Every major website about business or work will tell you what a leader should be, how soft skills are the future, how machines cannot take over because they cannot feel…
But what does your boss being an asshole (and you wanting to take revenge) have in common with AI limitations?
Well, emotional maturity.
Being emotionally mature means having free will.
It means being able to experience human emotions while retaining your cognitive ability to decide on your next steps of action. It’s the difference between there being a you at all, or “you” being a mere reaction to something that happened.
This boils down to taking “extreme” ownership for your thoughts and actions versus seeing others responsible for your thoughts and actions (“because he did that, I did this”)
Nobody’s the asshole
Morality and fear cannot be active in the brain at the same time (see Polyvagal theory), but morality and awareness of fear can.
We don’t have good language to describe this, but being afraid and being aware of your fear are two distinct patterns of neural activity. This is because awareness of an emotion happens in a different brain part than the emotion itself.
Fear happens in the ‘reptillian brain’ (fight or flight fear response that short-circuits your brain and free will), while the other happens in your ‘attention center’ (anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC for short).
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
It’s the part of the brain used for:
- Active attention
- Self-regulation of emotion
- Ethics and morality
- Decision-making
- Self confidence and dealing with frustration
- Conditioned learning (the basis of learning and memory)
- Conscious experience
- Error detection (koans such as “two hands clapping make a sound, what is the sound of one hand clapping” will keep this brain-bit on fire)
- Spiritual awakening and enlightenment (no, seriously!)
So basically, if we are in reptile brain, we can do none of the above. That makes us a liability in an office where higher brain functions are required.
“He who fears death will never do anything worth of a man who is alive.”
– Seneca
How to not be a reptile?
We can restore ourselves to a state of safety by self-regulating or co-regulating with other safe individuals.
Co-regulation is less within our control – we can seek a more nurturing environment, but isn’t every environment going to have its reptiles?
Self-regulation however falls within the bounds of our responsibilities, and is a function of our friend, the ACC.
To sellf-regulate, (ACC-function) you need to learn (ACC-function) to pay attention (ACC-function) to yourself, find errors in your judgment (ACC-function) and take conscious (ACC-function) decisions (ACC-function) … you get the idea
So a good starting point is actually training your ACC. How do you do that? well, meditation specialises on training the ACC to the point where it becomes the dominant brain structure (in terms of activity and connectivity).
Various other buddhist methods employ things like koans to brute-force insight formation (in neurological terms, an electric braingasm of sudden understanding that precedes those “Eureka!” moments)
Introspection (also a type of meditation?) and internal conflict resolution work too.
Psychological approaches based on conditioning, self regulation, exposure to the feelings, awareness etc also work well (see cognitive behavioural therapy, DBT)
So what’s a good leader?
- able to self-regulate and co-regulate others, they are ‘safe’ to be around and give others the feeling of safety.
- able to decide consciously, they possess critical thinking (the ability to think objectively, which can only come through understanding of one’s self).
- A good leader understands the limitations of themselves and others and that there are reasons why people decide one way or another.
- Integral and honest (morality).
- They empower people because they understand that this is what people need to give the best they can.
- They earn respect, because they respect themselves.
- They focus on helping others rather than themselves, because morality and empathy. (it’s the right thing for the team and the company)
- A good leader can detect and accept an error in their own judgment.
The list could go on, but it’s basically a measure of emotional maturity. The Stoic, the Übermensch, the Buddha are good role models that allow humans to gain independence from the circumstances of their lives.
So why is AI emotionally immature?
AI is not very mature at all. But maturity is a matter of time.
We have only been able to build what we understand. We mostly don’t understand emotions, the ACC or how to be emotionally mature.
In the meantime, we are able to do other cool stuff, like read your brain to see what you see.
Just give us another couple of generations iterations.
In the workplace
Needless to say that a workplace that promotes emotional maturity will have a lot to reap from the improved abilities of their staff:
- good communication,
- improved attention and learning (1h meditation raises brain dopamine by 50%),
- Honesty and morality
- Admitting mistakes and doing the right thing
- objective decision making
The takeaway.
If you introspect enough to understand your self, you will be able to achieve self-mastery, and most of the former obstacles in your life will become a thing of the past. Treating others kindly, connecting genuinely and honestly, taking responsibility for our behaviours.. you don’t need to be a superman to do all that, you just need to start.
And if you can’t see it this way, don’t worry, the Buddha only started at age 30. I couldn’t see it either, until I looked inside.
And don’t forget, what you need to do is to PRACTICE, not to know. Knowingly doing the wrong thing doesn’t help you become better. Reading about mindfulness is not the same as practicing mindfulness.