Dave Kashen explains how your brain is wired to scan for threats as a problem-solving machine. He uses brain evolution, from reptilian to prefrontal cortex, to show why we default to spotting what's wrong instead of what's right.
is that our ego minds are problem-solving machines. So they love— our ego loves to identify problems to solve, so then it gets to be dominant and relevant because it feels really useful. Oh, I have this mind and it can analyze and solve problems. So I think it's a bit of like a, um, self-perpetuating phenomenon. That we identify as our ego mind that likes to figure out and analyze. And our ego mind likes that we identify as it. And so the more that we see problems, the more it feels like, well, yeah, this is the right tool for the job. And, you know, more generally, I'd say I think we're wired for threat, like we're wired to perceive threat. You know, it's tricky being human because we have all these different brains in some way. It's not like our brain evolved in the sense of like one thing just got, you know, improved over time. It's more like there was this like reptilian brain and then this mammalian brain wrapped around it and then this prefrontal cortex came on top. So it's like we're like all these different species in one. And so a lot of our more primitive parts of our brain are primarily concerned with the question, am I dead yet? And like, you know, we're wired for survival, we're wired to perceive threat. And so, our sort of default is to scan the world and look for what's wrong, what's threatening, and we're really good at it.
