What we think of as 'us', headquartered in our minds, is merely a complicity of our bodies' invention, a figment of reality. In reality our minds are the battleground between our bodies' organs, which invented and co-evolved our minds as their
problem detection system, and our society, which seeks to co-opt our
minds to (as ee cummings put it) "make us everybody else" as part of a
collective army to fight that society's imagined enemies. In the sense we have come to conceive of ourselves, there is no
'us'.
I am
coming to believe that our bodies' organs co-evolved our minds for a
purpose other than their immediate and selfish self-protection. The second purpose of our minds, I think, is self-restraint.
Why? Because self-restraint of creatures with exceptional capacity to
influence their ecosystem is essential to the health of that ecosystem,
and hence to the health of all creatures within it. Most creatures do
not need self-restraint because, at their worst, they can do little to
perturb the balance of life. But larger, fiercer, smarter creatures can
wreak havoc, so their minds (in the collective interest of
all-life-on-Earth) should inevitably have evolved self-restraint as a
critical characteristic and determinant of decision-making.
Most
of who 'we' are continues to be the autonomous processes of our bodies'
organs, and the subconscious realizations that we call 'instinct'. Our
conscious thoughts comprise a tiny proportion of our information
activities. So what happened to us that we now equate ourselves
with our conscious thoughts, and even believe we have an identity, a
consciousness, that transcends our body entirely, and even defines
reality? Some would have us believe it is our abstract consciousness,
our ability to conceive, that 'makes' the world -- that there is no
reality without consciousness. (This belief reminds me of the equally
arrogant belief of religious fanatics that the world was created six
thousand years ago by a superhuman. It defies all credibility. But
whatever gets you through the night, I guess.)
Most creatures
exercise self-restraint, a manifestation of a humility that appreciates
and realizes that the delicate balance of nature that has evolved over
billions of years is the best model of sustainability, the best way to
live. They 'voluntarily' reduce
their birth numbers to keep them in balance with the rest of their
ecosystem. This remarkable phenomenon seems to arise as a result of
hormonal changes that respond to overcrowding and other stresses,
changes that indicate a collective awareness. Only if that fails do
nature's other remedies kick in -- increases in other predators,
disease, and, as a last resort, aggression and violence leading to
rising death rates.
I
believe we had this same self-restraint, until, as an unexpected
consequence
of our sophisticated brains, we invented civilization, and its
artifacts, including the suppression of our 'natural' self-restraint.
"To be nobody else" is indeed, as cummings said, "the hardest battle",
and it requires that we rediscover our instinctive self-restraint,
become truly natural creatures again, each one of us, alone, and free
ourselves from the slavery and propaganda that our society, with the
best of intentions, has imposed on us. We have lost that humility, that
self-restraint. We have become disconnected from all-life-on-Earth so
that we no longer sense that we are devastating the planet, that our
way of living is unsustainable. Why?
My
theory is that it began with either the ice ages, or with the rapid
extinction of large mammals that followed our invention of spears and
arrowheads. Suddenly, what had been a life of astonishing and
continuous abundance became a world of great scarcity. That scarcity
bred fear. That fear (in an autonomous process that Hall has shown
occurs precisely the same way in mice) produces murderous violence,
which in turn precipitates mental illness, trauma, shutdown, suicide,
and vulnerability.
At about the time of this collective mental
breakdown, we also invented, perhaps as a means of trying to manage
social disorder, abstract human language, a tool that enabled the
invention and dissemination of propaganda: Once we learned to
communicate accurately, we quickly learned the advantage of lying.
The
combination of emotional illness and psychological vulnerability, and
propaganda exploiting this weakness produced, I would theorize, four
phenomena that exemplify our modern society: groupthink ("becoming
everybody else"). frenetic behaviour (inability to pay attention),
disconnection, and dependence (on others higher in a hierarchy). A very
sad, unhealthy, destructive and unnatural way to live.
If this
is the case, what would we need to do to become our natural selves
again? To stop being "everybody else"? To regain that humility and
self-restraint?
It would be difficult, even more difficult than
cummings suggested. We would have to deny all the conventional wisdom
that we are taught from birth. We would have to live simpler, in order
to re-become self-sufficient. We'd have to shut off the noise and
propaganda that bombards our every waking moment. We'd have to refocus
on the simple joys of life: eating, sleeping, loving, playing, and
spend less time doing things that rely on others, people we don't know.
We'd have to talk less, and talk about what's important. In place of
the inane chatter we'd spend time reconnecting with our senses, our
bodies, our instincts, and the natural world. We'd have to stop living
the dread-ful life inside our heads and start living as part of
all-life-on-Earth, in the astonishing, joyful, real world. We'd have to
stop living in clock time and start living in Now Time.
We'd
have to re-become simply who we are: A collection of organs amazingly
complicit in realizing their collective success and happiness,
inventing and reinventing and succeeding ourselves, connecting with
love and without restraint, instinctively, under the spell of the
sensuous.
Could we even do this? I think it's possible. I think
artists are, by nature, closer to this simple, open, vulnerable,
natural, truthful way of living. We have a billion models -- the
wild creatures all around us, and the children, not yet disconnected and
damaged and beaten into submission. They are showing us the way.
Painting
above by painter and environmentalist Sophie Sheppard, auctioned in
1999 at the Authors Unite in Defense of Mother Earth festival.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
