and come to terms with them. Accepting emotions and feelings that may feel out of your control and mindfully accepting their experience is necessary for well-being”1 Part of this well-being comes from a strengthened aMCC.
Many people with autoimmune diseases, pain in the muscles, and/or certain mental health challenges are people who have a very small aMCC. Speaking about the hidden cost of stress on the body, Gabor Mate said, “An intimate relationship exists between the brain and the immune system.”2 Richard Paul and Linda Elder wrote in their book, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, “Critical thinkers have an abiding interest in the problematic aspects of their own thinking, and they seek out these problem areas, target them, and change something about their thinking in order to reason more rationally, logically, and justifiably…thereby experiencing a happier, more satisfied inner sense of self.”3 “Fundamentally, postmodernism is an assault”4 on the way God designed the brain and how he designed for us to connect and engage with ourselves and others. So how does postmodernism relate to all of this?
Postmodernism
To help us understand postmodernism, Stephen Hicks emphasizes in his book, Explaining Postmodernism, that postmodernism arose as a reaction to the failures of modernism, particularly in the realms of politics, economics, and art. Modernism, with its emphasis on reason, science, and progress, had promised utopia but often delivered oppression and conflict instead. “Many deconstruct reason, truth, and reality because they believe that in the name of reason, truth, and reality Western civilization has wrought dominance, oppression, and destruction.”5
Hicks shares that Postmodernism is a philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century. It challenges the notion of objective truth and universal values. To the postmodernist, there is no single, universal truth or way of understanding the world. This person would say, “reason, upon, which all progress had been based, had always been philosophically incomplete and vulnerable.”6
To continue with postmodern thinking, it focuses on power dynamics within society, highlighting how knowledge, language and social norms are used to maintain existing power structures and oppress marginalized groups. Power is used to advance one’s own interests and values. “We cannot ground any values objectively. Values are subjective.”7
Interestingly, postmodernism focuses on a few emotions, but they are negative ones, “and those emotions don’t connect to a rational reality.”8 Part of being human is to experience love, beauty, pain, sadness, loss, suffering, joy. God made our brains, bodies, and emotions to feel all of these. To be a well-differentiated leader one must be emotionally mature. In other words, we need to develop an emotional and rational capacity to lead well. Part of being a RARE leader, is “returning to joy”9 after experiencing a conflict because “emotions cause more problems when resisted than when they are accepted.”10 A RARE leader learns to “endure hardship well”11 because “suffering and unpleasant emotions can’t be avoided.”12 God knew this and this is one of the reasons he created the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex.
Conclusion
Part of the role of the aMCC is to help us return to joy and endure hardship well. It is the resilient part of the brain. God designed it this way. This is why it can be difficult to buy into the entire postmodern movement. God also designed for our brain to work in unison with our body, emotions, and immune system. What impacts one impacts them all. Besides, as our aMCC grows our critical thinking skills grow and that is an excellent skill for a leader.
- Jason Swan Clark. SpyEx Blog, Mental Health and the Spiritual Exercises: Ignatius’ depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation. March 7, 2024
- Gabor Mate. When the Body Says No. 5.
- Richard Paul and Linda Elder. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking. 7.
- Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. Stephen Hicks: Philosophy and Postmodernism, May 5, 2019. Quote at 1:03:37.
- Stephen Hicks. Explaining Postmodernism. 3.
- Ibid. 24.
- Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. Stephen Hicks: Philosophy and Postmodernism, May 5, 2019. Quote at 27:50.
- Ibid. 1:05:36.
- Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder. RARE Leadership. 161.
- Ibid. 161.
- Ibid. 175.
- Ibid. 175.
About the Author
Todd E Henley
Todd is an avid cyclist who loves watching NASCAR, photography, and playing Madden football. He is addicted to reading, eating fruits and vegetables, and drinking H2O. His passion is talking about trauma, epigenetics, chromosomes, and the brain. He has been blessed with a sensationally sweet wife and four fun creative children (one of which resides in heaven). In his free time he teaches at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary and is the Founder/Executive Director of Restore Counseling Center.8 responses to “Postmodernism goes against our brain structure”
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Oh man, I especially love reading your posts when you talk about your area of expertise. It makes so much sense that God created us to do hard things and be better for it. And so it follows that we need to build resilience, including the emotional maturity to push through hard things, instead of avoiding conflict or coddling each other overly much. A balance needs to be sought, for sure, but I really appreciate your unique perspective on postmodernism. Thanks, Todd.
Hey Kim, I like the fact that you mentioned about not avoiding conflict because this is an area of challenge for me but this program has really helped me to face conflict in healthier ways.
Also, this book reminded me of the aMCC, which is the resilient part of the brain, which means God created us to be resilient in tough times including overcoming fear to avoid conflict. Anyway thanks for the comment!
Thank you for sharing about the intricate makeup of the brain and connecting it with this week’s text. I am so thankful for our humanness, as you mentioned, “Part of being human is to experience love, beauty, pain, sadness, loss, suffering, joy. God made our brains, bodies, and emotions to feel all of these.” Each part is good. At the same time, I wonder about how God’s heart must ache at the distortions to each of the parts He created, in light of movements like postmodernism?
Hey Cathy, you’re right! God’s heart must ache at the distortions to each of the parts He created. I have wondered many times, “How is God able to hold so much pain and not inwardly explode or collapse in agony?” This says so much about the Father and his deep amazing love! Cody Carnes sings in his song, Run to the Father, “I don’t have a context for that kind of love” That says it all!
Todd!
I learned so much! I had heard the gut was the most “important” brain, and your education on that was amazing. We are em”bodied” beings. Jesus himself was em”bodied”. We can analyze all we want, we can think our way through any problem, but we are so “heavenly minded we are no earthly good”. It’s as if we are so “heavy on the thinking, we lose our actual physical capacity to process this thinking if we ignore our bodies”. It’s like the “gut instinct”. I could go on an on with what you wrote. I also picked RARE to be the book I was going to insert into my blog but it started getting too long, so thank you for what you brought in. I’ll say amen to your blog as well! I am deeply grateful to know you and to hear your perspective!
Hey Jana! Thanks for mentioning our gut because there are more neurons and neurological connections in our gut than in our brain, nervous system, and spinal cord! Our gut communicates or sends more messages to our brain than the brain to the gut. God is so amazing and as you wrote, we are embodied. This is why Jesus eat well, slept well, exercised by walking, and lived in community. He was in touch with his body, which made him so effective in ministry as a RARE leader. 😊
Love your connection with the anterior midcingulate cortex, I actually heard someone talking about this on a Tik Tok video a while back and thought Wow! Thats good motivation to do things we don’t like and I do think we need to be leary of anything that keeps us from getting uncomfortable. This is why I loved the concept of vertical learning so much in Beerel’s book! Great post man!
Hey my brother! I thought about tying in Beerel because vertical learning and development is about developing more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking, greater wisdom, and clearer insights. As you already know it involves gaining new perspectives and leadership mindsets to move a group/business/church forward. This is why the aMCC is so important in God’s design of developing people. I’m glad you already knew all of this…as expected. 😊