Doug Noll, a lawyer and peacemaker, explains how the brain creates conflict and peace. Humans run on 98% emotion and 2% reason, he says, which is why we make bad decisions when tensions rise. Two hardwired brain systems compete: one driven by fear that triggers fighting, and one that fosters love and cooperation. Noll claims he can reprogram people toward peace in 90 minutes.
Chapters
I'm Doug Noll. One of the areas that I find fascinating is the concept of peace and conflict in our brains. Now, I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm a lawyer by training with a peacemaking degree, but I spend a considerable amount of time understanding how the brain functions and what neuroscience teaches us. And here are a couple of things that I've learned that I love to share with audiences. First is we're 98% emotional and only 2% rational. And of course, whenever we're emotional, which is most of the time, we're making pretty poor decisions, especially when we're in conflict. I've also learned that there are two parts of the brain that don't always work in sync with each other. One is the fear part of our brain, which causes us to fight and get into conflicts, and the other part is the peace part of our brain, which causes us to love and cooperate and collaborate. Both of those systems in the brain are hardwired by capacity genetically, but they're deeply, deeply programmed by life experience. And so our tendency towards conflict or our tendency towards peace is based a lot upon how we programmed our brains. What I love to do is teach people how to reprogram their brains, and I can do that in about 90 minutes. So if people choose to be peacemakers, if they choose peace, I can teach them how to do that. If they want to choose out of conflict, they'll learn how to do that too. But the idea is that we can literally reframe the way that we see the world. We can literally reprogram the way that our brains process information so that we can choose peace. This is work that I love to do. It is service work that I offer up as part of my way of giving back to humanity. And if you like this kind of work, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Give me a call.
