Part 4:4D Fourthly, the upset human race has had to deny the truth that our species once instinctively lived in a completely integrated, cooperative, harmonious state

In the case of the other element involved in the explanation of the human condition of our species’ original instinctive orientation—the part of us that unjustly condemned our intellect—this element, as we will now see, has been an even more treacherous topic to navigate than the nature of our conscious intellect. This is because thinking about our species’ original instinctive orientation very quickly led our mind to the unbearably confronting memory, that all humans carry, of an upset-free, cooperatively orientated, innocent time in our species’ instinctive past—a time before the fabled ‘fall’ that all our mythologies, such as the story of the Garden of Eden, recognise occurred when we became a fully conscious species.

While we have had to deny it, we all intuitively know that our species’ pre-conscious instinctive state was one of living innocently in a harmonious, cooperative, loving, peaceful idyllic state—our awareness of which is apparent in our recognition of the existence of that ‘voice’ within all of us of an ideal-behaviour-demanding, altruistic, instinctive, ‘moral’ ‘conscience’.

As was explained in Part 3:4, in the explanation of the battle that emerged between our instinctive self and our intellect one very big question arose: ‘But what was our species’ particular instinctive orientation? We once must have been controlled by instincts as other animals are, but since our original instinctive orientation obviously wasn’t to a migratory flight path such as in the ‘Adam Stork’ analogy, what was our species’ original instinctive orientation?’ The answer, as outlined in Part 3:4, is that our species’ original instinctive self or soul’s orientation was, as we all intuitively know if we are honest, to behaving in an utterly cooperative, loving, harmonious, unconditionally selfless, altruistic way.

If it is true, which in truth we know it is, that our ancestors did once live in a cooperative, harmonious, loving state then that would certainly be an extremely confronting truth for today’s extremely upset, corrupted, angry, egocentric and alienated humans. In the Adam Stork analogy, Adam became upset because he was defying an instinctive flight path, but if our instinctive orientation was to behaving in an utterly cooperative, loving, unconditionally selfless, altruistic, harmonious way then our upset must be infinitely greater than Adam’s. Since the meaning of existence is to be integrative, that is cooperative, loving and unconditionally selflessly behaved, and we were behaving in a completely opposite way, namely competitive, aggressive and selfish, then when we defied our instincts we were defying the integrative ideals of existence—we were defying ‘God’! Such defiance would have made us extremely guilt-ridden and thus extremely upset, which is exactly what happened. ‘Flying off course’ in our case, necessary as it was, was an incredibly upsetting act of defiance—which is why we humans have been capable of extremely angry, mean, cruel and aggressive behaviour.

The next immense question to be answered, and this is a question for biologists, is ‘How could we humans have developed such a wonderful instinctive orientation?’ To elaborate, ‘How could we have developed an instinctive orientation to behaving in an utterly cooperative, all-loving, harmonious, unconditionally selfless, altruistic way?’ Mythologies might assert that we once lived in an unconditionally selfless, fully cooperative, integrative, ideal way, and we all do carry an awareness that we did, but the question this raises for biologists is how could a species possibly develop such an unconditionally selfless, fully integrated state? How did we develop our altruistic-behaviour-demanding moral conscience?

To appreciate why this is such a big question for biologists to answer we need to consider how the gene-based learning system—the system that gives species their instinctive orientations—works.

While much more will be said about the gene-based information processing or learning system later in Part 8, there is a particular limitation to developing the order of matter on Earth using the gene-based learning system that needs to be explained now. Genetic refinement or learning—what Darwin described as ‘natural selection’—works by selecting genetic traits that survive through time. Since only genetic traits that survive and carry on can become established in a species, it follows that traits that don’t carry on, such as self-sacrificing, altruistic traits, normally can’t become established genetically. Natural selection can’t normally develop unconditionally selfless, altruistic traits in a species because such traits are self-eliminating. To elaborate, while selflessness, indeed not just selflessness but unconditional selflessness—the capacity to, if required, make a full, self-sacrificing commitment to the maintenance of the larger whole—is the glue that best holds wholes together, such unconditionally selfless, altruistic traits cannot normally be developed genetically. In fact, the gene-based learning system could not develop selflessness beyond what is referred to as reciprocity, where a selfless act is reciprocated with a selfless act; in such cases the selfless act is intrinsically still selfish, as traits have to be if they are to carry on and become established in a species. The fact is, only traits that are in effect selfish—traits that ensure their own reproduction—can become established in a species.

So while unconditional selflessness is the glue that best holds wholes together, if an unconditionally selfless trait emerges and practices such self-sacrificial behaviour it won’t tend to carry on and therefore it normally cannot become selected for genetically. This inability of genes in almost every situation to develop unconditionally selfless or altruistic traits means the gene-based learning system is limited in its ability to integrate matter. The best ‘glue’ for developing wholes and holding them together is unconditional selflessness, but in almost every situation genetics is unable to develop such ‘glue’. The result is that in almost every situation only a degree of integration of members of species can be achieved genetically.

That was a brief description of the reason why genes can’t normally develop unconditional selflessness or altruism, which we can now appreciate makes the question of how could we humans have ever developed unconditionally selfless, altruistic instincts such a perplexing one for biology. How could we possibly have developed ‘give-your-life-for-others-without-care-for-self’, altruistic genetic traits if such traits self-eliminate and thus, seemingly, cannot become established in a species? How could we humans have acquired our altruistic moral conscience?

The reason I have said that ‘normally’, ‘in almost every situation’ genetics can’t develop unconditional selflessness is because there was, in fact, one way it could, which was the way our ape ancestors developed an instinctive capacity to behave unconditionally selflessly. As outlined in Part 3:4 (and again this will be explained in greater detail in Part 8:4B), that one way was through nurturing.

While nurturing is a selfish trait, as genetic traits have to be (by nurturing and fostering the next generation—which has the parent’s nurturing trait—the nurturing trait is selfishly ensuring that it carries on from generation to generation), from an observer’s point of view it appears to be selfless behaviour. The mother is giving her offspring food, warmth, shelter, support and protection for apparently nothing in return. This point is most significant, because it means from the infant’s perspective its mother is treating it with real love, which is unconditional selflessness. The infant’s brain is therefore being trained or conditioned or indoctrinated or inscribed with unconditional selflessness, and with enough training in selflessness the infant will become an adult who behaves unconditionally selflessly.

The ‘trick’ in this ‘love-indoctrination’ process lies in the fact that nurturing is encouraged genetically because the better the infants are cared for, the greater are their chances of survival, however, there is an integrative side effect, which is that the more infants are nurtured the more their brain is trained in unconditional selflessness. There are very few situations in biology where animals appear to behave selflessly towards other animals—normally, they each selfishly compete for food, shelter, space and mating opportunities. Maternalism, a mother’s fostering of her infant, is one of the few situations where an animal appears to be behaving selflessly towards another animal and it was this appearance of selflessness that exists in the maternal situation that provided the integrative opportunity for the development of love-indoctrination, the training of individuals in unconditional selflessness. And with this unconditional selfless behaviour recurring over many generations, the unconditionally selfless behaviour will become instinctive—a moral soul will be established—because genes will inevitably follow and reinforce any development process, in this they are not selective. The difficulty was in getting the development of unconditional selflessness to occur in the first place, for once it was regularly occurring it would naturally become instinctive over time.

To develop nurturing—this ‘trick’ for overcoming the genetic learning system’s seeming inability to develop unconditional selflessness—a species required the capacity to allow its offspring to remain in the infancy stage long enough for the infant’s brain to become indoctrinated with unconditional selflessness. As mentioned, zebras have to be capable of independent flight almost as soon as they are born, which gives them little opportunity to be trained in selflessness. Primates, however, are especially facilitated for leaving offspring in infancy and thus developing love-indoctrination. Being semi-upright as a result of their arboreal heritage, their arms are free to carry a helpless, dependent infant. Species that cannot carry and easily look after their infants cannot develop love-indoctrination. Upright walking and its resulting bipedalism in humans is a direct product of the love-indoctrination process, which means bipedalism must have emerged early on in the development of humans, as fossil records now confirm.

As mentioned in Part 3:4, and again this point will be more fully dealt with in Part 8:4, nurturing was the main influence or prime mover in human development—not tool use or upright walking or language development or mastery of fire or any one of the other evasive explanations that denial-complying biologists have been putting forward in the mountain of books that have been published on human origins. It was our ape ancestor’s exceptional facility to develop nurturing that enabled us to acquire an instinctive orientation to behaving in an utterly cooperative, non-competitive, fully harmonious and loving way towards each other—that gave us our moral soul, the voice of which is our ‘moral conscience’. This time in our primate past when we lived in such an idyllic state—which the bonobos are currently on the threshold of living in—was our ‘time in the Garden of Eden’, our ‘Golden Age’, the ‘dream time’ in our past, as our mythologies have recognised. In his 1990 book Memories & Visions of Paradise, the American author Richard Heinberg provides ample documentation of how our mythologies captured the truth of a cooperative, pre-human-condition-afflicted, innocent past for humanity, writing that ‘Every religion begins with the recognition that human consciousness has been separated from the divine Source, that a former sense of oneness…has been lost…everywhere in religion and myth there is an acknowledgment that we have departed from an original…innocence’ (pp.81-82 of 282). The eighth century BC Greek poet Hesiod also referred to this ‘Golden Age’ in our species’ past in his poem Works and Days: ‘When gods alike and mortals rose to birth / A golden race the immortals formed on earth…Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind / Free from the toils and anguish of our kind / Nor e’er decrepit age misshaped their frame…Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flowed by…Dying they sank in sleep, nor seemed to die / Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil / Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil / They with abundant goods ’midst quiet lands / All willing shared the gathering of their hands.’

The immense problem with recognising the existence of such a wonderfully cooperative, pre-human-condition-afflicted, innocent and loving past is its complete contrast with our present immensely upset, corrupted, competitive, aggressive and selfish, seemingly non-integrative state. Until we could explain the human condition—explain why we became corrupted, ‘fell from grace’, lost our innocence, explain why we became such a competitive, aggressive and selfish species—this truth of an utterly cooperative, unconditionally-selfless-behaving past was devastatingly, unbearably, totally exposing, condemning and confronting; suicidally depressing in fact.

The question this, in turn, raises is: ‘How did we cope with the truth of our species’ wonderfully cooperative and loving past while we didn’t have the explanation of the human condition?’ Obviously we tried to deny that we ever once lived in such a wonderful state. Although our mythologies recognised the truth that we did once live in a state of wonderful innocence, such assertions were invariably dismissed as nothing more than an unsubstantiated, without-any-factual-base, unscientific, fanciful, romantic dream of some impossible, never-did-exist-in-reality, unrealistic, idyllic, utopian, beyond-this-world existence. As has been mentioned and will be fully described later in Part 8:4, the truth is the bonobos provide ample evidence for the possibility of the existence of a cooperative, harmonious existence in our past. But denial-complying mechanistic science simply didn’t want to recognise the existence of such evidence. As a result, very little research has been done on bonobos, to the extent that they have been described as ‘the forgotten ape’ (Bonobos: The Forgotten Ape, Frans de Waal & Frans Lanting, 1997). We can now understand why.

To maintain the denial that we ever once lived in such a wonderful state we also needed to come up with a biological justification for our divisive behaviour, which duly developed around misrepresenting the fact that genes are selfish to excuse our selfish behaviour. Denial-complying, mechanistic biologists simply asserted that humans are selfish because our genes are selfish. We were told we are competitive, aggressive and selfish because of our instinctive animal heritage; that we have savage animal instincts that make us selfishly fight and compete for food, shelter, territory and a mate. Needing some justification for our divisive behaviour the upset human race held on to this excuse, even though, as has already been emphasised, this ‘selfish gene’ explanation for our human behaviour conveniently overlooked the fact that our behaviour involves our unique fully conscious thinking mind—that descriptions of our behaviour, such as egocentric, arrogant, deluded, optimistic, pessimistic, artificial, hateful, mean, immoral, guilty, evil, depressed, inspired, psychotic, alienated, all imply there is a psychological dimension to our behaviour. We held on to the ‘genes are selfish and that’s why we are selfish’ excuse despite there obviously being a psychological issue involved in our behaviour. We have suffered from a consciousness-derived, psychological HUMAN CONDITION, not an instinct-controlled animal condition—our condition is unique to us fully conscious humans.

The fact that genes are selfish doesn’t mean that there is no other purpose to existence other than to selfishly replicate your genes, as denial-complying mechanistic biologists argue. Rather, it is simply a limitation of the gene-based information processing or learning system that genes are selfish. The meaning of existence is to integrate or develop the order of matter, a process that is most assisted by unconditional selflessness, which means the gene-based learning system would develop unconditional selflessness if it could. The fact that it can’t simply reflects its limitation as a tool for developing the order of matter. Again, the history of denial of Integrative Meaning and of all the false excuses biology has given us for our divisive behaviour will be explained and described in greater detail shortly in upcoming Parts of this book.

While the truth that we humans have cooperatively orientated, altruistic instincts has been an unbearable truth for the upset human race to face, the question arises: why didn’t biologists recognise that any instinctive orientation would have challenged and opposed our fully conscious mind’s experiments in understanding? The story of Adam Stork, for example, explains how instincts became at odds with the intellect, but Adam Stork’s orientation was only to a flight path. Certainly, the development of cooperatively orientated moral instincts in humans greatly compounded the ‘criticism’ our intellect received from our particular instinctive orientation—for we weren’t just at war with some flight path like a stork who became fully conscious would have been, we were at war with cooperative, integrative meaning of existence, with that all-pervading truth that we have personified as ‘God’ no less. Our sense of guilt from our instinctive orientation was extreme, but the question remains: why didn’t biologists recognise that any instinctive orientation would have in effect criticised an emerging self-managing consciousness?

The answer is that any thinking about the instinctive orientations of animals brought into focus the question of our species’ own instinctive orientation, which we have all known is to behave in a cooperative, so-called moral way, yet we didn’t want to go near that acknowledgment. We saw with intelligence how we didn’t want to think about how our rational, reasoning conscious mind worked because we didn’t want to have to face either the truth of ‘Well, if I am so cleverly insightful why do I have to behave in such a dumb, apparently non-insightful destructively selfish, angry, egocentric and competitive way?’, or the truth that information could be simplified or refined because it meant admitting to the unconfrontable ultimate refinement or law of Integrative Meaning. To avoid having to face these truths we employed a strategy of making sure we wouldn’t begin to think about how the reasoning conscious mind works. The same situation and strategy applied to thinking about the mechanism behind instincts because any such thinking would all too soon bring us into contact with the subject of, and truth of, our moral instincts and so to avoid such an encounter we practiced not thinking about the nature of instincts at all. As a result, it is now very hard to find any analysis of what instincts actually are and how they develop. We discussed at length the selective breeding of livestock such as of horses and cattle, for example, about how we are readily, over only a few generations, able to change their physical appearance and instinctive behaviour, but we never talked about how much the innumerable wars in Europe, for instance, must have bled mainland Europeans dry of a great deal of innocence and left them relatively instinctively upset, cynical and alienated compared with other populations who hadn’t experienced such bloodshed and anguish. Like the issue of what consciousness actually is, the whole issue of instincts has been a big ‘no-go zone’. The human race, and virtually all its biologists, have been hiding very deep inside Plato’s dark cave of denial.

In fact, the next great truth that the human race has practiced living in denial of while the human condition couldn’t be explained is this truth of the differences in alienation between not only individual humans but human races, genders, generations, civilisations and cultures as a result of their various exposure to the upsetting battle of the human condition.