Instincts and Evolution
Evolution - a Cosmic Process
We regard our capacity for self-reflection as the end-state 'pinnacle', or crowning achievement of Earth-life, and not just as one out of many significant turning points in our evolution - with more to come. We're like a marathon runner in a 12K race who stops after the first 100 yards to turn around and marvel at all the distance he's already covered, and in so doing, forgets to finish the race. Our evolution is essentially a Cosmic process. It won't be complete until we unite in Oneness - not as an ideal or aphorism - but in a very concrete 'nuts and bolts' way through consciousness and subtle-energy bonds of Love with all the rest of Cosmic life. It will reach its culmination when we come to view ourselves and all others; as essentially spiritual beings experiencing physical lifetimes - and not as physical beings 'with' a Soul.
How We Self-Reflect
We use our enhanced human capacity for self-reflection mostly in the service of our individual psyche, for insights into those subconscious patterns of thought and behavior that once enabled us to survive psychologically intact in difficult childhood situations - but which are now hampering our adult functioning and psychological health. Most psychologists believe in the value of this type of 'insight therapy', the idea that just by bringing our maladaptive subconscious beliefs and behavior patterns into full awareness, we can extinguish them. But we refuse to self-reflect in the larger way Nature intended... to self-reflect on ourselves as a species, in order to gain insight into those instinct-based behavioral and cognitive templates that we still share with most of the rest of the animal world in order to collectively extinguish them in us as a species.
Over the centuries, some writers and philosophers have reflected on the 'Nature of Man' at the species level. However, these reflections tend to do little other than perpetuate our 'special case' status, by extolling our virtues and emphasizing our assumed place on the top rung of a species-based hierarchical scheme. It's not an accident either, that most have titles such as 'What Is Man?' because they usually emphasize gender-related traits more often seen in males than in females, such as aggression, and a supposed inborn 'instinct' to have many sexual partners. They tend to rationalize our propensity for war, rather than explore its specific instinctual underpinnings so that we might loosen the hold this persistent maladaptive behavior has over us. And those instincts that they do admit to our having are mostly viewed as permanent - not written in stone - but in our genes - and there's little we can do but accept them as part of our human condition.
On the contrary, our instincts are not something we can afford to ignore - or marginalize. Nor are they confined only to aggression and sexuality. Their influence on us is pervasive. But just as the ocean is largely invisible to the fish swimming in it because of its omni-presence, so too, our instinctual templates remain largely invisible to us as they continue to filter the bulk of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and behaviors into their well-worn channels.
"The more we learn about the kind of animal we are, the more self-conscious our behavior will become, and the more self-conscious we are, the more effectively we can change in the direction we chose."
Pierre van der Berghe
Anthropologist
The four major instinctual templates that persist in us as a species are:
- Territoriality
- Sub-Group Formation
- Status Hierarchies
- The Alpha/Pack Power Dynamic