in-cred-u-lous
adjective
- (of a person or their manner) unwilling or unable to believe something.
2. unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true : not credulous
cred·u·lous
adjective
- having or showing too great a readiness to believe things.
2. ready to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence
Incredulity
When I was in my teens, a number of things happened that created opportunity for me to experience incredulity. The first one I remember is a fire at my dad’s office in the middle of the night. I do not recall why the building was burning or much about what part of my dad’s work happened there. I just remember standing out in the street, watching it burn. I am not entirely sure I actually was there, but it is a memory just the same. Memory is like that. It is a dynamic, changeable thing. It is a created and then re-created tangle of facts and feelings about an event or series of events that may or may not represent reality.
Fundamentally, memories are formed in the limbic system, not in the pre-frontal cortex where we might imagine they are neatly cataloged and shelved in a coherent and retrievable form. In the limbic system, memories are a jumble of neurologic impulses that are triggered by a perceived threat or need to activate. These impulses create neural networks releasing neurotransmitters and hormones that influence the state of our emotions. A quickening of our heart (activation) mixed with oxytocin (the connection hormone) and dopamine (the reward neurotransmitter) can cause the emotion of love or affection for a baby or a kitten. The scent of a newborn’s head or the silkiness of the kitten’s fur adds a tactile reinforcement to the network of electricity and all the neurons that are firing off because of this experience fuse together into what we call a memory. Later, whenever we smell a baby’s head or touch a kitten, our nervous system recalls our earlier experiences and re-creates the sensation of wonder and love we felt when we first held our child or received a kitten as a present. The memory is the emotion. Our brains don’t necessarily care about the facts.
The same is true, of course, when a real threat happens, like a fire. All the same elements are in place, but the hormone released would be epinephrine meant to prepare us for battle. Our nervous system stores the components of the threat as well so that when we smell burning asbestos shingles, we feel afraid. We don’t really need all the details to be accurate. We just know that this is a bad thing in the pit of our stomach.
The most profound experience I had with incredulity was when my sister-in-law died in childbirth when I was 19. The details are fuzzy some 40 years later, but I cannot sing the songs that were sung at her funeral or walk by the hospital where she died without the feeling of a memory of total disbelief. She went in the hospital on that spring day to deliver a baby and came out in a hearse. Time stopped for everyone that day and everything that happened seemed to be in slow motion as we went from an excited “it’s a girl” to a phone call telling my brother, “you need to get back to the hospital, there is a problem.” Even as I write this, my heart is stressing at the emotional memory of being incredulous that this could happen to our Christian family. Turns out it could. It did. Believe it or not.
As I watched the cascading train wreck of events unfolding in my family around the issues of George Floyd’s murder, arguments over COVID masks, political debates and declarations, and the infortunity of a misguided and careless Facebook “like”, I found myself in a battle of words with a family member that would ultimately lead to estrangement. As I saw my 30 plus years of investment in this person go up in texted ashes without ever having a verbal conversation: I drowned in incredulity. My pre-frontal cortex never had a chance. This entire discourse lives in my limbic system to this day. The memories and details of what was written but never spoken wring in my heart. Never in my head. I am still unwilling to accept or believe what has happened and what may never be repaired largely because of credulity.
Credulity
Like memories, beliefs don’t necessarily have anything to do with facts. When we have come up with enough emotions surrounding a threat that activates our fight or flight system, facts do not matter. Our limbic system stands guard over the fact files, daring anyone to challenge them at their own peril. We take whatever we want to see as the truth, magnify it, armor it up, and use confirmation bias to fortify it into a conviction. No one and no amount of explanation or evidence can change our minds about what we know to be true. We cannot back down because to do so would cause us to risk being exposed as inept for being mistaken which could lead to being exiled. Our nervous system screams at us to assume malevolence in order to keep us safe from the possibility that we might be found to be flawed. We cannot bear that as a possibility because to be flawed is to risk rejection and that leads to annihilation which is to die. We believe what we believe because our nervous system tells us that we must, or we will die. If our pre-frontal cortex, or the reasoning part of our brain is not allowed to challenge our limbic system, thereby allowing a different narrative or conclusion, we will never be able to see things from a different perspective. We will never be able to assume benevolence in a dispute. We will only be able to believe what we believe we believe, regardless of any evidence that we may be believing a lie.
Without the ability to examine facts objectively, with our cortex leading the discussion, our credulity leads straight back to incredulity, and we simply stay stuck in estrangement because we have no other way to think about it.
Incredulity was the first stop on my way through the maze of estrangement. I was incredulous at the idea this could happen in my family, in my city and in my society. Challenging my credulity or willingness to belief things despite evidence to the contrary, was my way only forward. The next stop was “blame-shifting.”
