OTT - Oxytocin Tops Testosterone

Paul Zak’s fabulous book ‘The Moral Molecule’ presents an explanation of how these powerful hormones have contributed to human evolution from the first Hunter Gatherer tribes to our modern society. It’s a story of Yin and Yang of Competition and Collaboration of Differentiation and Integration. Throughout history societal health has been optimised when these hormones have been in balance. The understanding afforded by Zak’s work offers us an opportunity to choose the type of society that will best suit our future development. Are we best served by a continuation of the Dog-Eat-Dog stock market economics that almost brought us to ruin or is it time to forge a new era of co-opetition where we sincerely seek human fulfilment? Around the world we pay homage to Mammon with steel and glass cities built by greed. Communities that have cultivated the lands for centuries get bulldozed aside in the name of progress. The weak get trampled over, rights are ignored or ruthlessly redefined so that the rich can get richer as testosterone triumphs. Deep in our hearts we each know that greed diminishes us if not physically, through illness or wars of attrition, then spiritually through corruption and loss of human dignity. The truth is easily ignored however when big money’s involved and forever we have been devising ways to ensnare humanity with alluring visions of la dolce vita tied to crippling financial burdens. I believe that although the world has always loved a winner it loves lovers even more. There’s something so intoxicating about being in love that when we recognise it in young lovers we are invariably happy for them. It’s the one form of madness that society is entirely happy with. At its core it’s what drives our propagation as a species. Oxytocin, the family hormone, is released in response to lovemaking and stimulates lactation in the mother at the sound of her infant crying. It encourages bonding, togetherness and community building. We all want it. Genocidal acts and atrocities of war can result when the meme of oxytocin fragments societies such that if you’re not one of us, you’re the enemy. Tribalism has been the cause of some of humanity’s worst crimes as though the bonding effects of oxytocin establish clear demarcation lines between communities and testosterone then rallies to ‘protect’ them. The history books are filled with the most apocalyptic accounts from the crusades to world wars and other acts of barbarism. The rapid expansion of the internet and social media provides humanity with an extremely powerful tool with which to enhance our sense of Oneness and community in this global village. We can use it to serve humanity or, unconsciously, to hasten its destruction if we allow it to be exploited as a propaganda tool or worse. Weaponising the internet to inflict cyber attack on foreign infrastructure is a very real danger but arguably its more corrosive effects result from daily acts of cyber-bullying on social media. Human evolution has taken us far from the hunter gatherer tribes that evolved through the beneficial effects of oxytocin balanced with testosterone but today’s society needs this family hormone more than ever. We need to recognise the international family of humanity as a component of creation rather than its master. Let the meme of oxytocin encourage harmonious relationships between nations and with nature itself and bring a new meaning to ‘OTT’.