The Power of the Herd (70 page)

Understanding these and other possibilities helps you refrain from taking the aggressor's reaction personally and, if at all possible, muster up some compassion for the pain and betrayals all people have endured at some point in their lives.

7.   In almost every over-the-top emotional outburst, a certain percentage of the reaction triggered something from the aggressor's past, tapping a well of unresolved internal suffering. The only constructive thing you can do in the moment, however, is react counterintuitively, modeling emotional heroism. By enduring this impromptu sharo with dignity, by refusing to fight back, shame, or undermine this person, you are showing him or her that you are
nothing
like those previously hurtful bosses, opportunistic coworkers, abusive parents, two-faced false friends, and so on.

8.   You will never know exactly what the other person's past issues are, but you can, by remembering what led up to the explosion, gain some clues about
what did pertain to you,
which you can take responsibility for and change over time. When you analyze the situation afterward, the need to address your own ineffective patterns or develop a new skill set may become apparent. This means you will initially feel vulnerable or embarrassed. Do not let this realization intensify into shame. Problem solve about the
behavior
that needs to change. Do not see yourself as hopelessly defective. And congratulate yourself for handling the attack professionally and compassionately, which you most certainly did if you avoided fighting back, shaming the aggressor publicly, or undermining him or her in conversation with select coworkers, clients, or mutual friends afterward. (Venting confidentially with
one
trusted mutual friend or coworker, better yet a coach or counselor, is productive, and often necessary,
if
it leads to self-awareness, compassion, and problem solving.)

9.   If you did fight back, shame, or undermine the aggressor at any point,
see this as your current emotional-heroism baseline. Use the sequence associated with developing a high tolerance for vulnerability (see
pages 348–50
) to increase the much more advanced isometric, emotional-strength-training skill of building heroic self-control.

10. Take a break to heal. Do not confront this person in a raw, physically and emotionally compromised state.

11. Prepare for the difficult conversation (Guiding Principle 9, in
chapter 21
) that must follow to address both parties' concerns in order to get back on track and learn from the relevant issues that come to light. If you were viciously attacked or secretly undermined over the long term, you'll probably need help preparing for this conversation. You might also need a moderator to help conduct the conversation if you're still feeling overstimulated, fearful, vulnerable, or resentful. In the latter case, look for someone who knows the difficult-conversation format and who can support both parties.

(If you cannot find someone locally, Eponaquest instructors with the “POH” designation next to their names have received additional training in how to teach the “Power of the Herd” Guiding Principles. They can exercise these leadership and emotional- and social-intelligence skills through equine-facilitated learning activities designed to teach specific principles. Some of these skills can also be taught indoors, in business settings, in counseling offices, or through phone consultations. While many of the guiding principles benefit from the nonverbal training horses provide, preparing for difficult conversations is a purely human skill and can easily be mastered through phone consultations.)

12. Recognize that mending the relationship — even if this means restoring it only to a reasonable level of functionality — may actually take more emotional heroism than enduring the original altercation. The other party may be feeling shame, vulnerability, embarrassment, and resentment that he or she doesn't know how to deal with constructively and may continue to act out or undermine you as a result. Do not take this personally. Approach the challenge from a position of compassion and power. Use it as a chance to increase your skills in this area, but don't try to become this person's friend right away. Friendship may never be possible, but increasing understanding and trust may be, especially over time.

W
erner Herzog's evocative
2011 documentary
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
explores the Chauvet Cave paintings in France, some of which are nearly thirty-five thousand years old. These astonishingly sophisticated depictions of horses, bulls, cattle, stags, antelope, lions, bears, and even rhinoceroses are perplexing in their incredible sophistication and expressive power.

The discovery of this ancient art gallery in December 1994 astonished theorists interested in the evolution of human creativity. As David S. Whitley marvels in his 2009 book,
Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief,
these intricate murals were more than ten thousand years older than those discovered at the nearby Lascaux Cave, yet
“Chauvet Cave had art that was not simply
on par with the finest Paleolithic examples. It was, by significant margin, the oldest cave art in the world and it dramatically disproved any contention that our human artistic capabilities had evolved, over time, from simple to complex. When art first appeared, it appeared full-blown in a technically and aesthetically sophisticated fashion.”

As Whitley emphasizes again and again throughout his book,
“This first art consists of true aesthetic masterpieces
— works of art that fully rival our greatest creative achievements, of any time and place.” Yet while experts agree on the outstanding quality, some question his assertion that human creativity of this magnitude could have happened so suddenly. In discussing her interest in prehistoric cave paintings, Meg Daley Olmert, author of
Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond,
observed that
“many archeologists believe the ancient art we see
in these caves is merely the most protected art that has
survived the millennia, and that other, more rudimentary depictions may have not survived the elements.” At the same time, she too is impressed with these powerful, lifelike images, leaning toward Whitley's camp on this point: “Unless you consider the handprints and geometric graphics, the complete lack of ‘bad' art in the caves would seem to argue against the gradual acquisition of artistic ability.”

Olmert uses these same caves to make another compelling point. She emphasizes that the hormone oxytocin can be produced not only by touch but also by the sort of highly concentrated focus on other beings that mothers exhibit when adoring their newborns. She thinks this hormone may also be released during the “hunter's trance,” a term the evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson coined to describe an expanded state of awareness he experienced while spending extended time in nature, in which heart, breath, and mind are quieted, resulting in heightened concentration and attention to detail. (I find it interesting that Wilson called this the “hunter's trance” even though he often accessed this state while peacefully observing animals rather than stalking them to put food on the table. In this sense, it's clear that he too was unconsciously influenced by humanity's overidentification with predatory behavior.)

Once released in the body, Olmert asserts, oxytocin produces a whole sequence of transformational effects, buffering the flight-or-fight response in mammals and encouraging them take
social risks,
boosting the impulse toward what Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin called “mutual aid.” A relaxed, concentrated focus, combined with intense dedication to or adoration of the subject matter, is also characteristic of creativity, suggesting that the biology of the human-animal bond could very well have been a factor in inspiring those early, impressively detailed cave paintings.

And what were these ancestral artists paying tribute to in Chauvet and Lascaux? Most definitely
not
people. At Chauvet, only one vaguely human figure can be discerned: the lower portion of a woman's body. A nearby image depicts a human-bison hybrid. The vast majority of the paintings are highly realistic, artistically accomplished representations of animals. Horses are the fourth most frequently painted subjects, behind felines, mammoths, and rhinos (yes, a now-extinct species of rhino roamed Ice Age Europe!). But these early equines are among the most vividly portrayed animals in the cave, clearly showing individual characteristics in striking detail.

One of the most famous paintings, featuring four horses, captures facial expressions that an artist would pick up only from close, direct observation of individual living horses. The smallest, most youthful animal, for instance, has bulges along the bottom of its jaw. This is a classic sign of a colt or filly
around two or three years of age whose adult teeth are coming in. (In 2011, Spirit's three-year-old daughter, Artemis, looked very much the same. Other horses I've raised have gone through this stage, before the jawline smoothes out at maturity.)

Many of the lions also show specific facial features portraying intricate moods and behaviors, leading Olmert to come to a startling conclusion in her book:
the cave artists
“knew
these animals
— not just as a species but as individuals. These were neighbors, close neighbors.” What's more, she insists, the “impressive detail and graphic skill” of the paintings “tells us those animals were not terribly frightened of us.”

Whitley, an archeologist who writes from a less knowledgeable perspective on animal behavior, had the chance to actually visit Chauvet Cave. Even he was struck by how two different horses painted in separate alcoves were purposefully set apart from other animals, creating the uncanny impression that these horses were reaching out to him.
They “approach you, slowly, oblivious
, and unmoved by the lions, rhinos, and other animals surrounding them,” he writes. “They come to you in a stately and unhurried pace.”

Reading Whitley's words and staring at photos of these evocative paintings in the oversized art book
Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times,
I was inspired by a compelling possibility. Having lived with herds of horses as colleagues, teachers, guides, and friends — as sentient, empowered beings who made requests, reached out to me, communicated clearly, and often had their own opinions about things — it struck me that that these prehistoric artists were capturing an ancient invitation, that very moment when a horse looked a human in the eye and approached, hinting at a partnership in the making, one that would profoundly change both species in the process.

At the same time, I was struck by the two most impressive galleries, one dedicated to lions, the other to horses. While depictions of mammoths and rhinos are more plentiful at Chauvet, the attention to detail is much more sophisticated in the feline and equine paintings. Was this an early identification on the artists' part with the very two animals I had long associated with the predatory and nonpredatory sides of my own omnivorous soul? (While I was already familiar with Lascaux, I learned of the Chauvet Cave only in 2011, after writing
chapter 5
of this book, “The Lion and the Horse,” in which, you may remember, I envision these two animals as symbols of a balanced, fully empowered human psyche.) As social animals, lions employ teamwork when hunting, while horses
activate mutual aid to protect each other, factors that did not escape Olmert in her assertion that ancient humans learned much from watching their fourlegged neighbors.
“Our ceaseless need to assess the strengths
and weaknesses of animals, to cope with their overwhelming presence or threatening absence, was a matter of life and death,” she writes. “But analyzing animals proved to be more than a survival strategy; it became school, television, even church. It is no wonder that a history of staring at animals has left us with a brain that still can't help but seek them out and try to understand them.”

And, I would argue from studies on the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy and experiential education: animals
transform
and even
heal
us through respectful, mutually supportive interactions.

Let's look more closely at the oxytocin effect: This potent little peptide has been shown to lower heart rate and stress-hormone levels, increasing our sense of well-being, sometimes creating mystical feelings of connection with all life. It facilitates learning and even results in faster wound healing, while at the same time making people more trusting and trustworthy. Promising studies have confirmed that it relieves some of the antisocial tendencies of autistics. Oxytocin has also been shown to dramatically increase focus and social memory, two elements that would have been essential to the cave artists' advanced craft of recording detailed facial features of the animals they painted.

As Olmert contends in
Made for Each Other,
“Oxytocin may have stoked the warmer social climate
that emerged during the long, stressful Ice Age. The triumph of trust over paranoia enabled humans and animals to come together in domesticated partnerships and emboldened people to move beyond the social limitations of kinship and tribe and live harmoniously in a civilized world....When humans began to keep animals and animals submitted to our care, we inadvertently created a chemical biofeedback system that changed our hearts and minds.” Olmert also reveals that “our new, improved understanding of this molecule's ability to create strong feelings of attraction, recognition and commitment between mammals — and the fact that its effects can be released visually as well as through other sensory contact — strongly suggests that it was one of the subliminal forces that shaped the minds and hearts of our Ice Age ancestors.”