In nature we have the infant Myself and the guiding adult ego. The infant and the adult are bonded together in love. The infant trusts the adult, the adult is trustworthy, and all is good.
It seems that we now have The Myself, the Id, the Proto-Ego and the adult Ego.
The infant Myself naturally loves and trusts the mother. The Id is chaotic. There is a break in trust, and the infant no longer trusts the adult. It is the Proto-Ego, emerging from the Id state, which begins to make decisions on its own account; that is to say, the infant no longer trusts the adult and therefore the infant begins to make decisions alone. These decisions will have consequences which last throughout the life of the individual.
Example. This is the case of woman now in her sixties; it might sound comic, but it is also serious: it is Christmas. The father and eldest child out; the mother is cooking Christmas dinner; the middle child has been told to keep the youngest child quiet in the living room; the youngest child (the 'baby') has been told to lie down on the sofa, to stay there and keep quiet. The middle child is eight years old and is afraid of the mother. There is a jar of sweeties on the table; the mother has said that they must not eat the sweets. The youngest child, who is three years and 5 months old, wants a sweetie. She tells her sister to give her one. But the mother has forbidden them to eat the sweets, and the middle child refuses. The youngest child makes to get up from the sofa and get herself a sweetie. The middle child panics - the mother has said that the 'baby' must not get up - so the middle child quickly gives the youngest a sweetie, to keep her quiet. The sweet is pink. The youngest child knows she has been naughty. She is pleased with herself; she has outwitted her big sister and has got a sweetie. The mother brings in the chicken to stuff it on the dining table where there is more room; the mother takes chicken by its legs, and pulls the legs apart. The youngest child sees that the mother can see right into the body of the chicken. The child is terrified that the mother will do this to her, and that the mother will see the illegally taken pink sweetie in the child's tummy; and the mother must not see the sweetie. In terror of the mother, the youngest child has a kind of fit; the doctor is called and the child recovers.
The youngest child has made the decision that the mother must not see the sweet in the child's tummy. The child is terrified of her mother's anger and must protect herself from the mother's rage. We see that the child almost died, and it may be that the child feels it would be better to die than to have the mother know the secret. The secret of the illegal sweetie must be kept hidden from the mother.
This decision of the Proto-Ego was made by the child, who of course did not have the facts: even if the mother had taken the child by the legs and looked, the mother would not have been able to see into the child's stomach; and the sweet wouldn't have reached the gut so quickly. We may see that the child is superstitious in regard to the mother's power.
And we also see the great lack of trust in the family. The children do not trust the mother; the mother is angry - we must not blame her - and the children are dominated by fear of her anger. In a happier family, the mother would be wiser, and might keep the jar of sweets hidden; or if not and the children stole sweets on this occasion, they would not be in terror of the consequences; they might have told the mother; she might be a bit cross; and might have got them to help her stuff the chicken and so on. There would be no rage.
Dominated by fear of the mother's rage, the Proto-Ego has made the decision to keep the secret of the sweetie out of lack of trust, and guided by fear and superstition. The Secret becomes part of the fabric of that child's psyche, at a time when the child's brain is still developing.
This Secret remains, as part of the psyche of the individual, in the unconscious throughout life. The child grew up, the woman lived quite healthily and had some success in life. But at menopause the incident of the Secret began to re-emerge into consciousness, but did not become fully accessible to her conscious understanding; the woman became troubled and ill. But at menopause there are often very many difficulties. Eventually we were able to discuss, analyse and understand what had happened to the woman in her early childhood, and though weakened physically, I think she is recovering now.
The Proto-Ego 2
This case of the Secret of the Sweetie gives us a clear insight into the psyche of infants, and so of our early ancestors. We see the way our ancestors made their decisions; based on superstition and on fear. (There are other cases, and I have chosen this one.)
And through our later evolution, we have built on these early decisions; and our later decisions are faulty. We see this very clearly in our behaviours: we live in fear, of each other, and of what is hidden in our unconsciousness, individually and collectively; we dare not trust; and we keep the 'secrets' of the past, both ontogenic and phylogenic. We protect and maintain the taboos.
From very early our decisions have been built on faulty foundations.
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. The infant brain is healthy. The baby does not live in fear, the baby is not dominated by fear and taboo. And we do not want to live in fear. But our babies learn fear. The ancient fears erupt into the lives of our infants, and in many families children are taught fear by their parents.
Free Will
We have free will within instinct. The baby seeks the breast; a tiny infant will wriggle and squirm some distance in search of the breast; babies reach out. They make decisions and act on those decisions. And their decisions are made within instinct; their actions are performed within instinct. They act freely within instinct.
We are an animal species. We act together as a species.
We observe the migrations of other species; the birds and butterflies, for instance, which migrate in huge numbers across vast distances; elephants migrating across Africa; and so on.
As a species we made our evolutionary decisions together, and we still act together. Individuals within a species must act in common with other members of their kind.
The yelling phase of our two year old infants marks an event which caused argument and dissension among our early ancestors. There was a break from instinct and a break within the members of the species. A decision was made which was not acceptable to all members of the community. We know there was maturation delay at this point, and it is probable that the maturation delay was caused by natural events, perhaps famine. Maturation delay means that the young could not have babies; and it may be that the young felt the decision had been made by the elders and imposed. Or, starving, the young cried out against their elders; or all the community cried out against nature for failing to provide food, and for failing to provide babies.
But at this point in evolution, our ancestors also developed the capacity to tell lies, which separates and divides members of the species. Perhaps the lying was at first directed against nature, or perhaps the young 'pretended' to have babies, made fantasy babies. Denied by nature, babies were forbidden; a pretend baby is a kind of lie.
Our ancestors did not make the decisions to starve and to delay maturation; these were imposed by nature. But our ancestors did make the decision to deceive. Our ancestors actively developed the capacity to tell lies. And that is a step outside instinct. And it seems likely that all our troubles come from the decision to take that first step outside instinct.
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We have The Myself, the Id, and the Proto-Ego. The Id and the Proto-Ego result from phylogenic trauma. Phylogenically traumatised, the Proto-Ego makes faulty decisions. As a species, we have built on these faulty decisions, making further faulty decisions; and we have the Dominant Ego, which develops, acts on and imposes the faulty decisions.
It seems that the Dominant Ego feels that it has a duty to develop, act on and impose the faulty decisions. Human nature is fundamentally good. We must accept that tyrants believe they are doing good, even as they torture and murder their people. We must accept that nations believe they are doing good when they go to war. We must accept that even in the worst behaviour there is an initial good impulse.
The Dominant Ego believes it is doing good. The members of any ruling class or body believe they are good people who are doing good. But the good that they can do is limited by the faulty decisions made by the human species. These decisions arise out of trauma; traumatised people are deeply afraid; it is very difficult to think straight when one is deeply afraid. It is very difficult to make good decisions when one is in a state of trauma.
But it is also the case that the decision-makers, the Dominant Ego, must act within the bounds set by the taboos. Human societies must act - feel that they must act - within the boundaries set by the ancient taboos. It seems almost that it is an absolute condition of human beings to act within the bounds set by the taboos. Our traumatised ancestors set the taboos; they believed that the taboos protected them. We still believe that the ancient taboos protect us. As a species we do not give any conscious thought to this matter; our belief is perhaps almost instinctive. It is a concern. However, our ancestors made the decisions, and we can change our minds.
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We act together as a species, and the Dominant Ego makes the decisions as to how we will act together as a species. We know that we are an unhappy species; we know that tyranny, war, exploitation and so on are wrong actions. But, dominated by fear and taboo, still we do them. (We have discussed why we do such wrong actions; we have examined the ancient traumas and the effects of those traumas.)
We act together as a species instinctively. But our wrong actions come from decisions made outside instinct. The instinct to act together seems to be very strong: we see that nations can turn on minorities; that the mob can turn on any individual who even looks different; we see state propaganda which promotes war, tyranny and exploitation, when individuals are urged to a wrong course of action, and we see that the individuals, apparently willingly, join together to promote the interests of the state, which is the Dominant Ego.
And it is very difficult to stand aside from the instinct to act together. We know that tyrants torture and murder individuals who resist. But there is a deeper fear even than the fear of torture and murder. It seems there is a fear within each of us, which makes it very difficult to act independently. It is a very ancient fear.
Our aim is to be free to continue our human evolution. It is necessary that we face the ancient fear.
We are afraid of the ancient traumas, and we are afraid of the fear. We must remember our aim.
Free Will 2
The fear is in me, but it is not of me. The fear is certainly not of The Myself. It is a phylogenic fear. And it is very ancient. The Myself is not fearful.
An individual is naturally equipped with a capacity to feel fear. It is sensible to be afraid of a tiger who wants to eat you. But when you evade the tiger, or it goes away, then the fear is no longer necessary.
The fear within us as a species is not a passing tiger. This fear is not caused by a specific danger. It seems to be a permanent state; the fear is kept at bay by the Dominant Ego. But the fear is not resolved by the Dominant Ego. The Dominant Ego runs from the fear; we may speculate that the Dominant Ego feels that it has a duty to protect the species by hiding from the fear.
We have free will within instinct. Instinct, nature, provides us with free will. But we cannot exercise our free will while we are dominated by fear. It is really that simple: we cannot progress as a species while we are dominated by fear; we cannot continue to evolve while fear dominates us; we cannot be happy as a species while we are in a state of permanent fear.
We must not let the fear overwhelm us. We must free our species from this fear. Our instincts cry out for recognition: we want to love, to exercise our free will, to be happy, to enjoy the natural pleasures of life. The Dominant Ego fearfully prevents us.
The Dominant Ego is not a force which imposes on us individually from outside. It is true that tyrants and so on impose their individual will on the people. But, as adults, we are all part of the Dominant Ego; it is in us. To some extent we all acquiesce in the power of the Dominant Ego. To a greater or lesser extent we all feel that the Dominant Ego protects us. It does not protect us. We see very often that the Dominant Ego fails to protect us. We see very often that we fail to protect ourselves, individually and collectively, by means of the Dominant Ego.
The Dominant Ego is very afraid. Individuals with power, tyrants or lesser servants of the state, they are all afraid. It seems that we are all afraid, all subject to the same fear, though most of the time we do not feel the great fear. It is alright to be afraid, but we must be very brave, we must have courage.
Free Will 3
The Myself is unafraid, The Myself has free will and acts freely within instinct. The Myself is confident and happy, free to enjoy the natural pleasures of life and of evolution. All in nature is good; The Myself is fully aware of all things in and of the world of nature; The Myself has aim and purpose and is aware of the aim and purpose of all things in nature.
The Myself has will, aim and purpose. (Observe carefully our babies in early life and you will see that they have will, aim and purpose; they know what they want and strive to reach their aim.)
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. We know the will, aim and purpose of The Myself is good. We may identify the will of The Myself with the will of God, or the will of the simple good.
We have stepped outside instinct. We cannot now go back, we cannot go back to Eden; we must go forward. We must learn to identify and to identify with the will of The Myself, which is the will of simple good.
The Myself is within each of us. The simple good of our human nature is within each of us. Fundamentally we are, individually and collectively, The Myself. The will of The Myself is the true will of humanity.
We must learn to understand the will of The Myself; we must learn to recognise and to obey the will of The Myself, which is the will of humanity and the will of the simple good.
Free Will 4
The most important individual in a baby's life is naturally that baby itself. The baby naturally loves the mother and knows the mother as an extension of itself. The baby is itself and naturally can be no other than itself. It is naturally the role of the baby to be itself. It is naturally the will of the baby to be itself.
Human nature is fundamentally good; all babies are born good and loving. With that in common, with our common humanity, yet each one of us is unique. You must you and can be no other; and this is true of all of us.
The baby is at the centre of the universe; as he or she grows up, we hope, the individual comes to recognise that all other individuals are equally at the centre of the universe. We learn to co-operate in good endeavours, we work together for the good, and each one willingly contributes his or her individual qualities and skills to the co-operative endeavour.
But we are a phylogenically traumatised species. We are over-anxious, dominated by fear. The over-anxious mother dominates her child, repressing the will of her child to be itself. The phylogenically traumatised and over-anxious mother sometimes both dominates and neglects her child; and indeed, to dominate, to repress the will of the child is in itself neglect: to repress the child's will is to neglect the natural will of the child to be itself.
We see this mirrored in the actions of the State, which both dominates and neglects the people. For example, we have laws which promote the good, but we now have a huge number of rules and regulations, red tape and bureaucracy which confuse and frustrate individual free action. At the same time, the State neglects the poor, and too often neglects the children. And in dominating the people, frustrating individual free action, the State also neglects the natural will of individuals to be themselves.
We co-operate in good work, but too often find that we are coerced into supporting work which is not good. Even here in England, my well beloved country, there is a climate of institutional fear, which leads to such disasters as the appalling cover-up of terrible child abuse, terrible criminal sexual activity against children. There we saw the crime of child abuse, and the institutional fear which for years prevented the rescue of the children and the prosecution of the criminals. And it seems that the fear of the officers was of being or of being seen to be politically incorrect.
Fearful, afraid, dominated by fear, we cannot fulfil our function to be our individual selves.
And there is anger with the fear. We see this in the phylogenic breakthrough which afflicts our infants at 3 and a half years old. The anger arises out of the frustration of free will.
Let us stand back from all this horror and confusion.
The baby has free will, the baby is born with free will; the baby is born with the natural will to be itself. We must recognise that the baby has free will, that our children have free will. The parent must support and guide the child through the phylogenic difficulties of infancy and childhood; the parent must encourage the child to be itself, and at the same time teach the child co-operation. The State must support the parents. The State must recognise that individuals have free will.
We must recognise our children and ourselves, our species for what we are: fundamentally good. Born good and loving, our will is to be good and loving.
Free Will 5
At two years old, our infants yell and develop the capacity to tell lies; at three they enter the Dionysian phase, where they are incapable to sitting still and seem ecstatically happy.
And then at three and a half years old, the infant suddenly begins screaming in rage and terror.
I have been very reluctant to investigate this, but instead have concentrated on the yelling phase with the development of the capacity to tell lies. But now we must look at the repressed phylogenic memory which breaks through into consciousness at 3 and a half years old.
The event which caused our ancestors to delay maturation and to develop the capacity to tell lies - at the equivalent of our two year olds - is followed by the ecstatically happy phase, when our ancestors were the equivalent of our three year olds.
Then suddenly, very suddenly our infants are terrorised and enraged. What happened at the equivalent time in our evolution?
We may understand that there was a very violent and very sudden catastrophe. Perhaps this is the occasion when a massive meteor struck the earth.
We may understand that the ecstatic phase was for our ancestors a liberation from earlier restraints. We know that people who suffer trauma believe that they have caused the trauma. It may also be the case that our ancestors believed they had caused the liberation.
And then suddenly there was a natural disaster which nearly destroyed the species. We may speculate that our ancestors believed this disaster was retribution, punishment for their sense of joyful liberation, a liberation which they believed they had caused. Traumatised, terrified and enraged, they blamed themselves for the new disaster. They examined their behaviour and saw they had been lighthearted and very happy. We may understand that they blamed this very happiness, the fact that they had felt liberated and happy, as the cause of the new and terrible disaster.
We may understand that it is at this stage that our ancestors began to distrust their feelings of happiness, and their natural pleasures in life. We may also speculate that it is at this stage that they free will as dangerous.
We are fundamentally good; human beings do their best to be good, to be as we really are; and if pleasure is believed to be destructive to humanity, then human beings will give up their pleasure. Human beings will give up their natural joy, and believe that this is the right thing to do.
We may understand that our ancestors at this stage began to severely distrust natural pleasure. Much earlier in this work, we have examined the role of the female, and we may continue to recognise that it was the mothers who were in charge, and the females who bore the greater responsibility and sense of blame and shame for this new traumatic event. It was the females who most distrusted natural pleasure and the mothers who taught this distrust to their children, especially perhaps their daughters.
We may understand that the mothers now began to limit the expression of free will in their young. Freedom of action is in itself pleasurable, and freedom of action may lead to other natural pleasures. The mothers above all recognised that security was of the greatest importance: every care must be taken to prevent disaster from happening again. We may understand, with that sense of power which humanity sometimes displays, that the mothers believed that by limiting pleasure and the exercise of free will, they had a way to prevent disaster.
During later evolution, we see Olorgesailie and other sites where, for half a million years, vast quantities of stone axe heads were manufactured. It has been reported that many of these stone axe heads were very badly made, and unfit for purpose. We may also understand that far more stone axe heads were made than could be used. We may speculate that this activity was designed to keep the populace occupied, keep them under control, and to limited pleasure. Any one who has laboured in a factory or worked as an office drone in our time, may recognise the lack of pleasure such work brings.
In our time, we see that often children of 9 or ten years old, break out, have 'tantrums', and we may recognise this behaviour as frustration with their conditions at home or at school. We may also understand that this phenomenon is a breakthrough of a repressed phylogenic memory of labouring at Olorgesailie, which I speculate must have been mind numbing and very frustrating for more lively spirits.
An individual who has suffered unresolved psychological trauma in infancy will repeat the conditions of that traumatic event. I have watched as a woman who was abandoned in early infancy, repeatedly pushed her husband, children, siblings and friends away from her: it seemed that she was unconsciously driven to recreate the conditions of the sense of being abandoned when she was a baby.
As with the individual, so with the race. We are driven to repeat the conditions of our phylogenic traumas. We crave security to the extent that we still restrict our lives within very narrow boundaries, but still we break out in wars and other human made disasters; we destroy the security we have so carefully built.
We may recognise that the security we have manufactured for ourselves, is built on foundations of restricted pleasure and restricted free will.
Free Will 6
I have been foolish and stubborn. Unconsciously, I've tried to convince myself, and you, that the earlier trauma is the most significant event in human evolution. Certainly, the trauma which our ancestors suffered when they were the equivalent of our two year old infants now, is significant and does seem to be at the start of humanity's psychological difficulties.
But when I look properly, it is clear, obvious, that the later phylogenic trauma was more violent and much more disturbing to our ancestors. It is obvious in the effect that the breakthrough of the repressed memory of that event has on our infants at 3 and a half years old.
Why have I been so stubborn? Because I am afraid. In this work, my method requires me to live with our ancestors, to feel what they felt. I can't do the work any other way. I am not an academic, I can't stand back from my subject and take an 'objective' view from a safe distance. I must be with our ancestors, as far as possible, put myself in their place, see with their eyes and feel what they felt; try to understand them by experiencing what they went through. It is difficult, and sometimes, as now, it feels dangerous. But it is far more dangerous to repress the fear.
In this work, we face the ancient taboos, so that we can acknowledge and see them, investigate and analyse them, with the aim of freeing humanity from the effects of our disturbed evolution. Facing taboos is also difficult and can feel very dangerous, as it does now. Our ancestors set up the taboos to protect humanity, and to challenge the taboos is an act of defiance: we defy our ancestors when we try to overcome the taboos. But we must do so; it is far more dangerous to ignore the taboos and their effects on us.
And I have been stubborn because I am human, cowering and timorous in the face of danger. I am sorry for my foolish stubbornness.
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It's all there, the terror, the rage, the feeling of guilt as our ancestors believed that they had caused the disaster, all in the massive trauma which affected them when they were the equivalent of our infants now of 3 and a half years old; and, of course it is all re-experienced by our infants at that age.
The loss of pleasure is there, too, in this same trauma, as pleasure was frightened out of our ancestors. Traumatised individuals believe that they must have caused the event, when they have not and could not have caused the event. Traumatised individuals will search to find what it is they have done to cause such a thing to happen. Our ancestors searched for what they had done to cause the terrible catastrophe, and we may strongly speculate that they decided their own natural pleasure in life was the cause.
And in that trauma, too, is the loss of instinctive free will. We are social animals, we naturally must act together, but each individual naturally has his or her own free will within instinct. But in that trauma we began to distrust trust ourselves and our instinct of pleasure. We lost our instinctive trust in life and in pleasure. We lost confidence. We lost our status within the world. Observing our infants at 3 years old, we see that they are on top of the world. We may speculate that our ancestors at the equivalent stage of evolution felt that they were especially favoured by nature, and in the disaster which followed suddenly that sense was destroyed. By the effects of that trauma we lost our instinctive free will. Our ancestors crashed down and we have not yet been able to re-establish ourselves, to find our way again.
Our ancestors did not cause any natural catastrophe. It is most important that we clearly recognise this fact. Our ancestors did not cause and could not have caused the natural catastrophes which traumatised them, and which still affect us now.
But still we have within us the capacity for natural pleasure. For instance, it has been reported that some women experience orgasm when giving birth. This is very encouraging. The pain and dread that so many women have giving birth is in direct inverse proportion to what nature intended they should feel: nature provides pleasure and the pain is the result of the repression of that pleasure.
As we regain confidence and trust in ourselves and in our natural capacity and instinct for pleasure, we will open up. Our brains will open up. The taboos were formed to protect us. We may speculate that in fact the taboos freeze our brains, making it more difficult to think and to live properly. We may speculate that the taboos are literally and physically in our brains; and these taboos of fear make us afraid to think, and so make it difficult to feel pleasure in our bodies. And we must remember that there are brain cells in the gut too, in the area of the solar plexus.
The brain is an organ of pleasure. Or perhaps I should say that the brain is an organ which is capable of feeling pleasure. It is known that there is a pleasure centre in the brain. Nearly three decades ago, I wrote a novel and while I wrote it my brain was filled with pleasure; it seemed to be dancing with the pleasure of the work; and it was a most enjoyable experience. There is pleasure in the brain. When we allow ourselves, when we are capable of allowing ourselves, we can feel the pleasure in the brain, the pre frontal cortex is freed.
And when the brain is open again to its natural capacity for pleasure, we can see the world, feel the world as it really is: exciting, pleasurable and interesting, fascinating. We and the world and everything in it is loveable.
And the rest follows naturally.
Of course, we must not be impatient or 'there'll be tears before bedtime'. But let us be optimistic.
Free Will 7
Brain cells in the gut; the 'gut reaction', fear and tension in the gut, all these are significant in our work.
Did our ancient ancestors, suffering the great traumatic event, feel that they had been plunged back into chaos, back into the era before they had developed the intelligent head brain? It is possible. The gut brain became dominant. They had been intelligent, confident, capable creatures, using their head brains to evolve. Now, in the terrible event, their guts demanded attention. We may understand that the gut brain does not have the capacity for rational thought; but we may use our own capacity for reason to recognise what the gut is suffering, and to understand what it is that the gut needs in order to recover.
In the earlier trauma, our ancestors yelled against the imposition of delayed maturation; it may be that their yelling was an argument. And they used their head brains to develop the capacity to tell lies. The gut does not, and cannot tell lies. The gut feels, feels happy or unhappy, good or bad depending on external circumstances.
We may speculate that the origins of moral good and bad lie in the experiences of the gut; and we may understand the effects on the head brain of what the gut is feeling. The gut feels bad, the individual feels bad. We may understand that the bad feeling in the gut becomes translated as moral bad in the infant mind: during this ancient trauma the guts of our ancestors were in turmoil; our ancestors translated this bad feeling in the gut, into a sense of being bad themselves, a sense of personal, moral badness. (And I'm sure that George Frankl has said this, though I cannot remember in which work. But though he has said it, it is worth saying again particularly in the context of this ancient trauma.) We may reassure our ancestors, and ourselves, that the bad feeling in the gut is not a moral bad: we must not assume that we are morally bad when the gut feels bad.
But what does the gut want?
The gut wants to be free.
We are a species with a guilty secret. Our ancestors believed that they had caused the great trauma, and felt very guilty. They established taboos, not only to protect themselves from the pain of memory, but also to keep hidden the secret of their guilt: to remember the event would be also to remember the guilty secret; and that secret of their guilt must never be revealed. Of course, as with all taboos, it doesn't work. They had not caused the event, and guilt, a feeling of guilt seems often to oppress us now, individually and generally: we still feel guilty. But they had not caused the event. They were not guilty.
In the terror of event itself, their guts became disordered. We may speculate that after the event, there was a lack of food, even to famine; and that our ancestors had to eat whatever they could find in order to survive; eventually they learnt to hunt, kill, and eat meat, although is possible that they had eaten meat for some time before this event. But in the immediate aftermath of the event, we may understand that they ate whatever they could find. They were starving. It is very likely that what they found was mainly not good food.; and their guts became more disordered.
I speculate that our ancestors survived in these miserable conditions for a long time, and all the while their guts felt bad, reminding our ancestors of the trauma and of their 'guilt'; and all the while the secret must be kept. The hidden secret of their 'guilt' must be kept. But their disordered gut continued to remind them of the event and of their 'guilt'; they felt bad, felt morally bad, as well as physically ill.
So there was a kind of war going on, between our individual ancestors and their individual guts; an internal war in each of them, each one divided against him or herself. (And to eat well is to feel good.)
And their faeces, which come from the gut, continued to remind them of the trauma and of their 'guilt'. May we speculate that our ancestors began to feel guilty about their faeces because their faeces reminded them of their 'guilt'? Certainly, we still do feel guilty about our faeces; we are still coy generally that we do defecate, even though we must defecate. Faeces are a valuable natural resource, but we throw it away, though it should naturally be given back to the earth as fertiliser. (Of course, with 7.5 billion human beings on the planet, it might be more difficult to use our faeces properly, or perhaps it is more than ever important that we do use this huge amount of faeces as fertiliser, rather than mask it with poisoned chemicals, and then throw it away.)
And then gold, which our ancestors saw as, felt was an ideal, externalised version of their own faeces. We may understand that gold became the perfect image of the faeces, while their own actual faeces was dangerous to them.
So there was a kind of war going on, between our individual ancestors and their individual guts; an internal war in each of them, each one divided against him or herself; and then reflected outwards to the 'others' the 'strangers' and to the world itself. That internal individual war continues now, as does externalised warfare against the 'enemy'.
I have said a lot of this already in relation to the earlier trauma. But in the context of the later trauma, all this makes much more sense.
We long to be free, but we keep the gut chained, as if it were a dangerous and savagely immoral beast, which might break out and remind us of our ancestral 'guilt'. We may understand that our ancient ancestors feared their own guts; and we may recognise that we still fear our own guts and despise its product. And we cannot be free while we despise and fear our own guts.
Free Will 8
additional to Free Will 7 - We may understand that the gut cannot repress.We see that the head brain seeks to repress the gut. And in this we see that the head brain is active, which is itself encouraging: we may continue to analyse the head brain, whereas it would be very difficult to analyse the gut.
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Our work is difficult. The Dominant Ego is very strong, and we all cling to the Dominant Ego for 'safety'.
The origins of humanity's distresses lie deep in our phylogeny. And it seems to me that the loss of instinctive individual free will is at the heart of our distresses.
We must learn to listen to our children; the Dominant Ego ignores the will of the child. The children are our future; and they provide us with a clear view of our past: we see our early ancestors in our children, and see ourselves as we really are, good and loving, fundamentally good.
Our bond with nature is severely damaged, and to replace instinctive individual free will we have developed a system of hierarchies and contracts. The system we have in the west provides, limited, free will for the individual. But the system builds on the taboos; it supports the Dominant Ego and so strengthens the taboos.
Ideally, of course, the system we have developed should be for the benefit of all individuals. But the system is flawed, the contracts are broken. Tyrannies emerge, even within the democratic west, and individual free will is more and more limited.
Human nature is fundamentally good, we all want the best for humanity. But the taboos strangle instinctive individual free will, and - to put it bluntly - people become frustrated and angry. The frustration and anger present in differing ways: violence and crime, for instance, project the frustration and anger outwards from the angry, frustrated individual; whereas other individuals project their anger and frustration inwards and become ill - physically or 'mentally' ill, it is all one - and the individual asks, 'What's the point? What is the point of being me if I cannot be me?' The Myself understands that there is no place here to be.
Governments must learn to listen to their peoples; doctors must learn to listen to their patients; private landladies and landlords must keep the contracts they have with their tenants. People with power must learn to respect those over whom they exercise power. We must keep the contract.
And above all, we must listen to the children. We must learn to recognise their loving and good nature; we must support them in the breakthrough of repressed phylogenic traumas; we must allow them to be children, not allow them to be wilful, but allow them to exercise their free will, to explore their world as children, and to play; send them to school at 7, which is start of the latency period (Olorgesailie) and which is phylogenically more suitable than 4 or 5 years old, which is phylogenically unsuitable; and when they are in school we must respect their intelligent good nature. We must respect their instinctive individual free will. We must learn from the innate good nature of children.
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Should I add this here, a personal note?
On what may be my very last visit to any hospital, the doctor decided that I wasn't ill enough to be admitted to hospital, and refused to refer me to the private hospital - without which referral one may not gain admittance.
I asked her why it was that in my life her will was more important than my will. She said, 'Our decisions are evidence based.'
(I do not see on what evidence she based her decision: she had not examined me properly; while writing up my notes, she asked me questions and did not wait for my replies; when I weighed myself there in her room, I was shocked to find that I am 37k, which is under 6 stone, and when I told her this, she merely grunted and continued writing up the notes.
Yes, I am angry, and afraid, but I cannot blame her; there is no blame. And at the moment the UK government is ignoring the will of hospital doctors, so it is almost natural that the doctors ignore the will of their patients. It is perverse, but not surprising behaviour.)
And I learnt from the encounter, I came home and have written Free Will, which may be useful.
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George Frankl told me, 'You must not let it overwhelm you.' There is so much of it that it does threaten to overwhelm me, but I must not let it. So I might take a rest now.
Free Will 9
Of course, I can't rest; the brain is too active. And what else can I do now but write?
The puzzle is, why do I find it so difficult to act independently? With the doctors, of course, that is not the issue: I am asking for their co-operation, and it seems that to get that I would have to fight. And I decided as a general policy not to fight about 4 or 5 years ago. I've also known for a long time that it is pointless to try to argue with people who are behaving irrationally.
But with this work, for instance; I couldn't have thought of doing it without George Frankl's permission. When he told me that I must do it, he was giving me permission. I might have all the questions in mind, but be quite unable to think of answering them without his permission. He had for so long dismissed my question, 'What about the women in the caves?' that to pursue the subject without his permission would have been an impossible defiance.
Is it just me, or is it part of the human condition? We are social animals; and therefore perhaps we must act together. Who acts entirely alone? Robinson Crusoe before Man Friday? But Alexander Selkirk had to live alone on his island, there was no one else, he must live, or die, alone. Even Joshua Slocum, sailing alone around the world before satellite, or even radio contact, depended on a friendly reception wherever he landed; he had the help and support of others. Morally, he was not alone. And that is crucial.
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But let us press on. Behind the fear and anger is excitement. We see our three year old infants on top of the world, unable to sit still for excitement. Some might see this behaviour as disturbingly manic, but it is a breakthrough of a repressed memory, and it is phylogenically completely natural behaviour in our infants.
It is interesting that between the yelling phase and the later phase of screaming in rage and terror, there is this interval of ecstatic behaviour: this memory which breaks through at three years old. The earlier and later events were clearly traumatic times for our ancestors. We may see the event at three years old as a memory of a period of liberation after the maturation delay, a time of great joy and celebration. But then comes the major event which crushes the joy and plunges our ancestors into disaster. The memory of earlier joy is wiped out. Was it also actively repressed by our ancestors? May we speculate that our distressed ancestors were afraid of the joy they had felt, and came to believe that the excitement and joy were dangerous? And it seems that we still feel this way - 'Pride goeth … before a fall' and 'There'll be tears before bedtime'. We distrust our excitement and our pleasure in life.
The baby may suffer a difficult birth, but still is born good and loving. There is infant colic, teething difficulties, the infant diseases and so on. But there is a simple pleasure in being alive, being part of the world. The infant survives the colic, grows a fine set of teeth, recovers from the diseases, goes though the phases and stages of evolution, and experiences the simple pleasure of being alive. I am, of course, talking about those children who are at least relatively well cared for.
Human nature is fundamentally good, and this fundamental goodness is great pleasure. Life is naturally pleasurable.
Free Will 10
The battle is within each of us. Each one of us is fighting The Myself. The fight is personal, and then spreads out, is projected outwards onto the 'enemy', or the excitement is blocked within the individual body and turns to pain and disease.
We are frightened of the truth, the simple truth of happiness, joy, the simple pleasure of life. We are frightened of the reality of the simple pleasure of life, and in life, all life. We are frightened of the excitement of liberation, and find it very difficult to overcome the fear of disaster which in ancient times followed the great excitement of liberation. The pleasurable excitement in living is tremendous, and disaster is not inevitable.
We must have courage. In this work we have faced the disasters. Perhaps I've concentrated too much on the disasters: there is a lot of disaster to face and analyse. But we've climbed that mountain and now we must step onto a new and more splendid mountain, to face the excitement and pleasure of life, of all life, the natural pleasure of life. We must embrace the natural pleasures of life. And the very idea of doing so, makes me breathless with excitement. I am human, an old human, and resist. Let us move forward.
This work is for you. Read it carefully and share it. Take it forward. Remember all George Frankl's instructions, as given in the Postscript of Mothers and Daughters. You must be the parents. You must respect the textual integrity of this work; you must not seek to profit financially from this work. And please remember that this not a religious work.
This work is dedicated simply to the freedom of humanity.
The Link - note on Free Will
At two years old our infants develop what we have called the capacity to tell lies. We may recognise that our ancestors at the equivalent period, developed a creative capacity: they were suffering maturation delay, and developed a way to comfort themselves by 'creating' pretend babies. Our infants do this now in their games of make believe and let's pretend. We see that our infants are not lying or being deceitful; they are playing and they know that they do not have a real baby. Authors and actors are not lying and they know that their work is fiction. Our ancestors wanted to 'change the world', change the event, and made up imaginary babies to help themselves in their unhappiness.
At three and a half years old, our infants scream in rage and terror. We recognise this clearly as the breakthrough of the repressed memory of a terrible and terrifying phylogenic trauma which our ancestors at this equivalent time suffered.
Traumatised people believe that they must have caused the event. Our ancestors felt they had caused the event, and felt terribly guilty.
Traumatised people build taboos to repress the memory of the event. We may recognise that the taboos protect the individual or people from the pain of the memory. We may also understand that the traumatised individual or people, use the taboos to hide from their feeling of guilt. Our ancestors believed that they had caused the event, and felt terribly guilty; the taboos make it 'not to have happened': by erecting the taboos our ancestors tried to make the trauma vanish, and at the same time, tried to forget their feel of terrible guilt.
Our ancestors at this later trauma used the creative capacity to 'change' events, in order to protect themselves from the feeling of unbearable guilt.
We may understand that our ancestors did start to lie, to deceive at this second great trauma; they tried to protect themselves from feeling guilty by pretending that 'it didn't happen'.
Our ancestors did not cause the traumatic events. I cannot say that too often. We must recognise that our ancestors did not cause any naturally occurring catastrophe.
The effect on free will of this link is becoming clearer. Bullies of all kinds, from the nursery to tyranny, always blame the victim. All kinds of people and institutions behave in perverse and bullying ways, and unfortunately we are increasingly trapped in the very widespread bullying. Lying, institutional deceit, causes distress and illness to the innocent by limiting free will and spreading a feeling of helplessness among the people. (The fiction that private tenants are always guilty, and the hysterical fantasy that all citizens are potential terrorists, so that we must all prove our identity when we want to do almost anything, are two cases in point - harmful and mendacious fictions.)
Taboos do not protect. Our ancestors did not cause the traumas, and taboos do not protect.
Free Will postscript
Of course, I think about death, or of being dead, of ceasing to be human.
I am in pain and cannot find any help for it. I'm full of energy, but too weak to do anything. It's an odd state to be in. My brain is active and I long for conversation, but have no opportunity for conversation. And I think about what it will be like when I'm not human any more.
I'll be free. The pain will be gone. Several times in this work, I've mentioned the four occasions when I felt, was aware of a person who had recently died; and there were other similar occasions when I worked in the cemetery.
When I was 9 years old, a marvellous little girl died in the care of the nuns over the half term holiday. She was a year or two younger than me, I'd never spoken to her, can't remember her name, but I admired her tremendously. She was beautiful, she had laughing green eyes, big golden hair, and she sassed the nuns, with intelligence and perfect good humour. The nuns hated it, and muttered to us that she was the devil's child. They were angry with her. Her mummy was dead. Her daddy was an important man, an Irish businessman and politician, too, I think. And he went away that week leaving his daughters alone with the nuns. And when we came back to school on the Monday, the gorgeous child had died. We weren't allowed into the school, but were sent to walk in reverend mother's private garden - this in the middle of London. And while we walked, I felt that child dancing in my feet. One of my classmates, was shocked and told me off. But that splendid little girl had danced in my feet. It was wonderful.
Then after George died, I was walking a few days later to a meeting about his funeral. And suddenly I felt a great, magnificent force of joy through me. George, of course, it couldn't be anyone else.
In late 2009 a friend died. And a few days later, I was walking up the road to see her father and step mother. The road was greasy with a light snow, and I walked carefully. As I turned into the road where her parents lived, suddenly, always suddenly, she was there. A feeling, a sense of her. And I learnt that she was impish and shy.
The last occasion was when the hospital phoned me in the middle of the night to tell me my mother had died. She was 93, blind, old and tired, and wanted to die. I thanked the caller and lay down again. And then she was there, impatient, shy so shy, and she was gone.
A little while later, I had a mental image and a sense of my entire ancestry, all the way through the ages, in a continuity. It was good. I knew then that I belonged within a continuity of humanity.
So I expect to be free and to be happy. And to be aware of being free and happy. There is no time beyond our time, this earthly time, this human suffocating time. There is no time in eternity. A moment then of conscious joy is eternal.
And will I meet my friends again? I don't know. Will I see George again? Will he be all around me, and pleased to see me? How can I know that?