As humans, we are “situated” beings. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained this notion in a 1981 homily, saying that we receive our lives from outside of ourselves, from the moment we are born and every day thereafter.
Evidence from developmental neuroscience reflects this truth: Our human nervous system obligates us to experience ourselves in the context of the outside world. Science, alongside ancient global cultures and religions, highlights the interdependence of people. Neuroscientists describe this interdependence in terms of coregulation, serve and return, and behavioral synchrony. In Zulu culture the relevant concept is ubuntu — “We are, therefore I am.” Catholic social teaching uses the term solidarity.
Yet Western culture, particularly in the United States, often misconstrues interdependence as a weakness associated with “vulnerability.” Phrases like “crying is for babies” and “suck it up” are internalized at a young age and carried into adulthood. Those lessons are often laced with woundedness, with memories of our younger selves seeking comfort from others that we were, in the end, unable to find. The interdependent nature of the human nervous system makes the absence of that expected support uncomfortable, even painful.
Neuroscience is in its infancy relative to the span of human history, but philosophy and theology have been grappling with human nature for millennia. No academic discipline has yet worked out the specific mechanisms that drive our nature, but articulations of our interconnectedness may be found in Catholic social teaching. Rooted in Christian theology, this tradition emphasizes ideals of encounter, accompaniment, solidarity, a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, the dignity of the human person, care for God’s creation, and the common good. I am not Catholic, but when I discovered this language, I fell in love.
My neuroscience expertise lies in the subdiscipline of experience-dependent plasticity — the study of how our brains change with experience. Infants, toddlers and young children are completely dependent on the world around them because their nervous systems do not offer them the capacity to care for themselves. Ratzinger was correct: We are indeed obligated to receive our lives from outside of ourselves from the moment we are born — and every day thereafter.
It’s the “every day thereafter” I would ask us to consider. Theology and neuroscience make it clear that, no matter how old we get, we never outgrow the need for comfort and support from the people around us — nor our duty to reciprocate.
Despite the clarity across these disparate fields of inquiry, even a quick survey of the current political climate indicates that in the U.S. we lag behind the wisdom of theology and neuroscience in how we actually behave toward one another. Even so, we may find heartening examples of those who are able to build trusting relationships amid differences.
Consider, for example, the marriage of vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha. Vance depicted his impoverished childhood in rural Ohio in the book Hillbilly Elegy. A child of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance had a more comfortable upbringing in California, far removed from her future husband in geography, socioeconomic status and cultural tradition. Yet when they met, she said at the Republican National Convention, “he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm. He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”
I’ve heard “curiosity” defined as an autonomous decision to become familiar with an unknown. To govern a country as vast and diverse as the U.S. requires such curiosity — an openness to understand and serve those unlike ourselves at a national, even global scale. As “the body politic,” we the people bear the same responsibility.
Ratzinger described what happens when we neglect our obligations to each other: We tear deep fissures in the fabric of our communities. When we fail to repair these holes, our experiences instruct our nervous systems to “protect” us as the first priority, superseding any sense of responsibility to act in communion with the world. The future Pope Benedict XVI framed this transgenerational woundedness in terms of original sin, as explored in Christian theology for over 2,000 years; the data of neuroscience, public health and epidemiology now support similar ideas of “adverse childhood experiences,” “social determinants of health” and “attributable risk.” Whatever language one prefers speaks to a strong multidisciplinary consensus: When we break relationships, we wound each other, our communities and ourselves. Our cultural mantra of “suck it up” does not bind wounds but rather deepens them.
No two human beings have had the same experiences. At any given moment, our perspectives are informed by the computational output of neurological architecture that arises from our unique experience in concert with the contextual factors that inform our brain function.
Given the reciprocal impact we have on each other, a great challenge and opportunity lies in asking ourselves, “Does my behavior consistently express solidarity with others?” For most human beings, the answer to this question is likely a resounding no.
Human brain development leads us to adopt beliefs that align with the beliefs of those closest to us. They’re “our people,” our “in-group.” This kind of experience-dependent plasticity is a necessary component of brain function. However, one artifact of such deep identity computations is the way our brains easily equate those outside our group with the “other.” And in the absence of curiosity, especially in a heated environment like the 2024 political climate, “other” too often translates as “enemy.” As our real-life connections with each other diminish, our sense of shared humanity becomes impoverished and our fear of one another grows, feeding a cycle that further fractures our relationships and our communities.
The human brain can easily weave unknowns into stress reactions; just recall an experience of significant uncertainty in your own life and you will likely feel that bodily sensation all over again. When we are uncertain about an “other,” indifference and fear easily tear at the fabric of human solidarity and harm our implicit sense of interdependence. We sense this friction driving greater distances between us every day, further fracturing our communities.
What to do? I return to the idea of curiosity as an effort to become familiar with the unknown. Curiosity requires individual agency and action. To ask a question out of curiosity, especially when our sense of interpersonal and cultural interdependence has been fractured, is to face one of the greatest unknowns — how will this other human respond?
I have been humbled by the courageous curiosity offered me by so many colleagues of deep faith here at Notre Dame. We come from different places, traditions and disciplines, and could easily see one another as “other,” even as enemies. Inviting moments of encounter with curiosity, we move instead toward true accompaniment. Through these experiences of enacted interdependence, we see solidarity take actionable form, creating a deeper sense of connection to, belonging within and responsibility for our shared community.
Courageous curiosity motivates these conversations among theologians and neuroscientists as we seek to mend fractures of human reason. We may call on such courageous curiosity whenever we ask questions in our daily lives and our political conversations. When we take such risks, our reward is simply the potential for powerful insights — windows into our own lives and the lives of those with whom we are responsible for building community. Each experience of courageous curiosity builds our neural architecture to foster our understanding of each other as human beings, enabling each of us to take steps towards enacting our interdependence and mending the fabric of our communities.
Nancy Michael is Rev. John A. Zahm CSC Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the co-director of undergraduate studies for the neuroscience and behavior major at Notre Dame.