Man Is Not Wired for the World He Has Created

Why is man so beset with the ravages of insecurity and fear?   This lack of a feeling of security and the endless competition of modern life has left man unable to experience any peace with himself.   One may point to those with strong egos as being an exception, but in reality those who exhibit a strong ego have been found at their core to be very insecure.   Man is typically fully functional, but he is not at peace. 

Why does it matter?  If man is fully functional, so what if he is insecure and not at peace?  The reader may think that sounds like new-age hogwash.   

If man is insecure and not at peace, he cannot have, despite his best efforts, healthy relationships with his spouse, children, parents, and colleagues; he cannot act rationally in his best interest; and the insecurity leads to the violence, cruelties both large and small, and inhumanity that we see evidenced everyday.   And so there is no end to the dysfunction and the psychic suffering in this world.

Take a moment, or actually many, to think about your relationship with yourself and others.   If you think deeply, allowing reality to replace illusion, you will know that what I have just said is true. 

But back to my original question, why is this the almost universal state of man.   A strong clue comes from the comparison of aboriginal people* with not just contemporary man, but really man since he left the aboriginal life style.   Certainly man since the time of the Buddha, which was 3500 years ago, which predates the period when the Old Testament is thought to have been written. 

From what we know of aboriginal man, primarily from first-hand experience of aboriginal groups which remained intact, that is to say isolated, as late as the first part of the 20th century, aboriginal man lived happy lives not consumed by fear and other neuroses and emotions normally associated with man.   Close to home, we know this about American Indians before they were corrupted by contact with the White man.   Hence the phrase, "noble" or "innocent" savage.  

But while they were certainly innocent of the world of modern man, innocent in a similar sense to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were not innocent of the world they lived in.  They were aware of the significant natural and physical challenges that they faced in life.   But despite the hardships, or what we would certainly view as hardships, it did not impact their spirit and their sense of self.   Why?

Although aboriginal man was able to speak a different, and we believe a more exact and nuanced, language than animals spoke, and they had a more developed brain, their lives were in important ways more similar to that of our immediate primate ancestors, the large apes, than to modern man.   They lived off the land much as animals do and were deeply connected to it.   Their communal life was similar to that of the larger apes.   

Perhaps most importantly, for their psychic health, was their after-birth experience and the way they raised their young.  Birth, being thrust out of the womb, has to be a scary experience. When an animal is born, it is typically licked all over by the mother and is always next to the mother’s warmth until weaned. Aboriginal mothers, sans the licking, cared for their babies in much the same way.   But now when a baby is born, at least since Victorian times, it is slapped on the behind, washed by a stranger, rolled up in a blanket and given to its mother to be held and fed before being put in a basinet by itself. Not a nurturing environment. 

When a child is born, he has four basic needs:  food, freedom from pain, warmth/nurturing, and physical security. These are what I have called the four irreducible needs of all human beings, indeed probably of all sentient beings. In particular, a baby’s need for nurturing, for unconditional love, is almost without limit. So from the moment of its birth, a modern baby finds that its needs are not met, and the first seeds of insecurity are sown.  An animal's needs, on the other hand, unless it is the runt of the litter, are met. 

Aboriginal children are raised much as young animals are raised . . .  communally.  Thus they play together with other children from an early age, they are watched over by all adults, not just their mother, and they practice through their games basic, necessary, functions of life.   From the very start, the "I" of the child is more an "i," and all thoughts are in the context of "we."

Man is an advanced animal.  He is another species but not another life-form, class, or order.   And so he is biologically and developmentally "wired"  - –meaning all of his mental and other functions - for life as an animal.  And there has been almost no evolutionary development, mutations, of man since he appeared on this earth tens of thousands of years ago.   He has developed his brain and his skills, but these have not been evolutionary changes.  He is wired as he was at the dawn of man. 

So what happened when aboriginal man moved into a non-communal setting where he had to fend for himself?  How did he function?  Uprooted, he did what he had to do, he depended on his wits for survival and growth.   And so the "we" and "i" of communal life became the "I" of modern life.   Whether living on a farm, in a small village, or in a modern city, he has had to depend on himself.   He had to compete with others for his livelihood, especially once he left the farm. 

At some point also the way newborn babies were cared for and children raised changed because of the new lifestyle.   Except for the rich, where children were given over to the care of wet-nurses and nannies, babies were cared for pretty much as was "natural" until the advent of modern medicine and the establishment of hospitals.   As to being raised, for most children in the West, being inducted into adult life meant childhood labor, acting as an individual, not being part of a communal group that passed into adulthood together.   For those with money, they were not sent to work, but they passed through their lessons and education as individuals, competing with their peers.   In all cases, whether rich or poor, they were left totally adrift of the security of both parents and communal peers and instead needed to survive based on their own wits. 

And this has affected man terribly.   Some may be successful, powerful, rich, but they are at their core insecure, unhappy persons.   And of course the mass of people are not successful, powerful, or rich, but they are still at their core insecure, unhappy people because they are a product of our society. 

So if man is not wired for the world he has created, what do we do?  We can't change the world.   It is what it is.   There is no chance of reverting to the past, to a "back to the past" future.   

The only thing we can do is do what the Buddha and other prophets have taught:  change the way we relate to ourselves and the world around us.   Learn to accept things the way they are, know that you will be ok, safe, regardless what life throws your way because you have everything you need inside you to be at peace and happy, and thus be able to react to whatever you experience with dispassion, free of labels, free of the intervention of your mind.   

Obviously your mind will have other ideas.   It won't be agreeable to this way of looking at yourself and the world.   And so you must free yourself from your mind; all the emotions, judgments, cravings, and attachments that cause you pain and suffering are a product of your mind.   So say to them all, "Not me!"

And so you will rest undisturbed, and when you do, nothing offends, and when nothing offends there is nothing that interferes with you taking joy in each moment and having faith that you will be ok, safe.   Yes, there is something circular here, but that is typical of Buddhist thought.

This perspective will allow you to be in this world, interact with it, but respond to it in a spiritual way, not the way you've been trained and raised to do, through the mind.   This way of approaching life is not about separating yourself from the world; this is about changing how you interact with it.

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*I use the word aboriginal not as a synonym for indigenous, but in an anthropological sense, denoting a simple, often hunting-and-gathering, village-oriented communal society.   Many such societies may make up a tribe or a people, but the societal unit is the village commune.   This is in contrast to indigenous people such as the Inca and Astec who developed complex civilizations that were not communal. 

Ever Wonder Why the World Is the Way It Is?

We live in a dysfunctional world.  Violence and conflict are all around us … within ourselves, within families, within societies, between nations.  How often do I hear people asking, “Why?”

The typical answer is some version of, “That’s just life,” or “It’s human nature.”  But that’s too easy and facile an answer.  The truth is more complicated and enlightening.  While it’s true that it is the way it is, it is not human nature; it’s human development.  That means it’s not inevitable; people can change.  We have a choice.

All religions depict life as a constant struggle between light and darkness.  In former times, that fight was often spoken of as being between God and the Devil. 

These days one hears little about the Devil for the same reason that most people don’t talk much about God.  The existence of these deities as external forces that control our lives, to whom we can on the one hand pray for deliverance or on the other bargain with for what we desire, just flies in the face of both our life experience and scientific knowledge.  Many have thus lost their belief in the God of our forefathers, if not declaring God dead.

But another concept of God is very much alive for those who walk the path of spirituality/mysticism … whether it’s Buddhism, Hinduism, Jewish Kabbalah, Islamic Sufism, or Christian Gnosticism.  Their truth is that the Buddha/God essence is within each of us from the moment of our birth and remains there throughout our life.  

But that divine essence becomes hidden from us over the years, buried by successive layers of our ego-mind’s reaction to life’s experiences.  We become wounded by those experiences.  We become lost to our true selves.  And so we walk the path to reconnect, to rediscover our true selves.  Our salvation comes from within us, not from some outside force.  And so the eternal struggle is seen as being between our heart/soul and our ego-mind.

While we learn that the Buddha was tempted by Mara, the Buddhist equivalent of the Devil, I have never, I believe, heard the Devil mentioned when speaking of the challenge of healing ourselves, of ending our suffering. The reference is rather to freeing ourselves from the control of our ego-mind, it being the true source of our suffering, not the events we experience.  As the Buddha said, to free ourselves of the conceit “I am” is the ultimate freedom.

Recently, however, I felt the presence of the Devil.  I was having dinner with a friend who knows he has to limit his consumption of alcohol.  But he said he wanted a second glass of wine that night.  And that after dinner he wanted to go to some bars and have a beer like he does when he travels with other friends of his.  Knowing I would disapprove and say “no,” the expression on his face when he talked was a mocking one, sly.  I was aware of the strangeness of it at the moment, but I didn’t recognize it.  Only when I meditated the next morning, did I realize that I had been in the presence of the Devil.

I now understand that just as in some religions the Devil is thought to be a fallen angel,  in Buddhism, as well as the mystic traditions, the Devil can be equated with our ego-mind, which is our internal fallen angel/Buddha/God nature.  We have become so wounded repeatedly over the years that the ego-mind has no trust, no faith, and is consumed by fear; it has become cynical about the world around us.  It has overpowered our true self to “protect” us; we are in its control.  And so the Devil, our own Devil, is inside each of us; it is the nature of our ego-mind.

Ernestine, the Flip Wilson drag character, used to say, “The Devil made me do it!” In comic strips, a person was sometimes portrayed with an angel sitting on one shoulder whispering in his ear and the Devil sitting on the other doing the same, being confused by the competing advice; a graphic depiction of our internal Devil as well as our internal God-essence.   We have all experienced that.  So the concept is not foreign to our culture or experience.

I have written in previous posts how all the conflict and violence in the world, whether in the home, workplace, society or between nations is a result of the insecurity that man acquires from his life experiences.  (See my posts, “The Root of All Abuse and Violence - Insecurity” and “Insecurity as the Cause of Social Conflict and International War.”)  

That the ego-mind is not only filled with the fear, anxiety and self-centeredness (and often aggression) caused by insecurity but through continued wounding has acquired the lack of faith, trust, and cynicism of the Devil makes the dysfunction we observe all that more intractable.  And it explains the specter of evil that we see in all corners of the world.

This is why the world is the way it is.  It’s not because people are bad … there is no such thing as a bad person, just people who do bad things … or that humans are flawed.  It’s because our life experience has made us insecure and our ego-minds have reacted in a way which makes us a threat to our own well-being and the well-being of those around us.  The greater our insecurity, the more of a threat we become.  At some point we become the Devil incarnate.

If one wants to save the world from itself, this insight offers a possible agent of change.  It may not only be very helpful in a practical way for those already struggling to free themselves from the control of their ego-mind, the control of their emotions and perceptions, it may encourage more people, both leaders and followers, to enter upon that path.

How?  We very much identify with our ego-mind.  Its feelings and perceptions are all we’ve known our entire life.  Even for those who walk the path of the spiritual/mystic traditions, while we come to learn that our feelings and perceptions are the cause of our suffering and are not a reflection of our true selves, the power of these feelings are often barely diminished because we find it hard to deeply disown them.  So powerful is the ego-mind.  

When push comes to shove, we always return to the perspective of our wounded self, our ego-mind.  We have not purged ourselves from its grip.  The roots in our self-perception go too deep.

Identifying the ego-mind with the Devil may be very helpful because that image does not conjure up “I.”  It conjures up instead trickery, deceit, doing something against one’s best interest, evil … which is in truth how the ego-mind operates and controls us.  

Most people, regardless their status in life, regardless their lack of spirituality, would not I believe want to self-identify with the Devil.  It thus may well open the door at least a crack to the light of their heart.  And encourage people to at least ponder walking the path in order to find the way to disown their ego-mind and say “no” to its guidance, thereby freeing themselves from its control and finding inner peace and happiness.

Each soul saved makes for a better world.  Religions have always taught that.  But now salvation rests with the individual, what he chooses to do with his life.  Whether he chooses light or darkness, peace or suffering, not with his belief in a God external to himself.  This spirituality is of the present moment.   Its reward is here and now in a life of peace and happiness, not a Heaven to be experienced after death.

The Cause of Urban Ghetto Violence Cannot Be Placed on a Failure of the Black Community

There are many, especially Republicans, who criticize Blacks for the violence in the urban ghetto community, which mostly falls on themselves.  The point is either made or implied that it has something to do with Black culture, that it is a failing of Black mothers to raise their children properly, or that there are too few two-parent households.

While there can be no arguing against the facts of ghetto violence, the causal connections often made have only superficial merit.  If one looks at urban slums/ghettos around the world, one finds gangs, drugs, and violence.  It makes no difference if one is in Asia, Africa, Europe, Los Angeles or New York City.  

Regardless what the race, color, or ethnicity of the urban ghetto dweller is … the incidence of violence in the urban ghetto is a universal fact.  It is instead the crushing, de-humanizing impact of urban ghetto poverty that creates a seedbed for violence.

In most global urban ghettos, the poor are also predominantly immigrants or migrants.  One could even argue that Black Americans are still to a large extent immigrants (forced) because they have not been successfully assimilated into important aspects of the larger culture.  This aggravates the crushing impact of the urban ghetto because people also feel, with good reason, that they are not welcomed, that they have no place in the larger society.

That the combination of poverty and urbanization should produce such an outcome should not be surprising.  And the impact of globalization has actually made it worse.  

Maya Angelou, in her book Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, says that the children of the ghetto are the way they are because they do not experience caring, self-respect, and courtesy in the home.  That has much validity, but that experience itself is in turn the product of poverty and the soul-crushing life of the urban ghetto.

I’m not going to go into the sociological reasons why the combination of poverty and urban ghetto produce violence.  Untold books and articles have been written on the subject.  The reasons are well known and the facts inescapable.  Yet we as a society, and all societies around the world, choose to point the finger at the people themselves and/or their cultures rather than the situations the poor find themselves in because that is what is convenient for us.  

If it wasn’t the fault of the poor, if the problem wasn’t self-inflicted, then the larger society would have both a social and a moral obligation to correct the situation, to remove or at least ameliorate the causal factors.  But we do not want to drastically change the way our societies are structured, the way resources are distributed by government, the deeply embedded racism against the ethnic poor, and the pervasive discrimination directed towards all poor.  And so life for the poor continues more or less as it always has, even while receiving meager assistance in the U.S. and other countries from the government.

This is just one more example of the impact of the lack of humanity in our society  (see my post, “Healing Our Nation, Healing Ourselves”).  And our nation, as well as the rest of the world, will not move forward unless the essence of humanity is rediscovered by us humans, individually and collectively.