The Culture Code (10 page)

THE
PURSUIT
OF SALVATION

Side by side, the Codes for beauty and fat give us a glimpse into something deeper than how we regard physical appearance in America. If you’re beautiful, we’ve seen, you’re performing a noble mission; if you’re fat, you’re checking out of your role. We celebrate beauty, are awestruck by it, aspire to it. On the other hand, we discriminate against fat people and marginalize the morbidly obese, even though overweight women make up the majority of the female population in this country and the number of people who are overweight in America is higher than the number who voted for both candidates in the 2004 presidential election. Our new glasses let us see something that most of us have observed but few truly understand: how central to our culture is the pursuit of salvation. We will explore this further when we discover the Codes for work and money in America and when we reveal the Code for America itself.

The Codes for Health and Youth

A
ll human beings are born with brains divided into three parts. One part, the cortex (the cerebral hemispheres), handles learning, abstract thought, and imagination. The cortex comes into practical use in most children after they are seven years old. Before that age, children do not have the mental tools to make intellectual assessments. If you take two identical balls of clay and ask a child, “Are they the same?” the child will say, “Yes.” If you roll one of the balls into the shape of a snake and ask the child which piece of clay is larger, however, the child is likely to pick one or the other. Ask the same question of a child older than seven, though, and he or she is likely to say, “Do you think I’m dumb or something?” The cortex is where logic resides and where we do the higher-level reasoning that separates us from all other animals.

Another part, the limbic system (the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus), deals with emotions. Emotions are never simple; they are often rife with contradiction. In a business context, for instance, when customers tell you they love you, this is good, right? What if they love your products and never buy them? Would you rather have them hate your products and buy them all the time? The limbic brain is structured between birth and age five, largely through a child’s relationship with his mother. From her, we receive warmth, love, and a strong sense of connection. It’s very rare to experience that with a father. Because of this relationship with the mother, the limbic has a strong feminine side—when we say a man is “getting in touch with his feminine side,” what we’re really saying is that he is not afraid to access his limbic brain. Most humans find that in the struggle between intelligence and emotion, the limbic often comes out on top, as we are much more likely to allow our heart to guide us than reason.

The undisputed champion of the three “brains,” however, is the reptilian brain (the brain stem and the cerebellum). The name comes from this region’s similarity to the brains of reptiles, which are believed to be relatively unchanged from the brains their predecessors had 200 million years ago. Our reptilian brains program us for two major things: survival and reproduction. These are, of course, our most fundamental instincts: if we could not survive and reproduce, our species would end. The reptilian brain is therefore more influential than our other two brains. Physical attraction, for instance, has a strong reptilian dimension. At the reptilian level, one is physically attracted to someone whose genes provide the best chance of survival for one’s progeny in one’s circumstances. This is why, as previously discussed, an Eskimo man is more likely to find a round, overweight, tough woman attractive. At the reptilian level, he believes she has a better chance of surviving the harsh winters and brutal living conditions of the Arctic. If the Eskimo man in question combines his genes with hers, his children will have a better chance at survival.

Because survival is more fundamental to our existence than “feeling good” or “making sense,” the reptilian brain always rules the day. In a battle between logic, emotion, and instinct, the reptilian brain always wins. This is true when one is dealing with personal welfare, human relationships, purchasing decisions, and even (as we will see later in this book) the choice of leaders.

Like individuals, cultures have a very strong reptilian dimension. One can look at a culture as a survival kit passed down from one generation to the next. The American culture evolved as it did because the pioneers, and later the waves of immigrants who came to our shores, needed it to evolve that way if they were to survive the conditions of this vast country. Traits such as Puritanism, a strong work ethic, the belief that people deserve a second chance, and putting a premium on success all helped us to survive in this new world. Eskimo culture is decidedly different from American culture because the survival conditions are decidedly different. Swiss culture evolved the way it did, forging multiple cultures into one very strong one, in response to regular threats to Switzerland’s survival as a sovereign state. One can trace the distinctive evolution of each culture on the planet to the survival needs of that culture.

Thus, we find the Codes for the elements of a culture when we understand how our reptilian brains address that element. This process is especially clear when we look at the Code most closely related to survival—health—and the Code for youth.

WHAT
I
LEARNED
FROM
THE
WITCH
DOCTORS

Maintaining health and helping the sick has always been a passion of mine. This is the “healer” side of me, my feminine anima. Because I wanted to understand healing from as many perspectives as possible, I spent two years in the late 1960s studying witch doctors in Nicaragua. Afterward, I went to Bolivia and explored the difference between white magic and black magic. Finally, I spent several months in the Mato Grosso, an affluent area of the Amazon, to study with a
curandero,
a witch doctor–healer.

Before this sojourn, I was already aware that science had limits, that things happened in our brains and our bodies that we hadn’t been able to explain via the scientific method. These years in South America brought me to a new level of understanding. Some of these witch doctors were great psychologists. For example, they would not start healing a patient unless the patient proved he really wanted to be cured. One witch doctor I studied sent his patients on initiation journeys deep into the forest to find special plants and fight imaginary demons and monsters—all to prove his dedication to overcoming his disease. This same witch doctor refused to treat a patient unless his entire family was committed to the cure and played a part in the initiation journey. There is powerful logic behind the witch doctor’s actions. He wanted to make sure that the patient was in the best frame of mind to get better, that he felt he could conquer the disease, and that his family was strongly behind him. This might seem like medical common sense, but how many “traditional” doctors prepare their patients so completely before attempting a cure?

This witch doctor found a way to “detach” his patients from their cortexes. He didn’t bring out medical texts or send his patients to WebMD to read up on their diseases. Instead, he appealed to their reptilian brains. The witch doctor convinced his patients that he could help them survive—as long as the patients wanted it enough.

I’LL
TAKE
THAT
LIFE
TO GO

When Procter & Gamble hired me to discover the Code for health and wellness in America, I saw this as a very exciting opportunity because health is, of course, one of the primary archetypes of life. I therefore expected to uncover a Code that spoke to the essence of what it meant to be alive in this culture.

Americans are doers. In the words of that great American philosopher Nike, one can boil the American agenda down to three simple words: “Just do it.” Our champions are athletes, entrepreneurs, police officers, firefighters, and soldiers—all people who take action. We may respect thinkers, but we don’t celebrate them nearly as much as we do our action figures. It isn’t accidental that, for years, at the top of the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—a repository of great works of intellect and imagination—there resided a bronze statue of a famous cinematic boxer. Can one imagine a monument to Jackson Pollock standing outside Yankee Stadium?

This culture-wide call to action informs the way we look at our health. Few of us find it important to maintain the conditioning of a Navy
SEAL
or a marathoner (in fact, given the obesity figures in the previous chapter, many of us seem to find little need to maintain any conditioning at all), but we strongly believe that we need our health in order to
do things.

During the ten discovery sessions I held over the course of this study, I received different kinds of stories. There were those that told of illness:

When I was eighteen, I learned that my grandmother, who had raised me and always taken care of everyone, was dying of lung cancer. This just didn’t seem possible. She was eighty years old, walked several blocks every day—to the doctor, to the grocery, anywhere she wanted to go. She was the strongest woman I’ve ever known. She lived almost eighty-one years and for all but the last two weeks, she wasn’t dependent on anyone.

—a forty-six-year-old woman

When I was eight, the doctor told me I had a lack of calcium in my left leg and couldn’t put any weight on it. My mom and dad had to carry me everywhere. Every month, the doctor looked at my leg through a fluoroscope and my mother looked over his shoulder to see how my leg was coming. I hated that my mother had to carry me everywhere.

—a sixty-five-year-old man

I remember being ill when I was five. I had to stay in bed in a darkened room. The curtains and venetian blinds were closed to keep out the light. I had to rest my eyes, which meant not reading books or watching TV. I was so very bored. Being declared well at last was like getting out of jail! I couldn’t wait to go outside.

—a woman in her forties

A few years ago, I contracted a case of gout—imagine that; a person supposedly in the prime of his life who stayed in good shape and was careful about what he ate suddenly getting gout. My right big toe swelled enormously and every step was painful. I hobbled around like Walter Brennan and I felt like I was a hundred years old.

—a forty-seven-year-old man

There were those that told of recovery:

When I was a child, an accident left my mother paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors told her she would never walk again. She spent sixty-one days in the hospital trying to deal with her paralysis and how to care for four children all under the age of six. After she got home, she was depressed all the time, but one night my grandmother took her to church and a preacher told her God was going to heal her. She didn’t believe it, but that night, she walked up the driveway without any help. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but she is still walking today, twenty-four years later.

—a thirty-year-old woman

My mom is doing better in her battle with breast cancer. It was hard seeing her down and she looked older. Now she is always on a cruise or a vacation. It’s great seeing her alive again.

—a twenty-nine-year-old woman

There were those that offered the participant’s personal definition of wellness:

My most powerful experience of wellness came a few weeks after college graduation. I had a job lined up and a few weeks before I had to begin work. I went on a road trip with close girlfriends from college in an old orange VW Bug. One day, I was behind the wheel and my other friends were asleep. I was lost in my thoughts, driving in the country. Suddenly, I was filled with a wonderful feeling as I turned a corner on the road—I realized my whole life was ahead of me and it was going to be fantastic.

—a forty-five-year-old woman

My most recent experience of wellness came when I was hired for my new job. I feel a sense of satisfaction being in a job where I feel appreciated after being unappreciated at other companies. I feel like I have an impact on others.

—a forty-five-year-old man

I was about eleven or twelve years old when I started to have a feeling of wellness. My parents’ divorce was in the past. It was hard, but my mother found her sense of independence and maybe it rubbed off on me or something. It was a springlike day and I was roller skating by myself. The air was soft and fragrant.

At this moment, I felt the power of the universe and my own power.

—a forty-six-year-old woman

A glorious week at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico. The first time in my life I have taken time for myself. No job. No kids. No husband. Just meditation, yoga, African dance, morning walks, a step class, and a massage every day.

—a forty-two-year-old woman

Regardless of the kind of story a participant chose to tell me, a powerful theme emerged. There was clearly more to health and wellness than not being sick. Health wasn’t about being hale enough to enjoy a sunny day or spend quiet time with your spouse. Being sick wasn’t about a cough or a cold, or about aches and pains. What these participants told me was that being sick meant that someone needed to carry you, that you were not allowed to play outside, that you hobbled around, and that you couldn’t walk to the grocery. Recovery meant walking up the driveway or taking a series of trips. Wellness was associated with long drives, roller skating, doing a job that had an impact on others, or African dance.

For Americans, health and wellness means being able to complete your mission. The mission might be running a multinational corporation, getting the kids off to school, participating in local politics, scaling a mountain, or cooking a great meal for your family, but it involves
action
. As the message within these stories indicates, Americans believe that if they are strong enough to act, then they are healthy. Their greatest fear about being sick is the inability to do things.