GARY to Vineeto: I feel it is basically incorrect to say that violence is learned, as this South Bronx-bred author does state unequivocally. One need only look at the world-wide incidence of violence to see something much deeper and more resistant to change at work. While there may be one or two isolated, extremely rare cases of tribes way off in the jungle somewhere who are essentially peaceful (come to think of it, I can’t think of a one), human violence and warfare has a world-wide incidence endemic to the human species. Gary to Vineeto 13.11.01

PETER: There is a widely held belief that the human species has had a Golden Age at some time in the past or that a natural state of innocence existed way back in the mists of time and that this all the ills of mankind are due to the loss of this supposed innocence and peacefulness. This supposed loss is generally attributed to technological and scientific progress and an accompanying retreat from spiritual and primitive values.

The factual evidence from anthropological and archaeological research directly contradict these beliefs as there is ample evidence that every tribal group fought amongst each other as well as with their neighbours. These fights were either defensive or opportunistic attacks with the victims most often either eaten or offered up as sacrifice to the Spirits or Gods. Cannibalism was still practiced in some primitive tribes until mid last century whilst human sacrifice to some God or other has yet to cease.

And yet despite all the evidence of the human species’ predilection for anger and violence the belief that its causes are other than blind nature’s instinctual animal survival programming are still not only prevalent but held to be credible. There is even a notion that some animals are innocent and peace loving creatures. Dolphins are often lauded as such despite evidence of what can only be described as warfare, rape and mob violence. Our closest genetic cousins, the chimps, are similarly touted as gentle, peaceful creatures whereas warfare, rape, murder, infanticide and cannibalism have all been observed and documented as occurring as intrinsic to their natural state.

The factual evidence of the instinctual nature of animal and human animal violence is ignored, resisted, denied or dismissed. Many researches have bowed to public pressure and either willingly or reluctantly recanted their findings. As an example, Jane Goodall now makes no mention of the errant and malicious side of chimp’s natural behaviour that she documented early in her career, whilst anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon is still being subjected to malicious personal attacks because his studies of the primitive Yanomamo tribe in Venezuela. The Yanomamo were one of those ‘extremely rare cases of tribes way off in the jungle somewhere’ who were imagined to be ‘essentially peaceful’ and yet Changnon’s studies proved that they were anything but peaceful and innocent in their natural state.

The following is an excerpt from an article about Chagnon’s findings and I will post it here only because the link I had to it is no longer active –

[Michael D’Antonio]: In his book, Chagnon insists that among the Yanomamo he studied, warfare is a chronic condition that existed before he arrived and continued after he departed. Warfare, he says, is prominently reflected in the tribe’s mythology, politics, marriage practices and ceremonial life. In 15 months at one village, he says, he counted 25 attacks by other villages. Chagnon also confronts Harris’ food theory. In a discussion with a group of Yanomamo men, he asks if they fight over meat and then offers their reply both in their native language (‘Yahi yamako buhii makuwi, suw kb yamako buhii barowo!’) and in translation: ‘Even though we do like meat, we like women a whole lot more!’ Chagnon’s case against the food theory doesn’t end with a flippant anecdote from the jungle. His study of the tribe’s diet shows no evidence of protein shortages and no connection between the scarcity of game and outbreaks of violent conflict. Like many other criticisms of his work, he says, the food theory is wrong because it sprang from a desire to maintain a romantic view of ancient man as a ‘noble savage’.

‘It’s a fantasy about primitive man that says that we were all noble savages until society or capitalism or some other force corrupted our good nature’, he says. Chagnon’s work depicts a more complex ‘savage’ capable of both cruelty and kindness. By Michael D’Antonio. Time Magazine (?)

Also, if you are interested in the treatment still being dished out to N. Chagnon by some of his opponents, you could start with the following link – http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1282/22_52/67004535/print.jhtml

There is nothing as thrilling as the process of actively discarding one’s social beliefs and experientially understanding one’s instinctual animal nature by the simple act of seeing and acknowledging facts. This process does put one’s social and instinctual ‘self’ on the spot, as it were. I likened the process to painting my ‘self’ into a corner from whence there was no escape possible.

Good, hey.

PETER to Gary: Just thought I’d write a note about some aspects of the human condition that have particularly struck me in the last few weeks. Most relate to items I have seen on television – a marvellous way to observe and experience the full gamut of the human condition from the comfort and safety of one’s own house.

I recently watched a documentary called ‘Reason for Hope’ about Jane Goodall, anthropologist, environmentalist and renowned chimp researcher. After her early years of studying chimp behaviour, she went through a difficult period in her life when her husband died and she came to observe what she described as the ‘dark side’ of chimp behaviour – sadness, depression, anger, warfare, murder and cannibalism. After initially being shocked that chimps were not ‘innocent beings’, she came to regard the fact that chimps have a dark side to their nature as evidence that chimps were ‘even closer to being human’ than she first thought.

Jane Goodall then described a seminal event in her life, an experience of what is sometimes called a nature experience. From her description, her experience seemed to be a pure consciousness experience – a sensate-only experience of the purity and perfection of the actual world. Thinking about it afterwards, she felt the experience must have been a mystical experience or a spiritual revelation – simply because there was no other explanation available to her. This experience proved to be a turning point in her life – she changed from sceptic to spiritualist, from scientist to saviour, from feeling lonely to being loved, from feeling hopelessness to having a ‘reason for hope’. She saw human evolution as the eventual triumph of Good over Evil and began to cement her place as a champion of the good in the battle against evil – a Saviour, not only of Mother Earth and ‘her’ creatures, but also of Humankind.

It was a classic story, common to many. A period of loneliness and depression, an experience of personal loss or grief, a life-changing experience and a life born again as a Saviour – by whatever name, for whatever cause. What was of most interest to me in Goodall’s case was her description of what appeared to be a pure consciousness experience, her after-the-fact interpretation of the experience as a mystical experience and that she then went on to claim the experience as ‘her’ own – as being a personal revelation from God.

I find it always useful to remember why spiritual belief and superstition have thus far cornered the market in the human search for freedom, peace and happiness. Once someone has had ‘the Truth’ personally revealed to them in an altered state of consciousness – or as appears to have happened in Goodall’s case, misinterpreted a PCE as an altered state of consciousness – they are bound by a combination of gratitude and their own inflated sense of self-worth to spread the word that, while earthly life is a bitch, there is really truly a God who loves you. (...)

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PS to the Jane Goodall story –

One of her colleagues commented that the research into chimp behaviour was clear evidence that ‘the dark side of human nature was inherited from ancient primate life’. What would have made this observation more even-handed would have been an acknowledgement that the so-called good side of human nature was also inherited from ancient primate life. So far, it appears that only actualists dare to make such a clear-eyed assessment of the human condition – and, as yet, we are few on the ground.

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PETER: Just a comment on some points from your last post –

It was a classic story, common to many. A period of loneliness and depression, an experience of personal loss or grief, a life-changing experience and a life born again as a Saviour – by whatever name, for whatever cause. What was of most interest to me in Goodall’s case was her description of what appeared to be a pure consciousness experience, her after-the-fact interpretation of the experience as a mystical experience and that she then went on to claim the experience as ‘her’ own – as being a personal revelation from God.

GARY: A human being’s imaginative faculty is carefully nurtured and hurried along in childhood through nursery rhymes, fables, stories of all kinds, and the belief in the supernatural, the mystical, and the otherworldly is the result. It is not surprising, then, that people hurry to interpret a perfection experience in the framework that they are most comfortable with – as a mystical, otherworldly experience, or as a frank communication from God himself.

PETER: There are several aspects to this tendency. Firstly, there is a long, long tradition of mystical experiences, both in Eastern and Western religions, so much so that to feel oneself to be God, or to feel oneself to be a specially chosen friend of the creator God, is but the status quo. Secondly, given that human experience is universally deemed to be a battle between good and evil, every experience is automatically classified as either good or evil … and a PCE is invariably interpreted as being in the ‘good’ or Godly camp.

Underlying this social/historic programming are the instinctual survival passions – passions which are non-existent in a PCE but are given full reign in any altered state of consciousness experience. This means there is a powerful instinctive lure to claim any and all experience as ‘mine’.

The reason I point this out is that not only has an actualist to be wary of the spiritual programming that actively encourages the pursuit of altered states of consciousness, but also of the crude instinctive narcissistic drive that has thus far always corrupted the human search for freedom, peace and happiness.

RESPONDENT: Been mulling over this post from Peter, so here’s some babblings.

[Peter to Gary]: I find it always useful to remember why spiritual belief and superstition have thus far cornered the market in the human search for freedom, peace and happiness. Once someone has had ‘the Truth’ personally revealed to them in an altered state of consciousness – or as appears to have happened in Goodall’s case, misinterpreted a PCE as an altered state of consciousness – they are bound by a combination of gratitude and their own inflated sense of self-worth to spread the word that, while earthly life is a bitch, there is really truly a God who loves you. Peter to Gary, 7.6.2002

PETER: Just to keep the record straight, I have only assumed that Jane Goodall had a PCE, an assumption based solely on her description of the experience. Also many people who have an altered state of consciousness have had a very good dose of spiritual conditioning and, as such, are well schooled in the religious ‘God really loves me’ or the spiritual ‘I am God-realized’ experience. The essential point in discussing these matters on this list is three-fold.

The first is to make clear the distinction between the ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience of the actual world and the ‘self’-aggrandizing altered states of consciousness experiences that give an apparent feeling-only credence to the fantasy of spiritual other-worldly beliefs. The second reason is to encourage those who are interested in actualism to forsake the fantasy of spiritual beliefs and to progressively eliminate the time-honoured malice and sorrow implicit within the human condition.

The third, and most significant, is to encourage the practice of a sensuous awareness of the cornucopian delights of this eternal and infinite physical universe we mortal flesh and blood human bodies actually live in. By doing so, an actualist relieves others of the burden of his or her own feelings of malice and sorrow and also actively cultivates the circumstances for pure consciousness experiences to occur.

MODERATOR: Perhaps the greatest challenge for anyone who discovers the utter simplicity of the ‘PCE’ is to remain humble, to realize that, for all the ‘malice and sorrow’ that has been waged in the name of religion, at the heart of each tradition is a vast body of REAL wisdom about not only the ultimate fact of our essential non-dual nature, but about how a human being can come to realize and ultimately express that nature as themselves – an area about which all but those few perfected beings among us still have much to learn.

PETER: (...) As for our ‘essential non-dual nature’, I take it you are talking of the idea that we were born innocent, the ancient Tabula Rasa theory. The spiritual aim is then to return to our natural state of innocence – our true selves as we came into the world and before we were corrupted by evil. This is old-fashioned and out-of-date thinking that requires a blatant denial of modern empirical scientific research on the subject of human genetically encoded instinctual behaviour by Josef LeDoux and others.  A sensible clear-eyed observation of the startlingly obvious similarities between human beings behaviour and that of other animals is further evidence of human instinctual behaviour. Most animal studies focus on the similarities of the passions of nurture and desire, but murder, rape, infanticide, warfare, cannibalism, sorrow, despair and suicide have all been documented in our closest genetic cousins, the chimps. Jane Goodall was shocked when discovering and documenting this behaviour and she has since backed away from further research. Other research on human behaviour that I personally found profoundly revealing were the studies by Stanley Morgan that clearly indicate ordinary human beings’ willingness to inflict pain on their fellow human beings. The results were so disturbing in their revelation of our human nature that any similar studies have been banned as being ‘unethical’.