Part 1.2  The true interpretation of the human condition

Identifying what the human condition really is begins by looking more closely at this must-reproduce-our-genes, ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘savage instincts’ explanation that we have been using for our competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour.

It is certainly true that we have been comfortably attributing our competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour to us humans having must-reproduce-our-genes, ‘survival of the fittest’, savage instincts like other animals. This ‘savage instincts’ reason is what we have been taught at school and what we hear in every documentary. Indeed, everywhere in articles we read and in our conversations we see and hear comments like: ‘We are programmed by our genes to try to dominate others and be a winner in the battle of life’; and ‘Our preoccupation with sexual conquest is due to our primal instinct to sow our seeds’; and ‘Men behave abominably because their bodies are flooded with must-reproduce-their-genes-promoting testosterone’; and ‘We want a big house because we are innately territorial’; and ‘Fighting and war is just our deeply-rooted combative animal nature expressing itself’. (I should mention that, as I explain in Part 9 of my book Death by Dogma, and in other presentations, while left-wing thinkers use the biologically impossible ‘group selection’ theory to claim we have some cooperative, selfless and loving instincts, they also say we have this competitive, selfish and aggressive ‘animal’ side, which the political philosopher Karl Marx limited to such basic needs as sex, food, shelter and clothing. To quickly explain ‘group selection’, while it is a seemingly plausible theory that a group that is cooperative will always be more successful and so reproduce their genes more than a group whose members compete with each other, this idea is actually false biology because, as the biologist Jerry Coyne pointed out, of ‘the tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruism through natural selection favoring cheaters [selfish, opportunistic individuals]’ (‘Can Darwinism improve Binghamton?’, The New York Times, 9 Sep. 2011).) Yes, ‘you can help me reproduce my genes but I’m not about to help you reproduce yours’ is the biological reality of the natural selection process.

byrdyak-stock.adobe.com; jeaneeem / Flickr

Most significantly however, as I point out in Part 1 of THE Interview I did with the British broadcaster and actor Craig Conway (which appears at the top of our World Transformation Movement homepage—and I will be suggesting various documents like this that provide helpful elaborations on what is being described as I progress through this book), this must-reproduce-our-genes, ‘savage instincts’ excuse cannot be the real reason for our species’ competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour because, after all, words used to describe human behaviour such as egocentric, arrogant, inspired, depressed, deluded, pessimistic, optimistic, artificial, hateful, cynical, mean, sadistic, immoral, brilliant, guilt-ridden, evil, psychotic, neurotic and alienated, all recognise the involvement of our species’ fully conscious thinking mind. They demonstrate that there is a psychological dimension to our behaviour; that we don’t suffer from a genetic-opportunism-driven ‘ANIMAL CONDITION’, but a conscious-mind-based, psychologically troubled HUMAN CONDITION—the source of which is what is going to be explained.

To clarify, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, ‘psychological’ means ‘relating to the human mind and feelings’. So yes, we suffer from a ‘mind and feelings’ situation, which, as we progress with this description of what the human condition really is, will be explained as our self-managing, knowledge-finding, fully conscious ‘mind’ being upset by criticising ‘feelings’ from our non-understanding, dictatorial instincts. But, as I say, that is yet to be explained—but yes, we suffer from a fully-conscious-‘mind’-involved-with-‘feelings’ psychological human condition, not a relatively-unconscious-mind-with-instincts-in-control animal condition.

Further, this idea that we have savage, must-reproduce-our-genes, competitive, selfish and aggressive instincts like other animals can’t be true because we humans actually have cooperative, selfless and loving moral instincts, the ‘voice’ or expression of which we call our conscience, which is the complete opposite of competitive, selfish and aggressive instincts! As Charles Darwin said, ‘The moral sense…​affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals’ (The Descent of Man, 1871, ch.4). Of course, to have cooperative, selfless and loving moral instincts our distant ape ancestors must have lived cooperatively, selflessly and lovingly, otherwise how else could we have acquired them? Our ape ancestors can’t have been brutal, club-wielding, competitive, selfish and aggressive savages as we have been taught, rather they must have lived in a Garden of Eden-like state of cooperative, selfless and loving innocent gentleness—which, as will shortly be evidenced, is a state the bonobo species of ape is currently living in, and which anthropological findings now evidence our species did once live in. For instance, anthropologists like C. Owen Lovejoy have reported that ‘our species-defining cooperative mutualism can now be seen to extend well beyond the deepest Pliocene [which is well beyond 5.3 million years ago]’ (Science, 2009, Vol.326, No.5949).

Group of bonobos

‘Breakthrough of the Year’: cover of the
December 2009 issue of Science magazine

Matternes’s reconstruction of the 4.4 mya
Ardipithecus ramidus in its natural habitat

So, saying our competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour comes from humans having savage, must-reproduce-our-genes, competitive, selfish and aggressive instincts is simply not true. What will become clear is that this was just a convenient excuse we used while we waited for the real explanation for our conscious-mind-based, deeply psychologically troubled human condition—which is what is going to be presented. I should also mention that shortly in Part 1.4 it will be explained how it was the process of prolonged nurturing that enabled our ape ancestors to overcome the genetic imperative to reproduce our genes and by so doing become cooperatively, selflessly and lovingly behaved. This nurturing is also how the bonobos were able to become so harmoniously behaved, as the nurturing mother bonobos in the photo above provides some evidence of. Again, this will all be explained in Part 1.4.

Coming back then to the question of what the human condition really refers to: being competitive, selfish and aggressive is what other animals are; what we humans are is far worse than just being competitive, selfish and aggressive because what we are is something seriously sinister! As has been pointed out, despite our species’ magnificent mental capabilities, and undeniable capacity for immense sensitivity and love, behind every wondrous scientific achievement, sensitive artistic expression and compassionate act lies the shadow of humanity’s darker side—an unspeakable history of greed, hatred, rape, torture, murder and war; a propensity for deeds of shocking violence, depravity, indifference and cruelty. It is true—undermining all our marvellous accomplishments and sensibilities is the fact that we humans have also been the most ferocious and malicious creatures to have ever lived on Earth! As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, ‘man is the only animal which causes pain to others with no other object than causing pain…​No animal ever torments another for the sake of tormenting: but man does so, and it is this which constitutes the diabolical nature which is far worse than the merely bestial’ (Essays and Aphorisms, tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1970, p.139 of 237).

Yes, being competitive, selfish and aggressive, which is what other animals are, doesn’t come anywhere near to the heart of the issue about us humans of why we are the way we are, which is psychologically distressed; in fact, psychologically deranged. And the eternal question has been why? What is the reason for our dual capacity for what is referred to in Genesis in the Bible as ‘good and evil’ in our make-up? Are we essentially ‘good’ and, if so, what is the cause of our dark, destructive, insensitive, cruel, seemingly ‘evil’ side? As mentioned, religious assurances—such as the idea that although we are ‘fallen’ and supposedly ‘sinful’ and ‘evil’, ‘God still loves us’—offered comfort, but ultimately we needed to know why we became ‘fallen’ and why we are lovable. Why do we thinking, reasoning, rational, immensely clever, supposedly sensible beings behave so abominably and cause so much suffering and devastation? What is the origin of the dark, volcanic forces that undeniably exist within us humans? What is it deep within us humans that has troubled us so terribly? What is it that makes us such combative, ruthless, hateful, retaliatory, violent, in truth psychologically disturbed beings?

Significantly, following a request in 1988 from TIME magazine to the renowned South African author Alan Paton to submit an essay on apartheid in South Africa, TIME instead received from Paton, and published in its place, a deeply reflective article on Paton’s favourite pieces of literature. In what proved to be the writer’s last publication, Paton wrote: ‘I would like to have written one of the greatest poems in the English language—William Blake’s “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright”, with that verse that asks in the simplest words the question which has troubled the mind of man—both believing and non believing man—for centuries: “When the stars threw down their spears / And watered heaven with their tears / Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the lamb make thee?”’ (25 Apr. 1988).

The reason Blake’s 1794 poem The Tyger resonated so strongly with Paton, and is one of the most famous poems in the English language (it has been described as ‘the most anthologized poem in English’ (The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves, 2003) and is a mainstay of the English curriculum in schools) is because of its profundity. The poem raises that fundamental question involved in being human of how could the nasty, mean, cruel, indifferent, ‘dark side’ of our psychological makeup—represented by the ‘Tiger’—be both reconcilable with and derivative of the same force that created ‘the lamb’ in all its innocence? (More from Blake’s poem The Tyger will be included and explained in paragraphs 130-131.)

Maria Lindsey/Pexels

Yes, that is the real question about us humans: why have we been not just competitive, selfish and aggressive, but so ferociously aggressive and brutal, so extremely self-preoccupied and selfish, and so deeply unaware and estranged from being able to feel for others—in fact, so psychologically angry, egocentric and alienated that life has become all but unbearable and we have nearly destroyed our own planet? Are we essentially bad, a flawed species, an evolutionary mistake, a blight on Earth, a cancer in the universe? Or could we possibly be sublimely wonderful (which is actually what we are going to be revealed as being). And, more to the point, is the human race faced with the prospect of having to live forever in this tormented state of uncertainty and insecurity about the fundamental goodness, worth and meaning of our lives? Is it our species’ destiny to have to live in a state of permanent damnation?! (As we will also see, most fabulously we ARE going to be able to free ourselves from this dreadful state!)

While religious assurances such as ‘God loves you’ may have provided temporary comfort, they failed to explain WHY we are lovable. So, WHY are we lovable? How could we humans be good when all the evidence seems to unequivocally indicate that we are a deeply flawed, bad, even evil species? What is the answer to this problem of ‘good and evil’ in the human make-up? What caused us to become so brutally divisively behaved? The agony of having been unable to truthfully (i.e., not resort to the ‘savage instinct’ excuse) explain our obviously extremely psychologically distressed lives has been a particular affliction and burden of human life, our seemingly horrifically flawed state or condition—our psychologically distressed ‘HUMAN CONDITION’.

So this is what ‘the human condition’ really is: our horrifically psychologically distressed, angry, egocentric and alienated state or condition—the biological origins and resolution of which will be presented. However, in order to do so, it is first necessary to explain two particular features of our lives. They are HOW HUMANS ACQUIRED OUR COOPERATIVE, SELFLESS AND LOVING MORAL INSTINCTS, and HOW HUMANS BECAME A FULLY CONSCIOUS SPECIES WHEN OTHER SPECIES HAVEN’T.