Social cohesion requires brain cohesion

As doom turned to broom on our screens recently, every news source was filled with analyses of the riots in some of Britain’s major cities: Why had they happened? What is wrong with our society? How can they be prevented from happening again?

And to accompany images of youngsters making off with bottles of wine, flat-screen televisions, computers and mobile phoness, social commentators were quick to point out that moral decay isn’t restricted to teenage looters.

How many smashed windows and stolen Nike trainers, it was asked, added up to the billions lost from the world economy by reckless banking practices aimed at securing individual bonuses at the expense of global financial stability? Or from the questionable expenses of certain MPs, all within the letter, if not the spirit, of the law?

Much was made during the riots of how certain areas and “feral youth” within our cities, have become cut off from mainstream society, seeing no prospect of growth, feeling no empathy or affinity with an Establishment which has seemingly abandoned them.

But there’s a curious parallel in modern neuroscience.

In the brains of those convicted of crime, it’s been found over the past decade or so that there are often EEG abnormalities, and even “functional lesions,” areas unused and cut off - literally - from mainstream brain activity.

All experience changes the brain, and connections between neurons is maintained when those connections are regularly stimulated. If they’re not, they wither away and the connections are lost. Stress, particularly chronic stress, damages those connections, and reduces integrated functioning of the brain.

In particular, stress can overload the frontal regions of the brain, where rational evaluations and careful decisions made. That region then “opts out,” leading to impulsive, inappropriate and even violent behaviour. Such as looting. Or destabilising the economy for personal gain.

In other words, when the activity of the brain isn’t properly integrated, the activity of society isn’t properly integrated either.

Other factors come into play as well: Low serotonin levels in particular, but also inappropriate cortisol responses, unstable autonomic nervous system responses; all predispose individuals to crime. Yet all of these, along with brain functioning abnormalities, have one thing in common: they are by-products of stress.

Transcendental Meditation

This General Stress Theory of crime was outlined by author and attorney Jay Marcus in his 1996 book The Crime Vaccine; and in it, he recommended taking a close look at a simple antidote, a simple vaccine: Transcendental Meditation (TM).

TM involves sitting comfortably, closing the eyes, and using an effortless technique to settle the attention beyond thoughts to a silent field of restful alertness. This field is experienced as an unbounded ocean of consciousness, common to everyone. The Big Society doesn’t come any bigger than that.

The experience of transcendence nourishes connections throughout the brain, producing a global, integrated state of functioning not achieved when simply sitting with eyes closed, or when concentrating on a task.

It’s deeply refreshing, removes the effects of stress and strain, and rapidly restores balanced brain functioning - as well as increasing serotonin levels, improving cortisol, stabilising the autonomic nervous system and reversing other symptoms of stress.

Dramatic Improvements

The results can be extraordinary, even in the harshest circumstances.

“We had some of the toughest groups, or gangs I guess you could call them, in the world at Folsom Prison,” recalled Ernest Merriweather, a prisoner who learned Transcendental Meditation and is quoted in The Crime Vaccine. “There was the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Gorilla Family, the Mexican Mafia and others ... they were bent on destroying themselves and everything else around them. ... Prior to [the Transcendental Meditation programme] coming to Folsom Prison, if you looked at some of these people the wrong way, you were dead the next morning, or if you talked to someone the wrong way, you were dead, or if you borrowed a pack of cigarettes from someone and didn’t give it back you were dead. And [the TM programme] brought us all together. ... It really was a miracle to see some of these tough groups getting together in the same room and embracing one another ... it’s still hard to conceive but it happened.”

Hoyt S. Chambles, supervisor of the Correctional Education Programs at Folsom, added his comments. After TM instruction, he said, “there is a calmness and ability to discuss and talk a problem out rather than use physical means to achieve their goals ... these men are willing to meet life head on, but without any physical or violent confrontation.”

Folsom Prison’s programme of Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s was followed by other successful courses involving 30,000 inmates in Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Chile, Spain, Paraguay, Mexico, Korea, and, notably, in Senegal, where 11,000 prisoners and 900 correctional officers learned the technique and recidivism fell by 80%, allowing the closure of three prisons.

The same dramatic improvements have been found with the use of Transcendental Meditation in schools, even those in deprived and violent inner city areas - an initiative being promoted with huge success around the world by the David Lynch Foundation, which has funded courses in the technique for over 100,000 at-risk young people in the past three years.

Stress-free Society?

And such groups may offer a solution to stress for society as a whole.

Why?

Because, says Marcus, Transcendental Meditation can act as a crime vaccine, through a principle known as critical mass.

“If you keep the number of at-risk individuals below the threshold level by vaccinating a certain percentage of a population, the incidence of disease starts to decline and continues to decline until no one or nearly no one gets the disease.”

And what threshold level practising Transcendental Meditation can create social improvements?

It could be astonishingly small.

Just one per cent of a population using the technique has been found to generate measurable improvements in community life, including reduced crime rate - a finding which 23 published studies has made one of the best-researched phenomena in the social sciences.

So when looking for the root causes of riots why not add Transcendental Meditation to the list of possible solutions, along with better job opportunities, improved sporting and social facilities, and all the other conventional programmes which produce highly positive effects?

With simple techniques to banish stress and nourish brain integration, it may be possible to go far beyond the remedies of the past. Perhaps even to “vaccinate” our whole society against stress and the negative behaviour - from rich and poor - which comes from it.