666. Reading Praise Of Animality Makes Me Cringe

666.  Reading Praise Of Animality Makes Me Cringe

 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130605133712.htm
 

"In addition to humans' place in the animal kingdom at a scientific level, Lestel also highlights our essential, existential animality in his opening comments with fellow editor, Hollis Taylor. "A key question now is to know how the human of the 21st century can reactivate his animality and animalize himself anew when all Western thought since the Greeks tells him that he is human precisely because of this rupture with animality," Lestel suggests, building on his critique of the very philosophical foundations of the ethological tradition. "To be human does not mean to have fled animality, but on the contrary to live within it and to let it live within us…we are animals and animals are us.""

Where animality is not only allowed but made the basis of politics, we get Nazis, Fascists and the like.   Animality means the acceptance, facilitation and enhancement of instincts without any consideration for the victims.   

Recent German history is a good example for the political animality of the Nazis.     

• Under the ingroup-outgroup instinct, members of outgroups were murdered, exploited and driven from their territory.   
  
• Under the hierarchy instinct, the most stupid men cultivated their physical fitness and fought by aggression to the top, while the intellectual elite was killed and driven away.    Those at the top were ruthless in keeping their position of power.   
  
• Under the procreation instinct, women were reduced to be wombs, abused for breeding as if they were rabbits.  
  
• Under the gregarious instinct, people willingly merged with the obedient masses.  
  

We need a better world, where humanity is prevalent, and where animality is restricted and controlled by cognition and rationality.  

458. Religion And Atrocities

Religion And Atrocities 

Atheists often and with justification blame religions for the atrocities committed.   
But I think, that the religions are not cause of the atrocities.  Instead religions are merely condoning the worst behavior determined by the animal instinct in people.  It frees people from feeling responsible for the consequences of their behavior and it frees them from the need to override these obsolete instincts.   Religions enable people to be robots of their instincts without getting into inner conflicts.    Indirectly religion serves procreation and the survival of the species. 

1.  Atrocities to outgroups.

Those animals, who live in groups, are driven by the gregarious instinct to be a part of the group, and by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to consider outgroup members as resources to be exploited for survival.    They kill outgroup members to get more food, sometimes they even eat them.   This gives them an advantage in the fitness for having the most success in raising healthy bearer of their genes.  

The situation is exactly the same for humans.   By killing, eating, enslaving, sacrificing or evicting from good soil the members of any outgroup, they can acquire resources for having more offspring and thus enhancing their procreative fitness.   Therefore the ruthless readiness to commit atrocities has been successfully maintained in the human gene pool.  
But humans have also evolved intelligence.  Humans are prone to ask themselves the question, why they should get punished for killing or harming their neighbor, while they are encouraged or even coerced to kill and harm others, just because they look different, speak a different language or even just live on the other side of an invisible territorial border.    This difference seems very irrational and lacking any sense justifying it.    Animals are unable to ask such a question, but some humans cannot avoid to do so.  

With enough rational thinking and the ability to have empathy and consideration, people would answer this question and solve their inner conflict by stopping the killing.   They would start to feel responsible for what they do to all people beyond the ingroup-outgroup difference.   But this would require sharing resources.  This would mean to voluntarily reduce the breeding success in contradiction to the procreation instinct.  
So instead they invented a god, who was the god of the ingroup.   Atrocities to the outgroup were ascribed to god's will and considered as god's responsibility.   Thus they freed themselves from being responsible for what they did.    Their god allowed them to be the animals, that their evolving reason hesitated to be.

2.  Atrocities to women.
Biologically seen, the survival of mammals including humans depends upon the willingness of the females to bear and raise children.   Animals do not think, they have no option to be either willing or not, they are the robots determined by their procreation instinct.  
But human females have such an option, unless men succeed in depriving them of the choice.   Evolution has made men physically stronger enabling them thus to establish control over women.   Polygamy, male power over all resources for survival, women being the property of men, were and are common social situations.   The male have the option to rape women and to force pregnancies upon them.  
As a result of the evolution of the human mind, men are able to feel empathy and to have consideration for other people's suffering.  They are capable to be conscious of causing the woman's plight, and this creates an inner conflict with the urges of the procreation instinct.   Rational responsibility requires, that they avoid causing a woman's suffering by making her pregnant, unless she agrees.    
But Instead men solved the inner conflict in favor of their subconscious procreation instinct.  They invented a god, who sends children as his divine gift and expects women to raise them in gratitude and docility.   The men made the women's suffering god's responsibility.   They consider establishing power and control over women as justified by god's will.    In obedience to this god, they now can ruthlessly force childbearing upon women without feeling any inner conflict.   This includes even atrocities to any person, who helps women with birth control.  

Religion helps people to continue to be guided by the worst animal instincts still existing in their subconscious brain.   Religion impedes them to become truly humane.   Religion impedes the evolution towards eliminating the readiness to atrocities from the gene pool.        

455. Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Epicurus And The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

This continues entries 452, 453 and 454.  

One of Epicurus' principles is not to harm and not to be harmed.  This principle makes his philosophy coincide so much with my own needs in how to live.  Yet equality or inequality and the pain caused by humiliation and indignity due to be forced into a lower position was never mentioned in what is known of Epicurus' philosophy.   For a long time I was very puzzled, how he could even own slaves and appear oblivious of their pain.  

I was projecting my own strong egalitarian emotions indiscriminately upon others.   Epicurus' brain was obviously strongly hierarchical-gregarious and so was the brain of all those, who were his disciples by their own free choice.    I am completely void of the hierarchical-gregarious instinct.  

Epicurus lived in a society, where there were three categories of people, free men, free women and slaves.  About 30% of the population were slaves.  Free women were very restricted in their lives.   Their main function was to reproduce.   They were excluded from schools, from public offices and from entering many public buildings and from participating in public events.   They were free only as far as not being owned or sold, but they were not free to do, what they wanted, their life was restricted by their dependence on husbands or other men to act on their behalf.

Epicurus seems to be completely void of any empathy, consideration or responsibility for the harm done by pushing people down to and holding them in inferior conditions and situations.   Not all people experience this as equally harmful, because their subjective experience depends upon the predisposition of their either more egalitarian or more hierarchical-gregarious brain.   But at least some people do get harmed by enforced hierarchy.   

A philosopher teaching a general way of life supposed to be valid for everybody should take such harm into consideration.   Therefore there is a contradiction between his benevolent philosophy of homeostasis and enjoying life on this earth and his unconcern about the pain, that he was inflicting himself upon those hierarchically lower.    He himself did own slaves.   He did allow women and slaves to enter the garden community, but it was doing them a merciful favor as exceptions.   He seems to have been void of any comprehension for the unjustified humiliation of this attitude.  

Epicurus was the infallible guru, the never erring teacher, whose wisdom was above the criticism of his disciples, whose veneration and reverence was ascertained by an oath to adhere to his teachings.    He was someone, who enjoyed the power, praise, prestige and influence of being the guru on the pedestal.    He had a narcissistic need for veneration, but he earned it with real achievements, so he was successful in fulfilling his needs.   The benefits from his place on his pedestal were his motivation and compensation for the certainly hard work, stress and exhaustion of doing, what was expected from him.  
The followers accepted their devote role as the price to be allowed into the community.   Those free men having a choice, whose egalitarian brain was determined by the need for the dignity of being equals, were not attracted to become Epicurus' disciples but deterred to stay away.   The slaves of course were not asked.  Women with an emotional need for equality got treated better than elsewhere and had to be content with the emotional alms given to them.   There were no places offering the appreciation of full equality to women, they had to take the best there was.              

Epicurus had a psychological need for submissive disciples, succeeded in attracting them, got reinforced by their willingness to allowing him the place on his pedestal.   People with egalitarian brains were deterred from getting near him, therefore he was deprived of even noticing their existence.  The entire garden community including Epicurus' himself were driven together by the shared very strong hierarchical-gregarious instinct.   The hierarchy established was logical only to those choosing it, while it was a deterrent to those with an egalitarian brain.    Epicurus' blind spot was the conclusion, that the deliberate submission of his disciples was not the choice of some self-selected persons, but a ubiquitous human trait.

Epicureanism as it has come to us from 2300 years ago needs to be adapted and modified by two major additions:  

Apistia and egalitarianism.    

454. Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

Narcissism Explained By The Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain

I suggest to first read entries 452 and 453, where I defined the differences between an egalitarian and a hierarchical-gregarious brain.   The psychological differences between the two brain dispositions are different causes for dishomeostasis and differences in what stimulates the pleasure center of the brain, and how strong is this stimulation.

People with an egalitarian brain have a strong need for respect, appreciation, dignity.   Disrespect, depreciation, humiliation, indignity cause them a strong dishomeostasis of emotional pain.    

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain and the aspiration for a high position have a strong dishomeostasis for power, praise, prestige, veneration.    They are attracted to find as many inferior people as possible to give this to them.   They are void of any empathy or awareness, that what they want is a source of dishomeostasis for egalitarian people.   

People with a hierarchical-gregarious brain but with the acceptance of gaining benefits by having a low position experience this position as being in homeostasis.  They are also unaware, that egalitarian people suffer dishomeostasis, when forced into the same position.     

People with an egalitarian brain gain self-esteem and confidence by comparing their own achievements only with their own goals.   Therefore they have no reason to become narcissists.

People with an hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feel a strong dishomeostasis for the emotional benefits of a high position without being able to earn such a position by appropriate achievements are prone to become pathological narcissists.   Their bluff fails sooner or later and they lose their temporary source of narcissistic supply.   Then they fall back to enforce domination on the women in their lives, who are the most vulnerable and the least able to end the ordeal. 

In entry 453, I mentioned already the situation, when legal and external circumstances like slavery force people with an egalitarian brain in an unwarranted low position.   Chosen alliances are a different situation.  

1.  Memberships in ingroups, which are chosen without any external necessity, are chosen only for the attraction and benefit of the group itself.    Such groups are for example sport clubs, sects, cults, political initiatives, charities, self-help groups. 

1.1.   In hierarchical groups, leaders with a hierarchical-gregarious brain have earned the position by hard work and talent, but they acquire special benefits as an incentive.   

1.1.1.  Power reduces the dishomeostasis of fear and anxiety.   

1.1.2. Adulation, admiration, veneration fulfill narcissistic needs, that can either cause dishomeostasis or at least have a strong impact upon the pleasure center.   

As long as these benefits are earned by real achievements, rejoicing and indulging in them is different from pathological narcissism.  
Followers with a hierarchical-gregarious brain in such a group have a realistic view, that they either cannot become leaders or that the effort to strife to become leaders is too much.    They accept their lower position as a consequence of accepting hierarchy as the unavoidable structure of any group.  

But being a part of the group also reduces their dishomeostasis by giving protection against fear or by catering for some special need.   

In addition, they generalize the achievements of the leaders as if they were achievements of the group, which justify the prestige of the group.   Then they identify themselves with the prestige of the group.   They enhance their own self-esteem by experiencing themselves as partaking in the achievement of those, whom they follow.  
The fans of a football team are proud of the victories, as if they had played themselves.  The members of a cult, who have in reality paid a lot of money to be allowed in, feel as if they were the elected and privileged few.  

1.2.  When someone with a strong hierarchical-gregarious need for a high position lacks either the abilities or the motivation to invest efforts and cannot achieve such a position, he sometimes becomes a pathological narcissist.   Where he fails to achieve, he develops a grandiosity delusion, where he does not earn adulation and veneration, he develops an entitlement delusion.  When he does not get the admiration he feels entitled to, he blames this as the fault of those refusing to give him enough narcissistic supply.  A pathological narcissist is able to bluff people for a while, but he usually gets soon unmasked.      

1.3.  Egalitarians in egalitarian groups are joining for the benefits of the shared purpose, and by giving special functions to members, they do not give them power nor do they put them upon a pedestal.  

1.4.  When egalitarians do join hierarchical groups for a special purpose, they do this without accepting the hierarchy as justified.   They follow their own purpose, as long as they can do this without being required to show adulation or veneration, that they do not feel.   

1.5.  Sometimes a pathological narcissist chooses an egalitarian group as a stage to bluff competence in the hope to establish a hierarchy.   He considers it as an easy endeavor, because there are no competitors for a high position in an egalitarian group.   The pathological narcissist is unaware of the egalitarian group's rejection of a hierarchy, because he mistakes hierarchies as something ubiquitous.   But the entitlement delusion and the treating of egalitarian people as inferior causes the egalitarian group members to feel insulted and they soon end his attempts.   

2.  Couples are a special form of a group, they are the smallest and closest ingroup consisting of only two members. 
 
2.1.  Traditionally, while men were given education and earning possibilities, of which women were deprived, there were couples of two hierarchical-gregarious brains, in which real differences caused a woman accept an inferior role under a patronizing man.   The engineer marrying his secretary is an example.

2.2.  Two egalitarians choose each other for shared traits based upon reciprocal respect and appreciation.

2.3.  A man with a hierarchical-gregarious brain, who feels entitled to dominate and patronize a woman with an egalitarian brain, causes her serious suffering.    Sometimes the man feels entitled to the top position by the mere fact of being male, sometimes he is a pathological narcissist and has the delusion of superiority, that he does not have.  

But there is a big difference between being a member of a group and being half of a couple.  
 

The person, who has a strong need to gain the benefits of a high position in a group, but who is earning it does not automatically assume the same role in a relationship.   When he succeeds to get his needs met in a high position in his job or in a chosen group, he is not driven to establish a hierarchy also in a relationship with a woman, who prefers to be an equal partner.   

The pathological narcissist is the real problem.   He has such an urge for adulation and veneration, while he is unable to earn it, therefore he is eternally driven to manipulate, bluff and coerce people to comply with his delusion of giving him his narcissistic supply, but it never lasts.   When his narcissism becomes disruptive in a group, he can either be removed or the person feeling disturbed can leave the group unharmed.   Only the egalitarian woman, who had the bad luck to have become emotionally or legally tied to him is suffering a pain, that does not end, until the relationship has failed. 

453. The Egalitarian Or Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain Scale

The Egalitarian Or Hierarchical-Gregarious Brain Scale

This continues entry 452.  

I speculate that there is a bell curve of the innate strength of the gregarious instinct.  

1. At one extreme end of the scale are the people with the hierarchical-gregarious brain.   They are very much driven towards other people by a strong gregarious instinct.   They accept domination, deliberate and enforced submission as morally acceptable.  They perceive the acquiescence with any position in a hierarchy as a natural part of life.  They accept this not only concerning positions due to individual differences, but also to externally ascribed and enforced differences, that are sometimes haphazard, irrational and not justified by any trait or quality of the individual.  

They are equally prone to accept disadvantages from having low positions on the hierarchy and to ruthlessly inflict suffering upon those, who are on a lower position.   They inflict such pain on those, whom they have pushed down by competition and by power struggles and on those, who have such positions by haphazard circumstances.    They are often either not aware of causing pain or they are in denial.

2.  At the other extreme of the scale are the people with the egalitarian brain.  They are void of the gregarious instinct.  They consider all people as entitled to have equal chances in accordance with their individual traits, talents and skills.    They accept only individual differences as reasons limiting what someone can get and achieve in life.   They do not want to form hierarchies, they prefer a just exchange between people.   They choose to interact with some individuals and to avoid others.    They prefer to stay away from hierarchies and to cooperate selectively.    By consideration and responsibility they refrain from pushing people down to a lower position, because they are aware of the pain of being forced into an undeserved inferior position.       

Unfortunately, the innate inclination on the scale often does not correspond with the possibilities and circumstances.  The position in the hierarchy of external options is not a choice.  Racism, slavery, discrimination by gender, discrimination by the place of birth are examples of reasons morally accepted by those with a gregarious instinct as a justification to force a low position upon individuals without allowing them an alternative.   
A person with an egalitarian brain, who happens to be born in a privileged position has the choice to refuse the option of a high rank.   A person born into an underprivileged position does not have any choice.    
This has very detrimental consequences:  A person with an egalitarian brain suffers emotional pain when forced into a low position for unjustified reasons.    This person feels humiliation, indignity, abasement.   But the person with the gregarious brain, who has a high position and who is well meaning, caring and patronizing is unable to understand the pain of the egalitarian brained subordinate. 

Slavery is a good example.   A master and a slave of equal intelligence and talents experience the hierarchical situation very differently.    While the slave with an egalitarian brain suffers extreme pain from being in such a predicament of unjustified indignation, the master with a hierarchical-gregarious brain is oblivious of doing any harm, if he subjectively treats the slave with care and consideration for all his ascribed and alleged needs.   Instead he feels to be a good person for treating the slave better than required by law and social norms.   He may even feel entitled to gratitude from the slave for such mercy done to him.  

452. The Gregarious Instinct

The Gregarious Instinct
 

The respect for another person's knowledge and appreciation of another person's achievements, is psychologically very different from veneration and reverence for an entire person.    

The person with superior knowledge can be chosen as a teacher, and learning from him is intellectually beneficial.   It is a rational choice to acquire knowledge selectively.    It does not cause blindness for the teacher's limitations. 

 
But venerating disciples and followers put their guru and master upon a pedestal and blindly take in every of his words as ultimate wisdom.  They submit to him in totality and consider any criticism as a sacrilege.    Whatever wisdom he has is mistaken as a justification to put a halo upon him and deny henceforth any of his manifestations of weakness, shortcomings, errors or limitations.  

I have been very puzzled, why people are so prone to follow gurus and get sucked into sects and cults, because I did not comprehend, what benefits they get from such a blind submission and acceptance of inferiority.  This is so much in contrast of the hierarchy instinct driving people to compete for superiority.  

But finally I got aware, that I have completely omitted to consider the impact of the gregarious instinct upon human behavior.    I am personally void of the gregarious instinct, so I did not recognize it in others.   I am not attracted to people in general, only to people, with whom I have something in common.   I am only attracted to people, who make me feel the joy of consent.

I had mentioned before some people's elusive feelings of interconnectedness and that people have an identity as particles.   I did not see the full implications of this.    Interconnectedness and being a particle are more than only conscious feelings.   They are representing the powerful subconscious gregarious instinct.  
 

Like any other instinct the gregarious instinct causes urges and dishomeostasis.  The urges are to belong to herds, the dishomeostasis is lacking the protection by the herd.   Being deprived of interaction with group members, indiscriminate as individual personalities, causes discomfort.   The loss of feeling protected causes fear.   
In humans, the herd can be any ingroup, any social group, where the gregarious person feels protected in and to which he is attracted to belong to.   

If there were only the hierarchy instinct, people would compete and attempt to gain a high rank and if they are not able to do so, they would give up and move away.    But due to the gregarious instinct people feel so much need to belong to the herd, that they experience even the submission to the lowest position as more beneficial than to be expelled.   There cannot be a hierarchy, unless there are all ranks, high and low.  
Therefore I have to define the hierarchy instinct as not being the instinct to only fight and compete for a high position, but as an instinct to attempt taking the appropriate place in the hierarchy in accordance with the innate genetic fitness.   By the hierarchy instinct, the individual accepts the most suitable position for serving the survival of the herd.   The gregarious instinct urges the individual to do this.    Therefore there cannot be a hierarchy instinct without the gregarious instinct.  

This is an excellent source:  
http://progressor.webs.com/_05.htm