Divergent Thinking (16 page)

Scientists in Divergent's world once tried to “knock out” the genes linked to negative traits like cowardice, dishonesty, and low intelligence. The results of that direct approach were catastrophic. On the individual level, eliminating a trait like cowardice resulted not only in courage, but in aggression and violence. Or as David explains to Tris, “Take away someone's aggression and you take away their motivation . . . Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation” (
Allegiant
). On the social level, the Purity Wars erupted.

Learning from this, the Bureau of Genetic Welfare decided to take a slower, less-invasive approach to genetic “improvement.” They are willing to wait for generations to pass in order to eventually produce a higher number of “genetically healed humans.” But slow approach or not, future Chicago is still another genetic experiment like the one that caused the Purity War to begin with. If we evaluate that experiment's design from a purely scientific point of view, it's a terrible plan, and unlikely to produce the desired results.

Basically, the future Chicago is a selective breeding program. Selective breeding is a very ancient technology; humans have practiced it since the domestication of dogs and the dawn of agriculture. Every delicious pineapple, every fast-growing turkey with overdeveloped breast muscles, every potato destined to be french-fried is the result of generations of tinkering with genes via selective breeding.

Human beings are just as malleable as turkeys or pineapples. We are organisms that reproduce, passing along genetically coded traits. Some of those traits are easy to see, like eye color. Others are not so visible, like the inclination to take risks. Remember Darwin and his willingness to go sail off and slog through jungles? It is possible that he was influenced by his own “adventurer” gene. Even smoking cigarettes—that weird habit of the Candor—may be an expression of DNA. Research indicates that willingness to try the first cigarette is tied to a risk-taking gene, and addiction is also a genetic predisposition.

Nothing is simple when it comes to genes, and tinkering in hope of enhancing one trait can cause the emergence of another, unexpected trait, even when that tinkering isn't done directly to the DNA. A fifty-year-long fox-breeding experiment is great evidence of this. Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev focused his breeding program on a particular behavioral trait—tameness. Only the tamest members from each litter were allowed to mate. The resulting generations of foxes were tamer. They were very friendly and sociable around humans. But they also had floppier ears, a wider variety of coat colors, and shorter noses. If you selectively breed for tamer foxes, you end up with an animal that looks a lot like a domestic pooch. Judging by the products—like Jeanine and Eric—of the Bureau's long-term breeding program, future Chicago is full of unintended consequences.

What about the intended goal, the production of those desirable Divergents? Future Chicago is doomed to be less successful than the fox-breeding experiment for several reasons. First of all, there is no geneticist making the decisions about which of the subjects will mate and with whom. They keep track of the family trees, but they don't do what Belyaev did with the foxes by controlling which foxes mated. If the goal is Divergence, then a faction system that encourages mating from a limited gene pool where a single trait dominates is counterproductive. It's like trying to produce “tame” foxes by breeding from a closed-group selection of foxes that may or may not show any tendency to tameness. And all that is further complicated by the “Choosing Ceremony,” where the breeding animals choose which gene pool to enter. (If the very idea of “captive breeding” of humans revolts you, it should. Ethical scientists would never behave in that way. But there is nothing ethical about science as practiced in the Divergent trilogy.)

Since the faction system makes the production of Divergence less efficient, why did the Bureau of Genetic Welfare build it into the social fabric of future Chicago? David tells Tris that this social order, with its clear cultural divisions, was meant to “incorporate a ‘nurture' element.”

Nurture matters, there is no doubt about that. A baby raised in an environment where sharing and generosity are valued is more likely to imitate those behaviors (go mirror neurons!). A baby raised in a culture where the rule is “spare the rod, spoil the child” is more likely to use violence to solve problems (mirror neurons, no!). The factions are designed to enhance the traits valued in each of those “cultures.” And nurture doesn't only influence behavior. The effects of nurture (or the lack of it) can be inherited.

It's an amazing fact: if your grandmother or grandfather had a stressful life, you may be more prone to anxiety. The change isn't genetic; it is
epigenetic.
That prefix
epi-
means “on or above” and that's where your grandmother's hard life has left its traces—in proteins that encode on the outside of the chromosomes she passes down and that can affect the expression of certain genes. We know that environmental factors, like stress, can influence which genes get turned on and which ones don't. This may be one reason why stress can have such long-term effects on health: it actually can cause cells to grow abnormally and result in disease, even cancer. That is bad enough. That those stress-induced changes can move right along, borne by sperm and egg cells, into future generations is even worse.

There is new and dramatic evidence that fear itself can be inherited due to epigenetic transfer. Researcher Brian Dias conditioned a group of male mice to associate a specific smell with painful shocks.
¹⁰
(This is similar to the fear conditioning of Little Albert.) Later, those male mice fathered litters of pups, which shared their fathers' fear reaction to that scent without ever experiencing the pain. Those pups were born “knowing” what their fathers had learned the hard way. While the actual mechanics of this transference are still a mystery—this is far from settled science—it is clear that an environment rich in fear can have a remarkably lasting impact.

So, while irreparably flawed as a system to create more “genetically healed” Divergents, the Chicago experiment does recognize the idea of nurture. However, the “nurturing” it provides is far from optimal. It may even be counterproductive, especially in Dauntless.

FEAR TAMING, DAUNTLESS STYLE

Let's apply what we know about the biology of fear to the Dauntless training program. Is it therapeutic? Does it provide the skills to control fear?

Let's start by considering Dauntless headquarters. It's a giant, dark hole in the ground that provides ample opportunities to die. What is the reasoning behind that? Tris sums it up pretty well when she says, “I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient. There's nothing especially brave about wandering dark streets with no flashlight, but we are not supposed to need help, even from light” (
Divergent
). For Tris, negotiating Dauntless' dimly lit passages and rough floors is preparation for future moments when she will have nothing to depend on but herself. She imagines that to be a positive goal, but that sort of self-reliance comes at a cost. A culture that scorns “help” devalues teamwork and cooperation. The priorities of Dauntless are training and technology. Teamwork isn't on the list. And we learn from Tobias that both the faction's training and technology are becoming more brutal.

The simulations in the fear landscapes are a key part of Dauntless training. What happens during those sessions? As Tobias crisply describes the process to Jeanine in
Insurgent,
“The simulations stimulate the amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear, induce a hallucination based on that fear, and then transmit the data to a computer to be processed and observed.” Knowing what we do about stimulating the amygdala, the cascade of fear responses, and counterconditioning, it seems possible that the simulations might be used therapeutically. Time spent in a personal fear landscape is an opportunity to confront specific stimuli in a controlled situation. It sounds very much like the program used in fear extinction. However, considering Four's repeated visits and the fact that his fears may change but are never extinguished, the technology doesn't seem to be any great advantage.

As advanced as Dauntless technology is in evoking fear, the techniques they use to tame it are simple. When Four prepares Tris for her first visit to her fear landscape in
Divergent,
he gives her this instruction: “Lower your heart rate and control your breathing.” He might as well have said, “Deep, slow respirations cause a slowing of the pulse.” That's how the principle was stated in a letter written in 1922.
¹¹
It works, but it's not exactly cutting-edge technology in action.

As I was reading the Divergent trilogy, the multitude of serums made me curious: What about the potential for a “serum” that is an antidote to fear? Could we overcome fear with an injection?
¹²

Research led by Moshe Szyf at McGill University indicates it is possible to “remove” the “residue” of fear from the brain. Ordinarily, rats neglected by their mothers are more fearful, less able to learn, and generally less healthy. But, when the researchers injected a drug called trichostatin A directly into the brains of rats deprived of nurturing care, that damage was undone.
¹³
The result has been compared to rebooting a computer. Knowing what we do about epigenetic harm, that “reboot” could even provide a long-term benefit, preventing the effects of stress from being inherited by future generations.

Another option might be a modification of the Bureau's memory serum. Instead of deleting memories as a means of social control, the memory serum might be better used to help individuals regain mental health. It appears to be an attainable goal. Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have successfully targeted and erased specific memories from the brains of mice.
¹⁴
Eventually, it may be possible to alleviate the disruptive memories related to PTSD. We could even use it to help people overcome addictions by wiping out associated memories that trigger cravings. Those suffering from debilitating, irrational phobias might look forward to relief.

But there is another strategy that requires fewer needles in fewer brains. Instead of reversing the damage done by fear, it is possible to prevent it. A brain that grows up in a secure, nurturing environment is more resilient and more resistant to the negative effects of fear in the first place. Reliable kindness and love can serve as a sort of immunization. Maybe Tris is able to endure and persevere throughout her trials because she received a dose of emotional serum in the form of good nurturing that strengthened her and hastened her recovery from stress and trauma.

In terms of making people fear resistant, Dauntless training probably does more harm than good. It neglects fear “prevention” and focuses instead on overcoming physical reactions by repeated exposure, and we've already seen how damaging that sort of constant stress can be. But there is another, bigger problem regarding the culture of fear in Tris' Chicago, and it isn't limited to the Dauntless. The entire faction system is an incubator for a particular variety of fear: the fear of others (or otherness). And that fear is one that almost inevitably leads to violence.

FEAR AND VIOLENCE

Social systems that are inherently unjust breed insurrection. This dynamic echoes throughout the trilogy. Inside future Chicago, the factionless live in abject poverty doing menial jobs. Evelyn's “army” is composed of disenfranchised people without hope or opportunity. Outside, the world is divided into GP (genetically pure) and GD (genetically damaged). The GDs are lower status, which is brought home when Matthew tells Tobias the story of the violent attack on the girl he loved. The crime goes unpunished because the attackers are privileged GPs and the victim is considered to be less important. That injustice spurred Matthew to help Nita and her group of rebels. When the social order is so abusive, anarchy looks tempting. Tris observes in
Allegiant
: “It seems like the rebellions never stop . . . ” The factionless, the Allegiant, and the GD rebels are all militant groups, and their militancy is always in reaction to a system that marginalizes them.

Honestly, the world of the Divergent trilogy looks a little too much like the one I live in now. When the Dauntless, under influence, take to the streets and massacre the Abnegation, the result is hard to distinguish from propaganda-fueled ethnic cleansings in Rwanda, Germany, and Armenia, where people were systematically targeted and killed because they were perceived as a threat.

It doesn't require hallucinations or activation of tiny transmitters to trigger that sort of violence. Remember the scene in
Allegiant
where
the bullies attack a Candor boy because he has broken the dress code and is still wearing black and white? He wasn't wearing the right color clothes. I wish that scene was unbelievably exaggerated and not something that could ever happen, but in the real world people have been killed because they wore the wrong color bandana.

Gang violence, eugenics programs that focus on genetic “purity,” and ethnic cleansing all have the same purpose: eradication of difference, the erasure of the Other. And the foundation of all of them is the same ancient fear. That same fear triggered the Purity War and flourishes in the fundamental distrust between the groups in future Chicago. It created a situation ripe for violence, and that violence occurred again and again.

We don't have to live mired in fear. We have alternatives. We can become more like Tris. We can think before we act. We can recognize the amygdala's response for what it is, an often-misguided overreaction. We can build on the empathic impulses born in our mirror neurons. We can learn to recognize our common humanity and respect difference. We can be models not of fear, but of tolerance and compassion. We don't have to become the citizens of future Chicago; we could be free.