1983 Submission to the journals Nature and New Scientist by Jeremy Griffith, titled “Free: The End of the Human Condition – The Summary”

 

In 1983 Jeremy Griffith travelled to London from Australia to personally submit to Nature and New Scientist magazines the following ‘Summary’ of a book titled Free: The End of The Human Condition that he hoped to find a publisher for. (This book was eventually published in January 1988 by the Centre for Humanity’s Adulthood (CHA) that Jeremy established in 1983 to promote study of the human condition. In 1991 the CHA was incorporated as a non-profit organisation and re-named the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA), which in 2009 became the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT (WTM).)

Unfortunately, despite personal representations by Jeremy to John Maddox, the then editor of Nature magazine, and to Colin Tudge, the then Features Editor of New Scientist magazine, Jeremy’s submission was rejected by both journals. John Maddox (later Sir John Maddox) repeatedly said to Jeremy that the foundation idea of all Jeremy’s thinking, of Integrative Meaning or the development of order of matter that arises from the law of Negative Entropy, is ‘wrong’ (from audio recording of the 15 Dec. 1983 meeting). Basically Jeremy couldn’t get to ‘base one’, couldn’t get his explanations ‘off the ground’ with Maddox—such has been the extent of the denial by mechanistic, reductionist science of any truths that bring the issue of the human condition into focus. It was this type of experience of evasion and denial by mechanistic science that taught Jeremy he would have to be self-sufficient in developing these ideas and taking them to the world. Since then, Jeremy has been drawing up his battle plans to overthrow the world of denial (because that is what is perpetuating the suffering in the world now that understanding of the human condition has been found). The exposé of humanity’s denial and the way to cope with that exposure that is set out in FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition and the Freedom Essays represents the frontal assault of those plans.

What is so interesting about this submission is that it shows that Jeremy had basically worked out all the answers to the fundamental questions in the human story in the brief period between 1975 and 1983 when Jeremy submitted his ‘Summary’. 1975 is when Jeremy begun formulating his thinking and writing about the human condition and first wrote to the famous philosopher Edward de Bono to share some thoughts he’d had about why humans weren’t ideally behaved. (Jeremy chose to approach de Bono because of de Bono’s recognition of the power of lateral thinking or imagination or free thinking—something Jeremy had always been recognised as having a lot of when he was at school, even though he was not considered a clever student. De Bono had written that ‘often the pupil who is not considered bright will be the best thinker’.) It was from this early thinking in 1975 that Jeremy developed all the ideas that are present in this 1983 submission, and it can be seen that very little has been changed or added since then. Basically the four great outstanding mysteries in science—of the explanation of the human condition, the meaning of our existence, the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and why humans became conscious when other animals haven’t, were worked out in those amazing eight years from 1975 when Jeremy was 29 years old, to 1983 when he was 37! In that period Griffith also established the furniture design and manufacturing business (click here to read about Griffith Tablecraft) that was to fund the Centre for Humanity’s Adulthood (now the WTM).

Interestingly, in a WTM meeting in March 2012, Jeremy made this comment about this 1983 submission: ‘I think it will be many, many years after the main ideas in the 1983 Nature magazine submission (of the acknowledgment of Integrative Meaning, of the explanation of the human condition, of the explanation of the origin of our moral sense and of the explanation for how we humans became conscious when other animals didn’t) have been recognised in the scientific community that the real depth of insight, clarity of thought and originality in this submission will be appreciated.’

The only element in this Summary that has changed since 1983 is the idea that it was the need to develop cooperation from having to adapt to savannah conditions that led to the love-indoctrinated integration of our forebears. Rather than having to adapt to savannah conditions, it was the opportunity that love-indoctrination itself provided to develop integration that led to the integration of our forebears.

The ‘Summary’ article was submitted to Nature magazine on 5 December 1983 (their reference G-12057 JM/​MS) and to New Scientist magazine on 5 December 1983.

The submission follows.

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Griffith, [Address at the time], Sydney. Australia, Ph. Australia [number]

 

Copyright © 1983 Jeremy Griffith28 November 1983

 

 

FREE

The End of the Human Condition

 

‘The Summary’

 

We have found the reason which is the explanation and not another false excuse for the way we are and so ends criticism or guilt and thus ambivalence, anger and wars on earth. This is the reconciliation of biology, theology and philosophy. It brings an end to the human condition and to humanity its freedom.

 

 

Framework:

The Trinity

1. ‘The Meaning of Existence’

 

The Two Refinement Mechanisms

 

2. Genetic Refinement

 

Genetic Refinement’s Limitations

 

3. Brain Refinement

 

Brain Refinement’s Limitations

 

First Solution: Instincts

 

Instincts encounter Genetic Limitations

 

Second Solution: ‘Love-Indoctrination’ which was Humanity’s Infancy

 

Humanity’s Childhood

 

‘Love-Explanation’  which  was  Humanity’s Adolescence. The

Human Condition and our Alienation explained.

 

 

 

‘The Meaning of Existence’

 

To begin with, the ingredients of our world are energy, matter (both forms of energy) space and time, with information being the change in the relationships of this matter in time and space subjected to the laws of physics. The key question is what happens to the relationships of matter in space and time. Nobel laureate Dr Ilya Prigogine pointed out that the residue effect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics operating in an open system, such as Earth’s, is the development of order of matter in time and space. This is the developments of the growth in space of larger amounts of stably associated matter and the refinement in time of more stable arrangements of matter. In systems language, which is our new unevasive language of description, this is the development of systems of matter, or development. Thus the meaning of or theme to or underlying ‘force’ in ‘existence’, which we have long metaphysically personified as ‘God’, is to develop the order or integration of matter.

We have evaded admission of this purpose, which is the development of integration, and of its reconciliation with ‘God’ because we have not been able to explain why, we humans practiced divisiveness. If we admitted to integrative meaning without explanation for our divisiveness we only added to and did not solve our self-criticism or sense of guilt. This is the paradox within which we have struggled. Before we (humanity) and thus science could admit to meaning and purpose we had to be able to explain rather than criticise our condition. We had to explain what we metaphysically referred to as ‘the origin of sin’. Almost invariably those areas of inquiry that remained controversial were those areas where exposure threatened. We had to get through to the whole truth because partial truths often left us criticised. Criticising partial truths had to be evaded.

The way we scientifically evaded the existence of development and thus purpose was to admit only that there had been change which we said was without meaning or purpose and which we called ‘evolution’. Evolution was our evasive scientific word for development, while ‘God’ was our safely abstract (sufficiently remote not to directly criticise us) ‘fundamental’ admission of the ‘absolute’ fact of development and thus purpose. In this way, with the absolute truths as goals there before us, but with sustaining false excuses or evasions for our condition, we progressed in hope and faith. We progressed towards eventual enlightenment when we would become not only in ‘Gods image’ but ‘like God knowing’, that is understanding. (Genesis 1:27 and 3:5). This moment of reconciliation has now arrived.

The hierarchy of development of systems or of integration has been: energy → (integrates to form) fundamental particles → simple nuclei → complex nuclei → atoms or the 109 known elements → molecules → compounds → virus like organisms → single celled organisms → multicellular organisms ‘A’ → specie societies or specie individuals (the integration of multicellular organisms) → integration of all specie species (‘when the wolf will lie down with the lamb’) → integration of all things (the maturation of the development [of order] of the universe or ‘peace on earth’ and ‘in heaven’).

Humans are currently in the final stage of the development or integration of the specie individual of humanity (transition point ‘A’).

 

The Two Refinement Mechanisms

 

There are two main mechanisms of the refinement and thus development of the integration of matter—of learning ‘Godliness’. These are natural selection of arrangements of matter or of information, and following this mental or intellectual or brain selection of information.

 

Genetic Refinement of the Integration of Matter

 

Initially information refinement proceeded by ‘chance’. ‘Random’ formations of molecules occurred and were destroyed. The information represented by each arrangement was confined to each system of matter. Then this ‘random selection’ of information was improved upon with the advent of reproduction of information. This was initiated with DNA replication. This incidentally is the advent of what we call ‘life’, which is now an unnecessary demarcation to make in the story of development. Reproduction of information meant the separation of information from matter. A zebra might die but the stability ‘idea’ or system that is the zebra species survives, although modified or refined by the loss of that zebra.

At first reproduction was asexual but then it became sexual because the mixing of genes in mating contributed extra variety to select from, thus speeding up refinement considerably.

The ‘natural selection’ of arrangements for their stability or lastingness can also be called ‘genetic learning’ since genes are where the information is recorded.

 

Genetic Refinement’s Limitations

 

Genetic refinement has three important limitations to learning about stability and thus to developing ‘Godliness’ or integration or order, between multicellular animals.

 

First Limitation

 

In natural selection the male and female constitute the reproductive whole and this must remain selectable. Natural selection selects wholes it cannot select/​compare parts of a whole. This means the specie members cannot become exclusively specialised as a part of a larger specie individual. There are two exceptions. They are where the specialisations are sex linked or exclusive to one or other of the sexes and where the member becomes part of an ‘elaborated reproductive unit’.

Ant and bee colonies are able to integrate by elaborating the reproductive unit. Workers and soldiers have their sexual development retarded thus ‘enslaving’ them to their queen. This practice is not possible for large animals because it drastically reduces the variety of the species on which genetic refinement depends. For example, instead of 1000 sexual individual buffaloes (i.e. 1000 reproductive units) being sustained on the African plain there would only be say 10, each with 100 workers.

Not being able to develop exclusive division of labour or exclusive specialisation denies a species the ability to more efficiently organise its use of available resources and this limits integration or development. In particular where each member of the developing specie system or individual has to remain a whole and do everything itself and not specialise, there is going to develop conflict or competition. The integrating members each have to remain capable of getting their own food, space, shelter and a mate. This normally means they have to remain relatively isolated from each other, non-social and disintegrated because increased proximity normally means increased competition between the members for available food, shelter and space. However this problem of having to remain isolated can be overcome to varying degrees and some integration achieved. Lions are able to become social since they each benefit from hunting together. The final limit to integration derives from the fact that only the quest for a mate is always advantaged by development of integration of the members. The more they find ways to integrate the more opportunity there is for male-female contact leading to mating but also for male-male contact leading to divisive competition for each mating opportunity. In the end the break out of sexual or mating opportunism becomes so intense that it brings a halt to further development of integration of the species.

Amongst larger animals the two genetic refinement devices for containing sexual opportunism have been:

a. Delayed sexual maturation such as occurs in the Australian Bower bird, where sexual maturity and with it sexually mature plumage in the males, does not occur until six years after the birds have otherwise grown up.

b. Common or shared-by-all cooperative traits. The common cooperative trait most used is the dominance convention which orders and thus minimises the friction or conflict arising from sexual opportunism.

The problem with dominance hierarchy is that it eventually leads to a serious drop in variability and to counter-act this, anti-dominance conventions develop. These include exogamy conventions, incest taboos and monogamy conventions.

These common cooperative conventions are genetic traits held by many or all members of the group. They are genetically learnt cue-triggered behaviour patterns specific to one form of the problem and this is their limitation. The reason they are specific is that genetic refinement cannot learn insights or laws or generalisations. Because they are not a general solution to sexual opportunism, it keeps breaking out in other forms.

Thus the available devices of delayed sexual maturation and common cooperative conventions were only of limited effectiveness in overcoming the mating opportunism. This is the impasse which holds back squabbling wolf packs, herd animals and other highly social non-human species in their efforts to learn to integrate or to please ‘God’.

 

Second Limitation

 

Non-reproducing altruistic traits cannot be learnt. This means that genetic refinement cannot learn altruism on its own. It is impossible for an animal to learn genetically to give its life to preserve its integrated group or society. Full commitment to integration cannot be learnt genetically. Stressing gene selfishness, as the evasive theory of sociobiology does, is to emphasise this flaw in the genetic mechanism rather than the nature of the development or the overall goal at which the mechanism is directed.

‘Apparent’ altruism exists amongst genetically refined animals. Two examples are informative:

1. A lookout bird drawing attention to itself and thus exposing itself to danger and even, at times, death to give a warning squawk to its flock is really a display of a cooperative or integrative trait which is common or shared by other members. On average, each member benefits more from the shared trait of giving warnings than it loses on the few occasions when it happens to be the one to have to give the warning. In this way a degree of integration has been able to be genetically achieved because the requirement for the information to reproduce is still being met. Such traits can only become established as common and thus individually beneficial in the group if they are not always fatal before they reproduce.

2. A mother bear defending her cubs to the death. In this situation we are looking squarely at ‘gene selfishness’ on its own. In maternalism, there is no direct genetic integrative intention as there is in common cooperation. The nature of the genetic learning mechanism of replication or reproduction is that it separates information from matter. It is the information encoded in the genes which carries on rather than the generational manifestation of that information.

The reason for this separation of information from matter is that it allows information to be modified or refined. It allows an arrangement of a system of matter to adapt to the present and thus persist in time and, where possible grow in size. Genetic refinement allows an arrangement of matter (information) to develop and not break down—is concerned with developing order or integration not disorder.

 

Third Limitation

 

Only the past experience can be compared with the present experience. Other events through time cannot be compared. This means species cannot learn genetically to understand what happens through time and thus cannot refine anticipation of what is likely to happen in the future.

Species bring their past self to the present and through selection alter themselves to fit the present needs. They abandon the past for the present. In fact if the influences of the present circumstances were to stay the same for long enough, species would eventually shed all the variety from which they derive their changeability and become overspecialised.

Further it is only by chance that a genetically learning species may happen to conform with the future. Genetically the right present needs have to occur by ‘chance’ for a species to be prepared for the future—for ‘God’ or purpose or the objective of existence to have the opportunity to be fulfilled. As a consequence species often wander up what we have come to recognise biologically as blind or dead end evolutionary paths.

 

Brain Refinement of the Integration of Matter

 

Unlike genetic information refinement brain information refinement can compare the present with the past as well as the past with the present. It can learn about the relationship of events throughout time. Brain refinement can reflect on change itself.

While genetic refinement separates information from matter, brain refinement is able to separate information from influence. A brain records or makes a nerve pathway model or image of an experience that is stored, and it can then compare the stored image separately from its source. The depository or storage of models in the brain is memory. In brain learning the various nerve information recordings or experiences are compared for their relationship with each other, which means events through time are compared.

In the brain nerve network of pathways, incoming experiences can be considered to be recorded or inscribed each as a particular pathway through the network of pathways. The pathways of different experiences overlay where they share the same information. The value of recording information this way is that it allows related aspects of experience to be related. The area in our brain where information is related is in fact called ‘the associating area’. Where parts of an experience are the same, they share the same pathway and where they differ their pathways differ or diverge. All the nerve cells in the brain are interconnected. Thus, with sufficient input of experience onto the nerve network, and sufficient nerve network similarities or consistencies in experience will show up on the network as well-used pathways—as pathways that have become highways.

Further, because duration of nerve memory is related to use, our strongest memories will be of these highways of greatest relationship. Thus experiences not only become related or associated in the brain they also become simplified or concentrated so that the brain gradually forgets or eliminates inconsistencies or irregularities between experiences and thus deduces the common features in experiences. Subsequently with these insights connected to effector muscles in the animal, the self-modified behaviour will feed back, refining the insights further. Predictions are compared with predictions leading all the way to the deduction of meaning to all experience, which is to integrate.

These correlations or consistencies or regularities or ‘highways’ that are found between events through time we call insights. Once we can deduce these insights or laws between events through time we are in a position to predict or anticipate the likely change of events in the future. We can learn to understand what happens through time—we can learn or refine meaning to existence. It is brain refinement that enables us to learn to become ‘like God knowing’ which is understanding of the meaning of existence. Genetic refinement can orientate us to the present but only brain refinement can allow us to learn about change itself. A brain deduces the purpose to existence or the design inherent in change in information through time—it learns the predictable regularities in experience.

 

Brain Refinement’s Limitation

 

Nerves were originally developed as connections for the coordination or integration of cells in multicellular animals. Through natural selection the nerve connections between stimulus and response parts of the body were gradually organised or adapted or refined to the organism’s reproductive advantage. This is the first use that was made of nerves and the resulting nerve learnt behaviour we call reflexes.

The next opportunity for development using nerves arose from the coincidental ability of nerves to remember. It was found by animal species with their member’s coordinating nerves, that when an electric impulse passed along a nerve pathway it left a recording of its passage in the nerve pathway which could be used again later. This ability to store impressions formed the basis of memory which formed the necessary basis for brain refinement.

The limitation of brain learning was that it was confined to each animal. It was self-learning by experiment, and if any experiment resulted in its self-destruction then the self-learning came to nothing. With genetic learning the inevitable mistakes or deaths or eliminations which form the mechanism of its learning did not matter since there were multiple copies of the information. The equivalent situation for genetic refinement would be the elimination of the species every time a fatal mistake was made by a member. Every time brain refinement made a fatal mistake it self-eliminated, so how was it ever to get under way and survive all the millions of errors in its trial and error experiments? The solution was the formation of a highly integrated alliance between the genes and the brain. This alliance had two stages of development. The first was instinct and the second was love-indoctrination.

 

First Solution: Instincts

 

Initially the dangerous self-adjustment mistakes simply occurred, with the result that those who made them died. Eventually those varieties of members which happened to have genetic characteristics or propensities resisting those particular self-adjustment mistakes survived. In some cases these naturally selected restraints or shepherdings would have been morphological. For example, if the self-destructive mistake was taking the body or genetic animal for a walk over a cliff, a morphological safeguard against this may have been to ‘naturally select’ members with short legs who could not climb around in mountainous places. In other cases, the genetic shepherdings were the establishment of reflexes, where the nerve pathways themselves were organised against certain brain misadventure through selection.

As soon as a nerve net (primitive nervous system) appeared in animals to coordinate their cell’s activities, their capacity to temporarily remember impulses through their pathways would have appeared. As a consequence, the relating of rememberings and thus early self-alterations or anticipations or predictions would have begun. Predictable regularities or insights were made in the mind and acted on (that is anticipations made) and genetic refinement learnt to block any self-eliminating mistakes. As the brain developed so the genes ‘watched over it’ and brought it under control so that gradually the species learnt to safely anticipate or safely self-change its behaviour according to regularities which emerged in its nervous system (i.e. according to understandings). A gradual, hand-in-hand process of the genes ‘following’ the brain occurred, shepherding it from self-elimination and reinforcing successful self-alterations.

These genetic shepherdings are called instincts. To illustrate an instinct recall it was suggested that short legs could have developed to stop brains taking their bodies for a walk off a cliff. In fact it was not a morphological restraint but an instinct which developed to ward against this mistake. Visual cliff experiments with young animals show that they are born with an innate knowledge stopping them from going over the edge.

 

Instincts Encounter Genetic Limitation

 

Through the development of instinctive orientations, the brain was allowed to develop. The difficulty was that such dependence on the genes to watch over the brain was only satisfactory up to the point where the genetic limitations to learning integration were encountered. Dependence on genetic refinement meant that its problems were inherited.

Genetic refinement is unable to learn about change. It is so preoccupied with the present that, for the future to be satisfied, it has to happen by chance that what a species learns for the present also suits the future. With the genes following and watching over the brain, this situation is reversed. The brain makes anticipations about the future but the genes are only affected by how well the self-change meets the species present need, which is to maintain its chances of reproducing.

This means instincts effectively block the brain from making the understandings which are fundamentally important to integration, being exclusive specialisation and altruism. Any instincts which reinforced truly selfless thoughts reinforce their own elimination and so never develop.

The genes cannot shepherd the brain towards an understanding of integrativeness which underlies all experience. The brain cannot make information relate beyond a superficial level. Self-consciousness or self-awareness is blocked since consciousness depends on being able to understand at least the relationship of the self to immediate events.

This is where the majority of animals are stalled in their development today. If we look into a cow’s or cat’s eyes we see a confused mind struck dumb by this impasse. What then sheltered or looked after the self-elimination danger of the brain all the way to complete integration?

 

Second Solution: Love-Indoctrination which was Humanity’s Infancy

 

A situation was encountered earlier where a mother bear was capable of learning genetically to sacrifice her life to protect her young and thus the reproduction of her genes. It is in this situation of maternalism that the opportunity existed to learn complete integration. While this situation is a case of reciprocity or gene selfishness it is, in appearance or outwardly, completely selfless behaviour.

The following analogy will help to explain this integrative opportunity of maternalism further. In an acorn tree the growing acorn seed and its mother tree are two separate, although related, individuals. Behaviourally the mother tree is altruistically or selflessly looking after the young acorn seed even though genetically it is acting selfishly by fostering its genes in its offspring. Imagine that we could give the acorn seed a self-learning device or brain so that it could learn in its own lifetime. During its maternal bonding period to its apparently selfless mother what would it learn? It would learn pure altruism or integrativeness or how to be utterly cooperative or selfless. It would be taught or trained in love. It would be love-indoctrinated. Further, extending the period the acorn seed spends on the tree before it is shed would increase the amount of love-indoctrination training the seed would get.

Consideration for the larger whole above self is what love is and is what maintains an integrated larger whole. Love is the fundamental principle of integration. Love is another word for unconditional selflessness or altruism.

Of course it was not in a plant such as an acorn tree but in animals where the self-learning brain existed, that love-indoctrination was possible. While babies are completely dependent on their mother’s apparent selflessness or generosity or love their brains are being trained in that selflessness or integrativeness. Having been so trained in infancy they will then behave integratively as adults. The longer they can be kept in infancy the more they can be love-indoctrinated and the more they will practice selflessness or love or cooperativeness as an adult and the more integrated groups of large multicellular animals will appear. After a while the ‘genes following the brain’ will reinforce this process and make love an instinctive expectation.

How could selfish genes reinforce a non-selfish process? Primarily by encouraging maternalism itself. Gradually instinctive reinforcements emerged which identified or recognised what was going on. We self-selected by seeking in mate selection the members who were loving. Above all these were those who had spent a long time in infancy and who were closer to their memory of infancy (i.e. younger). The effect was to retard our development so that we stayed as infants when adult. We became infant-like adults. This explains our recognition of neotenous looks of a cute small nose and large eyes as being beautiful. This also explains our loss of body hair and tells us when it occurred. The outward effect was that we became infant looking. We self-selected for what we now recognise as innocence. Later, during humanity’s adolescence we would become upset and resentful of innocence such that this cultivation of innocence would become perverted and instead of cultivating it we would seek to destroy it.

So the first thing love-indoctrination could achieve was complete integration or cooperation. As well, however, love-indoctrination had a remarkable side effect. It liberated a brain from instinctive blockage to think clearly. The effect of love-indoctrination on the brain was that truly selfless integrative thinking was at last being promoted which liberated the mind to think properly/​soundly and thus effectively and so become conscious (of the real relationship of events through time). Consciousness is the essential characteristic of mental infancy.

The ‘trick’ here was that maternalism was genetically selfish and thus reproducing and thus genetically encourageable but from an observing mind’s point of view it was selfless behaviour and so encouraged the development of understanding which was otherwise blocked. So the second thing love-indoctrination did was correctly orientate or nurture a mind.

The essential requirement to develop love-indoctrination was the ability to look after a long-infancied neotenous and thus helpless infant. In fact to ascertain a species’ level of intelligence we have only to ascertain its ability to look after a helpless infant. Whales leave their polar feeding waters and travel all the way to protected inlets and warm water latitudes where they experience starving conditions to calve, because only by doing this can the species develop some love-indoctrination or training in cooperativeness or integration and thus coincidentally liberate their minds to some extent to think effectively. However nothing compares to freedom of arms for ability to look after a helpless infant and thus develop love-indoctrination, which was why the primates have been able to develop so much intelligence. Due to their arboreal heritage of armswinging semi-upright mode of movement through trees, their arms were already partially freed from walking. This was the critical factor or prime-mover in mind development and incidentally it means we would have learnt to walk upright early in this infancy period.

As well as the exceptional facility to look after a helpless infant, the exceptional need to develop cooperation is also required for mind development. Gorillas are comfortably hidden away in the jungle living on abundant giant celery. The other great apes are living relatively safely in forests. The exceptional need for cooperation occurred in a tree-living monkey-like primate called Ramapithecus some 12 million years ago. At this time due to cooling world climatic conditions and thus shrinking forests Ramapithecus was forced to abandon life in the trees and adapt to savannah conditions. Unable to run fast or defend itself with sharp teeth as other savannah-adapted animal species were able to do, it was forced to depend upon and thus develop cooperation as its means of survival.

Further, for the process of love-indoctrination to be carried to completion, ideal nursery conditions are required and apparently such luxurious conditions were available only in one part of Ramapithecus’ range. This was the aptly described ‘Cradle of Mankind’—the Rift Valley of Africa near the warm equator. At this time the nurturing of the infants was our priority concern and so throughout humanity’s infancy and childhood, from 12 million years to 2 million years ago, humanity was matriarchal. In this sense, women created humanity. However patriarchy was just around the corner, when humanity entered the agony of adolescence.

The maturation periods of infancy, childhood and adolescence which have now been mentioned, relate to the various stages of the emergence of brain understanding capability or self-realisation—specifically of self-consciousness (infancy) followed by self-confidence (childhood) followed by self-orientation or identity search (adolescence) followed by self-implementation (adulthood) and self-fulfilment (maturity).

We thought for a long time that only humans could reason and then it was discovered chimpanzees could think ahead ‘now if I put that box on top of that box I anticipate from experience that I will reach the bunch of bananas tied to the roof of the cage’. Such effective thought, and thus anticipation ahead, convinced us we were not the only animals who could reason or ‘think’ or effectively manage events through time. The great apes are about midway through the infancy stage in development of consciousness. They are where we were about 7 million years ago.

Infancy is the establishment of self-awareness or self-consciousness—of ‘I exist’ or ‘I am’ or ‘I’. Prior to the advent of love-indoctrination, the landscape of understanding of change—of the relationship of events surrounding the animal was just a fog with the mind unable to make sense of the swirling array of experiences in it. This picture or organisation of experiences had to steady a great deal for the brain’s mind or association or understanding capacity to reason out the animal’s immediate relationship to events surrounding it, thus allowing it to effectively manipulate events over the short term. Learning to relate events over the much longer term, ultimately over all time, had to develop later.

 

Childhood

 

By 5 million years ago we, humanity, had perfectly refined integrative instincts. During infancy our indoctrination in love became fully instinctively reinforced in us. Any anticipation, hence self-change of behaviour became completely integratively orientated or shepherded. By the end of infancy, whenever the mind thought integratively, the instincts in effect said “that’s right” and whenever it thought divisively the instincts in effect said “that’s wrong”.

Importantly it was by chance that Ramapithecus needed to be integrative to survive and not because the mind understood that the meaning underlying change was integration. The integrativeness was a genetically imposed orientation not a self-understood insight.

Childhood was spent living idyllically in complete integration. We lived then in the shelter (on the apron strings) of our ‘mother’, love-indoctrination who looked after us—who told us how to behave. Our whole instinctive memory of our infancy and childhood constitutes our soul. The integrative behavioural orientation or guidance component of our soul, we call our conscience.

With the difficult period of the nurturing of the brain refinement facility or mind or spirit completed by 5 million years ago, Ramapithecus began to multiply or flourish. This naturally occurs following the completion or fulfilment of any opportunity for genetic development when survival stability or relative non-change returns to the species. Implicit here is the explanation for so called ‘punctuated equilibrium’ or spasmodic ‘evolution’. This population explosion marked the first major success for brain development and the transition of humanity from infancy to childhood. As a consequence of this multiplication in numbers, numerous fossils have been found of Childman. We call them australopithecines and they lived in what we instinctively ‘remember’ as paradise and have had described in the Bible as ‘The Garden of Eden’. This was the time when we finally became as God or development wanted us, integrative, in the ‘image of God’. Humanity’s childhood was spent in an idyllic world which we can now at last return to, where our behaviour towards each other was utterly integrative giving and loving or unconditionally selfless. Our childhood lasted from 5 million years to 2 million years ago.

The emergence of self-confidence is the characteristic of childhood: ‘look at me, I can jump puddles’. Infancy was inward receiving orientated while childhood was outward applying orientated. Infancy was about ‘I am’ and childhood was about ‘I can’ or demonstrativeness. Childhood was the development of self-confidence—of reinforcement of what our mental self could do.

In adolescence, as we shall see, we had to find understanding, but in childhood our self-management mistakes had not yet got out of hand so that we did not need to understand. In childhood we were innocent of the responsibility that came with this free will—with this wondrous ability to do whatever we liked with ourselves and our world. Self-management during childhood was only dabbled in. We still depended on our ‘mother’, love-indoctrination instincts, for safe passage through life, but we were beginning to investigate the limits of this power to anticipate.

By midway through childhood the emerging self-management capability and thus independence from instinct started to get Childman into trouble. Innocent mistakes began to bring the self-management capability into conflict with our perfectly integrative instinctive conscience. These earliest self-management misadventures that we call naughtiness characterise late childhood. As the word ‘naughty’ implies they were not serious mistakes since at this stage our conscience could still repair and thus contain them.

Selfishness occurred again later in a deliberate form during humanity’s adolescence when compromise coercion became overwhelming, but its first occurrence since pre love-indoctrination times was in late childhood. The emerging self-management capability’s first mistake or misunderstanding was the obvious one. We saw ourselves as being ‘I’ before seeing ourselves as ‘we’. We saw ourselves as separate—we were selfish—we ‘took all the bananas for ourself’. The consequences of this early innocent selfishness were devastating because other members and our own conscience became extremely angered or upset by our outright selfishness. However we soon learnt the benefits of a more subtle form of selfishness. In reciprocity or conditional selfishness, the others were given some food also to stop them becoming angry and/​or in anticipation of sharing in their food later. However our conscience was not deceived and became increasingly hurt by these misadventures in self-management.

Early ‘prime of innocence Childman’ was Australopithecus afarensis. Middle ‘demonstrative Childman’ was A. africanus and late ‘naughty bullying Childman’ was A. robustus.

 

Adolescence and the Human Condition

 

While our tentative self-management experiments in late childhood were able to be repaired by the ‘greater love’ that existed then, our intelligence development and thus experimenting in self-management and thus self-management mistakes eventually became too great for our conscience to repair. This corruption break-out signaled the onset of adolescence and began the desperate search for answers or understanding or self-adjustment know-how or self-explanation. This gave rise to the need for self-expression which was the advent of language 1.9 million years ago.

Adolescence is when we encounter the real dangers of the power of free will to manipulate our world and thus the sobering responsibility of this ability and thus the need for answers to manage the ability. Childhood is concerned with self-discovery through self-demonstration while adolescence is concerned with self-orientation through self-experimentation or questioning. Childhood is ‘I can’ and adolescence is ‘But who am I’. In adolescence we begin to be frustrated with our lack of understanding and thus self-management ability. The game of self-management that existed in childhood became in adolescence a serious business.

Genetic refinement was able to separate information from matter and thus adjust the species to the requirements of the existing or present situation. However it was limited in that it could not separate information from influence, as brain refinement was able to do. The ability to process information separate from its influence allowed animals to learn about change itself and thus learn to anticipate. The ability to correctly anticipate the future—to learn to understand integrativeness as the purpose or meaning of existence and then self-adjust or self-manage so as to implement that objective is the ultimate development capability—is the time we become not just ‘as a God’, capable of pushing the world around, but ‘like God’ responsibly in charge of development. However to become responsible self-managers we had first to learn to understand existence and this is where a major conflict arose.

It was by chance that Ramapithecus needed to be integrative and not because the mind understood that the meaning underlying change was integration. Infantman became instinctively indoctrinated or trained in integrativeness or love but not understanding of integrativeness. The integrativeness was a genetically imposed orientation, not a self-understood insight. Genetic refinement adjusts to the present, which happened to be integrative. Our instinctive self or conscience can recognise non-integrative behaviour and is thus effective in criticism but it is completely deficient in explanation or reason or understanding.

This distinction between our instinctive integrative orientation and our self-adjusting or intellectual or conscious self is such a critical matter because it meant that during humanity’s adolescence we had to set out in search of self-adjustment understanding in order to be able to know how to correctly self-adjust. Our conscience could guide us safely through existence but it could not explain existence to us and without this we could not anticipate properly and thus self-adjust successfully. Our conscience or instinct gave us orientation but no answers. This left us with the task of having to find the answers.

The major conflict arose when the mind began to try to manage from a basis of attempted understanding of existence and in the process made mistakes in understanding, such as late childhood man’s innocent decision to take all the bananas for itself. The instincts then criticised these mistakes and tried to stop the experiments. Our conscience tried to stop self-adjustment development and yet we had to try to learn to self-adjust!

We were a self-adjusting system unable to successfully self-adjust and dependent on our love-indoctrination instinctive shepherding for guidance. However sooner or later, we had to grow up and leave the safety of our infancy and childhood home to shoulder the responsibility of being a self-adjusting system. We set out on the adventure to find our own identity and thus learn to cope on our own. The first bands of early Hominids (Adolescentman) left our ancestral home in Africa about 1.5 million years ago.

The first hominid was Homo habilis who was ‘sobered idealistic man’. Homo erectus followed and he was the ‘adventurous man’ who left Africa. Then came ‘angry man’ who was Homo sapiens and finally ourselves ‘exhausted or refined in alienation or sophisticated man’, Homo sapiens sapiens.

There are two sides to the adolescent situation. If it was not for the restraining presence of our safely orientating conscience we would have had no safe shelter or basis from which to search for understanding. Our conscience made our search possible. Thus for instance, it was the continual presence of the innocent—of our conscience—of idealism, within us and amongst us that served to save us from ourselves—from excessive mistakes and the consequential self-departure or corruption. However on the other hand we had also to defy our conscience to some degree to try to master self-adjustment.

It can be seen that the ‘origin of sin’ and thus our human ambivalence and thus our anger and aggression, is the conflict that developed when the mind began to search for meaning in the safe presence of the orientating but not understanding conscience. Every time we made a mistake our conscience criticised us even though we had to learn to understand change and in the process necessarily made mistakes. Our conscience was totally uncompassionate or unsympathetic towards self-management mistakes. Personally, as the meat in the sandwich, we were in the extremely difficult predicament of having to both defy our conscience and obey it! This was the human paradox within which we lived and struggled during adolescence that is what we have called our human condition. Within this predicament is the origin of criticism or sin or guilt and also on the other hand, the origin of defiance of criticism which is our human anger or aggression and resentment of criticism. For instance, the presence of innocence only represented the criticism we were trying to live with, and so we resented innocence, and so we tried to evade criticising innocence, and so we destroyed the innocent.

—We destroyed innocent animals (the advent of hunting and thus meat eating 1.9 million years ago).

—In perverted sex we destroyed the innocence of women. In this way when all things natural only criticised us and we felt disowned by the world, women came with us on ‘the long march’ through adolescence to bring us their warmth and ‘love’. During adolescence humanity changed from matriarchy to patriarchy. Males have the job of group overseers or protectors so it is the male who was charged with the task of going out to challenge this group-threatening lack of answers. Baboon males have to go out to fight the group-threatening marauding leopards and human males had to go out to fight the group-threatening battle for answers. Later this task translated as having to resist previous generations exhaustion and accumulated evasion or compromise coercion or ‘evil’. This became increasingly difficult and thus males became increasingly frustrated, angry and resentful of innocence as mistakes accumulated throughout adolescence.

—Innocent people were replaced by less innocent people. Less intelligent and thus more innocent people could not cope in the new reality of compromise and were replaced by more intelligent and thus more realistic people. Eventually 50 thousand years ago in Homo sapiens sapiens, development of IQ or speed of mental information processing came to a halt and a balance was struck between answer-finding but corrupting cleverness and non answer-finding but sound lack of cleverness. Since that time the less clever have been as important in development as the clever. The average IQ of humans today is that amount of IQ that is safely conscience subordinate.

—We destroyed the innocent original self or soul within ourselves by mentally forgetting it or blocking it out or evading it. Our incessantly criticising uncompassionate conscience hurt us terribly and so we repressed it, which is the origin of our alienation from self or self-separation or neurosis and incidentally of our subconscious self. Humanity has 2 million years of accumulated alienation from self. We are extremely exhausted, upset and angry but immensely heroic. Humanity has been 2 million years indefensible or insecure or egocentric.

The ideal solution to the paradoxical predicament of having to both defy our conscience and obey it was to have been balanced about it. If we obeyed our conscience completely we were safe for the present but we would not learn to understand existence, however if we were excessively free of the influence of our conscience we would make too many mistakes and depart too far from integrativeness. We needed to be free to a degree to experiment and try to self-manage and learn to understand but also restrained or conscience obedient to a degree. The trouble was that such an ideal development balance could not be precisely known and so it could only be found through oscillation—through pursuing freedom until we become obviously excessively mistake laden or corrupt and then changing to pursuing obedience to conscience until it, in turn, became too repressive of the need to understand and so on, back and forth. In politics, socialism and the left wing which stress obedience to absolutes, represents one side of the balance, while capitalism or the right wing, which stresses freedom from absolutes to find out, represents the other side of the balance. It was only the dialectic or oscillation from excesses that revealed the middle road, giving rise to bouts of excessive freedom and excessive oppression and thus conflict and argument and polarisation. We progressed by argument which, in the extreme, was war. It follows then that to end war or bring peace to earth the argument or polarisation had to be resolved. Mental understanding of change had to be reached which matched or explained the instinctively known absolutes, which here is at last achieved. This is the arrival of peace on earth. The realist and idealist, the right wing and left wing the young and the old and, above all, the ambivalence within ourselves are now reconciled. It is all over—development of understanding has concluded. Our divisiveness is now explained. Humanity’s fight is won. The human condition is resolved. Humanity is at last free.