The human condition is the human capacity to behave lovingly but equally maliciously. Only when we really explain this phenomenon will humanity be able to stop anger and go the way of love.
Imagine if we humans were guided only by our instincts. That would be very useful because it would make everything predictable. After all, an instinct is programmed. As a result, all people would exhibit almost identical behavior with which you can easily build a society. What's more, expanding is then superfluous because group life would simply be there. Call it the animal condition.
But, for about two million years now, we have not been taken by the hand solely by our instincts. The strong growth of our new brain (neocortex) has ensured this. Since that miraculous growth, we have been directed not in one but in two directions.
The first direction is that of the human instinct which cannot deviate from its genetic pathway. The second direction is set out by our intellect. Thus there is now a vast experimental space open to us in which the intellect can freely move in all directions.
The instinct is older and can neither learn nor understand. So instinct by definition has no understanding for that new intruder with a deviant and free dynamic.
Our static instinct cannot comprehend the deviant and free dynamics of the 'new invader', intellect.
The new intellect does want to learn, understand and experiment and to do this it must deviate from the tried and tested route of instinct. Suddenly it turns out that our good instincts are rigid. Yes, our instincts cannot help but criticize and even condemn the intelligent intruder. This, of course, is not done intellectually, but through intuition and an uneasy feeling. It is this disagreement that takes place in every self-conscious person. "Keep the rule!" But also: "Explore!" This conflict is no laughing matter.
The intellect has the thankless task of continuing that appalling quest for understanding and experimentation, despite the internal criticism and the instinctive urge to conform.
Look, this is exactly the subcutaneous tension that every person carries with them. We are being directed in two diverging directions. That unreal tension is the battle between our evolutionarily newfound intellect and our ancient instinct. Through our astonishing evolution, man leaves the predictability of the animal condition and is thrown without a manual into the deep waters of the human condition.
We are thrown into the deep waters of the human condition without a manual.
The human condition is our until recently inexplicable capacity to behave both good and evil. That evil behavior is compensation and camouflage for the dismay and frustration we reap from our conflicting direction.
Anyone who starts from evil behavior and does not know what is at the root of it, cannot but conclude prematurely that humans are poorly coded. Without the biological explanation of the human condition, without understanding this evolutionary transition, we are doomed to condemn ourselves as evil or failed creatures.
What keeps man in this impasse is the excuse that mechanistic biology has used, namely that our evil, self-centered and disturbed behavior arises from our animal condition to want to reproduce and defend our territory.
Only honest thinking will get us past this impasse. Only by incorporating the great questions of life and the great philosophical insights into the biological explanation of human behavior does the truth come into view.
A holistic explanation of the human condition can finally make us see how paralyzing it has been to keep swallowing the mendacious argument that humans are essentially competitive and aggressive because of underlying brutal animal instincts such as we find in other species. That statement ignores the demonstrable fact that our species had acquired morality before we had developed intellect.
Man's instinct is neither aggressive nor evil. On the contrary, our genetic tendency is cooperative and helpful in nature. We have developed our psychotic behaviour with the advent of our free intellect. We are not suffering from a genetic animal condition, but a psychological human condition!
We are not suffering from a genetic animal condition, but a psychological human condition!
The most important insight is now that our free thinking ability is not a faulty further development. On the contrary, the intellect is a godsend with infinite possibilities. Both controls are good. They are just unrecognised!
Yes, we are being directed in two directions, but whoever realises this and then understands that this conflict is inevitable, indeed necessary in the evolution of our species, is no longer off the map or dismayed. Understanding the cause of the struggle is then the start of the healing.
This statement makes us reluctantly understand that we are all fundamentally good, not bad! That changes everything! Then we'll be the heroes of the planet on the arduous quest to reconcile our two controls - the genetic and the neural.
We are the heroes of the planet with the most difficult task of understanding ourselves.
We can now argue that, in spite of our psychotic tendency to think and act evil, self-centered and superficial, we may now abandon the road of terror. This justifies our decision to no longer add to the inner psychosis or anguish of soul that is going on in our being from now on.
Now that we understand where our tendency to act evil, selfishly, superficially and pretentiously comes from, we do not have to follow an infinite therapeutic path, or to conform without explanation to the social delusions of the day. Understanding is necessary. Understanding is enough. Understanding is instant. Understanding is the key!
Now that our mind experiences saturation through real understanding, it can then look with compassion at the condemnation of our instincts. Thus will our instinct be freed from its anguish of soul. Thus man is finally reconciled!
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