Perhaps you highly value principles such as honesty, respect, equality or fairness. Whatever your cherished principles, are you aware that your capacity to behave in concert with them is surprisingly dependent upon how you manage your limbic brain balance? Or how you do that is profoundly influenced by how you choose to use sex?
Here’s why: Limbic brain imbalance can easily alter your perceptions, priorities and choices at a subconscious level. You believe your freewill is operational, but actually, perfectly natural neurochemical fluctuations may be causing you to act impulsively, destructively or self-destructively – even in uncharacteristic ways that violate your own principles or do not serve your long-term wellbeing.
This is why practices like Synergy, meditation, time in nature, soothing social contact, and so on, are so valuable. They protect our freewill, making it easier to act consistently with our principles.
Morality
This post doesn’t advocate a particular external moral agenda. Rather, it’s about how our inner compass works. Whatever your moral code, if you or your loved ones occasionally do things that violate it, read on.
Moral decisions (including sexual ones) do not invoke a specific “moral sense” in the brain. They rely on a brain mechanism that influences all choices: our reward circuitry.
“Scientists at Harvard University have found that humans can make difficult moral decisions using the same brain circuits as those used in more mundane choices related to money and food.
These circuits, also found in other animals, put together two critical pieces of information: How good or bad are the things that might happen? What are the odds that they will happen, depending on one’s choice?”
The structures they studied are all components of the brain’s reward circuitry: ventral striatum, insula and vmPFC (pre-frontal cortex).
Sneaky genes cloud perception
So, where’s the problem? The problem is that our genes have hidden agendas. Food and resources register as rewarding because they promote survival. And, of course, the most powerful rewards are for behaviours favouring more progeny, whatever the risks.
Think of Harvey Weinstein (who triggered the #MeToo movement), Bonnie Blue’s sex extravaganza, and R. Kelly’s infamous proclivities. Consider the facts that between 2018 and 2022 HIV diagnoses jumped by 21% among Latino gay and bisexual men, with an estimated lifetime risk of 1 in 2 among young black men who have sex with men.
These folks have one thing in common: Their inner compasses aren’t functioning in accord with their principles. Their perception is off, in part because a primitive brain mechanism assesses their risky activities as—believe it or not—genetic opportunities. “Selfish genes” indeed!
Sex
How do our genetic programs pull our sexual strings? By releasing extra dopamine (the “gotta get it” neurochemical) in our brain’s reward circuitry when we become aroused.
We don’t realise what’s going on because we’re used to relying on input from this circuitry as we make countless other, generally sound, decisions. So, when hit with extra dopamine, we just know we need to act on that impulse. In fact, we actively resist unwanted, more sober thoughts.
Sneaky, eh? On the other hand, when dopamine (sensitivity) plummets, we may feel bored, or like we don’t want more of something (or someone)—or like we just made a huge mistake the night before.
Whether our neurochemical prod is unusually powerful or unusually faint, we’re either on a mini-drug trip or suffering a bit of a hangover. Either way, we’re labouring against chemically induced odds. Fortunately, the impulses pass—before or after we act—and clarity generally returns.
Here’s the thing
Neither cravings nor their consequences have much to do with moral character. The culprit here is limbic tone. It can produce a fog of unsettling perception distortions, inner conflict, and self-doubts.
We act without realising we’re under a spell. When our neurochemistry shifts again, we wonder, “What was I thinking???”
Answer: we weren’t. We were on neurochemical autopilot, or at least suffering from distorted perception that enabled us to rationalise reckless behaviour.
So, truly, external morality isn’t the best basis on which to judge anyone’s sexual choices. Our moral sense doesn’t operate apart from our reward circuitry. It decides what is “rewarding” or “not rewarding”. That, in turn, has a huge impact on what we view as “appropriate” or “inappropriate”, and even “humane” or “inhumane” in the moment.
When extreme stimulation throws our limbic tone out of kilter temporarily, we’re at risk for regrettable choices. As one guy said:
My pleasure centre totally takes over. It persuades the rational part of the brain that this will be my last time, that I need another hit of intense stimulation to get on with things. It’s like I have two people living inside me.
Principles are easily ignored by brains struggling with dopamine imbalance
That is the problem. Yet, when a brain is in balance, it doesn’t much need artificial “moral” rules—because its owner is thinking clearly. Here are the comments of five men who have cut back on extreme stimulation:
It’s amazing how much of a difference there is. I’m a lot less nervous, more coherent, confident, everything. It feels like my real personality can come out.
I think more clearly, and act more efficiently and my focus LASTS. I can follow through, solve problems, even multiple things in a row for extended periods of time. Even my boss said that I seem much more in control.
I feel MORE masculine, more in control, more stable, more ALIVE, and consequently, in a weird way, more ‘virile’…? I’m not sure how to explain it. It feels amazing.
I have experienced clearer thinking, better social interactions, more emotional stability, more energy, and more wholeness. It is very nice to see results so quickly.
I feel more grounded and more directed, have more to give to more people. The times I spend with my partner, I feel full and happy.
In short, people are not bad people because they violate their moral codes under extreme, neurochemically generated pressure. Many simply need to restore and protect their equilibrium, so their compasses once again align with their true values. This recalibration can take weeks after a wholesome behavioural shift. But only they can choose the behaviours that clarify their perception and allow them to make sound choices.
Avoiding extreme stimuli sustains (or restores) balance. This is why many of the world’s spiritual traditions focus on brain-balancing techniques such as meditation, qi gong, diet, devotion, prayer, service, questing, generosity and careful management of sexual desire. Add to that list daily, non-goal-oriented affection. Such tools can be surprisingly effective at keeping our inner compass aligned with who we really are.
Conclusion
If we want to protect our freewill, we need to make sure our behavioural choices keep our limbic brains in balance. Otherwise our wayward genetic programs will steer us recklessly toward behaviours that statistically favour the passing on of genes.
Careful use of sexual desire, Synergy, is doubly effective. Not only does it forestall the mood swings that can follow conventional, orgasm-driven sex, and which promote limbic brain imbalance. It also improves limbic balance by meeting our deep needs for companionship and affectionate touch. Then we can live up to our principles more effortlessly.
