I love it when people break down something as complex as human behaviour into a simple model that explains many observations. One of the martial arts authors I follow is Rory Miller, who has provided insightful observations for my journey in self-protection.

So, what is this model?

You can break down human behaviour as being influenced by three distinct ‘brains’.

• The Lizard Brain
• The Monkey Brain
• The Human Brain

The Lizard is the oldest part of your thinking brain, the hindbrain. Your survival instincts, particularly fight, flight and freeze responses are triggered here.

The Monkey brain corresponds to the emotional brain. The Monkey is concerned with social behaviour, status, and other people’s thoughts. For much of our evolution, being cast out of the tribe meant being sentenced to a slow and lonely death. The Monkey brain knows this and fears it above all things.

The newer neocortex is what we call the Human brain. It is thoughtful and usually rational, but it is also slow. Although it tends to find a good solution, one of the older sections of the brain usually decides to go before the neocortex has fully explored the problem.

You have three different brains with three different priorities. They evolved to deal with various kinds of conflict. They also have a seniority system.

The Lizard’s only concern is your survival. The Lizard brain has the chemical power to take over your brain completely. It can hijack you whenever it feels the need. This hijacking is triggered by fear of imminent death. Most people only experience the Lizard in moments of extreme terror, if at all. Your training may not overcome the influence of the lizard brain, so people sometimes fail to do what they have been trained to do when needed.

The Monkey is concerned with social survival and status. It literally cannot distinguish between humiliation and death. This imaginary fear of what other people might think is potent. In the book ‘Machete Season’, Jean Hatzfeld documents a man in the Rwandan genocide who went out every morning to hunt Tutsi and hack them up–men, women and children–with machetes. The man said that the taunts, jeering, and laughter would be much worse if he didn’t join in. It was easier to chop humans up than to be ridiculed for not doing so.

The Monkey is powerful and explains some intense, dangerous puzzles in human behaviour, conflict and trauma. That people stay in an abusive relationship is a puzzle, but not for the Monkey. The Monkey knows that it is still a relationship. To have a tribe and a place, no matter how painful, is less terrifying than being alone or uncertain of your place.

If you notice a pattern here, these Monkey Strategies, such as staying in bad relationships or fearing humiliation, work. They don’t work for you, they work to keep groups together.

Despite its slowness, capacity for self-delusion, and ease with which it can be hijacked, the Human brain is extremely powerful. The Human mind can understand an abstract goal and work towards it. The Monkey and the Lizard, despite their strengths, are purely reactive. The Lizard seems to live in the now with no thought of the future, while the Monkey can only envision bad outcomes. Both seem incapable of imagining a better future.

The violence that can be triggered by social conflicts (pubs, clubs, road rage, etc.) can stem from your monkey brain taking over.

So if someone says, “Get out of here or I’m going to kick your ****” – which part of that statement do people hear?

The part that gives you a way out of the challenge or the challenge?

I reckon that most people only ‘hear’ the challenge and think, “How dare they threaten me?” or “I’m not being spoken to like that,” or even “No way, I’m going to kick yours.”

If you start thinking and acting on these types of responses to escalate the situation, and you end up fighting, you will not be able to claim self-defence, because you did not walk away when you had the option. [Obviously, if they still pursue you and threaten you after walking away, that is another matter.] 

Being aware of your Monkey brain is the starting point for controlling it.