Part 8:4D Self-selection of integrativeness through sexual or mate selection

Part 8:4C provided a brief description of how our ape ancestors, and some other primate species living today, developed consciousness. What now needs to be explained is how this emerging consciousness began to support love-indoctrination’s development of selflessness, thus helping to both accelerate and maintain the development of the integration of our ape ancestors. To be more precise, I need to explain how the emerging consciousness enabled self-selection of integrativeness—especially through the sexual or mate selection by females of less competitive and aggressive, more cooperative and selfless and thus integrative males with which to mate.

In beginning this explanation it needs to be emphasised again that unconditional selflessness or love is the real objective of existence; it is the meaning of life. Having had to live in such deep denial of the integrative, selfless, loving theme of existence while we couldn’t explain our seemingly unloving, non-integrative, ‘unGodly’ human condition, it is now very difficult for the alienated human race to appreciate that selfless love is the obvious theme of existence and universal objective for behaviour. But the truth is that love, selflessness—in fact, unconditional selflessness or altruism or true kindness—is an extremely obvious theme and meaning of existence and objective for behaviour. Everything, all of life, is trying to develop order, is trying to integrate—is, in effect, desirous of achieving a state where love/​unconditional selflessness, and the fully integrated state that it makes possible, reigns.

The immense problem, however, for virtually all living organisms is that they have been ‘locked out’ of becoming fully integrated by the gene-based learning system’s inability (except through the use of love-indoctrination) to develop unconditional selflessness. While all living organisms owe their origins to the gene-based learning system, that system’s inability to develop unconditional selflessness ultimately limited the amount of order, the amount of integration, that they could achieve. It is as though the gene-based learning system has been a great tease: it gave life but prevented that life from achieving real harmony and peace. To use religious terminology, living things were allowed to approach the ‘Godly’, ‘heavenly’, fully integrated state but were then denied the opportunity to actually enter that state. This is the great problem, the great ‘agony’ of the ‘animal condition’: almost all animals have been ‘locked out’ of ‘heaven’. In fact, the ‘animal condition’ has, in its own way, been just as torturous as the ‘human condition’!

An excellent description of the agony of the ‘animal condition’ can be found in Part 3:11C where I discuss the extraordinary 30,000-year-old Neolithic cave drawings in the Chauvet Cave in southern France. I wrote there that when our current human-condition-afflicted minds become preoccupied with upset, with soul-repression or psychosis and thought-repression or neurosis, we lose the ability to take an interest in the world around us. The pain in our brain prevents us from truly feeling or seeing or engaging in our surroundings. It follows then that as the human race became more and more upset, so its ability to feel and savour the world around it shrank. So although the humans responsible for the drawings in the Chauvet Cave were not anything like as upset-free/​innocent as humans were two million years ago when upset first began to develop in earnest, their ability to draw the animals around them so vividly indicates they were much, much more innocent than humans today. Clearly alienation has increased at an extremely rapid rate in the final stages of humanity’s two-million-year journey to find self-understanding. When all the upset in humans subsides, as it now will with understanding of the human condition finally found, the world is going to open up for us humans enormously—we are going to be able to feel everything around us. We are going to have so much kindness and love and empathy for each other and our fellow creatures because we will, once again, be able to feel everything they are experiencing, including just how embattled the lives of other animals are. While the nurturing, love-indoctrination process enabled our ape ancestors to break free from the tyranny of genes having to ensure their own reproduction, other animals are stuck having to perpetually compete for food, shelter, territory and a mate; unlike humans, they can’t develop full unconditionally selfless cooperative instincts. And so, in the amazing Chauvet Cave drawings, above all else, it is this empathy with, this feeling for, the relatively short, brutish, forever-having-to-fight-for-your-chance-to-reproduce lives of animals that those who made these drawings have so sensitively expressed. You can sense the whole internal struggle of the animals’ lives in these drawings. Their huge chests heave with their brutal and tough battle to reproduce their genes—they are struggling so much to endure their lot it is as if they have asthma! One day, when we humans get over the terrible agony of our ‘human condition’, we will again be able to empathise with the terrible agony of the ‘animal condition’. It’s not very nice to have to belt the living daylights out of others to ensure your genes reproduce! It’s not at all easy being a non-human animal—and that is an extreme understatement! It was mentioned in Part 8:2, but it should be mentioned again here, that the competitive state that exists amongst animals obviously also exists amongst plants, insects and microbes, however, not having the developed nervous system of animals their awareness of the agony of that horrifically competitive existence could not be as great as it is for animals.

Yes, the ‘animal condition’, being ‘locked out’ of ‘heaven’, is an awful existence to have to endure—as I said, it’s as horrific in its own way as our current immensely upset and alienated ‘human condition’. We can appreciate therefore how immensely relieving it must have been when our ape ancestors were finally liberated from the agony of their ‘animal condition’! While love-indoctrination’s development of selflessness was a difficult and fragile process, once it succeeded in creating a selflessly trained and thus truthfully wired brain capable of the level of consciousness that we term ‘infancy’, the block to not being able to cultivate love/​unconditional selflessness and thus the fully integrated, ‘Godly’, ‘heavenly’ state was finally completely breached—the biological gate stopping the development of integration had finally been swung right open.

For a mind to be set free—both instinctively and consciously—must feel like the whole world has opened up, almost as if everything can be seen and experienced for the first time. Indeed, when humans leave behind the human condition (as now occurs when they take up the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING (see Section 3 of Freedom Expanded: Book 2), or even when they have a near-death experience) the world does suddenly open up, they can suddenly access feelings and sensitivities and awarenesses that are almost overwhelming in their intense beauty and excitement. Similarly, as explained in Part 7:1, when we humans fell in love we let go of our attachment to the human-condition-afflicted world of reality and allowed ourselves to dream of and be transported to a world free of the human condition, and again, the feelings we experienced in that state were overwhelmingly wonderful and thrilling. So it can be appreciated that species emerging from the stupor of the animal condition would similarly experience those exciting feelings and awarenesses that come from being liberated from an immensely oppressed situation and at last accessing the integrative, all-loving true world. But above all, it is the sheer excitement, thrill and power that comes with this freedom to finally be part of the all-loving, true world that would have given our ape ancestors, and be giving the bonobos today, the ability to finally stop being owned by the world of competition and change sides and take up support of the world of selfless love. And, as will be described shortly, it was the females who were the first to be able to begin to savour this amazing freedom from the competitive, have-to-reproduce-your-genes, fight-for-every-mating-opportunity animal condition and change sides and take up support of the loving, true world. As mentioned earlier, the normal situation amongst animals is for the females to taunt the males—letting them fight with each other ferociously, making them chase them endlessly, encouraging (in the case of birds) the growth of ever more exotic plumage, etc, etc—so that they can establish which is the strongest, most virile male to mate with, obviously to ensure their offspring will also inherit the strongest, most virile genetic make-up. So to have a change where instead of this competitive situation where the strongest and most aggressive males dominate and succeed in reproducing, the most gentle and least aggressive are successful and favoured, is a truly extraordinary turnaround.

Again, under the duress of the human condition, it is virtually impossible for humans today to appreciate the power that comes with being able to access the true world, but it is an absolutely awesome power and one our ape ancestors gained access to—as have now the bonobos. Later, in Part 8:4G, a horrific description will be given of male chimpanzees who have had their developing love-indoctrinated world devastated by environmental pressures and, as a result, have been turned into brutal, murderous, blood-thirsty beasts. It will be explained there that such demonic behaviour arises from the fact that knowing both instinctively and consciously of the existence of the all-loving, animal-condition-free, true world, and then being denied access to it, effectively rejected from it, left them feeling extremely distressed, resentful and angry—even furious to the point of being hateful and sadistic. Once you have a situation of love then you also have the potential for the reversal of that situation, for the possibility of the situation of there not being love—there exists a negative counter-position. For once animals know love, to then find themselves deprived of it and/or unable to be loving is a very frustrating, upsetting and even guilt-producing situation to be in. In the case of the human condition, what the human race did to artificially rid itself of the agony of that condition was to say that there is no integrative meaning/​purpose to life because then there was no problem with not being integrative, no dilemma and thus no agony of the human condition from which to suffer. We got rid of the positive situation so we wouldn’t experience the negative situation—actually, we only deluded ourselves we had eliminated the positive situation; as stated, we only ‘artificially’ rid ourselves of it—but the point being revealed is that once you have the positive situation then you also have the potential for the distressing negative situation to occur. Once a species was liberated from the animal condition and knew love, whenever there was a subsequent breakdown in nurturing, or a break-out of competition for resources, those animals then knew what they were missing out on and/or not behaving in accordance with, which could make them extremely upset, psychotic (psyche/​soul-hurt) and neurotic (neuron/​mind-distressed); it could make them ‘demonic’. The point here is that the degree that these chimpanzees became sadistic and demonic as a result of not being able to be loving and/or experience love is also a measure of how aware their species must be of the fabulous all-loving, true world. They know all about love and its value, and, just as they can behave and act in an upset way as a result of that knowledge, so they can also behave and act in a loving way as a result of that knowledge—they can actively favour selfless behaviour in others; females can choose less aggressive males with which to mate.

To describe what took place when love-indoctrination had developed sufficient love for the conscious mind to appear and start supporting the love-indoctrination development of the all-wonderful, ‘Godly’, ‘heavenly’, unconditionally selfless, all-loving, integrated state it will be helpful to very briefly revisit the stages of maturation that a conscious mind goes through, as initially outlined in Part 3:11. ‘Infantman’ was our ape ancestor who developed the nurturing training in selflessness that liberated consciousness. Then, when this consciousness had developed sufficiently to begin to experiment in self-adjustment and manage events to its own chosen ends, ‘Infantman’ became ‘Childman’, the australopithecines. The main phases within childhood were ‘Early Happy Childman’ (Australopithecus afarensis), who evolved into ‘Middle Demonstrative Childman’ (Australopithecus africanus), who then developed into ‘Late Naughty Childman’ (Australopithecus boisei). At each stage greater experimentation in conscious self-management took place—from demonstrating the power of free will in mid-childhood, to beginning to challenge the instincts for the right to manage events in late childhood. When the conscious mind broke free of the influence of the instincts and took over management of events—which occurred at an ever increasing rate from the beginning of childhood onwards—the instincts began to, in effect, resist that takeover, a tension that at around two million years ago resulted in the distressing, sobering upset state of the human condition, a development that saw the transition from ‘Childman’, the australopithecines, to ‘Adolescentman’, Homo. But now, with the finding of understanding of the human condition, the human race matures from insecure adolescence to secure adulthood—‘Adultman’ emerges. (Note, while the descriptions ‘infancy’, ‘childhood’ and ‘adolescence’ are sometimes used to describe the early stages of maturation of many species they are particularly used to describe the stages of maturation that a conscious mind goes through; in non-conscious species, terms such as ‘the young’, ‘juveniles’ and ‘subadults’ are mostly used to describe their early stages of maturation. It needs to be emphasised that in this presentation the terms ‘infancy’, ‘childhood’, ‘adolescence’ and ‘adulthood’ are referring to the stages of maturation that a conscious mind goes through.)

Of these stages of maturation, the one that we are particularly interested in here in terms of understanding how consciousness came to support the love-indoctrination process is infancy—the stage when consciousness, understanding of cause and effect, develops sufficiently for the conscious mind to realise that it is at the centre of constantly changing experiences, that ‘I exist.’ Self-awareness is one of the first consequences of being able to make sense of experience. Another expression of this emerging power to understand cause and effect and therefore manage events was cited earlier, using as an example the chimpanzees’ ability to reason that by stacking boxes they could climb up and reach a banana tied to the roof of their cage. However, while such self-awareness and ability to manage events over a very short time interval were the first expressions of the emergence of consciousness that occurred in infancy, it wasn’t until childhood that active experimentation with the ability to effectively understand and thus manage change began.

Infancy is all about receiving unconditionally selfless treatment or ‘love’. It is only in early happy, innocent childhood that the outward expressions of the emerging intellectual ability to experiment in self-management begins. As described in Part 3:11A, it is in childhood that the power of free will is innocently tested or played with; it is during childhood that the conscious mind starts to experiment with the awesome ability that consciousness provides of managing events to bring about its own desired outcome. We call it ‘play’ in recognition of the naive unawareness children have at this stage of the problems associated with having free will, particularly their unawareness of the conflict it inevitably leads to with our instincts. At this stage we are still, as it were, holding onto our mother’s apron strings, our instinctive orientations, with one hand, while carrying out short experiments in conscious self-management with the other.

This reference to still ‘holding onto our mother’s apron strings’, still depending on our instinctive orientations for the management of our life, is significant when understanding how consciousness came to support our love-indoctrination process. Throughout infancy and childhood we still depend on our established instinctive responses, namely our nurtured orientation to love, for the overall management of our life, and further, it is not until childhood that we begin to actively experiment in managing our life from a basis of understanding. Infancy is when we are fully immersed in the state of loving integrativeness, which, incidentally, is why when the young of most species are in this stage they are so incredibly joyous. In the case of our ape ancestors, and some other primates living today, infancy is when their brain was/is indoctrinated or inscribed or trained with unconditional selflessness, which, as has been explained, eventually became/​becomes instinctive. It is when the unconditionally selfless, moral instinctive self or soul is created, and it is when this selflessly inscribed and thus truthful brain begins to make sense of experience, become conscious of the relationship between cause and effect. Love-indoctrination produced a mind instinctively orientated to behaving selflessly, which also happened to be a mind that was conscious. The instinctively orientated instinctive self is also a conscious mind—in this infancy stage they are one and the same thing. What happens in childhood is that this ‘sameness’ begins to fragment because the conscious mind becomes sufficiently developed, sufficiently understanding of cause and effect, to begin experimenting with understandings, the effect of which is to begin challenging the instincts’ control of the individual—a process that culminates in the upset state of the human condition. It is only when the conscious mind begins to experiment in self-management that a schism develops between the instincts and the conscious mind. In infancy, which is the stage before this experimentation in self-management begins, the instincts and the conscious mind are fully immersed in feelings of both appreciating and wanting love (in the case of the instincts), as well as thoughts that similarly appreciate and want love (in the case of consciousness).

In infancy, the love-indoctrinated instinctive self and the conscious thinking self are in harmony, both liberated from the selfish opportunistic ‘animal condition’ and aligned with, inspired by, committed to and desirous of producing loving behaviour. Within this state we can expect that, to begin with, the love-indoctrinated instincts would be the dominant force in maintaining unconditionally selfless, loving behaviour, however, it also makes sense that as the conscious mind developed it would have played an ever-increasing role in seeking and maintaining such loving behaviour. To make the point, if we were to put a 20-year-old human’s conscious brain in an animal that had totally selfless instincts, and if we imagine that the 20-year-old conscious brain was free of any human-condition-type conflicts with the instincts and thus totally able to appreciate the importance of loving selflessness, then it makes sense that that individual’s insistence on selfless behaviour would largely be driven by the all-powerful, self-adjusting, self-managing conscious mind, with the instincts very much only of secondary influence. Extrapolating backwards then, the influence of the conscious mind of a one-year-old in maintaining selfless behaviour would not be very great, with the maintenance of that selflessness largely dependent on the selflessness-demanding instincts. In fact, it is not until around two years of age that the power of the developing conscious mind finally becomes effective in maintaining selflessness.

This previous line begs the question: what happens to consciousness at around two years of age that makes such a difference in the maintenance of selflessness? Psychologists recognise that it is only after about the age of two that infant humans are able to recognise themselves as an entity separate to their mother. This time of ‘differentiation’, as it is termed, is a natural consequence of discovering ‘I’, of becoming self-aware that was described earlier. If we replace ‘mother’ with the love-indoctrinated instinctive training in love—which is reasonable since it has the equivalent role of a mother—then it follows that a pre-two-year-old infant isn’t able to recognise itself as separate from its training in love, which means it isn’t able to act independently of it. However, when at two the infant is able to see itself as separate from that training in love it is then in a position to act independently of that training—it can knowingly start implementing the immense desire for the world to be loving that comes with being free of the animal condition. It can consciously self-select for loving integrativeness, especially through the sexual or mate selection of less competitive and aggressive, more cooperative and selfless and thus integrative individuals with which to mate.

With regard to infants being capable of having, as I said, ‘an immense desire for the world to be loving that comes with being free of the animal condition’, it should be pointed out that while the level of consciousness that occurs in infancy is not sufficiently developed to begin experiments in managing life from a basis of understanding, it is still a highly conscious state of awareness. In fact, as the human race leaves the human-condition-afflicted situation of having lived in so much denial of so many truths, we are going to be astonished at just how much conscious awareness infants have of the world. The level of consciousness that two to three year old humans have—which is the level of consciousness that the great apes (the bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) have, and the level of consciousness our ape ancestors had when they began to complement the love-indoctrination process with the self-selection of cooperativeness through mate selection—is very aware of what represents an ideal, all-loving, integrative, ‘heavenly’, true world and what doesn’t, of what is desirable behaviour and what isn’t. Just how extraordinarily aware the human mind is has been revealed by the experiences of those who have undergone primal therapy, which involves memory regression back to traumas that occurred during their infancy, at birth, and even as a foetus in the womb—and the awareness of even the foetus is astonishing. A pioneer of primal therapy, the psychiatrist Frank Lake (1914-1982), wrote that ‘fetal life is not drifting on a cloud, [but is as] eventful as the nine months that come after birth. The foetus is not unaware of itself, or of the emotional response of the mother to its presence, but acutely conscious of both and their interaction’ (Mutual Caring, ed. Stephen Maret, 1982, p.58). The literature on primal therapy is full of examples of the level of awareness that a foetus has, such as the following: ‘I myself [Dr Farrant] am a survived abortion attempt and in Denver it took me four months of [regular primal therapy sessions to connect with the full trauma]. I had a toxic headache, confusion state, irritability, terror, rage, all confusedly mixed. It was like a jigsaw puzzle that I would put a piece of each time I primaled and one day the final piece went in and I knew. So profound was the knowing that I rang my 79-year-old mother and told her what she had done…My mother in 1927 was a fashion model…with a svelte-like figure…When I came along the figure changed shape, so she didn’t like that…So she took a bunch of pills and got into a hot bath, which is exactly what I told her [in other words, what the foetus knew] she had done. She burst into tears and revealed that I couldn’t possible know that because she had not even told my father, she never told anybody’ (psychiatrist Graham Farrant, M.D., Keynote address at the 14th International Primal Association Convention, 30 Aug. 1986). As we are going to discover, the level of awareness of human infants is such that they have been deeply cognisant of the whole dilemma of the human condition, deeply aware of what the world should ideally be like and therefore how seemingly wrong it currently is. Although infants haven’t been consciously mature enough to try to actually understand and explain the imperfections of the world like older children and adolescents attempted to do, they have been deeply aware of the problem of the imperfections of the human condition and have been distressed by it. Indeed, much of the difficulties associated with the stage known as the ‘terrible two’s’ that infants have gone through have probably been due to their struggles with, and protests against, the ‘wrongness’ of the human condition, and I am not just talking about instinctive expectations not being met, but conscious awarenesses of what is right behaviour not being enacted; I am talking about both psychosis and neurosis. Some evidence of the awareness infants have of the wrongness of the human-condition-afflicted world is that the infants of relatively innocent, less human-condition-afflicted races of humans today, such as the Bushmen of South Africa and the Australian Aboriginal, rarely cry—to quote a renowned paediatrician, ‘!Kung [Bushmen]…infants hardly ever cry’ (Cultures without Colic: Breastfeeding & Other Baby Lessons from the !Kung San, by Dr Harvey Karp, accessed 2 Apr. 2012: see <www.wtmsources.com/117>).

In terms of when our ape ancestor inhabited the two-year-old infancy stage of consciousness, and other primates who are currently in that stage of development, they would have had, and have, in the case of the other primates, an extremely strong conscious awareness of what constitutes ideal behaviour and what doesn’t, and therefore they would have wanted to, and would want to, and been able to, and be able to, favour and select for ideal behaviour. Other animals certainly have strong instincts against any treatment that hinders their genes’ chances of reproducing, they don’t in effect like being ill-treated, but because they suffer from the animal condition they haven’t been able to develop loving instincts that actually desire love—and because they aren’t conscious they cannot consciously appreciate and consciously want love. As has been described, while other animals have been locked out of love/‘heaven’, this is not the case for two-year-old equivalent primates. Love-indoctrinated two-year-old equivalent primates can behave selflessly themselves, and can seek to ensure others in their group behave selflessly—and they can consciously deeply appreciate and favour non-aggressive behaviour.

If you have a genetic/​instinctive block against selfless behaviour it means two things: firstly, that you can’t start behaving selflessly because selfless behaviour can’t be selected for genetically; and secondly, that you can’t begin to think truthfully and thus effectively and therefore can’t become conscious of the importance and magnificence of selfless behaviour. To recap, if you have a genetic/​instinctive block against selfless behaviour your genes won’t let you behave selflessly and you also aren’t able to think truthfully and thus realise that selflessness is the right behaviour. You are blocked on both fronts. BUT, once you breach the first block of not being able to develop selfless instincts you can then breach the second block and become conscious, thus allowing you to both behave selflessly and consciously appreciate the importance of selflessness, and, through that conscious appreciation, actively favour those who are more selfless/​integrative. (Again, by ‘selfless’ I mean ‘unconditionally selfless’, because the selflessness involved in reciprocity is actually selfishness.)

Species that can’t develop love-indoctrination can’t overcome the instinctive block they have against behaving unconditionally selflessly. For example, dogs have an instinctive block in their brain that prevents them from thinking that selflessness is meaningful and, as a result, behaving selflessly, and, as a result of that, becoming conscious of the true relationship of events that occur through time. The only way dogs could become conscious would be to develop love-indoctrination, have what unfilled cortex is available in their brain inscribed in selfless training, BUT the problem for dogs, and nearly all other species, is they can’t develop love-indoctrination because they haven’t been able to afford to leave their young in infancy long enough to inscribe sufficient love/​selflessness/​truth into that cortex.

Interestingly, in chapter 4 of The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that ‘The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial [offspring] affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.’ Yes, ‘as soon as’ an animal’s ‘intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man’ (in other words, as soon as the animal had become conscious) it ‘would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience’ because it would recognise and appreciate that the theme or meaning of existence is to be integrative, which means cooperative and loving—especially if it is living in a ‘social’ situation where conflict causes disorder, but even if it is not in a social situation it would realise the importance of integration because order is an obvious universal objective. Darwin was certainly a denial-free, honest and thus effective thinker.

With regard to infancy being a state that is fully immersed in love, it should be mentioned that by mid-childhood, when the conscious experimenting in self-management got underway and the conflict with the instincts emerged that gave rise to the human condition, this state of being both instinctively and consciously in love with love, immersed in the desire to have and maintain a fully integrated state, did start to rupture, but by that point the fully integrated instinctive state had become fully established. Our moral soul and its ‘voice’ within us, which is our ‘conscience’, was by then firmly in place.

So, it wasn’t until the level of consciousness of a two-year-old emerged that conscious self-selection for less aggressive behaviour could begin in earnest. Thus, it was when love-indoctrination allowed primates to develop the level of consciousness of a two-year-old that we can expect that conscious self-selection for integrative, cooperative, loving selflessness would have greatly assisted love-indoctrination’s development of integration.

What now needs to be stressed is that while chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans have this two-year-old, or thereabouts, equivalent level of consciousness where they have independent self-awareness and therefore can assertively select for selfless behaviour, especially by the females trying to favour less aggressive males to mate with, they still haven’t been able to completely bring an end to the animal condition because they still endure the situation of a male-dominated world where males aggressively compete for mating opportunities. The fact that they have the independent consciousness of a two-year-old and therefore must have highly love-indoctrinated instincts for love/​selflessness well established and yet still haven’t been able to bring to an end the competition amongst males for mating opportunities that results in male dominance is witness to just how difficult it is to complete the love-indoctrination, mate selection process and develop full integration. As will be described shortly in Part 8:4G, the limiting factor for these primates is that they lack a sufficiently food-rich environment. As explained, our ape ancestor and bonobos are seemingly the only primates to have been blessed with all the conditions necessary to develop full integration. But again, even the bonobos who have been able to develop much more love-indoctrinated integration than chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans—to the point of being able to bring to an end male competition for mating opportunities and the male dominance that goes with it—have still not yet fully completed the nurturing infancy stage because they have to use sex as an appeasement device to counter a residual tension and aggression. If bonobos had been able to complete the infancy stage and become a fully integrated species they would no longer need to use sex as an appeasement device and, in fact, would have developed monogamous relationships.

To explain, once competition for mating opportunities was brought under control, monogamy would have become the natural state because, firstly, each female pairing with a different male maintains more variability than the situation where one male dominates a group of females, and, secondly, because it provides infants with the greatest stability and continuity of love. Although the multiple partners, ‘free love’ strategy that bonobos are having to employ for appeasement while selflessness is still being perfected does provide more variability than monogamy, it doesn’t offer infants the same stability and continuity of love as monogamy. Again, the reason variability is advantageous is because it gives a species the greatest chance to genetically adapt to different situations, and it has to be remembered that the longer life span that accompanied the longer infancy period in the love-indoctrination process limited variability and thus adaptability, so monogamy helped counter that limitation. With regard to humans having lived in monogamous relationships, as was explained in Part 7:1, with the emergence of the upset state of the human condition sex became perverted, used as a means of attacking innocence, particularly the innocence of women. When this happened the original monogamous state of human relationships that we would have lived in since the end of our species’ infancy stage began to break down as men in particular became preoccupied seeking out more ‘attractive’ innocent looking younger women for sexual destruction. As explained in Part 3:11C, it was at this point that the convention of marriage was introduced to try to lock men and women into permanent relationships, especially because such breakdowns in relationships were so hurtful to children who not only instinctively expect to grow up in a monogamous family situation, but consciously want the world to be loving. The saying ‘the first cut [the first falling out of love] is the deepest’ is an acknowledgment of the deep and total commitment humans make to their first love; it reveals that the original, relatively innocent relationship between a man and a woman was a monogamous one.

To return now to the description of consciousness’ support of the love-indoctrination process.

In terms of being able to consciously favour the more selfless/​integrative in order to achieve greater selflessness and with it integration, the fastest, most effective way of doing so would be through selecting mates who are more selfless because that way you are eliminating selfishness at the fundamental level of your species’ genetic make-up. Further, since it is the males who are most preoccupied with competing for mating opportunities, it is the females who are in the best position to implement this selection of less aggressive individuals with which to mate. Despite being unaware of this process of love-indoctrination that liberated consciousness, which in turn allowed self-selection of integrativeness, especially through mate selection, primatologists have verified this selection of cooperative integrativeness by females: ‘Male [baboon] newcomers also were generally the most dominant while long-term residents were the most subordinate, the most easily cowed. Yet in winning the receptive females and special foods, the subordinate, unaggressive veterans got more than their fair share, the newcomers next to nothing. Socially inept and often aggressive, newcomers made a poor job of initiating friendships’ (Shirley Strum, National Geographic mag. Nov. 1987); and ‘The high frequencies of intersexual association, grooming, and food sharing together with the low level of male-female aggression in pygmy chimpanzees may be a factor in male reproductive strategies. Tutin (1980) has demonstrated that a high degree of reproductive success for male common chimpanzees was correlated with male-female affiliative behaviours [‘affiliative’ is an evasive, denial-complying, mechanistic term meaning friendly/​cohesive/​social/​loving/​integrative]. These included males spending more time with estrous females, grooming them, and sharing food with them’ (The Pygmy Chimpanzee, ed. Randall L. Susman, ch.13 by Alison & Noel Badrian, 1984, p.343 of 435).

While the observations made in the popular documentary series Orangutan Island (about a group of juvenile orphaned orangutans being rehabilitated on a protected island in a river in Borneo) probably can’t be considered a product of rigorous scientific research, they do provide revealing footage and interesting commentary about orangutan behaviour. In the 2007 episode ‘House of Cards’, an orangutan named Daisy, who is the dominant young female in the island group (in the series she is described as ‘Sheriff Daisy’), is seen strongly reprimanding another young female, Nadi, who repeatedly behaves selfishly. The narrator says, ‘As usual, Daisy is keeping a watchful eye on all the action and she spies someone who is not playing fair—it’s repeat offender Nadi who is refusing to share [a jackfruit]…Daisy decides it’s her duty to step in…Daisy is refusing to allow Nadi anywhere near the eating platform because Nadi’s been upsetting the order in this peaceful community…Daisy is making Nadi pay for her behaviour, so to avoid starving Nadi has no choice but to leave.’ Whether or not it is an accurate interpretation of events, the footage appears to fully support the commentary—a female is seen to be maintaining ‘the order in this peaceful community’. Many more illustrations of strong-willed, female primates insisting on integrative behaviour will be given shortly in Part 8:4F.

Yes, since it is the males who are the most preoccupied with competing for mating opportunities, the females must have been the first to select for selfless, cooperative integrativeness by favouring integrative rather than competitive and aggressive mates—and it was this process of the conscious self-selection of integrativeness, especially the sexual selection of less aggressive males with which to mate, that greatly helped love-indoctrination subdue the males’ divisive competitiveness. Moreover, by seeking out less aggressive, more integrative mates the females were, in essence, selecting those who have been most love-indoctrinated. This raises the next point to be explained, which is that the most love-indoctrinated and thus most integrative individuals will be those who have experienced a long infancy and exceptional nurturing and are closer to their memory of their love-indoctrinated infancy; in a word, younger. During the development of love-indoctrination, when unconditionally selfless, loving behaviour had not yet become instinctive, the older individuals became, the more their infancy training in love wore off. In the case of our ape ancestors (and this recognition would be occurring amongst all the great apes), they began to recognise that the younger an individual, the more integrative he or she was likely to be and, as a result, began to idolise, foster, favour and select for youthfulness because of its association with cooperative integration. The effect, over many generations, was to retard physical development so that adults became more infant-like in their appearance—which explains how we first came to regard neotenous (infant-like) features, like large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and hairless skin, as beautiful and attractive.

The neotenous or infant-like large eyes of seal pups and frogs, and the large eye spot markings together with the soft, typically infant-like, moppish ears of giant pandas, are what makes these animals so ‘appealing’. The following drawing of a panda depicted without its trademark spotted eyes and round ears, but with pricked ears and small eyes, shows just how quickly it loses its ‘cute’ appeal.

‘Would we care if they weren’t so cute? White out the black eye spots and give the ears points, and the panda loses much of its appeal.’ Illustration by Robert Parkinson.Good Weekend supplement, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Sept. 1989

The following three photographs, of an adult chimpanzee, an infant chimpanzee and an adult bonobo, show the similarity between the infant chimpanzee and the adult bonobo, indicating the effects of the love-indoctrination, mate selection neotenising process.

Adult chimpanzee; infant chimpanzee; and an adult bonobo

These photographs below of an infant and adult chimpanzee show the greater resemblance humans have to the infant, also illustrating the effect of neoteny in human development.

The following photograph of a chimpanzee foetus at seven months shows body hair on the scalp, eyebrows, borders of the eye lids, lips and chin—precisely those places where hair is predominantly retained in adult humans today, again illustrating the effect of neoteny or pedomorphosis in human development. Clearly, humans are an extremely neotenised—love-indoctrinated—ape. ‘Pedomorphosis’ (derived from the Greek pais meaning ‘child’ and morphosis meaning ‘shaping’) was the term given by the biologist Walter Garstang in 1894 to a mode of evolution in which the adult form of the descendant resembles the young form of the ancestor. Garstang showed that it was from the free-swimming larval forms of echinoderms that the evolution of chordates and hence of vertebrates, could be most satisfactorily traced.

So, we humans did learn to recognise that the older individuals became the more their infancy training in love wore off and therefore that the younger an individual, the more integrative he or she would likely be, and this selection for youthfulness had the effect of retarding our development so that we became more infant-like in our appearance as adults. As stated, this was how we came to regard neotenous features—large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and hairless skin—as attractive.

It should be noted that, as initially described in Part 7:1, when the upset state of the human condition fully emerged some two million years ago the selection for youthful, neotenous-featured, selfless integrativeness that took place during the love-indoctrination process began to be supplanted by selection for youthful, neotenous-featured innocence for sexual destruction. When upset emerged in humans, innocence, particularly women’s innocence, became sought-after for sexual destruction—sex for procreation was perverted, used instead as a way of attacking innocence for its implied criticism of the upset, corrupted state. What this means is that while neotenous features have been continually selected for thousands of generations, from the beginning of the love-indoctrination process in our earliest ape ancestors right up to the present day in modern humans, the reasoning behind the selection for neotenous features changed significantly along the way. (Note, this ‘selection’ is not the ‘natural selection’ of the gene-based refinement system but ‘self-selection’ through conscious choice.) At two million years ago, instead of selecting for neotenous features because they signalled a cooperative individual, such features began to be selected for because they signalled an innocent individual who was ‘attractive’ for sexual destruction. So while humans are an extremely neotenised ape and the love-indoctrination process explains how we first came to regard neotenous features—large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and a hairless body—as attractive, love-indoctrination isn’t the only reason for the extent of the extremely neotenised state of humans today, or the reason we now regard neotenous features as beautiful and attractive.

______________________

It should be pointed out that the assumption might arise that since juvenile animals haven’t yet entered the adult stage where there exists extreme competition and aggression for food, shelter, territory and a mate, that selecting for juvenileness so that eventually the less competitive and aggressive juvenile characteristics are carried through into adulthood might be a way of eliminating aggression from a species, but it isn’t. Certainly, as will be described in detail in Part 8:5H, we humans have domesticated dogs and even foxes by selecting for more friendly and social juvenile characteristics, the effect of which was to retard the development of some dogs and foxes so that they retain the more friendly and social behaviour of juveniles into adulthood—with the juvenile neotenous physical characteristics of floppy ears, more neotenous faces, etc, also carrying through into adulthood. Retarding development does bring the tamer, more friendly, social characteristics of the juvenile stages to adulthood, but it still doesn’t free the genes from their need to be selfish, and so doesn’t eliminate selfish competition and aggression—only love-indoctrination can do that. Juvenileness is a form of more friendly socialness but it isn’t in itself a selfless state—in fact, dogs and foxes who have been ‘puppyfied’ still aggressively compete for the resources of food, territory and mating opportunities. The adult stage of having to reproduce can be delayed and partially submerged by selecting for youthfulness but not eliminated. Again, only love-indoctrination can remove the intrinsic selfishness in a large multicellular animal species, make it a truly selflessly behaved species. This is why I said that in the love-indoctrination process the reason for selecting for youthfulness was not because the young haven’t yet become aggressive competitors for resources, especially for opportunities to mate, but because ‘the older individuals became, the more their infancy training in love wore off’. What is important is the training in love/​selflessness, not in delaying the onset of adult competitiveness and aggression. The famous ‘dog whisperer’ Cesar Millan is forever telling dog-owners that the mistake they are making in trying to control their dogs is that they are attempting to love them into behaving less aggressively when what they have to do if they want to achieve control and reduced aggression in their dogs is impose dominance. This is the point: our human development, our humanisation, the elimination of competitive aggression and the formation of our instinctive all-loving, unconditionally selfless, moral soul, was achieved using love-indoctrination supported by mate selection, but love-indoctrination doesn’t work with dogs because even if they have been tamed/​domesticated through human selection of more juvenile characteristics, they haven’t overcome the ‘animal condition’ of selfishly having to ensure their genes reproduce, which is why dogs are still highly competitive for food, shelter, territory and a mate—a competitiveness that only dominance hierarchy can abate. Dog owners try to, as it were, fill the heads of their dogs with love, try to train their dogs in selfless love, try to nurture them into behaving integratively, in fact, try to love-indoctrinate them, but our selection of dogs has only been for juvenile tameness, not for unconditional selfless love. Incidentally, this is why the taming/​domestication of dogs and even foxes has been able to be achieved in a relatively short time, a much shorter time than it takes to achieve love-indoctrination, which, as has been explained, is a difficult, time-consuming process because it has to overcome the powerful intrinsic selfishness of the genes. The fact is, there is a huge difference between the love-indoctrination supported by mate selection process and our domestication of dogs and foxes. Domesticated dogs and foxes are still ‘locked out’ of the fully integrated, ‘heavenly’, unconditionally selfless, all-loving state. As Cesar Millan teaches, dogs are trying to dominate all the time. Real love, giving away a competitive advantage, is not a consideration of theirs. Friendliness, or tameness, and love are, in truth, very different.

Mindful of this immense difference, the human domestication of dogs and foxes does dramatically illustrate some of the aspects involved in the love-indoctrination, mate selection process, particularly how powerfully effective in producing a change conscious self-selection can be, and how the development of stages of maturation is retarded by selecting for youthfulness—which is why description of our domestication of dogs and foxes is a worthwhile inclusion here. Again, the huge difference between the love-indoctrination supported by mate selection process and our domestication of dogs and foxes is described in much greater detail in Part 8:5H.

______________________

In summary, love-indoctrination enabled genetic refinement’s seeming inability to develop unconditional selflessness to be overcome, and the love-indoctrinated emergence of unconditional selflessness allowed consciousness to emerge, and with the emergence of consciousness came the ability to support the love-indoctrination process by actively consciously self-selecting for cooperative integrativeness, especially by females selecting more cooperative individuals with which to mate.

While love-indoctrination can be seen developing in some species particularly primates and especially bonobos, so far the evidence indicates that it has only been our ape ancestors who managed to complete the process, the result of which is our species’ unconditionally selfless, genuinely altruistic, universally loving instinctive self or ‘soul’, the ‘voice’ or expression of which is our moral ‘conscience’—a hypothesis the fossil record is now corroborating.