The best of science

This is a fascinating essay, cleaner, disturbing! and arduous ... whose content is so rich that it is difficult to summarize. It should already say a word Laborit, neurobiologist and extraordinary personality, free (as far as can be he say!) And subversive, who managed the performance to basic research without any financial assistance government. He has paid a sidelining from the French academic and scientific community, as Laborit was also known worldwide, invited to China to give lectures there, and he was awarded the Albert Lasker (equivalent of the Nobel Prize).

This essay discusses the biology of behavior, it aims to explain in accessible terms to the public the basics of our neurobiological functioning and its impact on our behavior both individual and group, from birth until adulthood. Laborit share facts basics (how a body, what is its purpose, how our nervous system is built, what differentiates us from other animals) to light in a new light broad topics like love, freedom, happiness, pleasure, etc. "The only purpose of a being, is to be", that is in substance the author's message.

To summarize the main lines we can say that:
- From birth our body is programmed to maintain its biological structure, meet basic needs and ensure their well-being
- To do this, our brain remembers the pleasurable experiences (that seek to replicate - it's the pleasure principle), unpleasant
- Our brain is also permeated by the actions of others on us. It is learning that we receive from a very young age (rules, values ​​etc) and which one hardly defeated as automation gains remain anchored in our nervous system unconsciously
- In society, man is competing with others for the appropriation and conservation of beings and things "rewarding". There appeared the will to dominance, the establishment of social hierarchies by leaders who also develop a lot of stratagems to control and lull the masses, the "culture" to entertainment
- Modern man is unfortunately a production tool since its affirmative preliminary everything depends on the added value it can bring to the system
- Man must also act according to the rules established by the company, the environment. When it can not act on what control his nervous system, it comes in inhibition of the action mechanism discovered by Laborit and now world famous. The inhibition of the action is the cause of stress and psychosomatic illnesses
- Man, unlike other animals, has a brain that allows it to anticipate, to imagine. Imagination is according Laborit what distinguishes us from other animals.

Praise of the leak, so it's a call to use our imagination to invent our lives, a life outside of hierarchical systems of dominance imposed by society, outside of the competition. The conclusion of Laborit is not very optimistic: "As long as we have not widely disseminated through men of this planet the way their brain works, how they use it and as long as one will not say that so far it has always been to dominate the other, there is little chance that there is anything that changes "