Dr. Humberto López ,a Nicaraguan psychiatrist, provides an interesting scientific explanation for the sudden massive uprising in Nicaragua. It was published on social media.
THE NICARAGUAN SOCIAL PHENOMENON AND MIRROR NEURONS
Dr. Humberto López
For everyone it is inconceivable how a civic insurrection was produced so quickly and massively in Nicaragua. The presidential couple and their political analysts could not foresee that a popular insurrection would be produced from sending out to “club” and later kill “some few rebellious kids” that showed solidarity with the elderly over reforms to the social security law. And how could they believe that this would be possible if the Cuban people, who suffered acts of repression for more than 50 years and with an economic crisis, did not react in this way; less probable even that it would happen in Nicaragua that has been experiencing sustained economic growth for several consecutive years. In the economic determinism of Marxist sociological analysis this simply is not possible. The Nicaraguan social phenomenon challenges all existing sociological theories.
The problem of traditional sociological theories is rooted in the fact that they do not take into account what is now known as the Mirror System of the human brain, recently discovered by Italian neuroscientists. In scientific experiments the existence of certain types of specialized neurons were discovered, called mirror neurons, whose function is that we feel what others feel as if it were happening to ourselves. In other words, evolution has provided us with a biological system for empathy, as an automatic mechanism to be able to defend ourselves from threats to our species or our social group, that overcomes fear. It has also been proven that this neuronal system is activated automatically in a more intense way when we have greater affinity with the people being affected.
In the case of Nicaragua, when the Ortega-Murillos ordered the elderly to be clubbed, it made the mirror system of some students be activated in solidarity; and when they sent them to club the students, that activated the mirror system of other students; but when they ordered them to kill, according to them to intimidate them out of fear, it produced a more intense activation of the mirror system of all the students that overcame fear, but also activated that system in the rest of the population who felt a profound affinity with youth in whom they identified with youth that could be their children or grandchildren, generating a massive emotional contagion.
But some may ask: What did this massive social contagion happen in Nicaragua in a few days and did not happen in Cuba over 50 years? The explanation is in the social networks, that did not exist in Cuba. And it is the fact that the mirror system is activated better through vision, and the Cuban dictator controled the only visual means of communication, television. The social networks cannot be controled in today´s Nicaragua, and almost all Nicaraguans have cell phones, from which are transmitted the crude images of the youth murdered, wounded and attacked.
The government did try to eliminate the AFFINITY factor of the population toward the youth sector in protest, accusing them of having connections with a discredited political class “on the right”, but to the misfortune of the Ortega government, and in contrast to the Venezuelan opposition, the Nicaraguan student movement does not have godfathers from the political class. In this case, the lack of political leadership ended up being a potent vaccination against the attempt to subtract from the affinity with the struggle of these young people.
The lack of knowledge of human behavior on the part of dictatorial governments and their lack of empathy toward their people is what blinds them to preventing these popular reactions to acts of repression, and does not allow them to understand that in the face of greater repression, the activation of the neuronal mirror system is more intense, and therefore accelerates the contagion of massive social empathy capable of overthrowing dictatorships in a peaceful way.
For all of the above and thanks to mirror neurons, and of course to God who provided us with them, the peaceful struggle of the Nicaraguan people has their victory ensured.