We’ve Outlived Utility Of Instinctive Drives,
Intellect Must Redesign Their Novel Worth
There is this singular and objective hypothesis, which if accepted, paves way for objective understanding of how we humans are what we are. This hypothesis is a result of the scientifically singular understanding of brain functioning, which engenders very powerful insight into how our consciousness works. As this hypothesis about consciousness is accepted, it shall be easy to understand and accept the realism about how we have loads of obsolete and obstructive notions about cognition and causality, which we have uselessly carried forward since ages. This is time to shift to the new cognition and causalities.
It is now to be accepted that we humans are not a logical and intelligent creature, if we do not have a specialized, education, training and sustained practice of good things we have learned. Humans are not born intelligent and logical; rather we are totally reactive, instinctive and intuitive creature. Our behaviours are determined entirely by a multidimensional process of interaction between our various instincts. These instincts are genetically determined neural mechanisms, provided by evolution for action and behaviour. There is no mechanism for intelligence or memory which is separate from sensory, motor and instinct mechanisms.
The untrained and uneducated human is totally instinctive and not capable of objective reasoning or proper cultural behaviour under complex modern social environments. The human has been provided by evolution with instincts, which causes him to seek both training and education, as he or she is a competitive social animal. He is quite capable of logic, reason, and intelligence when he chooses to be so, provided that he learns and follows the necessary discipline and rigid methodology. Even then, he is instinctive in his goals. His instincts provide the direction, drive and power behind his every action.
Moreover, a section of scientists argue that nothing has remained instinctive in humans anymore as we all have been into this society and human made cultures since long. They believe, all instinctive drives of humans are not purely instinctive but coloured, shaped and conditioned by cultural benchmarks of action and behaviour.
However, there is no conflict in the two observations. No doubt, humanity has been impacted by two very powerful forces – nature and nurture; that is their pure instincts and cultural sense of appropriate and righteousness. This is evident from the fact that most humans are split between what their instincts drive them to and what their cultural upbringing leads them to. That is why often, a person would say – I am confused as whether I should listen to the call of my heart or that of my mind. An average person believes that there always are two calls on decision-making about an issue. One is from heart, which he or she believes is his or her gut feeling, which most people call visceral. Second voice comes from the mind, which most believe is the call of a culture within a person.
There is this preference of heart or visceral choice over the mind call as most believe, heart is where righteousness is, as average person believes, mind is devilish and it usually orchestrates complications, whereas heart is simple, pure and mostly right. This is populist psychology playing its part in everyone’s life and life-living choices. People love to listen to their hearts; that means most prefer to have the way their instincts lead them to. There is no doubt about the preference as, we already discussed how evolution has installed in us very powerful drives, which are so wired to the idea of survival that most of us lead ourselves the way our instinctive drive takes us to. Scientists say, even the culturally learnt behaviour finally becomes part of the instincts and that is why, it is accepted that humans are largely instinctive.
This works out as double trouble for humanity. Human mind mechanism has this wired facility to make most actions and behaviour as auto-mode, action-reaction causality. This is the reason most of us are in a perpetual state of drift and flux, which makes us auto-generate series of action-behaviour, the utility and worth of which we seldom think in a receptive-mode and retrospective thinking. That is why loneliness is some facility for us, which makes us sit focused over our auto-mode decision-making instincts, to assess about their true and right utility and worth.
Scientists maintain that modern human developed intellect in parallel with other physical and neural traits. Modern humans have risen well over evolutionary instincts and they have this intellectual duty to create and prolong a good culture, where there is intellectual control over instinctive drives, for larger wellness of the society. Only through the application of the intellect, utilizing experience, education and training, as control mechanisms over the raw instincts, appropriate cultural behaviour can be obtained.
Scientists say that most human drives are without conscience. They do not care about long-range effects. It seeks only immediate gratification. Modern knowledge of brain realism also accepts that consciousness is very localized. It instinctively being a reactive mode facility cares for only short term utility and worth.
If conscience exists, it exists in the intellect of the human. To be human is to allow the intellect to preside over the utility and worth of every important action-behaviour over the dimensions of time, space, people and processes. It is this necessary intellectual control of the instincts which makes a culture successful. We see contemporary cultures in drift and flux because majority of people are behaving true to their instincts, without much intellectual control and conscience. And, this intellectual control is a learned function and is called self-discipline, to over-ride less desirable instinctive behaviour.
That is why in most advanced contemporary cultures, where liberalism has unleashed uncontrolled instinctive drives of humanity, sans any intellectual self-control, the governments of the day have to spend huge moneys on police, jails and other emergency measures. Most modern cultures are failed cultures as the level of self-control in people in personal and societal spheres are very little and diminishing fast.
One such powerful instinctive drive of humanity, which has shattered most modern liberal cultures, because of ever reducing intellectual self-control is sex. This over-encompassing sex drive has lost its evolutionary role way back and it surely looks like an obstructive vestige of the obsolete evolution. Still, it dominates the human thinking and worldview in biggest possible way, overriding even survival sanity.
Evolution, at one point of time, many millions years back, switched from non-sexual reproductive procedures to sexual one as it had definitive benefits for species survival and genetic excellence. Evolution embedded sexual drive in neural wirings to ensure that human excelled over other species. This evolution then created gender roles and suitable physiological as well as neural differences were created in males and females. This scheme of things required that men always looked for sex and women used sex as selection tool for best mating option.
Things have changed in modern cultures. Evolution’s game plan is no more valid and no more required as traditional gender roles have changed and in liberal cultural scenario, sex has lost its old and tested evolutionary purpose. Moreover, in modern living, humanity does not have the old challenges of survival and species proliferation, as we are many times more in numbers on this planet and have managed to live quite long. We do not need to go into details as everyone knows, how modern cultures have placed sex in a rather demeaning and diminutive imagery as fun thing, thrill-tool and time-pass activity, rather than a reproductive tool.
In modern civilization, where success of cultures depends on how intellectual self-control is exercised over instinctive drives, just the inverse is happening. Sex was once an instinctive drive, designed for species needs millions of years back. Now that modern human life-living situation and overall cultural advancement has made those needs obsolete, what we need is intellectual self-control over this powerful sex drive, which has lost its primitive usage. We need to accept sex in a totally different light and perspective.
Though, it is a long and complicated scientific explanation as how our brains have been designed in long years of evolution; we just have to know and accept that unlike other human organs, human brain is not a single organ. It is rather a cooperative of many parts, evolved during different times of evolution, with each part being an addition to the old one, not a replacement. Therefore, what we need to accept is that our brain is not doing this favour of intellectual discretion to us. It still has the primitive brain, over which the new parts have piled up. That is why our brain still has the primitive instincts and drives. It also has modern logical parts but brain is not doing any automatic pruning for us. We have to exercise learnt and nurtured intellectual control over our instincts. Both instincts and intellect are part of our brain mechanism but this self-control thing works well only when we have evolved a higher consciousness. Instinctive behaviours are auto-mode, intellectual initiatives are not. Therefore, the intellectual self-control needs to be inculcated and persevered through conscious practice. This presupposes quality lonely time with self.
No doubt, human inventiveness and human intellectual prowess are potent mechanism, which can engender so much novelty out of even a waste. Sex however is such a beautiful human experience. With applied human intellect, modern humanity and cultures surely can turn this obsolete sex drive into a highly beautiful, artistic and worthy entity.
There is this very subtle difference in cognition regarding so many life-living realisms, which produce two extreme causalities – extremely beneficial or extremely calamitous. This difference in cognition is about how we hit a poise of higher purpose between tangible as well as intangible elements of some realism. This needs to be applied in the domain of sex. The tangibles of sex and physical intimacies have a very limited purpose, which are now evolutionary vestiges. We surely do not need sex in its primeval tangible form. However, the intangibles of sex are unlimited and they offer us so many sunny shades. The intangible elements of nurturance, mutuality, intimacy, cooperation, compassion, commitment, trust, etc are all very beneficial requirements for overall wellness of we all and all these elements must be made to ride on the tangibility of sex. Evolution has given us a vehicle, a medium, but what we carry on this vehicle is now the role of our intellect and higher consciousness.
This requires change in the age-old cognition about sex. We need to unlearn the populist perspectives about tangibility of sex and learn the intangibilities of sex, in the light of new wellness needs in modern times. The artistry of intellect to attain this change needs two key ingredients –
As we said earlier, with applied human intellect, modern humanity and cultures surely can turn this obsolete sex drive into a highly beautiful, artistic and worthy entity.
It is a similar situation with loneliness. We have to unlearn its tangible aspects to change the old cognition about it as a bad and debilitating thing. Then, we need to apply our intellect to redesign a new cognition, which sees and accepts the beautiful and beneficial intangible elements of loneliness.
We all just need to accept that there are things, which need to change. We are no more what we used to be millions of years back, when the evolution wired in us so many of our current drives. As these drives are still there and we surely cannot delete them from our genetic makeup, we have to fast unlearn the obsolete roles and worth of these drives and design new intellectual meaning and utility of these drives.
Similarly, loneliness was once a very meaningful tool evolution wired in us so that we all could drop our individualistic streak and fall back to society, culture and other collectivity as our survival chances were good only when we lived in groups and interacted in mutuality mode. However, modern living and contemporary cultures have outlived the utility of loneliness. This collectivity, over-connect with cultures and being part of the crowded mainstream worldview itself has become a huge burden on individual as together, they are triggering more chaos, conflict and confusion, because of the constant drift and flux, they keep us into. It is time we unlearn the obsolete instinctive perception, role and utility of loneliness.
We need loads of self-control, self-discipline and self-awareness of high order to intellectually re-design the rules of individuality as well as our social needs. Times have changed, the world we live in has changed, life-living realism has changed. That is why we also have to intellectually design such changes in ourselves and in our mainstream cultures, which make both individuals as well as cultures become successful.
Scientists say, evolution is a stupid engineering. Things in distant past happened as accidents, and in time, many of such accidents, which evolution opted for as bare survival input, were labelled as successes. Scientists say, we have come to a stage, where we are no more a puppet in the hands of accidental evolution. Scientists say, future of humanity is in designing excellence, not survival. All future evolutions shall no more be accidental, but planned after very mindful and conscious intellectual rumination.
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