Populism often has this weird tendency to ride on ‘abstract logic’, mostly suiting personal utilities. As individual desires are common and operative ambient milieus too are symmetrical, such populist perspectives become memes, which we call as ‘collective unconscious’. Pop cultures often have deep shades of powerful memes, painted on the canvas of collective unconscious, beyond conscious cognition. Consciousness anyway is usually in constant drift, blown apart by powerful pop sinews.
One such populist perspective is the term and idea called ‘visceral’. The populist perception is that what is instinctive to all of us has the ultimate utility and wisdom. This emanates out of this contemporary liberal and consumerist meme that ‘I Know and I Know It Right As It is Visceral To Me’. This seemingly embedded over-egoism of ‘I’ and its avowed ‘super-hero’ imagery has fueled this penchant for all things visceral.
This populist perception to validate all shades of desires and wants of our instinctive urges and drives however is only a very personalized value, which has become a meme but has no roots in logic and objective prudence. Interestingly mystical seems the realism that what happens to us, felt obviously by its deep-seated ‘desire-drive’, is more believable and acceptable than some distant and ‘external’ prudence of objective logic. That is why, pop feminism seems to have this penchant for accepting viscerality and drive-driven choices as true empowerment, as this comes easy, without any enterprise of conscious initiatives.
Scientists warn that most human drives or instincts are without conscience. They do not care about long-range effects. It seeks only immediate personal gratification as to most of us, feeling one’s own desires is the easiest thing and many believe – All good things need to be simple…!
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. And as deciphering one’s personal desires and gratification needs are the easiest wisdom, most of us fall for this utility of ‘intelligence’.
However, visceral drives and their utility apart, what singular objective logic says is –
‘If conscience exists, it exists in the intellect of the human, not always in instincts. To be human is to allow the intellect to preside over the utility and worth of every important action-behavior over the dimensions of time, space, people and processes. It is this necessary intellectual control of the instincts which makes a culture successful.’
Globally, there are studies and researches going on, which are looking into the dynamics of individual drives and social viability and they see clear trends. We see contemporary cultures in loads of drift and flux because majority of people are behaving true to their instincts (Visceral Wisdom), without much intellectual control and conscience.
Interestingly, even though this intellectual self control is a learned function and is called self-discipline, to over-ride less desirable instinctive behavior, the very seed of this need for self-control is deeply wired in our instincts itself. The guilt or remorse or even this ephemeral ‘second-thought’ that often follows instant-self-gratification is also instinctive and visceral. We seldom accept it this way.
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. The element of self-regulation and self-discipline, in the domain of ‘collective unconscious’; is gradually going down.
Science is working on bio-engineering probabilities, which could install a ‘package’ of knowledge and information in the minds of every new born, like a computer is installed with a software, so that every individual of every new generation could not have to spend long years reading about them and learning them. May be, science could also be someday successful in creating a ‘pre-fabricated’ brain-software, which makes it possible for all kids to be born with all past knowledge of humanity. Till then, it is ‘field-day’ for every stupid man and woman to flamboyantly flash his or her ignorance and proudly proclaim it to be the ‘exclusive genius’ of humanity…! This is visceral…!
Solipsism, early-life streaks of ‘anti-intellectualism’ and ‘anti-rationalism’ is not something, which come ‘pre-installed’ or ‘pre-fabricated’ in human mind but we are wired for them. Individual men and women ‘learn’ these ‘stupidities’ from their mad-milieus, as not only now, in all ages, ambient social-cultural milieus always have abundance of ‘stupidities’ for every young man and woman to ‘learn’ and then flash them as ‘exclusive genius’ of personal possession. Aping is visceral, however, what one apes is his or her choice, evolved out of the milieu, he or she was born and raised into…
Somehow, every newborn boy or girl comes on this planet with just an operating system of raw instincts, wired deep in his or her neural-make-up of brain states. Though, science may not yet have devised this ‘magic-software’ of ‘knowledge-package’, to install in every newborn’s mind but for sure; since ages, most newborn boy and girl are blessed with two ‘engineers’, in the form of mother and father, who keep installing ‘good-software’ of necessary personal/social/cultural knowledge and information in the computer of young minds, so that they have the contemporaneous mind training to fit into the larger sanity of humanity as well as ambient milieus.
However, tragically, not only in contemporary world, but in almost all ages, majority of newborns are assigned stupid ‘engineers’ of mother-father, who either do not have ‘sound engineering’ knowledge themselves, or they are themselves victims of stupidities, or they do not have the time, wherewithal and inclination to do their cosmic duties. In contemporary cultures, the parenting has become qualitatively more precarious. There is now marked evidences on correlation of parental misadventures and stupidities of their kids, when they grow up.
Therefore, on an average, at any time in evolution, human society has been inundated with over 80% stupids, who believe and accept that just being born as human being, they become the veritable genius and most knowledgeable creatures on earth. It is only very natural that average level of stupidity in human society and culture is almost always constant at 80%-stupidity. Somehow, it is also visceral and that is why the critical mass of stupidity is stabilized at optimum 80%. Why?
It is largely because, some humans may endure all pains and sufferings to unravel and decipher the true sanity and symmetry of knowledge for human wellness and excellence but they are always part of our history – A knowledge base not amenable for automatic transference to every newborn mind. No mind is born ‘pre-loaded’ with a software of ‘historicity’. Every individual boy and girl has to grow and evolve to learn the ‘history of knowledge and wisdom’ and then make practical use of this human wisdom in their own lives. This is some task, which requires loads of painstaking and honest labor and persevered poise. Only handfuls have it… This is also visceral… Why?
Somehow, solipsism, anti-intellectualism and anti-rationality are all something, for which we all are wired. This is how evolution has designed our body-mind mechanism and consciousness as evolution itself has been and remains a stupid engineering. That is why, in this factory, mostly stupids are manufactured. Science has deciphered this ‘hardware-software’ trouble of humanity, even as billions of humans happily and stupidly accept themselves as geniuses. This is hardwired… visceral to all of us…!
Science says –
“When confronted with the unpredictable and unknown, your frontopolar cortex refuses to admit defeat. It draws on all your computational abilities to search for patterns in random data. In the absence of real patterns, it will detect illusory ones. And it will prompt you to act on them.”
That means, we all live in a world of make-shift beliefs and ‘perceptions’, for which our brain and mind consciousness has such predilection that it is ever willing to accept any idea, which is already there in our memory/experience – part of ‘I’ or ‘Self’, which we have an infatuation to associate with. However, even a universal truth or transcendental realism, which is not in our brain referral, we shall ignore it and would rather fight against it with all might of our ‘perceptional’ mind consciousness. That is why, most people love to live, survive and thrive in the world of ‘self-suiting’ and ‘self-satisfying’ perceptional world of imaginations, sans facts and truths.
Globally, we can easily find such a person and personality among our dear politicians, whom we hail like ‘God’ and other God-Like celebrities, whom we ape like primates. We shall also talk about this issue of why most of us all are in deep infatuation with this perceptional-living.
So, different people shall have different personal expression of their core drives. Someone shall feel and accept that life is futile and there is no meaning of eating, drinking and having limitless sex. Many however shall readily accept life’s purpose as simple as the above. So, your core drives themselves create all shades of questions within you and accept answers as per their neural make-up in brain states. Science says, there are seven shades of consciousnesses and 16 brain types, which make people different in their thoughts, perceptions and actions. This in turn ensures that human conflict with each other is perpetual…!
The trouble is – stupidity of ‘visceral-living’ and self-certified-genius of ‘perceptional-living’ is what we all are wired for. There always is plethora of wisdom, all aligned to simple acceptance for every human being – man or woman. However, very few have the intelligence of personal initiative to seek it and imbibe it. This is the role and duty of parents but parents are themselves often the worst bunch of stupids in contemporary world of consumerism and instant-self-gratification.
As a wise said –
Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. Every community, every nation has its own lie, which it calls its idealism. Every creature therein breathes this lie from birth to death; lies are adapted to the mind of each race and art. There are only a few men of genius who can break free from it through heroic moments of crisis… genius cannot be defined without touching the ridiculous…!”
The good as well as bad thing is – Humanity has a long history and history has this goodness to repeat itself, so that the stupid humanity could at least see the light of sanity, even when they fail again. However, there are only handfuls of humans, who think it necessary to check the pages of history to learn continued wisdom and unlearn past mistakes.
Here is an example –
In most parts of developing world, like India, China, etc, sexual revolution is now becoming mature. Now even teenage girls are openly mouthing ‘free-sex’ and ‘unlimited-sex’ demands. This somehow makes many girls and women believe that ‘empowerment’ begins and ends with ‘Doing What Body Wants’ and what all bodies ‘want’ is sex-thrills and instant-self-gratification, most of which we do not ‘need’. This ‘Be Yourself’ stupidity of visceral drives is some ‘perceptional empowerment’ many women think is being ‘modern and contemporary’. This they do, not even bothering to check, what recent and long history of humanity has to offer as ‘learning’ and ‘unlearning’. As we said, it is some stupidity, we all are wired for. However, historicity and its sedimented wisdom does not come pre-installed in new born brains.
As contemporary young women and even teenage girls are advocating free-unlimited-sex liberalism, the part of world, where it all started, has now spent decades structuring an advocacy against it. Already, anti-feminism and ‘back-to-basic’ voices among many reasoned women and girls are getting stronger and those societies, who launched (rather re-launched) it and ‘repeated’ the mistake, humanity had committed thousands of years back, are now well on road to sanity, with both most men and women accepting the futility of the dwindling, yet prevalent free-unlimited-sex culture.
If only we could check Oriental history and if only we could check the history of social sciences, we all could accept why this contemporaneous ‘free-unlimited-sex’ intellectualism and ‘Be Yourself’ empowerment is an old-obsolete vestige of history and why the new millennium men and women are moving away from this once very powerful ‘unsettled-feminism’ agenda of unbridled-unlimited-sex.
Our History –
Around 3000 years back, in India, when human civilization and culture had settled enough to find and enjoy the level of security, abundance and even opulence to think of higher joys and goals of life, there was a very powerful and popular idea of ‘Sexual-unputdownability’, wrapped in the garb of ‘Liberal Righteousness’, ‘Be Yourself’ agenda and ‘Visceral Is Intelligence’ philosophy. We have descriptions of these ‘sexual-liberalism’ of ancient India in our classical texts. The Buddha was born in such cultural and ideational chaos of ancient India, where rich and wealthy population was out to ‘enjoy life bounties’ and were willing to adhere to a wing of life-philosophy, which was akin to modern sexual-insanity, where all sex-escapades were advocated to be made above moral-questioning. Where all shades of viscerality of instant-self-gratifications and hardcore consumptive-carnality were justified and even practiced.
Buddhist literatures and texts of the time are full of description of socio-cultural anarchy, which was prevalent in times of Buddha, which moved Buddha to embark on a path of ‘samyak-vichar’ (poised thought). There are enough written texts available for all young men and women to read and learn from our history. If contemporary young men and women think and live in the perceptional world that what they are witnessing and practicing is something new, novel and contemporaneous to humanity, then they are away from facts and truths. It is just history repeating its stupidities. Their novelty is somehow only a few thousand years obsolete.
Somehow, the ancient Indian epic of Mahabharta and the embedded spiritual philosophy of Geeta in it are great texts of societal and cultural situations of the times that seem to be pre-dating Buddha. In Mahabharta also, which scientists date around 1400-1500 BC; there are vivid details of how ‘unbridled-sexualism’ and ‘irresponsible-liberalism’ had created a society and culture of ‘mad-consumptive-opulence’. In Geeta too, there is a very powerful description of a ‘demographic theory’, where Krishna elaborates to Arjuna about how ‘unbridled-sexualism’ and ‘irresponsible-liberalism’ in the then society had resulted in wider chaos and unnecessary conflicts in society, threatening the very survival of human civilization.
Geeta and Mahabharta must also be accepted as one huge ‘social science’ text. Similarly, Buddha must be accepted as probably the first ‘Cognitive Science/psychology’ genius, who understood human drives, human cognitive conundrum and consciousness conflicts. It is debatable whether he was the first but so many greats of past insisted on this need to see and understand the wired drives of body and mind and then rise above them through a persevered process of self-dialogue and self-actualization. Indian spiritual philosophies of Yoga and Vipasyana are brilliant cognitive texts, detailing the causalities of human drives and milieus, which engender this stupidity of ‘Be Yourself’ viscerality. They also list the way out.
Then again, around in 600-800 AD, India again witnessed the same situation. There was a spiritual-philosophical movement led by Shankra, who advocated a ‘poised-life’ even when there was a contemporary populist philosophy by ‘Charvaks’, which advocated this ‘unbridled-liberalism’, based on ‘visceral-intelligence’ and so-called ‘Be Yourself’ philosophy.
Many believe that this Charvak philosophy was also there in the times of Buddha. In fact, since the inception of human civilization and culture, two streams of life-living philosophy has always existed –
Here, we have to see and accept something very critical. There is always this ‘cyclicality’ in time-space domain. That is why history repeats itself. There is also this very well documented history of social sciences evolved between 15-17th century, which have well elaborated how human thoughts create socio-cultural conflicts. The general will, social contract and Epicureanism ideas are there for all to see and understand.
Classical spiritualism has said it way back, social sciences documented it in modern era and now modern contemporary science in new millennium has been telling us that this cyclicality of human society is wired in our brain. That is why it has this cyclicality of repeating itself in time-space continuity. This we need to see, understand and accept –
In contemporary societies, where life and living has become very complex, it is only natural that humans shall feel the pinch of poise in a hard way. If we see, understand and accept it, we all are wise and our societies are happy. It is primary wisdom…!
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 favor 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.
This hypothesis advocates this contemporary wisdom that ‘Be Yourself’ ideology is a qualified wisdom. Just being yourself or blindly following what our instincts leads us to is stupidity. True meaning of ‘Be Yourself’ is seeing, understanding and accepting the drives and instincts through a tough and objective process of ‘self-actualization’ and ‘self-dialogue’ and then install intellectual self-control over all our visceral desires.
As ancient spiritual traditions as well modern science has been telling us – ‘What we seek is what we want and all that we want is not what we need.’ There is this fine-line between what we ‘want’ and what we actually ‘need’. This is the prudence of evolving and maturing as a human being. Our visceral self shall always lead us to our primary drives of 3Ps – Possession, Preservation and Perpetuation. These drives are wired intelligence, so that we all survive and excel. However, our drives are value-neutral and very localized. In collective modern living, we cannot solely rely on our drives and justify it by professing to Be Yourself viscerality. We need to apply intellectual self-control to prune our old and obsolete vestiges of drives.
There was an interesting survey in USA, where a group of people were asked whether they would accept $100 right then or forego it to get $500 after six months. Study found that overwhelming majority of people accepted only $100, not bothering to wait for six months in anticipation of better gains. This is some viscerality, which we need to unlearn. Be Yourself drives and instincts can be good, but not always and not in all situations. Our drives were created when humans lived in precarious life-living milieus. We now live in reasonably settled and structured milieus. That is why, we cannot and should not rely blindly on such old and obsolete drives, which have lost their utility and worth in modern milieus.
Instinctive behaviors are auto-mode, intellectual initiatives are not. Therefore, the intellectual self-control needs to be inculcated and persevered through conscious practice. This presupposes quality time with self. Contemporary life-living of constant drift and flux drowns us in auto-mode reactive decision-making, conditioned by our raw viscerality. This we all need to unlearn. This unlearning is the true empowerment and it has nothing to do with gender question. Both men and women need the same empowerment.
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