the human condition?

[andrew]

here's a link i just stumbled upon this week-end:

http://www.worldtransformation.com/?gclid=CO7Pm5TvzaMCFQ5Xagodnm9Www

first off, i have to say that i really like these folks which isn't always the case when it comes to spiritual claims.....here's what my first impression is: it seems to me that they are completely buying into the myth of the nobel savage re avatar et al....but for the moment let's go with it. now it seems to me that all these ancients had no concept of home ownership and capitalism so i don't for the life of me see how these soteriological claims can come to fruition in this system. also, it seems that the claims also suffer from a monological viewpoint in that there is one grand solution to the complexities of the human condition; sort of like buddhist claims that if everyone just meditated and became bodhisattvas all the worlds problems would vanish......

he does mention wilber in this thesis a number of times which is why i am posting it here and i can imagine the pre/trans fallacy coming into play...also, i also seems like they are setting up a similar situation as integral as far as you can't argue with us because we're second tier and we know better and these guys have the same thing going on albeit in a slightly different manner........

[Seth]

Andrew, I'm not sure I know what the myth of the noble savage is. Is that in a way connected to a notion of original blessing?

Out of what I've watched on the site you linked to, the instant/brief intro and origin of the human condition, I don't really find myself opposed to anything that's been presented. Seems they highlight the importance of integrating our shadow elements while giving a plausible story for their origin and existence. I don't know if I'm prepared to fully accept the theory as the main culprit in human dysfunction, but at the very least it does seem to have some origins of truth attached to it.

I think it's kind of neat how the biologist giving the presentation on 'origin of the human condition' gets choked up on a couple occasions. They do seem like decent people.

[andrew]

hi seth, here's a link from wiki showing what i was getting at which i believe is wilber's view, too:

A third is archeologist Lawrence H. Keeley, whose stated mission is to debunk what he believes in a "widespread myth" that "civilized humans have fallen from grace from a simple primeval happiness, a peaceful golden age" by uncovering archeological evidence that he claims demonstrates that that violence prevailed in the earliest human societies. Keeley, a political conservative, writes that he believes that the "noble savage" paradigm has warped anthropological literature to (presumably liberal) political ends.[37]

but yes, i don't think the worldtramsformation folks would take issue with your link nor do i......

i didn't watch the videos but rather read the pdf.....

i'm not convinced of the usefulness of creating political ideologies from a time in history that was riddled with uncertainties....some hunter gatherers surely were peaceful while it's clear others were not; again, this is not a good base to make sweeping politic policies on or grand soteriological narratives.......

[Seth]

Ok, so basically it refers to a romancing of the past? You see I didn't get that from what they were presenting, but it is possible that I misunderstood or haven't been exposed to enough of their material. What I was getting was our consciousness comes from a time of being purely instinct based, before the self aware mind, before the possibility of making conscious choice for ourselves. There was no inner conflict because there was no choice. It was a time of blind site. Not a better time. Once this mind became self aware, that is when the inner conflict arose... the human shadow was birthed. A going against the grain that produced feelings of guilt, despair, hunger, anger... darkness! All unconscious underpinnings to prove that we are fundamentally good.

That's probably a pretty sketchy rendition on what they're presenting, but I didn't find that it fell under the heading of romanticism (my word) or something like it. To me it seems more accurate to attach a concept like original blessing to what they're saying.

[andrew]

yes, it's a romantic notion of hunter-gatherer societies being more 'enlightened', or living in some past golden age; a notion that i am very skeptical of. funny, i did get from my reading that that is exactly what these folks believe, go figure.....but yes, i can buy your correct assessment on the rise of self-awareness from pure instinctual living and my non-credible opinion is that indeed there is much merit to what their saying here; but come on, grand claims that this knowledge is going to save humanity? hell, if god himself were to introduce himself personally to 1 to 5/10%-?? of this planets population that demographic would just as likely slit his throat! not to mention that there are about 1-2 billion muslims, jews, and christians that would never even come close to considering this. so how many people is that idea going to save? my guess is that it's going to be a very limited salvation on this one...but hey, A for effort.......

[Seth]

I hear what your saying, Andrew, but no matter what the projected outcome this movement has, it shouldn't overshadow the merit of what is being said. The biologist Jeremy Griffith who has developed this theory says it's reason based and doesn't involve any faith or metaphysics to rest its foundation. I think if his theory were right or accepted into mainstream thought, it could be quite impactful. For those who are interested the following seems to give a pretty good summary of the work.


The Summary Of The Biological Explanation Of The Human Condition

In human evolution when the intellect evolved to the level where it could take control from the instincts the two systems clashed.

The core concept of Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition is what occurred in the human species when our intellectual, or conscious thinking ability emerged in the presence of our already established genetic, or instinctive self. The following is a brief summary of the explanations put forward in Jeremy Griffith’s five books Beyond The Human Condition, Free: The End Of The Human Condition, A Species In Denial, The Great Exodus, Freedom, and in The Human Condition Documentary Proposal.

THE BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
A description of our intellect or conscious thinking ability

What distinguishes humans from other animals is that we are fully conscious. Consciousness is a product of the nerve-based system’s ability to remember. It is memory which allows understanding of cause and effect to develop. Once you can remember past events you can compare them with current events and identify common or regularly occurring events.
This knowledge of, or ‘insight’ into, what has commonly occurred in the past enables you to make predictions about what is likely to occur in the future—and with feedback or ‘experience’ the predictions can be refined.
Sufficiently developed, this capacity to understand the relationship of events that occur through time gives rise to the ability to self-adjust.
Being aware or ‘conscious’ of how experiences are related puts the intellect in a position to manage events to its own chosen ends. It can wrest management of life from the instincts.

Instincts controlled our species’ behaviour prior to the intellect emerging

Anthropological evidence indicates that the human species became fully conscious and able to decide for themselves how to behave some 2 million years ago.
Prior to that time humans were controlled by, and obedient to, their instincts, as other animals still are.

The gene-based (instincts) and nerve-based (intellect) learning systems

Unlike the intellect or nerve-based learning system, the instinctive or gene-based learning system is not insightful and cannot become conscious of the relationship of events that occur through time.
Genetic selection gives animals adaptations or orientations—instinctive programming—for managing their lives, but those genetic orientations, those instincts, are not understandings.
When our conscious mind emerged it was not sufficient for it to be orientated by instincts. It had to find understanding to operate effectively and fulfil its potential to manage life.
The problem is that when the intellect began to experiment in the management of life from a basis of understanding in the presence of already established instinctive behavioural orientations, an unavoidable conflict emerged between the two.

A conflict emerges between the ‘experimenting’ intellect & ‘orientated’ instinct

As the intellect began experimenting in self-management, by understanding existence, it resulted in behaviour that was sometimes different from our instinctive orientations. But the instincts, being in effect ‘unaware’ or ‘ignorant’ of the intellect’s need to carry out these experiments, ‘opposed’ these understanding-produced deviations from the established instinctive orientations.
The instincts in effect ‘criticised’ and ‘tried to stop’ the conscious mind’s necessary search for knowledge. Unable to understand and thus explain why these experiments in self-adjustment were necessary, the intellect was unable to refute this implicit criticism from the instincts.
This left the intellect no choice but simply to defy this unfair ‘opposition’ from the instincts.

The intellect reacts against the instincts’ criticism—anger, alienation & egocentricity

The intellect’s defiance expressed itself in a number of ways. It attacked the instincts’ unjust criticism, tried to block-out the instincts’ unjust criticism from its mind, and tried to prove the instincts ’ unjust criticism wrong.
Humans’ upset, angry, alienated and egocentric state—precisely the divisive condition we humans suffer from—appeared.
This conflict was then greatly compounded by the fact that the angry and aggressive behaviour was completely at odds with humans’ particular instinctive orientation, which was to behave lovingly and cooperatively.
From an initial state of upset, humans then had to contend with a sense of guilt which greatly compounded their insecurity and frustrations, making them even more angry, egocentric and alienated.
This escalating situation could only be ended by the dignifying, relieving understanding of why we became upset in the first place—an understanding that depended on the arrival of science and the ability to explain the differing natures of the gene-based and nerve-based learning systems.

A sample of evidence for this internal conflict

Eugène Marais, who was the first to study primates in their natural habitat, described the emergence of the conflict between instincts and intellect in his remarkable 1930s book, The Soul of the Ape:

‘The great frontier between the two types of mentality is the line which separates non-primate mammals from apes and monkeys. On one side of that line behaviour is dominated by hereditary memory, and on the other by individual causal memory…The phyletic history of the primate soul can clearly be traced in the mental evolution of the human child. The highest primate, man, is born an instinctive animal. All its behaviour for a long period after birth is dominated by the instinctive mentality…As the…individual memory slowly emerges, the instinctive soul becomes just as slowly submerged…For a time it is almost as though there were a struggle between the two.’ (Written in 1930s, published 1969)

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE EXPLANATION: THE ‘ADAM STORK’ ANALOGY
A simple analogy of migrating birds to illustrate the clash of instinct & intellect

We all know that many bird species are perfectly instinctively orientated to migratory flight paths. Of course this is not a conscious understanding of where they should or shouldn’t fly. It’s an orientation they are born with.
What would happen if we imagined putting a fully conscious brain in the head of one of these migrating birds who we will call Adam Stork? (The bird species chosen are storks which migrate from Africa to their nesting sites on the roof tops of Europe.)
With his newly acquired conscious mind Adam Stork now needs to understand where he should and shouldn’t fly. Not having any understandings he has to find them by experimenting with different understandings.

Adam departs from his instinctive flight path to exercise his intellect

Looking down from his migratory flight path, Adam sees an apple tree on an island and he thinks why not fly down for a feed. Not knowing any reason why he shouldn’t, he goes ahead with this, his first experiment in self-management and heads off to the island.
As soon as he does this his instinctive mind tries to pull him back on course. In fact it is inadvertently trying to stop his search for knowledge. His instinctive self in effect criticises him because it is unaware or ignorant of his need to search for knowledge.
Adam is in a dilemma — the equivalent of the human condition. If he obeys his perfectly orientated instinctive self he will be perfectly on course but he will never find understanding.

The cost of finding understanding is a sense of criticism

If he defies his instinctive self he will find understanding but he will have to live with the ignorant criticism from his instinctive self. Unable to throw his brain away he has no choice but to persevere with his experiments in understanding and battle the criticism.

Adam’s reaction to the sense of criticism from the instincts

Unable to refute the criticism with explanation of why these mistakes were necessary all Adam could do was retaliate against the criticism, try to prove it wrong or simply ignore it. He did all three.
He became angry towards the criticism, he tried to demonstrate his worth—prove he was good and not bad and he blocked out the criticism. He became angry, egocentric and alienated—in a word upset.

The parallels with the Biblical Garden of Eden story

This is similar to the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve take the fruit from the tree of knowledge—go in search of understanding—except that in this presentation Adam and Eve are heroes not evil villains. They had to search for knowledge and defy ignorance.
Upset was the price we had to pay to find knowledge. As it says in the song The Man of la Mancha we had to be prepared ‘to march into hell for a heavenly cause’.

Explanation resolves the conflict

Finding the understanding of the fundamental goodness of humans ends the unjust criticism that has so upset us. The burden of guilt has been lifted from humanity. The human condition of having to live with an undeserved sense of guilt has been relieved. Our anger, egocentricity and alienation can now subside. Adam would not have become upset if he could have explained why he was not bad to fly off course.

[andrew]

i'm agreeing with you on the merits of what's being said by these folks seth; and yes, it's a very grounded thesis...but ya know, i've been doing a little survey recently with random folks that i've been running into and have been asking them this question: which world would you choose to live in- one where purity (sattva) reigns supreme or one where all the great art of humanities dysfunction comes from, i.e. picasso, mozart, hemmingway, zepplin, coltrane, etc., etc., etc......so far, everyone i have asked that question to has chosen the latter! so what is it about purity that can't in general create great works of art? who knows, maybe all the right wing puritans will eventually move us into a society like the one that was portrayed in the movie equilibrium......if we're going to end the dysfunction we're going to have to end all the great works of art that comes from it..........are you up for it? and what will that society look like without all these great works of art that comes from humanities dysfunction.....

and yes, i realize that these folks are not using the sattva/purity lingo in their thesis per se, but i think my query still has merit, too.......

[Seth]

Andrew, my point wasn't if you were agreeing with me on the merits or not, my point was that I feel it more prudent to emphasize the potential merit rather than projecting how the world might react to their movement. I just brought up the point of reason to back a view that would hopefully balance out what you were saying. You seemed a little oriented in pessimism. I wasn't trying to further prove merit to you. Kapeesh!? ... understand? lol.. :p (just lightening up the mood)

The end of dysfunction, not saying that is their claim, doesn't mean that a person would stop housing a full spectrum of tastes and colors in their psyche. Dysfunction is more indicative of chronically suppressing something like anger rather than the simple act of experiencing it or expressing it on a canvas. The two worlds that you paint to base your little survey are fictitious. You take away my Zeppelin and I too am going to choose in the same favor as the rest.

So you seem to be treading cautiously with these people, which is fine, but what are your reasons at this time? I'm just looking for the merit behind your query.

[Christophe]

AHa. Yes these people own a piece of the truth. The Biologist Griffith feels like a guy who was deeply invested in green but then got disappointed by his fellow humans and went through some Dark Night Phenomenon. My guess is he suffered from clinical depression at some point, which explains his strange book covers and the involvement of a psychiatrist in their current videos, who ensures that Griffith had no psychosis, but a genuine insight.

I haven't seen all their videos but my guess is the WTM people are genuine second tier with a center of gravity at orange/ causal level. They seem to have a clear understanding of the dialectics of seperation and (re-)union (aka the developmental spiral), and a basic grasp of the differentiation of instinct and reason, or brain stem and Neocortex, or genetics and nervous system. Aka the human condition of modernity.

C.

[Seth]

How symbolic too is the wall color in the videos to an integral stage... even to have the reaches of green to be represented at the bottom with the plants. I do, however, resist boxing people in to a spiral dynamic box.

I'm slowly taking in what this biologist Jeremy Griffith has to offer. I just finished watching the video on integrative meaning, and must say I am becoming more and more resonant with his theory. He presents some good points and brings in apparent science and myth to back them up. I guess my next stop will be to watch the video entitled 'The Transformation'.

[andrew]

I'm hoping that there's a pic there from 'yours is no disgrace', by yes. i don't see an embed function for video here or i would have uploaded the vid:) that's for you seth.....

well, if these folks were saying that they've discovered a decent piece of the puzzle of the human condition and it's grounded in sound reason and we're going to put this info. out there and help as many people as we can i'd be fine with that. but again, their claims strike me as somewhat hubris when they declare that they have THE piece of the puzzle that's going to end all human suffering, misery, and tragedy....but also, i've also held an original blessing mentality for most of my adult life as i dismissed the claim of christianities original sin quite early on. but still, we're originally blessed! so what though! i guess i'm just not getting the significance of this as far as how these folks view it, but to be fair to me, i've just stumbled upon this work myself and these are simply my initial impressions that could be wrong and could change over time. where i do see this idea being very helpful are with religionists who are still struggling with the false concept of original sin, i.e. our prime minister who cuts cuts cuts all funding to the arts:(

[Seth]

Now There's some real integral art for you! :) To embed a video you have to push the HTML tab when making a post and directly paste the embed code there.

I'm obviously new to this material myself, and I did have the initial impression to write them off based on a superficial glance, but the more I look the more merit they seem to have. I too am a little unsure of the full implied impact of what they're presenting, but that also makes me wonder if and what I'm missing about what they're saying. I still have to watch the video on 'the transformation', so maybe that will give me a better idea. I, like you, Andrew, can see how they could influence religion by replacing a widely accepted christian doctrine like original sin with a more virtuous one like original blessing. Also, in terms of science I can see how the proposed might make an impact by modifying the mainstream belief in something like the 'selfish gene theory' with a more rich and deeper understanding of the true dynamics that are taking place. I'm no expert in these areas though.

[Seth]

Andrew,

Yeah, the transformation video is where he lost me. He doesn't seem very supportive of any type of shadow work, he does seem to be supporting a notion that one idea solves all, and he also seems to paint a picture of some sort of pristine nirvana to come. This by rejecting the negative elements in life rather than transcending and including them. That's what I get, anyhow. Why the need to go in that direction with everything? Like we discussed, there does seem to be a chunk of truth in what's being offered. To me that seems to be the more useful thing to focus on. We don't want to be throwing out babies with the bath water.