NLP and Our Instinctive Voice - Part 3

HARD WIRING

With all of the excellent and illuminating work currently bring carried out on genetics, we are now more aware of the influence our 'hard wiring' has on our behaviour. We are now able to view obesity, disease, violence, sexual orientation and other variations from the popular 'norm' as being something that individuals may carry in their bodies. Genetics can help society take a different, and hopefully more fruitful, approach to many social problems. It is the study of genetics that has given us permission to say men and women are different.

However, the danger with the study of genetics is that it provides an easy excuse and justification for behaviour we know to be anti-social. Men commit 82 percent of recorded crime in the United Kingdom. This fact is common knowledge throughout the police force and is instrumental in the planning of prisons. Men commit an even higher percentage of violent crime. These figures have changed little over the last 30 years and are replicated in most other parts of the world. It is true that social conditioning plays a big part in this imbalance of criminal behaviour between men and women. However, the evidence and the research suggest that there is a genetic basis to much of this anti-social behaviour.

What then? Do we then throw up our hands in defeat and say, 'Well that's the way men are, so let them get on with it.' That would be absurd. Many people, however, are throwing up their hands and saying, 'This is how I am meant to be and there's nothing I can do about it,' when it is obvious that what they are doing suits only themselves. If you want your relationships to flounder, then just blame your faults on you masculine or feminine genes. (And blame other people's faults on their gender too.)

Civilization might be seen as the process and the result of channelling and controlling those instinctual drives for the greater good - the greater good being the survival and happiness of everyone, because ultimately we are social, we cannot live without others. So, even though we still carry this 'hard wiring', there is no excuse for letting the monkey within us keep us in the jungle. And if men and women are 'hard wired' differently, this is wonderful. 'Differently' does not mean better or worse, superior or inferior. When men and women come together in a satisfying relationship, this is a celebration of difference. Let us enjoy the different. Let us build the team for the future, making the most of our genetic inheritance.