ChangingThe-Subject

A very interesting exploration of what could be genuinely 'third way' social policy bases resting on emerging insights about human brains and neurology. The .pdf is here. Nov28th2009ChangingThe-SubjectPamphlet.pdf (application/pdf Object)
I'd like to draw attention to part three which begins with a summary of what has emerged in the last few years from neuroscience:

The plastic brain: we learn and think through our brains strengthening and proliferating connections between neurons. These are not fixed and can be rewired even in adult life. Moreover, deprived environments seem to damage the ability of the brain to strengthen new connections.
The social brain: the ‘self’ as an isolated and disembodied decisionmaker in total control of behaviour would seem to be a fiction. A large portion of our behaviour seems to result from automatic reactions to the social situations we are in, as well as a
concern to abide by social norms.
The automatic brain: much less of our
behaviour than we might think results from controlled decision-making; rather it is through our ‘automatic’ brains that we make many decisions.
The habitual brain: we quickly become habituated to new behaviour. But also much of our behaviour results from intuitive judgements that are products of habits of mind’, formed by our automatic brains.
The pro-social brain: far from being solely self-interested, humans seem to be inherently disposed to value co-operation and altruism, and to care about harm done to others and issues of fairness. The myopic brain: we are consistently bad at long-term planning and decision-making and tend to focus on experiences that are closest to us temporally, spatially and emotionally (this is why we have developed social institutions that protect us from these shortcomings).
The happy brain: although personalities and cultures are highly variable, reliable sources of happiness are quite fixed (doing things for other people, a sense of autonomy, ‘flow’ activities,38 activities with intrinsic rather than relative value).

I respectfully suggest that we need to do our theology in the light of these emerging facts. I suspect that it means that hamartology and so soteriology starts to be nuanced differently to some inherited accounts. I would also suggest that our Christology starts to look a little different: what does incarnation mean in such an understanding of humanity?