Part 3:3 Only understanding of the human condition could end the march to ever greater levels of upset

Ideally what would have happened when Adam Stork began his search for knowledge was that he would have sat down with his instinctive self and explained to it why he had to fly off course. He would have explained that he was now a fully conscious, self-managing or self-adjusting being that had to experiment in understanding in order to master his conscious mind. He would have explained that he was using a fundamentally different information processing or learning tool to the one that developed instincts. And he would have explained that through the process of natural selection the gene-based learning system gave his instinctive self its perfect orientations to the world around it, but that the conscious mind that he was now using to manage his life was a product of the nerve-based learning system and its effectiveness depended on being able to understand the world around it.

To elaborate, nerves were originally developed for the coordination of movement in animals, but, once developed, their ability to store impressions—which is what we refer to as ‘memory’—gave rise to the potential to develop understanding of cause and effect. If you can remember past events, you can compare them with current events and identify regularly occurring experiences. This knowledge of, or insight into, what has commonly occurred in the past enables you to predict what is likely to happen in the future and to adjust your behaviour accordingly. Once insights into the nature of change are put into effect, the self-modified behaviour starts to provide feedback, refining the insights further. Predictions are compared with outcomes and so on. Much developed, and such refinement occurred in the human brain, nerves can sufficiently associate information to reason how experiences are related, learn to understand and become CONSCIOUS of, or aware of, or intelligent about, the relationship between events that occur through time. Thus, consciousness means being sufficiently aware of how experiences are related to attempt to manage change from a basis of understanding.

What is so significant about this process is that once our nerve-based learning system became sufficiently developed for us to become conscious and able to effectively manage events, our self-adjusting conscious intellect was then in a position to wrest control from the instinctive orientations we had acquired through the natural selection of genetic traits that adapted us to our environment. Moreover, at the point of becoming conscious the nerve-based learning system should wrest management of the individual from the instincts, which, up until then, had been controlling our lives, because such a self-managing or self-adjusting system is infinitely more efficient at adapting to change than the gene-based system, which can only adapt to change very slowly over many generations. However, while consciousness is the ability to understand the relationship of events that occur through time sufficiently well to attempt to manage and manipulate those events—and thus usurp management of the individual from the instincts—it still has to be able to identify the correct and incorrect understandings.

The problem, or catch-22 referred to earlier, was that when consciousness first appeared and wrested management from the instincts, the conscious mind had absolutely no understanding of genes and nerves and the different ways they process information. To use the analogy, Adam Stork had no ability to explain why he had flown off course, why he had defied his instincts. He was only just setting out on the great journey to find knowledge, ultimately sufficient knowledge to explain himself. He had no capacity to explain anything because the ability to explain and understand his world was what he was setting out to find. He needed knowledge to explain, defend and bring to an end his corruption, but he first had to suffer becoming corrupted through the process of finding that knowledge. At any time he could fly back on course and feel the relief of not being criticised, but to do so would mean abandoning the necessary search for knowledge.

The gene-based learning system can orientate species to situations but is incapable of insight into the nature of change. Genetic selection of one reproducing individual over another reproducing individual (in effect, one idea over another idea, or one piece of information over another piece of information) gives species adaptations or orientations—instinctive programming—for managing life, but those genetic orientations, those instincts, are not understandings. Thus, when the conscious mind emerged it had to set out in search of the knowledge it needed to manage change. It follows then that when our conscious mind emerged it was neither suitable nor sustainable for it to be orientated by instincts. It had to find understanding in order to operate effectively and fulfil its great potential to manage change, manage life. Since the conscious mind must surely be nature’s greatest invention, its failure to fulfil its great potential would, in truth, represent a failure of the whole story of life on Earth. The problem, however, was that when the conscious mind began to exert itself and experiment in the management of life from a basis of understanding in the presence of already established instinctive behavioural orientations, a terrible battle broke out between the two.

Our intellect began to experiment in understanding as the only means of discovering the correct and incorrect understandings for managing existence, but the instincts—being in effect ‘unaware’ or ‘ignorant’ of the intellect’s need to carry out these experiments—opposed any understanding-driven deviations from the established instinctive orientations: they ‘criticised’ and ‘tried to stop’ the conscious mind’s necessary search for knowledge. Unable to understand and thus explain why these experiments in self-adjustment were necessary, the intellect had no way of refuting the implicit criticism from the instincts even though it knew it was unjust. Until such time that the conscious mind found the redeeming understanding of why it had to defy the instincts (namely the scientific understanding of the difference in the way genes and nerves process information, that one is an orientating learning system while the other is an insightful learning system), the intellect was left having to endure a psychologically distressed, upset condition, with no choice but to defy that opposition from the instincts. As just stated, this defiance expressed itself in three ways: it attacked the instincts’ unjust criticism; it attempted to prove the instincts’ unjust criticism wrong; and it tried to deny or block from its mind the instincts’ unjust criticism. In short, humans’ upset angry, egocentric and alienated human-condition-afflicted state appeared. Our ‘conscious thinking self’, which again means ‘ego’, became ‘centred’ or focused on the need to justify itself. We became ego-centric, self-centred or selfish, preoccupied with aggressively competing for opportunities to prove we are good and not bad—we unavoidably became selfish, competitive and aggressive. The so-called Seven Deadly Sins of the human condition, of lust, anger, pride, envy, covetousness, gluttony and sloth, are in truth all different manifestations of the three fundamental upsets of anger, egocentricity and alienation.

Significantly, while we could learn to manage our upset, find ways to contain, restrain and thus slow its pace, the increase in upset could only ever be stopped through finding understanding of why upset occurred. In the Adam Stork analogy, Adam couldn’t silence the upsetting criticism emanating from his instinctive self until he could explain why he had to fly off course. A terrible journey of suffering lay ahead for conscious humans because, as will be explained later, it took the human race some two million years of enquiry to finally assemble the liberating true explanation of our psychologically distressed, upset human condition.

The human condition is shot through with paradox: to become happy we had to first endure unhappiness; we appeared to be bad but believed we were good; we are intelligent, smart and clever but, by all appearances, behave in a most unintelligent, stupid way that has brought the world to the brink of destruction. The human situation appeared to be so complicated and insoluble, which is why Tim’s climbing rope analogy is so powerful. How could we possibly make sense of the seemingly impenetrable mystery of human life, and yet the answer—the ‘unlocking point’—seems so simple and obvious in hindsight. Recall Huxley’s famous response to Darwin’s idea of natural selection: ‘How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!’