Post by Tamrin on Mar 11, 2012 8:52:59 GMT 10
Elsewhere on the forum we have been discussing whether or not humans still have instincts. Between the null and affirmative hypotheses is that advanced by Jeremy Griffith (O.G.G.) and his Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood.
Put simply, he believes that the reason humans have the capacity to be so good or so bad can be explained by our human development. He believes the aggression felt by humans is the result of two factions within everybody — the gene-based instinctive part of us struggling against the conscious self.Thus, he maintains that the selection process, in which instincts were lost (having become a liability once we acquired the capacity for wholly conscious choice), is as yet incomplete. He says our instincts may no longer govern our behaviour but they still make themselves felt, creating a sense of guilt, anomie or alienation when we choose to act contrary to their drives.
In presenting the explanation, an analogy involving migrating storks is helpful. (Refer to the picture of The Story of Adam Stork below.)
Many bird species are perfectly orientated to instinctive migratory flight paths. Each winter, without ever ‘learning’ where to go and without knowing why, they quit their established breeding grounds and migrate to warmer feeding grounds. They then return each summer and so the cycle continues. Over the course of thousands of generations and migratory movements, only those birds that happened to have a genetic make-up that inclined them to follow the right route survived. Thus, through natural selection, they acquired their instinctive orientation.
Consider a flock of migrating storks returning to their summer breeding places on the rooftops of Europe from their winter feeding grounds in southern Africa. Suppose in the instinct-controlled brain of one of them we place a fully conscious mind (we will call this stork Adam, because we will soon see that this story has similarities to the Biblical account in Genesis of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden). As Adam Stork flies north, he spots an island off to the left laden with apple trees. Using his newly acquired conscious mind, Adam thinks, ‘I should fly down and eat some apples.’ It seems a reasonable thought but he can’t know if it is a good decision or not until he acts on it. For Adam’s new thinking mind to make sense of the world he has to learn by trial and error and so he decides to carry out his first grand experiment in self-management by flying down to the island and sampling the apples.
But it’s not that simple. As soon as Adam deviates from his established migratory path, his instinctive self tries to pull him back on course. In effect it criticises him for veering off course; it condemns his search for understanding. All of a sudden Adam is in a dilemma. If he obeys his instinctive self and flies back on course, he will remain perfectly orientated but he’ll never learn if his deviation was the right decision or not. All the messages he’s receiving from within inform him that obeying his instincts is good, is right, but there’s also a new inclination to disobey, a defiance of instinct. Diverting from his course will result in apples and understanding, yet he already sees that doing so will also make him feel bad.
Uncomfortable with the criticism his newly conscious mind or intellect is receiving from his instinctive self, Adam’s first response is to ignore the temptation the apples present and fly back on course. This makes his instinctive self happy and wins back the approval of his fellow storks, for not having conscious minds they are innocent, unaware or ignorant of the conscious mind’s need to search for knowledge. They are obeying their instinctive selves by following the flight path past the island. Further, since Adam’s instinctive self developed alongside the natural world, it too reminded him of his instinctive orientation and, in effect, joined in the criticism of Adam for his rebellious decision.
Flying on, however, Adam realises he can’t deny his intellect. Sooner or later he must find the courage to master his conscious mind by carrying out experiments in understanding. This time he thinks, ‘Why not fly down to an island and rest?’ Not knowing any reason why he shouldn’t, he proceeds with his experiment. Again, his decision is met with a chorus of criticism—from his instinctive self, the other storks that were ignorant of the need to search for knowledge, and the natural world. But this time he defies the criticism and perseveres with his experimentation in self-management. His decision, however, means he must now live with the criticism and immediately he is condemned to a state of upset. A battle has broken out between his instinctive self, perfectly orientated to the flight path, and his emerging conscious mind, which needs to understand why that flight path is the correct course to follow. His instinctive self is perfectly orientated, but Adam doesn’t understand that orientation.
In short, when the fully conscious mind emerged it wasn’t enough for it to be orientated by instincts. It had to find understanding to operate effectively and fulfil its great potential to manage life. Tragically, the instinctive self didn’t ‘appreciate’ that need and ‘tried to stop’ the mind’s necessary search for knowledge, as represented by the latter’s experiments in self-management. Hence the ensuing battle between instinct and intellect.
To refute the criticism from his instinctive self, Adam needed to understand the difference in the way genes and nerves process information. He needed to be able to explain that the gene-based learning system can, through natural selection, give species orientations to their environment, but that those orientations are not understandings. This means that when the nerve-based learning system gave rise to consciousness and the ability to understand the world, it wasn’t sufficient to be orientated to the world—understanding of the world had to be found. The problem, however, was that Adam had only just taken the first, tentative steps in the search for knowledge, and thus had no ability to explain anything. It was a catch-22 situation for the fledgling thinker, for in order to explain himself he needed the very understanding he was setting out to find. He had to search for understanding, ultimately self-understanding, understanding of why he had to ‘fly off course’, without the ability to first explain why he needed to ‘fly off course’. He couldn’t defend his actions. He had to live with the criticism from his instinctive self and, without that defence, was insecure in its presence.
To resist the tirade of unjust criticism that he was having to endure and mitigate that insecurity, Adam had to do something. But what could he do? If he abandoned the search and flew back on course, sure, he’d gain some momentary relief, but the search would nevertheless remain to be undertaken. So all Adam could do was retaliate against the criticism, try to prove it wrong or simply ignore it—and he did all of those things. He became angry towards the criticism. In every way he could he tried to demonstrate his self worth, to prove that he was good and not bad. And he tried to block out the criticism. He became angry, egocentric and alienated or, in a word, upset.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’ as ‘the conscious thinking self’, so ego is another word for the intellect. Thus the word ‘egocentric’ means the intellect became centred or focused on trying to refute the instincts’ criticism; it became focused on trying to prove its worth, prove that it was good and not bad. Adam Stork became preoccupied trying to validate himself, looking for a win, any positive reinforcement that would bring him some sense of worth.
Tragically, Adam Stork had no choice other than to resign himself to living a life of anger, egocentricity and alienation as the only three responses available to him to cope with the horror of his situation, his condition. It was an extremely unfair and difficult position for Adam to find himself in, for we can see that while he was good he appeared to be bad and had to endure the horror of his associated upset state until he found the defence or reason for his ‘mistakes’. But suffering upset was the price of his heroic search for understanding. It was an inevitable outcome in the transition from an instinct-controlled state to an intellect-controlled state. His uncooperative, divisive aggression and his selfish, egocentric efforts to prove his worth and his need to deny and evade criticism became an unavoidable part of his personality. Such was his predicament, and such has been the human condition, for it was in humans that the fully conscious mind emerged.
Many bird species are perfectly orientated to instinctive migratory flight paths. Each winter, without ever ‘learning’ where to go and without knowing why, they quit their established breeding grounds and migrate to warmer feeding grounds. They then return each summer and so the cycle continues. Over the course of thousands of generations and migratory movements, only those birds that happened to have a genetic make-up that inclined them to follow the right route survived. Thus, through natural selection, they acquired their instinctive orientation.
Consider a flock of migrating storks returning to their summer breeding places on the rooftops of Europe from their winter feeding grounds in southern Africa. Suppose in the instinct-controlled brain of one of them we place a fully conscious mind (we will call this stork Adam, because we will soon see that this story has similarities to the Biblical account in Genesis of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden). As Adam Stork flies north, he spots an island off to the left laden with apple trees. Using his newly acquired conscious mind, Adam thinks, ‘I should fly down and eat some apples.’ It seems a reasonable thought but he can’t know if it is a good decision or not until he acts on it. For Adam’s new thinking mind to make sense of the world he has to learn by trial and error and so he decides to carry out his first grand experiment in self-management by flying down to the island and sampling the apples.
But it’s not that simple. As soon as Adam deviates from his established migratory path, his instinctive self tries to pull him back on course. In effect it criticises him for veering off course; it condemns his search for understanding. All of a sudden Adam is in a dilemma. If he obeys his instinctive self and flies back on course, he will remain perfectly orientated but he’ll never learn if his deviation was the right decision or not. All the messages he’s receiving from within inform him that obeying his instincts is good, is right, but there’s also a new inclination to disobey, a defiance of instinct. Diverting from his course will result in apples and understanding, yet he already sees that doing so will also make him feel bad.
Uncomfortable with the criticism his newly conscious mind or intellect is receiving from his instinctive self, Adam’s first response is to ignore the temptation the apples present and fly back on course. This makes his instinctive self happy and wins back the approval of his fellow storks, for not having conscious minds they are innocent, unaware or ignorant of the conscious mind’s need to search for knowledge. They are obeying their instinctive selves by following the flight path past the island. Further, since Adam’s instinctive self developed alongside the natural world, it too reminded him of his instinctive orientation and, in effect, joined in the criticism of Adam for his rebellious decision.
Flying on, however, Adam realises he can’t deny his intellect. Sooner or later he must find the courage to master his conscious mind by carrying out experiments in understanding. This time he thinks, ‘Why not fly down to an island and rest?’ Not knowing any reason why he shouldn’t, he proceeds with his experiment. Again, his decision is met with a chorus of criticism—from his instinctive self, the other storks that were ignorant of the need to search for knowledge, and the natural world. But this time he defies the criticism and perseveres with his experimentation in self-management. His decision, however, means he must now live with the criticism and immediately he is condemned to a state of upset. A battle has broken out between his instinctive self, perfectly orientated to the flight path, and his emerging conscious mind, which needs to understand why that flight path is the correct course to follow. His instinctive self is perfectly orientated, but Adam doesn’t understand that orientation.
In short, when the fully conscious mind emerged it wasn’t enough for it to be orientated by instincts. It had to find understanding to operate effectively and fulfil its great potential to manage life. Tragically, the instinctive self didn’t ‘appreciate’ that need and ‘tried to stop’ the mind’s necessary search for knowledge, as represented by the latter’s experiments in self-management. Hence the ensuing battle between instinct and intellect.
To refute the criticism from his instinctive self, Adam needed to understand the difference in the way genes and nerves process information. He needed to be able to explain that the gene-based learning system can, through natural selection, give species orientations to their environment, but that those orientations are not understandings. This means that when the nerve-based learning system gave rise to consciousness and the ability to understand the world, it wasn’t sufficient to be orientated to the world—understanding of the world had to be found. The problem, however, was that Adam had only just taken the first, tentative steps in the search for knowledge, and thus had no ability to explain anything. It was a catch-22 situation for the fledgling thinker, for in order to explain himself he needed the very understanding he was setting out to find. He had to search for understanding, ultimately self-understanding, understanding of why he had to ‘fly off course’, without the ability to first explain why he needed to ‘fly off course’. He couldn’t defend his actions. He had to live with the criticism from his instinctive self and, without that defence, was insecure in its presence.
To resist the tirade of unjust criticism that he was having to endure and mitigate that insecurity, Adam had to do something. But what could he do? If he abandoned the search and flew back on course, sure, he’d gain some momentary relief, but the search would nevertheless remain to be undertaken. So all Adam could do was retaliate against the criticism, try to prove it wrong or simply ignore it—and he did all of those things. He became angry towards the criticism. In every way he could he tried to demonstrate his self worth, to prove that he was good and not bad. And he tried to block out the criticism. He became angry, egocentric and alienated or, in a word, upset.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’ as ‘the conscious thinking self’, so ego is another word for the intellect. Thus the word ‘egocentric’ means the intellect became centred or focused on trying to refute the instincts’ criticism; it became focused on trying to prove its worth, prove that it was good and not bad. Adam Stork became preoccupied trying to validate himself, looking for a win, any positive reinforcement that would bring him some sense of worth.
Tragically, Adam Stork had no choice other than to resign himself to living a life of anger, egocentricity and alienation as the only three responses available to him to cope with the horror of his situation, his condition. It was an extremely unfair and difficult position for Adam to find himself in, for we can see that while he was good he appeared to be bad and had to endure the horror of his associated upset state until he found the defence or reason for his ‘mistakes’. But suffering upset was the price of his heroic search for understanding. It was an inevitable outcome in the transition from an instinct-controlled state to an intellect-controlled state. His uncooperative, divisive aggression and his selfish, egocentric efforts to prove his worth and his need to deny and evade criticism became an unavoidable part of his personality. Such was his predicament, and such has been the human condition, for it was in humans that the fully conscious mind emerged.
