Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RICHARD: (...) there is more to identity than just the ego-self ... much, much more.

RESPONDENT: Okay ... then I want to find out what it is that’s more to it.

RICHARD: As simply as possible: it is who you feel yourself to be at the very core of your being (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’).

(...)

RESPONDENT: ... Would a non-human animal also imaginatively feel the seat of its emotions or sentiments to be an immortal being?

RICHARD: What the primary requisite is, in order for a rudimentary animal ‘self’ – an inchoate affective presence, an embryonic feeler, an incipient intuiter – to imaginatively feel itself to be an immortal being, is self-consciousness and although there is some evidence to demonstrate that chimpanzees (and maybe even dolphins) are thus aware of being a self, distinctly so and separate from other selves, it is not necessarily conclusive. The secondary requisite is, of course, being capable of having that imaginative feeling cross the line into being an hallucinatory intuition ... namely: the ability to believe (to have faith), to hope (to have trust), and to have certitude (be capable of delusion). Over and above all those requisites, however, is the essential ingredient: the fore-knowledge of death’s inevitability ... and, as the archaeological/ palaeontological evidence to date shows that homo sapiens did not have that apprehension until about 50-70,000 years after sapience, it is apparent that non-sapient animals do not have that capacity.

RESPONDENT: So non-sapient animals lack that ‘being’ ...

RICHARD: If I might interject? What animals in general (other than chimpanzees, that is, and maybe even dolphins) lack is self-consciousness – the awareness of being a self (distinctly so and separate from other selves) – and not the instinctual/ intuitive feeling of presence that they do indeed exist, as that presence, in that they are the very instinctual/intuitive presence they instinctually/intuitively feel themselves to be at the very core of their existence.

The word ‘being’, in this context, is but another way of referring to that very instinctual/ intuitive feeling of presence (an instinctual/intuitive feeling of being) – albeit a rudimentary affective ‘self’ (aka ‘being’) inasmuch it is an inchoate/ elementary presence, an amorphous/ embryonic feeler, a nebulous/ incipient intuiter – as the suffix ‘-ing’, forming a noun from the verb ‘be’, denotes a (subjective) thing involved in an action or process.

And the action or process, in this instance, is the very movement or motion of the instinctual survival passions.

RESPONDENT: ... [non-sapient animals lack that ‘being’] and, consequently, the ‘alien identity’ which inhabits me ...

RICHARD: It was your [quote] ‘consequently’ [endquote] which occasioned my interjectory explication as it is as a consequence of the lack of self-consciousness that animals, in general, also lack a distinct and separate affective ‘self’/‘being’.

RESPONDENT: ... [the ‘alien identity’ which inhabits me] and makes that my perceptions are at least once-removed from actuality ...

RICHARD: If I might again interject? All animals are at least once-removed from actuality (in the perceptive process sensitive perception is primary; affective perception is secondary; cognitive perception is tertiary).

RESPONDENT: ... [my perceptions are at least once-removed from actuality] because they are mediated by ‘it’ ...

RICHARD: Again, your perceptions are at least once-removed from actuality because of the way the perceptive process works (per favour blind nature’s rough and ready survival package).

RESPONDENT: ... while in Actual Freedom perceptions are immediate, the identity having abdicated, altruistically self-immolated?

RICHARD: The altruistic ‘self’-immolation in toto, which enables an actual freedom from the human condition, *is* the extirpation of the entire affective faculty – which of course includes its intuitive/ psychic facility – as the extinction of the one is the (simultaneous) extinction of the other ... ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

Put succinctly: it is not possible to be sans identity, in toto, without being (concomitantly) sans the entire affective faculty.

(...)

RESPONDENT: All animals? Insects and arachnids, too?

RICHARD: I see that, in the third and only part of my reply you responded to, I inadvertently left off the [quote] ‘in general’ [endquote] qualifier which appears in the first two parts ... for example:

• [example only]: ‘All animals, in general, are at least once-removed from actuality’. [end example].

I am an actualist, not a biologist, and I am not about to become side-tracked into a discussion about whether or not animals of the phylum Arthropoda (such as insects, arachnids, and crustaceans, for instance) are instinctually driven by fear, aggression, nurture, desire, and so forth (and thus whether or not they are once-removed from actuality in the perceptive process) as the identity in residence all those years ago did not find it at all necessary to get into that sort of minute detail so as to be able to altruistically ‘self’-immolate, in toto, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body.

Indeed ‘he’ did not know anywhere near what I know (through having to look things up as a result of going public with what ‘he’ did) nowadays. In a nutshell: ‘he’ understood what the expression ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ really meant.

*

RESPONDENT: What I wanted to know was: when was it that animals became inhabited by the ‘alien identity’, a rudimentary sense of self?

RICHARD: As I am an actualist, and not a palaeobiologist, here is how I have put it on the home page of my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust web site:

• [Richard]: ‘Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... *‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history*. ‘I’ am so anciently old that *‘I’ may well have always existed* ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future.
In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’.
The instinctual passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self (...)’. [emphasises added].

RESPONDENT: [quote] ‘I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. (Walt Whitman).

RICHARD: First of all it is pertinent to mention that Mr. Walt Whitman’s greatest theme, throughout his work, was a symbolic identification of the regenerative power of nature with the deathless divinity of the soul ... and although he was profoundly influenced by transcendentalist ideas, in particular the work of Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the following line of his perhaps best encapsulates his core experience/ understanding:

• ‘... Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from ...’. (from ‘Song of Myself’, the leading poem in the first edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’, published 1885).

As for living with the animals: just for starters, anybody who considers that animals are ‘so placid’ (and therefore think to live with them and/or be like them and/or live as they do) can only be viewing them through a romanticist’s eyes ... by being born and raised on a farm being carved out of virgin forest I interacted with other animals – both domesticated and in the wild – from a very early age and have been able to observe again and again that, by and large, animals are not ‘so placid’ after all ... they are mostly on the alert, vigilant, scanning for attack, and prone to the fright-freeze-flee-fight reaction all sentient beings inherit.

Further to the point I was able to observe, and have maintained a life-long interest in observing, the correspondence the basic instinctual passions in the human animal have with the basic instinctual passions in the other animals ... to see the self-same feelings of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, for example, in other sentient beings renders any notion of living with them and/or being like them and/or living as they do simply ridiculous.

For some simple examples: I have seen a dog acting in a way that can only be called pining; I have watched a cat toying with a mouse in a manner that would be dubbed cruel; I have noticed cows ‘spooked’ and then stampede in what must be described as hysteria; I have beheld stallions displaying what has to be labelled aggression; I have observed many animals exhibiting what has to be specified as fear ... and even in these days of my retirement, from my comfortable suburban living room, I can tune into documentaries on this very topic: only recently a television series was aired again about observations made of chimpanzees over many, many years in their native habitat and I was able to identify fear, aggression, territoriality, civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, nurture, grief, group ostracism, bonding, desire, and so on, being displayed in living colour.

It is easily discerned by those with the eyes to see that animals do not live in peace by being as they naturally are. The insistence that the animal state being a natural state and therefore somehow innocent which is held by many people is but a wistful ‘long lost golden age’ fantasy.

Now that intelligence, which is the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons, has developed in the human animal the blind survival passions are no longer necessary – in fact they have become a hindrance in today’s world – and it is only by virtue of this intelligence that blind nature’s default software package can be safely deleted (via altruistic ‘self’-immolation in toto).

No other animal can do this.

RESPONDENT: Animals experience more happiness that humans because they don’t think (worry) and we do.

RICHARD: As ‘worry’ is a feeling – be it an anxious feeling, an apprehensive feeling, a fretful feeling, a nervous feeling and so on – I would suggest looking deeper than thought, thoughts and thinking before coming to a conclusion. And, as animals can be anxious, apprehensive, fretful, nervous and so on, it is highly questionable whether they are more happy than the human animal.

But whether they are more happy or not is besides the point anyway: the point being that only the human animal has the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons ... thus only the human animal can dispense with the blind survival passions.

Then one is not only constantly happy but constantly harmless as well.

SETH: Animals have a sense of justice that you do not understand, and built-in to that innocent sense of integrity there is a biological compassion, understood at the deepest cellular levels. In your terms man is an animal, rising out of himself, from himself evolving certain animal capacities to their utmost; not forming new physical specialisations of body any longer (again in your terms), but creating from his needs, desires and blessed natural aggressiveness inner structures having to do with values, space and time. To varying degrees this same impetus resides throughout all creature-hood. Such a task meant that man must break out of the self-regulating, precise, safe and yet limiting aspects of instinct. The birth of a conscious mind, as think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free will. Built-in procedures that had beautifully sufficed could now be superseded. They became suggestions instead of rules. Compassion ‘rose’ from the biological structure up to emotional reality. The ‘new’ consciousness accepted its emerging triumph – freedom – and was faced with responsibility for action of a conscious level, and with the birth of guilt. A cat playfully killing a mouse and eating it is not evil. It suffers no guilt. On biological levels both animals understand. The consciousness of the mouse, under the innate knowledge of impending pain, leaves its body. The cat uses the warm flesh. The mouse itself has been hunter as well as prey, and both understand the terms in ways that are very difficult to explain. (As Seth-Jane delivered this material, my mind flashed back many years to a summer day when I was about eleven years old. With my two brothers 1 sat in the back yard of the house in which we grew up, in a small town not far from Elmira. Our next-door neighbour’s cat, Mitzi, had caught a field mouse. She played with it in the grass; with conflicting feelings I watched Mitzi, of whom I was very fond, block off each attempt of the terrified mouse to escape – until finally, having had her sport, she ate it. At certain levels both cat and mouse understand the nature of the life energy they share, and are not – in those terms – jealous for their own individuality’.

RESPONDENT: To me the above is far closer to Richard’s natural amoral stance.

RICHARD: Just so that there is no misunderstanding: Richard does not have a ‘natural amoral stance’ at all.

• First and foremost: nothing is a ‘stance’ (or a philosophy or a metaphysics or a thesis and so on) as, unlike Ms. Jane Roberts, all that I write is a description which comes out of my direct and spontaneous experiencing at this moment in time ... my words are an ‘after the event’ report, as it were.
• Second: there is nothing ‘natural’ in what I did in regards the elimination of the instinctual passions and the animal self in the ‘lizard brain’ ... it was a very, very unnatural thing to do (it is fear and aggression and nurture and desire which are natural).
• Third: to be ‘amoral’ is when a person can totally and reliably be capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception.

The $64,000 question then appears to be this: Did the wisdom of a bodiless spirit called ‘Seth’ (an aspect of ‘God’ by whatever name) bestow such a remarkable freedom upon Ms. Jane Roberts as amorality indubitably is?

And further: how has anyone benefited from a wisdom that promotes a ‘blessed natural aggressiveness’ by equating what a cat does with a mouse as being ‘playfully killing’ and thus ‘that innocent sense of integrity’ and ‘sense of justice’ wherein there is a ‘biological compassion’ because (and this is the central argument) the ‘consciousness of the mouse’ (and a ‘terrified mouse’ at that) ‘leaves its body’ via an ‘innate knowledge of impending pain’ as being a ‘‘new’ consciousness’ by virtue of the ‘emerging triumph’ known as ‘free will’ whereupon all these instinctual impulses are somehow ‘superseded’ by an ‘emotional reality’ induced by ‘the birth of guilt’ wherein committing all the aforementioned mayhem and misery is now felt as being a ‘suggestion’ to live by rather than a ‘rule’ ... and gratuitously called ‘freedom’?

This inhumane ‘suggestion’ (condoning and/or advocating the inducing of terror in another) and gruesome ‘‘new’ consciousness’ (condoning and/or advocating homicide as it is the body and not the consciousness which is killed) is identical to that divine wisdom found in the Bhagavad-Gita where Mr. Krishna (‘God’ by whatever name) assures Mr. Arjuna that it is quite okay to kill his relatives in war because (a) it is his duty by virtue of the caste he was born into ... and (b) he would not be killing the person anyway but only the body.

May I ask? How do you see this as being even remotely close to what Richard experiences and thus promulgates?

RESPONDENT: We have slightly different semantic interpretations ...

RICHARD: Okay ... perhaps you may be inclined to explain to me how the following points are but ‘slightly different’ meanings or connotations applied to words (‘semantic interpretations’ ):

1. Richard speaks from his direct moment-to-moment experience (he lives what he writes); Ms. Jane Roberts spoke from a disembodied spirit (she did not live what she wrote). Ergo, Ms. Jane Roberts has a ‘stance’ ; Richard lives an actuality.

• Just where lies the ‘slightly different semantic interpretation’ ?

2. Richard did something very, very unnatural ... resulting in peace-on-earth becoming apparent; Ms. Jane Roberts did something supernatural ... resulting in further addling the minds of otherwise intelligent peoples so that peace on earth is nowhere to be found.

• Just where lies the ‘slightly different semantic interpretation’ ?

3. Richard is easily amoral in that he can totally and reliably be capable of spontaneously interacting in the world of people, things and events, in a way that is neither personally insalubrious nor socially reprehensible, at all times and under any circumstance without exception because he has eliminated the instinctual passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) that form the animal self which is the root cause of all the misery and mayhem; Ms. Jane Roberts channelled a wisdom that promotes a ‘blessed natural aggressiveness’, by equating what a cat does with a mouse as being ‘playfully killing’ and thus ‘that innocent sense of integrity’ and ‘sense of justice’ wherein there is a ‘biological compassion’ because (and this is the central argument) the ‘consciousness of the mouse’ (and a ‘terrified mouse’ at that) ‘leaves its body’ via an ‘innate knowledge of impending pain’, as being a ‘‘new’ consciousness’ by virtue of the ‘emerging triumph’ known as ‘free will’ whereupon all these instinctual impulses are somehow ‘superseded’ by an ‘emotional reality’ induced by ‘the birth of guilt’ wherein committing all the aforementioned mayhem and misery is now felt as being a ‘suggestion’ to live by rather than a ‘rule’ ... and gratuitously called ‘freedom’.

• Just where lies the ‘slightly different semantic interpretation’?

4. No. 10 says that what Ms. Jane Roberts published (above) is ‘closer to Richard’s natural amoral stance’ than what Peter wrote; Richard says ‘How do you see this [Wisdom Of A Bodiless Spirit] as being even remotely close to what Richard experiences and thus promulgates?’ ... to which detailed reply No. 10 says: ‘The Wisdom Of A Not So Bodiless Spirit’. Yet the spirit called ‘Seth’ (an aspect of ‘God’ by whatever name) clearly says [quote]: ‘if your definition of that word (‘spirit’) implies the idea of a personality without a physical body, then I would have to agree that the description fits me’ [endquote]. (page 4; ‘Seth Speaks’; © 1972 by Jane Roberts; published by Bantam Books NY, NY).

• Just where lies the ‘slightly different semantic interpretation’?

MARK: As to the question of the instinct’s (and indeed the self’s) only toehold on the body (that seemingly undeletable interface between the body and instincts that I spoke of earlier, that possible DNA connection), is it not possible that the ‘physical turning over of something in the base of the brain’ that Richard speaks of in his last moments as a being, is the final unlocking of some physically encoded something in the ... somewhere!

RICHARD: The physically encoded ‘something’ is indeed located ‘somewhere’ ... at and around the top of the brain-stem. Perhaps it may clarify the issue if I post a rather long selection of quotes from a molecular biologist who taught microbiology and biochemistry in Australia and New Zealand universities, the late Mr. Darryl Reanney ... so as to provide a geneticist’s slant on the issue?

Mr. Darryl Reanney wrote [quote]: ‘Brain biologist Paul MacLean has put forward the attractive idea that the human brain is a composite structure, composed of three interlocking but distinct elements – three partly separate brains, each with its own software and its own input and output channels. The oldest is the reptilian brain. Next, layered above it is the paleocortex or limbic system, while layered above that is the neocortex (...) the limbic system (together with associated brain elements like the hypothalamus) is the engine of the so-called ‘instincts’ which MacLean has wryly described as the four F’s – feeding, fighting, fleeing and fucking. This behaviour is conspicuously cyclic and repetitive. The pre-human part of our brains still listens to the beat of nature. The outermost layer is our ‘thinking cap’, the part which boasts the cerebral cortex, the seat of language, imagination and reasoning skills. Under this lies the limbic system, which may be loosely thought of as the seat of emotions. These two layers enfold the ancient reptilian core common to all (higher) animals. These deep brain structures predate the human species by hundreds of millions of years (...) the human brain preserves, in its present structure, the history of its past development. The newer layers are built on top of the older layers, just as younger strata in a geological formation lie on top of – and conceal – the more ancient strata which preceded them. In particular the ancient reptilian core and the next-oldest rind wrapped around it, the limbic brain ... the seats of the so-called instincts (...) the fight or flight reaction [is] the instinct which drives us to defend the integrity of our body/ self in the face of danger. When life is threatened, the mind-computer has to make a rapid choice between two options – to avoid the danger by trying to escape from it or to confront the danger by engaging in real or mock combat. Associated with this instinct are the emotions of rage (fighting) and fear (fleeing). These emotions correspond to a sense of crisis which means that they are rapidly aroused and demand an immediate response. Whereas we can ignore or suppress feelings of hunger and thirst, rage and terror dominate the psyche until the threat that engendered them has been dealt with. The [sex instinct is the] instinct which drives us to reproduce. Associated with this instinct of sex is the emotion of lust, by which I mean simply the direct expression of sexual urge without taking into account any of the complicating value judgements which arise when the biological drive is viewed through the distorting prism of the symbolate mind.

These value judgements colour the underlying instinct so deeply that the sensation of love, which we normally associate with sex, is seen as the ‘highest’ of all human emotions. These instincts conform to a common pattern. In cases studied in animals, the instinct is often triggered by a specific signal which behavioural scientists call an innate releasing mechanism or IRM. The role of hormones in instinctive behaviour is often misunderstood. Hormones are responsible for the ‘state of arousal’, the ‘turn-on’ that accompanies the instinct but they do not trigger it. This is the role of the IRM. What hormones do is determine the threshold of response. There has been an enormous controversy over the question of whether IRM’s exist in humans and, if so, whether these are learned or inherited. The controversy need not concern us. There is no doubt that we share the instincts of the four F’s with our vertebrate relatives (for example, the chemical changes in the blood of a terrified man are identical to those in the blood of a terrified cat), and it seems hard to dispute that these instincts are activated by powerful stimuli or signals.

Once an IRM has set the scene in an appropriately primed individual, the final step is the carrying out of a specific action pattern which leads the animal to physically engage in the particular behaviour which the specific hormone has prepared and the specific IRM triggered. Behaviourial scientists call these selective action patterns ‘consummatory’ acts because they remove the source of their own motivation. The pattern common to all instincts is thus encoded in the following paradigm. Hormones raise the level of arousal and thereby diminish the barriers that inhibit the action pattern; the IRM triggers the action and the consummatory act completes the sequence. Instinctive behaviour is fundamentally goal-driven and goal-oriented.

This is why it conveys such a strong impression of purpose (...) we are sexually reproducing creatures so our genes are a 50:50 blend of those from each parent. This mixing of genes makes each of us a physically unique individual. Experience builds on these genetic differences, differentiating us increasingly from our fellows as we grow up. By the time we are 13 years old, we normally have strongly developed ego-selves – we are recognizable individuals, labeled by society with identity tags called names. Manifestly then, evolution still works on and through individual differences between people (...) human society experiences a mode of natural selection based on competition between ego-conscious individuals. What this process selects for is, in the main, what one might expect of such a system: greed, survival at all costs, a ‘killer instinct’ in business, a massive emphasis on goods which reflect enlarged ego structures, wealth, power, indifference to others – in short, selfishness. Selfish egos replace selfish genes. The basic nature of the ego-self shows up in the way it is constructed within each individual brain. The ego-self is an expression of the learned layers of memory stored in the cortex but – and here is the crucial point – the ego-self remains inextricably locked into the survival software permanently written into its genes.

The genes of every human being create in the physical brain a robot, the limbic/ reptilian complex which houses the survival instincts. This robot is the same in all of us. Blindly, it pegs each emerging layer of the ego-self to the ancient feedback loop of self-preservation. The process is one-way. Once an experience has been added to memory, it becomes part of the ego-self, to be conserved along with every thing that went before. Thus the robot – something we all share as part of our evolutionary heritage – becomes the unwitting agent by which our emerging personalities – the source of our differences – become hostage to foreverness. The chemical loop of self-preservation takes into itself the psychological ego-self. According to its program, what the robot must do is maintain the status quo. This has a far-reaching consequence. Once a strong sense of ego-self has developed during the later years of childhood and the teens, the new (and mostly unimportant) day-to-day experiences of life usually serve to reinforce (or at worst only slightly modify) the current status quo structure of the ego-self. We cling fanatically to our sense of identity, of me-ness, because it has become our lens of life, our window to the world, our personal guardian of the universal survival imperative of the selfish gene. Because selfish egos spring from selfish genes, the ‘desires’ built into the ego-cage are open-ended. It is the nature of the ego to reinforce its own ‘self-image’ by always wanting more of those things which strengthen its ‘definition’ – more money, more power, more time (whence springs its open-ended urge to last forever). To put this another way and so make my next point, what we dread above almost all else is change. By this, I do not mean the simple addition of ordinary day-to-day experiences which are easily accommodated within the existing ego-self structure: I mean changes that profoundly alter the ego-self, reshaping and remaking it. The reason for this is fundamental. If we change the ‘I’ self-image too deeply, we create a new creature; the ‘me’ that emerges from a profound personality change is, in a real and factual sense, no longer me – it is a stranger, it is other.

For this reason, and I believe this is a defining feature of human growth, the transformative experiences of life, those which involve suffering and pain, and ‘shake us to the core’ are innately resisted by the self-preserving robot whose task it is (remember) to blindly maintain the status quo. Human psychology is inherently self-protective and conservative (...) the discovery of evolution, more than anything else, heightened an age-old tension that has ‘always’ existed between the conservatism of our subconscious (the seat of instinct) and the flexibility of our cerebral cortex (the seat of intelligence). I once described man as a ‘machine that dreams’. The machine is the robot in the limbic brain, fixed in form and programmed by genes to maintain what is as it is. The dreamer is the cerebral cortex, a free-wheeling adventurer whose software programs are written not by genes but by experience. A dreamer dreams of things that are not yet. He dreams of change. And change is what the ego-self fears. We are in literal truth at war with ourselves, the robot in the limbic brain struggling to keep the status quo while the adventurer in the cortex toys with novelty. This war within our psychology, like the day/night cycle, has become externalized in our myths. Almost every human culture has developed a folklore which shows the universe polarized between warring opposites: God versus the Devil, Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness, Osiris versus Set. The pleasure/ pain centres of the limbic cortex act as ordering foci for these opposites of experience.

Now we see that the ‘struggle’ between the pleasurable (good/bright/day) centre and the painful (bad/dark/night) centre is also interleaved with an unresolved conflict between the bottom story of the mind, where instinct dwells, and the upper story where thought lives (...) bedded deeply in the mind then are dual programs which are exactly reciprocal in the sense that one arouses while the other diminishes the desire to consummate the ‘drive’ in question, be it eating, fighting or mating. These linked opposites are reflected in a wide range of contrasting human attributes: pleasure and pain (the primary feelings) and reward and punishment (the derived values). Carried to an extreme, the primary feelings of pleasure and pain become intensive emotive hyper-states: ecstasy and agony. I believe these linked opposites find direct, unambiguous expression in two of our most fundamental myths, the opposing hereafters of heaven (bliss equals reward) and hell (agony equals punishment); they are also strongly linked to the contrasting opposites of good and evil. The ancient Aryan Indians talked of the Gods Indra and Soma hurling ‘sinners’ down to ‘hell’ and Vedic scripture contains dark references to a black underground for ‘wrong-doers’. The heaven/hell duality was also mirrored in and reinforced by the other great contrasting principles of human experience – day and night (again), male and female, hot and cold, etc. Most religions contain some symbolism based on the duality of linked opposites – yin/yang (widespread in Oriental religions), light/ dark (Zoroastrianism), heaven/hell (Christianity) (...) the fact that our personalities are ‘divided against themselves’ points to a profound evolutionary paradox. Whenever a better adapted form of life appears during evolution, the old form of life from which it arose is doomed. In a sense, a superior variant is a traitor to its own kind for, given time, it will eliminate its own antecedents. Instinctive behaviour is fundamentally goal-driven and goal-oriented.

This is why it conveys such a strong impression of purpose (...) to bring out the inner nature of instinct, we can recap it thus: eating and drinking equals self-maintenance; fighting or fleeing equals self-preservation and reproduction equals self-continuation. We possess all these instincts; they are our ‘original sin’ – the genetic memory of our animal ancestry. However, the selective action pattern of each instinct does not, in the human case, take place in a mindless mechanical automaton like a thermostat. The chemical states associated with each instinct register in our conscious awareness as feelings’. [endquote]. (‘The Death of Forever; A New Future for Human Consciousness’; By Darryl Reanney; Teacher of microbiology and biochemistry, University of Canterbury. N. Z., LaTrobe University, Australia. Publisher: Longman 1991 ISBN 0 582 87054-2).

RESPONDENT: The instinctive brain can function independent of whether you’re conscious or not ...

RICHARD: Or, to put that another way, the autonomic nervous system functions non-consciously (as evidenced in sleep).

RESPONDENT: ... this body will very much regulate its flow of blood, the heart will beat of his own accord, the digesting process will not require your attention, etc.; also a good example can be found in patients living in a state of coma.

RICHARD: Somehow you seem to be conflating what the word ‘consciousness’ refers to (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing a state or condition) with what the word ‘self-conscious’ refers to (the awareness of being conscious) ... and, while the state or condition of being conscious can also include being aware of being conscious, the vast majority of conscious organisms (animals) do not have self-awareness.

A comatose person is an unconscious person ... neither conscious nor aware of being conscious.

RESPONDENT: Animals and birds do not require consciousness in order to live, so it seems there are many examples where the brains do not require consciousness in order to perform their usual activities.

RICHARD: All sentient beings are conscious ... and sentience means consciousness. Viz.:

• ‘sentience: the condition or quality of being sentient; consciousness, susceptibility to sensation’. (Oxford Dictionary).

A sentient being, and all animals are sentient (having the power or function of sensation), is a living organism capable of sensory perception (a virus, for example, is an organism without sentience) which means that sensory perception is what consciousness is at its most basic ... perception means consciousness (aka awareness). Viz.:

• ‘perception: the state of being or process of becoming aware or conscious of a thing, spec. through any of the senses; the faculty of perceiving; an ability to perceive; [synonyms: (...) awareness, consciousness]. (Oxford Dictionary).

In popular usage, however, the word ‘consciousness’ can also mean the (illusory) identity which is being conscious ... whereas the word ‘awareness’ does not usually carry that connotation.

To put that another way: while the word ‘conscious’ can mean the same as what the word ‘aware’ means the word ‘consciousness’ can also mean something other that what the word ‘awareness’ means ... it can mean the supposedly immortal entity which makes a sentient being alive and not dead (as in the phrase ‘consciousness has left the body’ to signify physical death).

RESPONDENT: It seems consciousness is a luxury item exclusively at the use of the human animal.

RICHARD: Again you appear to be talking of self-consciousness (not to be confused with ‘self-conscious’ as in being embarrassed) or self-awareness ... if so there is evidence that the chimpanzee is self-conscious (aka self-aware) and, although it is early days yet in the research, there is some evidence that dolphins may be too.

It is far from being a luxury item ... it is a vital precursor to intelligence.

That the vast majority of animals are not self-conscious (do not have self-awareness) is the reason why, by and large, it is generally held that animals do not have a consciousness which ‘leaves the body’ at physical death.

RESPONDENT: One thing I’m not sure about is the fact that there are many ‘animals’ (non-mammalian) that I’m not sure experience ‘fear’ as we (humans) know it – though the survival instinct is pervasive.

RICHARD: As I not a biologist or zoologist I have no more interest in being drawn into quibbles over whether non-mammalian animals experience the feeling of fear ‘as we (humans) know it’ when they display the freeze-flee-fight reaction than I have about whether they experience the feeling of desire, for example, ‘as we (humans) know it’ when they are eating or mating.

For the sake of simplicity I just call the instinctual passions fear and aggression and nurture and desire and be done with it.

Furthermore, as it is estimated that there is between 2 and 4.5 million species on planet earth, with more being discovered every day, to wait until all the different species have been individually examined to determine the exact nature of their drives, impulses and urges, before committing oneself to the action which will bring about peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, will only bring about more waiting ... until one finds oneself on one’s death-bed surrounded by family and friends, raising oneself up on an elbow and croaking out the words (one’s last words), ‘I’m not sure if ...’ and/or ‘I’m not sure about ...’ and so on.

There were no sureties about these matters for the identity within this flesh and blood body all those years ago: apart from a general or encyclopaedic knowledge, personal observations, and intimate investigation, all ‘he’ knew and needed to know, from numerous PCE’s, was that ‘he’ was standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent ... and accordingly went blessedly into oblivion. Here is one example of how I have described my modus operandi:

• [Richard]: ‘Speaking personally, I did not know of any research on this subject when I started to actively investigate the human condition in myself 20 or more years ago: as I intimately explored the depths of ‘being’ it became increasingly and transparently obvious that the instinctual passions – the source of ‘self’ – were the root cause of all the ills of humankind. It was the journey of a lifetime! (...) I make no pretensions whatsoever of being a biologist – I am a lay-person dabbling in an ad hoc general reading of the subject – and I have no personal need for an interest in biology at all (since I began reporting my experience to my fellow human beings I have had to find out about all manner of things).

I know I have written this to you before ... its import may be even more obvious if repeated in this context:

• [Richard]: ‘Life is truly this simple: the pure intent to have the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent, as evidenced in the pure consciousness experience (PCE), is activated with the nourishment of one’s innate naiveté via wonder ... whereupon an intimate connection, a golden thread or clew as it were, is thus established whereby one is sensitive to and receptive of the over-arching benignity and benevolence of the world of the PCE – which is already always just here right now anyway – and one is not on one’s own, in this, the adventure of a lifetime.
And sincerity works to awaken one’s dormant naiveté.

RESPONDENT: I’ve come up with a few possibilities for what you might mean by ‘fear rules the world ...’. 1) What humans and animals ‘feel’ themselves to be is rooted in fear.

RICHARD: I have often put it that ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ (just as I have also put it that ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ or ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ or ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’).

Mostly I have put it that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: 2) Humans and animals feel ‘fearful’ virtually all of the time (though to what degree could be up for grabs).

RICHARD: As the human animal ‘self’, like any other animal ‘self’, is fear (and is aggression and is nurture and is desire and so on) ‘I’ am that feeling all the time. At root, ‘I’ am nothing other than ‘my’ feelings ... ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ (thus ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself, is affective in nature).

The degree to which ‘I’ feel ‘my’ affective nature, and which aspect of it, varies each moment again of course.

RESPONDENT: 3) When the faecal matter contacts the whirling metal blades, then fear takes over.

RICHARD: Well, that is when it is most obvious that ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ ... if, in the freeze-flee-fight reaction, the instinct to fight takes over then aggression is what ‘I’ most obviously am at that moment (as in ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’).

RESPONDENT: 4) All of the above.

RICHARD: In essence what I am saying is that, at root, fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions ... hence fear runs/rules the world of sentient beings.

RESPONDENT: My perplexity lies in the fact that (as far as I can tell) most people don’t feel ‘fearful’ virtually all of the time in any overt way.

RICHARD: Indeed not ... after all, there is the entire range of feelings to be, each moment again.

RESPONDENT: Yet, there does seem to be underlying fears that may not be extremely bothersome that are present virtually all of the time.

RICHARD: Indeed so ... fear, being the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions, underlies all the other passions (and their cultivated derivations).

RESPONDENT: If fear were constantly experienced – it’s hard to see how ‘feeling good’ would even be possible.

RICHARD: True ... most of the time fear is a background noise, as it were, as there is an entire suite of feelings to be, each moment again.

RESPONDENT: Many animals seem to spend much of their lives virtually free from feeling fearful ...

RICHARD: By being born and raised on a farm being carved out of virgin forest I interacted with other animals – both domesticated and in the wild – from a very early age and have been able to observe again and again that, by and large, animals are not ‘virtually free from feeling fearful’ for ‘much of their lives’ ... they are mostly on the alert, vigilant, scanning for attack, and particularly prone to the freeze-flee-fight reaction all sentient beings genetically inherit (obviously I am not speaking of a pampered and cosseted chihuahua dog, for instance, in some swanky city apartment).

RESPONDENT: ... yet I admit that fear is inherent in the instinct for survival which is always present, though not always operative.

RICHARD: I would rather say ‘not always fully operative’ ... it is only in a PCE that it becomes stunningly apparent how fear (and the other passions of course) has been ever-present, no matter how subtle, crippling one’s every step.

After all, at root, ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ – and in a PCE ‘I’ am in abeyance – thus ‘I’ can never be, or know, fearlessness.

RESPONDENT: Anyway, could you go into a little more detail as to exactly what you mean when you say ‘fear rules the world’.

RICHARD: Sure ... as, at root, fear is the most basic of all the instinctual survival passions then, at root, ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’: thus what ‘I’ am, at root, is what rules the world (I am talking of the real world, of course, the world of sentient beings which the animal ‘self’ within pastes as a veneer, a reality, over this actual world).

There is no such reality in actuality ... and ‘I’ can never experience actuality (‘I’ am forever locked-out of paradise).

RICHARD: I was born and raised on a farm and had vast experience with killing and death from before I can consciously remember coming face-to-face with killing and death. A short list of animals would have to include the domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens and so on, all of which I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands. The wild animals would include kangaroos, emus, dingoes, foxes, rabbits, eagles, crows, magpies, pigeons and quail ... all of which – with the exception of the dingoes, foxes, eagles, crows and magpies – I have personally slaughtered and skinned and dressed with my own hands (the dingoes, foxes, eagles and crows were killed for their bounty as they were considered pests). Stalking animals made me keenly aware of the human being’s primal animal nature, whilst raising livestock for a living necessitated an eye for the detail of animals’ basic nature on a daily basis. I have made a study of the differences between animals and humans – by reading countless scholarly studies made by enterprising people; by watching many a television program on animal life and by often visiting zoos – because I am vitally interested in life on earth with its death and killing all around. Also, I observe animal action and behaviour and ascertain from research how an animal is likely to perceive itself and the world so as to throw some light onto conditioned human behaviour ... to ascertain the difference between ‘nature and nurture’. For example: I have seen a dog acting in a way that can only be called pining; I have seen a cat toying with a mouse in a manner that can only be dubbed cruel; I have seen cows ‘spooked’ and then stampede in what must be described as hysteria; I have seen stallions displaying what can only be labelled aggression; I have watched many animals exhibiting what must be specified as fear ... and so on. Only recently a television program was aired here on chimpanzees about studies made over many, many years of them in their native habitat and I was able to see civil war, robbery, rage, infanticide, cannibalism, grief, group ostracism ... and so on. It is easily discerned by those with the eyes to see that animals do not have peace-on-earth by being natural. This insistence that the animal state being a natural state and therefore somehow desirable because human are ‘divided from nature’ that is held by many people is just nonsense ... I am glad that I am human and that we are living in a civilised society with all that technology can offer. We have already improved on nature so much in the areas of technology, animal breeding and plant cultivation, for instance.

RESPONDENT: Most of your animal experience seems to relate to domesticated animals.

RICHARD: When I cast my eye (above) I count 7 domesticated animals enumerated and 10 wild animals specified ... but apart from that, do you not find your response weak?

RESPONDENT: Haven’t you seen far more tooth and red claw examples of the human animal’s behaviour?

RICHARD: But surely the human animal’s behaviour is more tooth and red claw only to an outsider (one divided who sees human nature as ‘other’)? Is what you are describing not a misinterpretation of human nature by a divided-from-its-source primate? Is it not only more tooth and red claw to a primate who feels unconnected to human nature? Is it not only more tooth and red claw from a divided-human mentality? After all, dividing from the source isn’t necessarily a terrible thing if it is a tool used by one rather than a tool which makes use of one (as its tool) ... would you not agree?

Is not the biggest problem a too-clever-for-itself conceptualising mind?

RESPONDENT: That which is alive can hardly breath without bringing harm or destruction to some aspect of the environment, yes? The whole exercise of personal existence must be a heavy measure on the side of silliness when a larger view is taken toward its effect. Does it not seem silly that this body should eat while another starves?

RICHARD: The very fact that one is alive means consuming nutrients ... and staying alive means that something, somewhere, must die in order to supply these nutrients. This is a fact of life ... and the marvellous thing about a fact is that one can not argue with it. One can argue about a belief, an opinion, a theory, an ideal and so on ... but a fact: never. One can deny a fact – pretend that it is not there – but once seen, a fact brings freedom from choice and decision. Most people think and feel that choice implies freedom – having the freedom to choose – but this is not the case. Freedom lies in seeing the obvious, and in seeing the obvious there is no choice, no deliberation, no agonising over the ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ judgement. In the freedom of seeing the fact there is only action.

When it comes to the consumption of nutrients there are many and various beliefs one can hold dearly to. There are people who will not eat red meat at all ... only white meat and fish. Then there are people who will not eat any flesh of warm-blooded animals at all ... only fish and reptiles. Then there are people (vegetarians) who will not eat any meat at all, but will consume eggs and dairy products. Then there are people (vegans) who will eat only vegetables, grain and seed. Then there are people (fruitarians) who will only eat fruit. Then – as we go into myth and fantasy – there are those who live on water and air ... and finally those who live on air only.

Some vegetarians maintain that as a carrot (for example) does not scream audibly when it is pulled from the ground there is no distress caused by the consumption of vegetables. Yet the carrot indubitably dies slowly by being extracted from its life-support system – the ground is its home – and is this not distressing on some level of a living, growing organism? It all depends upon the level, or degree, of ‘aliveness’ that one ascribes to things. Vegans, for instance, will not consume eggs as this prevents an incipient life from being born. Fruitarians go one step further and say that, as the consumption of carrots prevents them from going to seed and sprouting new life, vegetables are to be eschewed entirely. Then, as the eating of grain and seeds also prevent potential life-forms from growing, they will eat only the flesh of the fruit that surrounds the kernel and plant out the embryo plant-form (I have been a fruitarian so I know full well what I am speaking of.)

The obvious fact is clearly demonstrated by taking all this to its ultimate consideration. What will one do – as a fruitarian causing no pain or the taking of life of anyone or anything – about those pesky things like mosquitoes, sand-flies, cockroaches, rats, mice and other ‘vermin’ that invade my house? Put up screens? What about outside? Will I slap them dead ... or just shoo them away? What will one do if attacked by a snake, a crocodile, a shark, a lion and so on? Do as the Revered Scriptures say and turn the other cheek? Will I humbly submit to my fate and be mauled severely myself – or even killed – simply because of a religious injunction, a moral scruple, a noble ideal, a virtuous belief, a passionate opinion, a deeply held ethical theory? In other words, have animals and insects been given the right, by some inscrutable god, to do with me whatsoever they wish? Is my survival dependent upon the non-existent benevolence of all those sentient beings that I am not going to cause distress to?

What then about germs, bacteria, bacillus, microbes, pathogens, phages, viruses and so on? Are they not entitled to remain alive and pain free? If one takes medication for disease, one is – possibly painfully – killing off the microscopic creatures that one’s body is the host too. Some religions – the Jain religion in India, for example – has its devout members wearing gauze over their nose and mouths to prevent insects from flying in and they even carry small brooms to sweep the path as they walk so that they will not accidentally step on some creature. It can really get out of hand. For instance, small-pox has been eradicated from the world by scientists as a means of saving countless human lives ... is this somehow ‘Wrong’? What is ‘Right’ in regards to what I do in order to stay alive? If I do none of these things then I will be causing pain and suffering to myself – and I am a sentient being too. It is an impossible scenario, when pursued to its ultimate conclusion.

And then there is the matter of one’s fellow human beings. Some of them – in fact at times a lot of them – are desirous of invading the country that one is living peacefully in, with the avowed intent of killing, torturing, raping, pillaging and subjugating oneself and one’s fellow citizens. If one holds a strong and passionate belief in not causing any pain and suffering to other sentient beings then one must be more than a fruitarian ... one must be a pacifist as well. This amounts to hanging out a sign – if everybody else in the country one lives in adopts this specific belief – which says, in effect: ‘Please feel free to invade us, we will not fight back, for we hold firmly to the principle of not causing pain and suffering to any sentient being whatsoever’ (the Tibetan situation is a particular case in point.) Thus anarchy would rule the world – all because of a belief system handed down by the Saints and the Sages, the Messiahs and the Avatars, the Redeemers and the Saviours, the Prophets and the Priests, century after century.

All this is predicated upon there being an enduring ‘I’ that is going to survive the death of the body and go on into the paradisiacal After-Life that is ‘my’ post-mortem reward for being a ‘good’ person during ‘my’ sojourn on this planet earth. It is ‘I’ who is the ‘believer’, it is ‘I’ who will cause this flesh-and-blood body to go into all manner of contorted and convoluted emotion-backed thoughts as to what is ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’, what is ‘Good’ and what is ‘Bad’. If it were not for the serious consequences of all this passionate dreaming it would be immensely humorous, for ‘I’ am not actual ... ‘I’ am an illusion. And any grand ‘I’ that supposedly survives death by being ‘Timeless and Spaceless’, ‘Unborn and Undying’, ‘Immortal and Eternal’ am but a delusion born out of that illusion. Thus any After-Life is a fantasy spun out of a delusion born out of an illusion ... as I am so fond of saying.

When ‘I’ am no longer extant there is no ‘believer’ inside the mind and heart to have any beliefs or disbeliefs. As there is no ‘believer’, there is no ‘I’ to be harmful ... and one is harmless only when one has eliminated malice – what is commonly called evil – from oneself in its entirety. That is, the ‘dark side’ of human nature which requires the maintenance of a ‘good side’ to eternally combat it. By doing the ‘impossible’ – everybody tells me that you can’t change human nature – then one is automatically harmless ... which does not mean abstaining from killing. It means that no act is malicious, spiteful, hateful, revengeful and so on. It is a most estimable condition to be in. One is then free to kill or not kill something or someone, as the circumstances require. Eating meat, for example, is an act of freedom, based upon purely practical considerations such as the taste bud’s predilection, or the body’s ability to digest the food eaten, or meeting the standards of hygiene necessary for the preservation of decaying flesh, or the availability of sufficient resources on this planet to provide the acreage necessary to support the conversion of vegetation into animal protein. It has nothing whatsoever with sparing sentient beings any distress.

Thus ‘Right and Wrong’ is nothing but a socially-conditioned affective and cognitive conscience instilled by well-meaning adults through reward and punishment (love and hate) in a fatally-flawed attempt to control the wayward self that all sentient beings are born with. The feeling of ‘Right and Wrong’ is born out of holding on to a belief system that is impossible to live ... as all belief systems are. I am not trying to persuade anyone to eat meat or not eat meat ... I leave it entirely up to the individual as to what they do regarding what they eat. It is the belief about being ‘Right or Wrong’ that is insidious, for this is how you are manipulated by those who seek to control you ... they are effectively beating you with a psychological stick. And the particularly crafty way they go about it is that they get you to do the beating to yourself. Such self-abasement is the hall-mark of any religious humility ... a brow-beaten soul earns its way into some god’s good graces by self-castigating acts of redemption. Holding fervently to any belief is a sure sign that there is a wayward ‘I’ that needs to be controlled.

Give me ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ any day.

*

RESPONDENT: Look at the way death nourishes life and look at the way such ‘survival’ masters as T-Rex and the cockroach are contrasted by the butterfly-flower relationship or the way the wolf keeps the deer population strong and healthy. Look at the way the predator and the prey are involved in a mutually beneficial harmonious relationship from the larger perspective.

RICHARD: Aye ... and look how ‘T-Rex’ and the ‘cockroach’ and the ‘butterfly’ and the ‘wolf’ and the ‘deer’ and so on are all unable to free themselves from their instinctual passions – and the sense of self bestowed – and thus be the universe’s experience of itself because the intelligence has not evolved in them yet that will enable then to be here, now, where peace-on-earth already always is. They have no intelligence yet to use ... whereas you have. What are you doing with it? Wishing to remain involved in the ‘mutually beneficial harmonious relationship’ of ‘the predator and the prey’ type relationship that has resulted in 160,000,000 peoples being killed by their fellow human beings in wars this century alone? What ‘larger perspective’ does your metaphysical ‘intelligence existing in/as the uni-verse’ come from that makes it oblivious to such animosity and anguish on such a large scale?

RESPONDENT: It is not oblivious to suffering.

RICHARD: Then why is there not action? Why do you wish to remain involved in the ‘mutually beneficial harmonious relationship’ of ‘the predator and the prey’ type relationship that has resulted in 160,000,000 peoples being killed by their fellow human beings in wars this century alone? Is it not that you are ‘oblivious to suffering’ through a mental de-sensitisation process that categorises all the misery and mayhem as being a ‘mutually beneficial harmonious relationship’ ?

RESPONDENT: Again, predators kill prey to eat.

RICHARD: Yes, the human animal outlawed cannibalism this century so as to deflect predation away from its own kind for obvious humanitarian reasons. There is progress.

RESPONDENT: They kill the sickest and weakest of the prey. This makes the prey population stronger.

RICHARD: Indeed ... but this instinctual trait shows up in the human bullying and exploitation of their weaker fellow human beings. Why do you not apply your ‘mutually beneficial harmonious relationship’ of ‘the predator and the prey’ type philosophy to all the wars and murders and so on and see that it is a ‘good thing’ that Mother Nature is doing in wiping out the undignified, the unworthy, the dishonourable and the mediocre to the point of being a pathetic excuse for a human being type of peoples?

Like someone infamous in modern history tried to do this century ... he was doing what comes natural, eh?

RESPONDENT: The millions of peoples who have died in wars have were not eaten by their killers.

RICHARD: Maybe not ‘millions’ ... but the eating of one’s slain enemy was practised up until twenty to thirty years ago (or even later). The indigenous cultures flourishing in the Highlands of New Guinea immediately spring to mind (as this recent example was within my life-time and near-by) but there are many, many other examples.

RESPONDENT: Their deaths were therefore pointless. If a predator over-kills a prey population, it thereby suffers by the lack of food.

RICHARD: Aye ... and as animals have no intelligence they then starve to death. The human animal, with its ability to reflect, plan and implement considered action can circumvent this natural process and flourish.

RESPONDENT: There is a balance here that simply is not present in the human example of war with which you are equating it.

RICHARD: Methinks you will find that it is ... I am saying that the same-same instincts drive the human animal as drives the other animals. It is just that you admire these instinctual traits in animals but bemoan human behaviour (driven by these self-same instincts) and persistently blame thought, and the intellect in general, for human beings doing what otherwise comes natural.

*

RESPONDENT: And look at how all the life-forms of Earth, in apparent conflict with one another when viewed from a narrow ‘survival of the fittest’ ‘grade school’ paradigm are in fact all mutually continuous with one another.

RICHARD: There is no ‘apparent’ about their ‘conflict with one another’ at all ... it is actual conflict (just like the human animal’s conflict with one another). It matters not what ‘paradigm’ one views it through ... fear and aggression and nurture and desire run rampant in all sentient beings.

RESPONDENT: Generally animals only kill to eat.

RICHARD: Dream on ... animals are instinctually-driven by territoriality, just as the human animal is; animals are instinctually-driven to defend their young, just as the human animal is; animals are instinctually-driven to compete to copulate, just as the human animal is.

RESPONDENT: Do you not discern between competing and killing?

RICHARD: What has this comment got to do with instinctually killing to defend territory; instinctually killing to defend young; and instinctually killing to copulate?

RESPONDENT: You may be projecting your own suppressed conflict onto ‘out there’(?)

RICHARD: And you may be repeating yourself again soon ... can you not move on past your preconceived notions and actually look at the animal world as-it-is? Just because they do not have spears and bows and arrows and rifles and machine-guns and missiles does not mean that they would not if capable. They are as instinctually-driven with fear and aggression and nurture and desire as the human animal is.

RESPONDENT: Haven’t you noticed that thought has exasperated the violence exponentially when it comes to humans?

RICHARD: Aye ... but have you noticed that thought cops all the blame whilst the emotions and feelings born of the instinctual passions get either over-looked or exonerated as being ‘natural’?