While there are many helpful phrases in the “street peace” trainings that we do as the Portland Peace Team, my favorite, which we offer when possible to someone in emotional distress over a soluble crisis, is, “Let’s fix this.”
That sentence, short and immediately understandable, can deëscalate many agitated people, especially someone who sees no possible solution and is suffering from an “amygdala hijack,” a loss of rational functions in favor of an increasingly overwhelming grasp of control by our most primitive portion of the brain, the limbic system, or “lizard brain.”
When a person feels the connection, the offer of help, and the air of hope, if not certainty, that the presenting problem can be successfully managed and resolved, it tends to tamp down the flare in the amygdala and slowly return control to the cerebral cortex, the reasoning portion of our complex human brains.
The lizard brain’s reasoning is similar to the apocryphal, chilling statement attributed sometimes to Josef Stalin, “Where there’s a person, there’s a problem. When there’s no person, there’s no problem.” Yeah, it doesn’t get more lizard brain than that.
So, can we engage in a thought experiment? Can we, for a moment, regard the midterm elections as a great big, “Let’s fix this” from the majority of the American people to the rest of the American people?
The majority stopped the election liars and deniers from gaining Secretary of State offices in all swing states. Independents generally voted to “regain the sane.” Even some Republicans split their tickets here and there to selectively vote against the Road Rage Republican candidates.
