1970 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 118

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FROM TERRITORIAL IMAGE TO CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT

practically no one foresaw the emergence of the African and Asian countries, the population explosion, or the threat of nuclear war. Before we discuss the consequences of the progressive change in what has been called spontaneous behavior, we must underline a paradox — namely, that those actions for which we cannot consciously summon up good reasons, since they are based on unconsciously generated feelings, have been strictly determined in their evolution by our socio-physical environment. The more permanent characteristics of our environment create powerful mental images; the earlier in the evolution of man these images were formed, the more generally and powerfully they are represented in our current attitudes and behavior. Many beliefs held collectively by man are extremely difficult to change, precisely because they are based on precultural images. The reason for the immutability of phylogenetic images comes into focus if one considers that some of them have a physical substrate in the brain. For instance, our ability to represent objects in space accurately can be physically located in the area where temporal, parietal and occipital brain lobes meet. People suffering from space agnosia or constructive apraxia show lesions in this area, and cannot duplicate a figure out of component parts, even if they may be normal in all other respects. If knowledge of all of our relations in space has a physical counterpart in our cerebral organization, then it becomes understandable that territorial and dominance behavior, which are originally of spatial nature, rest on ingrained mental images. Our deliberate behavior, even if it ostensibly occurs because of environmental contingencies, is the result of prior inner manipulation of mental images. Thus, our deliberate behavior can occur in a vacuum — strictly speaking, we do not need our socio-physical environment, even if only few in our population can function adequately without it. The plotting of action after a possible World War III (which would leave this world with little of our present environment) or the actual behavior of the astronauts in space (which represents an environment alien to any spontaneous action) illustrate this point. Practically all of our knowledge in the area of spontaneous behavior dates from this century, and we would do well to keep two things in mind during the discussion of the following tentative formulations.

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