George Frankl would sometimes complain that I made complications - he said that I made simple things complicated.
He was right - in a way. Some things that he found simple did not seem so simple to me. But he was a man, and life is simpler for men, in at least one respect. He was a man, and could not see, could not grasp how complicated life can be for women.
This complication is based in a simple matter of biology, which we have discussed before. The male gives out : he expels his anal waste product, and through his penis gives out spermatozoa, and liquid waste products.
The female gives out and retains : the female expels her anal and urethral waste products, (and vaginal waste product); but she must keep her vaginal created product for nine months before giving birth.
This is perfectly natural, and in nature it is not a difficulty. But humanity has stepped outside nature. Where other mammals accept what nature gives; humanity questions what nature gives. And humanity invents. We question and we invent.
We see the origins of these behaviours in the phylogenic breakthrough when our two year old infants yell and develop the capacity to tell lies.
This is a marker for a hugely significant, a very big event in human evolution. Research has shown that there was a maturation delay at the period in our evolution when our ancestors were the equivalent of our two year old infants now. We have looked at this before, but we must examine it again.
We know the great importance of procreation; we have seen that the baby was of primary importance to our early ancestors. We have speculated that our early ancestors at this time invented the Pretend Baby : maturation delay meant that they could not have real babies, they were not allowed to create their real babies, and so they created the pretend baby.
We may speculate that these ancestors knew that the baby was pretend; but we may also speculate that the ancestors felt that the Pretend Baby was real - they believed their own invention.
We will understand that our ancestors felt that they must protect the pretend baby, just as they would protect a real baby. We may now see that the capacity to tell lies may develop out of the need to protect the pretend baby : our ancestors were forbidden to create their real babies; the ancestors created the Pretend Baby; the ancestors felt that they must protect the pretend baby; the ancestors must keep the pretend baby a secret in order to protect the pretend baby. The secret of the pretend baby becomes the first lie, the first deception. And the Pretend Baby now becomes the Secret Baby.
The taboos are markers; the taboos remind us of significant, important events in our evolution. Every time there is a breakthrough of a repressed memory of trauma we have the opportunity to remember consciously the events of the trauma. It is all there in the memory. We have the opportunity, but we do not consciously remember. Why?
During the later years of his life, Frankl often said that we must look at things the other way around - take a fresh perspective.
We have assumed, I certainly have accepted that we do not remember the events of trauma because we are afraid to remember; we assume that the taboos are some kind of guardian against remembrance; that to remember traumas is to recreate the traumas and the taboos protect us from 'it happening again'. But we have seen that the taboos do not protect us; we see that we continually unconsciously re-create the events of traumas and that this continual unconscious re-creation of traumatic events actually puts us in real danger.
We may be certain that when we do consciously remember the traumatic events, we will be free of all the negative, bad effects of the traumas. But still we refuse to remember consciously what did happen. Why? Human nature is fundamentally good : there must be a very good original cause for our refusal to remember.
When we look back at these early ancestors, we are looking at the equivalent of our two year old infants now. This does not make us superior to our ancestors, but it does provide a perspective. Our ancestors were intelligent and loving, and they lacked our sophistication. When we look at our early ancestors we are looking at people with the psychological development of little children now.
Why do we not remember the events when we have so many opportunities to remember? Our early ancestors felt that they must protect the Pretend baby; to protect the pretend baby they felt very strongly that the pretend baby must be kept Secret. They felt that they must keep the Secret. They had already been deprived of the real baby; the Pretend baby keeps the real baby possible, and therefore the pretend baby must be protected. The ancestors felt that they must keep the Secret.
And we may rationally speculate that this Secret of the Pretend Baby is the first taboo, and sets the model of taboos - we frigidly believe that we must not examine taboos.
We recognise, of course, that we must examine taboos. We must also recognise that our ancestors had a very serious purpose when they created the Pretend Baby : to keep the species alive.
We may understand that the females who created the pretend baby put a great deal of energy and imagination into their creation; as much love and devotion, perhaps, as they would put into the creation of their real baby. They were determined to keep their pretend babies as safe as real babies. Keeping the Secret protects the pretend baby. It's very simple. And we don't need to protect the pretence any more.
The Secret Baby 2 - money
He's way ahead of me. I follow him, slowly, reluctantly, across a vast plain. He's a long way ahead.
They must have been so afraid, these early ancestors. We see our two year old infants as cute; we think of their games as play. Our ancestors were grown men and woman - or males and females; they were not yet homo sapiens; they were the forebears of homo sapiens; and what they did, what they chose to do in difficult circumstances was extremely serious to them. The Pretend Baby was a vital part of their struggle for existence at the time of maturation delay.
We see that there were earlier phylogenic difficulties: infant colic and teething troubles, for instance. But though our ancient ancestors complained, they did not try to change their circumstances. With the maturation delay, however, our ancestors tried to change their circumstances. They tried to make the circumstances different by an act of imaginative will: they imagined the Pretend Baby, willed it into existence; the pretend baby was very real to them, and vital to their existence: they could not have young; the species must die without young; they must have young, they must have the baby. They were desperate and afraid, and tried to change the natural circumstances.
They knew it was a pretence, an imaginative fabrication, but they believed in the moral reality of this imaginative pretence; and in that sense our ancestors were not lying or being deceitful. It was vitally morally necessary to have offspring, to continue the species: to survive, there must be offspring. In later generations, the pretence became a game; first a ritual, then eventually it became a game - even down to our own times, when infants play mummies and daddies, and the dolls represent babies - these games are a breakthrough of the ancient memories of our early ancestors' response to maturation delay.
Men, of course, do not have wombs. And we know that little children now talk of having a baby from their bottoms - "Mummy's having a baby. It's in her tummy. I'm having a baby, too. It will come out of my bottom," (Sophie D, 23 months old). We may speculate that this confusion originates at the time of the Pretend Baby.We may understand that the males as well as the females fantasised about having a pretend baby. As adults, they must know where babies come from, but the males - wombless - decided that their pretend baby would have to come out of their bottoms: the males' pretend babies would be born from the anus. And we may now begin to see a connection to our obsession with gold, money.
"In popular dream interpretation faeces always means wealth, and all the metaphors of all languages contain allusions to the equations; excrement = money, dirt = treasure." George Frankl The Unknown Self.
The greatest treasure is the baby. But men do not have wombs: men cannot give birth. Gold, money has become the alternative to the baby; gold, money is seen as precious; and gold, money has become more valuable in our culture than our babies are: we increasingly value money more than we value our offspring. It is difficult to understand precisely why. All the evidence is available, but there is such confusion.
I can see the process, I can see what happened in the minds of our early ancestors, as outlined above. And I can see that what I've called the Pretend Baby was morally vitally important to our early ancestors. I can see the process of money becoming so important in our civilisation. I can see the connection with feminism - feminism in the 1960s started as Womens' Liberation, a movement to free women from sexual repression; and I can see that sexual repression was difficult to overcome; therefore women concentrated on money, in an unconscious attempt to understand the difficulties. I see.
The species must survive: the pretend or Imaginary Baby was morally vital to the survival of our ancestors: there must be a baby, there must be continuation of the species; the imagined baby is loved and must be protected. This imagined baby becomes a very important part of our psychological phylogeny. The imagined baby becomes almost like a god, to be revered and remembered; and the imagined baby stays within the evolving human psyche as something sacred. But the origins of the imagined baby become lost over two million years: we worship our own invention but do not know precisely what or why we worship. Our early ancestors, both male and female, 'gave birth' to the imagined baby from the anus, and so we can see the confusion with money. The equation becomes; baby = money.
The Secret Baby 3
The real baby grows in the womb; the female retains the foetus until birth when the baby emerges out of the vagina. The imaginary baby is held in the bowel until the 'birth' of the imaginary baby out of the anus. We may understand therefore that the anus becomes retentive. The imaginary baby is of the mind; but the anus may become physically retentive. But the block is in the brain.
The equations become; baby = money, more babies = more money. These equations are, of course, in the unconscious. In plain fact, we know consciously that more babies cost more money. (And with the gross over-population of human beings on the planet, we are more and more aware that more babies, more human beings, cost more of everything.) It is recognised that in some societies, having more children will provide a workforce to bring more money into a family. We may see this as a rationalisation.
I must stop now. I need a break. I'm feeling quite cross. It's hard work. I don't like to grumble, but I feel quite cross with George. But it's funny, too. How ridiculous we humans are. If there were a federation of planets, the other beings wouldn't let us join; they'd simply laugh at us for being so silly. If there were gods they'd be laughing at us, too. And I'll bet George is laughing, not mockingly, he wouldn't do that. And I get the feeling that he might be saying, 'What took you so long?'
The Secret Baby 4 - hoarding
It is difficult to digest these ideas; difficult to consciously examine the issues here.
We hoard, as a species, or certainly in our global civilisation, we hoard; we hang on to things and are most reluctant to let go. We hoard material things, and we hoard resentments, ill will and anger against each other. It may be that the material hoarding gives us some sense of security.
The negative feelings can be very strong, disrupt families, destroy communities and lead to war. These negative feelings against each other protect us from facing the great phylogenic terror, which threatens to overwhelm us with its power. It is an outrageous terror. It was felt by our early ancestors at the times of phylogenic traumas; and the terror still underlies our consciousness. We must remember that our ancestors then were as infants are now: they felt very deeply; had very strong emotional responses; they felt that they were powerless, helpless against the forces of nature.
Our ancestors were powerless against the forces of nature, just as animals are. But unlike the other animals, our ancestors chose to fight back against nature. The other animals accepted; the other animals had no choice but to accept the great natural events; they did evolve around the traumatic events, but did not fight back against nature; the other animals adapted to the natural forces.
We are different. Our early ancestors could not accept nature's raw power and chose to fight back, chose to try and outwit nature. I do not understand the psychology of this decision to fight back against nature; perhaps our ancestors thought that they could use their clever brains to overcome nature. But they, we have failed: we cannot outwit nature. We must learn to live with nature, learn to accept the raw power of nature. We must learn to understand that nature is stronger than we are; and we must learn to understand that we are not to blame for nature's activities
Children and even adults who suffer traumatic events believe that they have caused the events, just as our ancestors believed that they had caused the traumatic events; our ancestors believed they were to blame for the events. This in itself seems extraordinary: where did our species get the idea that we cause disaster? Is it age related? Do very young infants, under about 15 or 18 months old, have the same self-perception of great power as children of two years or more? Perhaps with the idea of lying, of deception, our ancestors at the equivalent of two year old infants now, believed that they had found a way of outwitting nature? But where that idea came from, I cannot begin to guess. I cannot understand our human perception that we have such great power.
And, just as we still do now, our early ancestors 'took it personally'. And again, I do not understand this perception. Nature is impersonal, and destroys an ant hill or a town impartially. (Chimpanzees are our nearest relatives and it would be interesting to have a comparative study of infant chimpanzee behaviour and infant human behaviour. However it would be difficult to trust the findings of any such study, as adult human participation will, of course, affect the behaviour of the subjects.)
Of course, we now have the capacity to destroy the world. We have the capacity to destroy nature. We can 'win' the ancient fight against nature.
But human nature is fundamentally good. Our ancestors had a good motive when they first felt that they could deflect nature's power. Our ancestors wanted to protect the species: with the imaginary baby, the secret baby, our ancestors wanted to keep the species from extinction. That was their simple good motive. If humanity destroys the world then we destroy the beloved baby.
(Another factor in this puzzle of human behaviour is that we copy nature. Infants copy their adults. We, as adults, copy the furies of nature, as we see most clearly in our weapons of war. In our long fight against nature, we also see that we use our clever brains to destroy in 'peaceful' ways, too.)
But for our ancestors the great motivation was the beloved baby, the continuation of the species. We see that our two year old infants yell, and I speculate that the yelling may be dissension; that our ancestors may have been aware that to try to deceive nature with the imaginary baby was a dangerous course of action. And it has proved to be a dangerous course of action.
It is estimated that we now have nearly two billion children on the planet. We have fulfilled the aim of our early ancestors: the imaginary baby, the secret baby has become a great reality. Let us turn our attention to those living, real children. Let us give all these real children the devoted attention and care that they need. Let us turn away from the imaginary baby and the hoarding and turn towards the reality of living children.
The Secret Baby 5 - creativity
It seems that we feel that the imaginary baby is essential to what we are as a species. And I can see there may be reluctance to let go. It seems that we feel that we need the imaginary baby, just as strongly as our ancestors felt that the imaginary baby was vital to them.
But let us look at this with compassion and with reason; reason with love.
First of all, I may be wrong. I may simply have misanalysed the perverse behaviours of our species, and the causes of our perverse behaviours. The imaginary baby may be simply a figment of my own imagination. That's possible. And it is for you to find different causes for our perversities. I have said before that you must question everything that I say in this work; and it is very important that you think for yourselves.
I accept the validity of the theory of the imaginary baby; and I can see difficulties in accepting the validity of this theory.
It may be that some intelligent adult women may feel insulted by this theory. Women may feel that the theory makes them personally seem foolish.
Men cannot know what it is like to be a woman: men cannot fully grasp the fact of having a womb; the duality of giving and keeping, of retention and release.
The imaginary baby is not caused by adult women now. The imaginary baby was the idea of our ancestors when they were the equivalent of our two year old infants now. And at that time in our evolution, it is likely that both sexes were closer to each other than we are now: it was easier for our male and female ancestors to relate to each other. And there was a much stronger sense of empathy among our ancestors than there is now among us: there was much better understanding among our ancestors, just as there is much better understanding among infants now than there is among adults now.
But there is something deeper going on in the psyche. Our ancestors desperately needed, felt that they desperately needed the imaginary baby. Their offspring, the real baby, was the object of their love, their reason for being. Deprived of the baby by maturation delay, our ancestors had no object for their love, they felt that they had nothing to love, felt empty and that they had nothing, and no reason for being. They were desperate. The imaginary baby fulfilled a great need for our ancestors: the imaginary baby gave them some thing to love, some thing to protect and to nurture. And perhaps by what is known as 'sympathetic magic' the imaginary baby gave them hope for the future of the species.
It is extraordinary. The imaginary baby was an idea, a thing of the mind. The idea is important in the creative process. A pregnant woman has the idea of the baby growing in her womb; she loves and nurtures her baby with her mind and in her body. But for our ancestors at maturation delay, the imaginary baby could not develop into a real baby: the imaginary baby must always remain a thing of the mind. It could never be born as babies are born; the imaginary baby is 'born' out of the anus. But our ancestors had invested great love in the creation of the imaginary baby, and it is easy to see that they loved, projected their love on to what was 'born' as the faecal 'baby'.
Our male ancestors were able to participate fully: the males could make the imaginary baby as well as the females; and the males could love their faecal 'baby' as much as the females did. The experience of the imaginary baby was shared by the males and the females together; the effect on the species of the imaginary baby has been profound.
We may recognise that all our art, and other creative work results from this early idea of the imaginary baby. We may see that our species developed invention - including the invention of money, and perhaps weapons - and artistic creativity from this early idea. Should we give up all this creativity? Of course, speaking for myself, I would happily see us give up the crazy invention of money, and of weapons, but we are a creative species; we have learnt creativity beyond the process of re-creation of the species: we have learnt to make more than babies. We cannot unknow what we have learnt.
Then may I suggest that we concentrate our learnt creativity on the emotional and psychological, as well as the physical well being of our real children? Let us choose what we create so that we benefit our real children; let us use our learnt creativity to make a happier species.
The Secret Baby 6 - the womb
Women must recognise the primacy of the womb, and there is resistance.
Humanity is confused. We distrust ourselves. We are confused between the anal and vaginal; confused between the product of the bowel and the product of the womb; and we have lost confidence.
Humanity lives in what is known as the instinctual void: we are never sure that what we are doing is right. Other animals are guided by instinct; we have to a very great extent lost the use of our instincts; we do not trust our instincts. We have become confused between what is right and what is wrong, between what is good and what is bad. Human nature is fundamentally good, and we are desperate to be good, to do what is right. It hurts and puzzles us that we are so lost and confused.
In 2009 when I was writing the first edition of this work, I had a strong image in my mind's eye of a female ancestor from ancient times; she was standing in a landscape of rough grasses and she was puzzled by her product; she wanted me to tell her if what she had produced from her body was a baby or a faeces; was it good or was it bad? The product was hidden in the grasses and I could not see it. But I recognised her confusion.
The faecal 'baby', the anal product: it is not bad as such, but it is not a baby! The faecal product may be worthy of our respect or even admiration - we may be pleased to produce a fine turd, but we cannot cuddle or nurse it, we cannot kiss it, bathe or dress it; we cannot make plans for it, or imagine its future as a great man or woman! We cannot love our faeces as we love a baby. The faecal product is waste matter; ideally we bury it in the ground so that it breaks down and feeds the earth.
The real baby is the product of the womb. The real baby is fascinating in every detail; the smooth soft skin, the bright eyes, tiny perfect finger nails, fine hair, tender limbs, genitalia, veins, from top to bottom, everything is beautiful and fascinating. We love the real baby, we hold it with tender gentle respect, with strong compassion, feel its beating heart and breath, and every movement of its body. We protect and nurture the real baby, teach and guide it as it grows through childhood and into the future. The real baby is the product of our love, the object of our love, and our reason for being.
And it is not necessary to have a baby in order to love the baby, to feel the love for the baby. It is not necessary to have a baby in order to feel and recognise the primacy of the womb.
The idea is important. Our old idea of the faecal baby has become unhelpful. Let us embrace the idea of the real baby as the object of our love and creative energies.
The Secret Baby - The Real Baby
Hidden behind the imaginary baby is the real baby.
Human nature is fundamentally good; all babies are born good and loving.
While I was beginning this work, I had a strong image in my mind's eye of our ancestors before they left the forests. A great male was swinging with joyous acrobatics in the canopy from branch to branch. I looked for the female and saw her sitting there in dappled sunlight among the leaves, engrossed, enraptured with her offspring; her young delighted her; she loved her baby, and the baby was everything to her.
Nature provides the mother with overwhelming love for her baby.
The mother loves her baby, and that is the secret. That is the secret which must be kept to protect the baby from destruction by the furies of nature. It's extraordinary. Through the succession of phylogenic traumas, the mother was terrified that nature would destroy the baby; the mother had to hide the baby; and hide her love for the baby. To protect her baby from the 'evil eye' of nature's destruction, the mother pretends that the baby doesn't exist for her.
The presence of the imaginary baby merely confuses the difficulty.
And when the mother is able to consciously feel her love for her baby, then humanity will recover. Humanity will be able to experience the joyous excitement of living. Humanity will be free. The libido will be liberated.
The Secret Baby 8 - a sense of loss
The imaginary baby is compensation for what we've lost. The imaginary baby compensated our ancestors for the lack of offspring at the time of maturation delay. The imaginary baby comforted our ancestors, and gave them something to think about; an occupation, an occupation of the mind, and the body.
The imaginary baby was an anal product. The imaginary baby was an invention of the mind, and given material form in the faeces of our ancestors. We may see that the imaginary baby has descendants: art, invention, money all these we may see as the descendants of the imaginary baby. When our two year old infants yell they are commemorating the great loss our ancestors endured at maturation delay. We still have a sense of loss. We will recognise that the descendants of the imaginary baby - money and art and other inventions - compensate us for what we still feel we have lost.
But we must recognise that even the greatest works of art are less than a real baby, less great, less beautiful, and far less real.
I am not being sentimental. I value the great works of art, and the great artists, and the sense I have that I understand the world of creative endeavour. But though I would be very unhappy to be deprived of the great art, even the works of Rembrandt, Beethoven and Mozart inspire me with less love than I feel for a baby: a human baby, any real baby is greater than all the descendants of the imaginary baby.
It has occurred to me that humanity is crying out for recognition; the human psyche is crying out to be recognised. It is estimated that there are 7.4 billion human beings now in the world, of whom 1.9 billion are children. This seems to me to be an unconscious human cry for human recognition of humanity: we are real, look, it's all right now, we can have babies. But we still, apparently, don't believe that it is alright now.
There is another factor. We are the descendants of the first inventors who produced the imaginary baby, giving it form in their anal product, We have inherited their inventive capacity. The inventive capacity is part of what we have evolved into. The capacity for invention is very powerful in us, and very important to us: we love our inventiveness and our inventions.
All people of all ages have inherited the inventive capacity. For children and for men, it is comparatively straightforward to be inventive. For women the process is complicated by the fact that real babies are born from the vagina. The vaginal product and the anal product are somewhat confused; and, again, this confusion is part of our phylogeny.
This is a very difficult area of analysis. It is psychologically very delicate. Women have inherited the inventive capacity. but women are also the mothers of real babies. A woman may be as inventive as any man, and a woman may love her inventions as much as a man may love his; there is no doubt about that. But the real baby needs continued love.
Aa an inventor you may love your work. But when you have made a painting, or built a bridge, or written a novel, your inventive work is over. The inventor can walk away, leaving others to admire the painting, read the book, maintain the bridge. Your completed invention will not suffer when you walk away.
A mother can walk away from her baby, of course, but the baby suffers. The painting, the bridge, the novel are imaginative constructs. The baby is real. If the mother abandons her baby, the baby suffers loss.
The Secret Baby 9
It is a complex area of study. But the message is clear and simple: the faecal product cannot feel. The Mona Lisa cannot feel pleasure or pain. The imaginary baby cannot feel anything. The imaginary baby, the anal product, cannot be psychologically damaged.
The real baby, any real baby feels and thinks and learns.
It is common for parents to say things like, 'She's got to toughen up,' or 'He has to learn that the world is a hard place,' and so on.
Children learn. And they meet with very difficult phylogenic experiences. It is wrong to add to their burden with harsh ontogenic experiences.
It is right and necessary that parents help their children overcome all those phylogenic traumas which break through during infancy and childhood.
The Secret Baby 10
Humanity has come such a long way. There has been love and pleasure, pain, fear and anger. The journey has been marked by trauma; we have been driven by natural forces beyond our control, natural forces which our ancestors did not and could not understand.
We lived in the forests, along with the other apes, and we may still see something of our way of life when we carefully observe the living apes now. But we were forced to move when the planet cooled and the forests declined. Our ancestors were driven out from their home by natural forces. And from then until now the journey has been difficult. Our behaviour has been shaped by these difficulties. What our ancestors experienced, we still experience; we are still what they were, and we are what they have become.
In this work we have tried always to remember George Frankl's proof that human nature is fundamentally good, that all babies are born good and loving. We have tried always to remember Frankl's guiding principle of reason with love. In this work we have tried to understand human behaviour. We have tried to analyse and resolve our human difficulties. We have seen that though the work is hard, it is possible to gain some understanding.
In this work we have seen that the human psyche sometimes works in strange ways. In all the difficulties and traumas of our long journey, the baby has been our great love. We have tried always to protect the baby. We have hidden the real baby from danger, even to the extent that we have tried to pretend that we do not love the real baby. We have been superstitiously afraid that if we show our love for the real baby, then the real baby will be taken away from us. This superstitious fear has led to an actual lack of love for the real baby. Our species has become trapped in this strange superstitious behaviour and we are damaging the real baby.
It is time to free the real baby from our superstitious fear.
I make this appeal primarily to women, but also to men: please be morally certain that you want a real baby before you have a real baby.
Let us consciously put the real baby at the centre of our lives and our societies. The real baby loves us; our babies and children love us. Let us have the courage and generosity to acknowledge and accept their love. Let us free ourselves to love our children.
The Secret Baby - The Secret Vagina
Our civilisation is descended from the imaginary baby. We have constructed our civilisation and it has been born out of the anus.
The real baby is developed and nurtured in the womb, and is born out of the vagina. But the vagina has become part of the secret of the imaginary baby.
Our ancestors suffered a series of phylogenic traumas. Throughout these traumas, our ancestors must protect the real baby, as we have seen. The real baby became a secret.
We may therefore understand that our ancestors protected the vagina in the same way. The kept the real baby secret to protect the real baby from harm; and they must also keep the vagina secret. The real baby is born out of the vagina, and so to protect the real baby the vagina must also be kept secret. When we understand this, we also understand why it is that very many women do not have much sensation in the vagina. Indeed, men value the vagina more than many women apparently do; and many women, particularly young women, are mystified by the attraction of the vagina for men! The commonly experienced lack of sensation in the vagina dates back to the secret baby; the lack of sensation in the vagina is caused by the desperate need that our ancestors felt to protect the real baby from harm. We may also recognise that our female ancestors strongly felt the need to protect themselves from harm, and that the lack of sensation in the vagina is a way they had to protect the vagina from harm. But the baby and the vagina are so closely related that both must be protected; it is as vital to protect the baby's birth canal as it is to protect the baby itself.
Our ancient ancestors did not have word language. A two year old infant now is capable of word language; many two year old infants have a large vocabulary, know the meanings of the words and use the words in the correct context. Our ancestors at the equivalent period of evolution did not have words; they used sounds, they vocalised, we know that they yelled. At the Dionysian breakthrough, our three year old infants dance, they use movement to express their ecstatic feelings; and at the next traumatic breakthrough our 3 1/2 year old infants scream, they do not use words to express the rage and terror which suddenly grips them; and we may understand that our ancestors at the equivalent era did not have words to express their feelings of devastation. It is not clear to me when our ancestors began to develop word language, but we may speculate that words were introduced at some stage before the settlements at Olorgesailie and elsewhere; and that the half million year period of these settlements was when word language gained precedence over empathy and the ancient language of signs.
When we try to analyse our ancient ancestors, we are handicapped by their lack of word language and by our lack of empathy. But what there is to know is all available to us; everything is held in the species memory. And we have our own individual memories; we have all been infants, and we have experienced the world of infancy which is hidden from adults; we simply need to remember what it was like in our heads, what the mental landscape of the infant is, to have some understanding of ourselves, our infants now, and our ancestors in the time of humanity's infancy.
Mothers keep the secret. Every mother knows where the baby has come from, but to some extent motherhood takes the woman back to ancient times, when our ancestors faced the terrible conditions of phylogenic trauma. (Many mothers complain that having a baby has made them 'stupid', and we may speculate that this is evidence of regression to an earlier phase of evolution.)
The Sydney Opera House, the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Taj Mahal, the Terracotta Army, the works of Shakespeare are all wonderful examples of man's ingenuity. But the real baby, any real baby is a living example of the magnificence of the vagina! Every real baby is a celebration of the magnificent - though strangely secret - vagina.
The Secret Baby - postscript
You will understand that I am not entirely optimistic about the future of humanity. But there is hope.
We have evolved around the unresolved phylogenic traumas. We have built our civilisation on the basis of decisions made by our ancestors when humanity was in its cultural infancy, and our ancestors were suffering from trauma. Those decisions were made under the duress of trauma. The Dominant Ego is the product of those traumatised decisions. And most of our decisions and actions are made on the basis of those traumas. Our lives are ruled still by the traumas suffered and the traumatised decisions made by our ancient ancestors in a succession of unresolved phylogenic traumas. We are living in a society ruled by the feelings and decisions of traumatised infants.
What are we seeing when we observe a two year old infant yelling? I do remember that I yelled at that age: one of my older sisters made a remark about my 'funny singing'; and I remember thinking that she was being mean to me, though the poor child was surely trying to get me to stop making such a terrible racket! So I remember that I did yell, but do not remember how I felt; I have the impression that the yelling was just something that happened to come out of me, and that it didn't affect my mood: I yelled because that's what you do when you're two years old.
What were the conditions our early ancestors endured that led to maturation delay? How may maturation delays have there been in the course of human evolution? The first at the equivalent of 2 years old, and another at the equivalent of 3 1/2 years old, both imposed by natural conditions; and we may speculate that during the half million years of the settlement at Olorgesailie there was an extended period of maturation delay imposed by the matriarchs. English law now is imposing maturation delay on our young people by compulsorily extending education (or training) until 18 years of age. What did our early ancestors endure that caused maturation delay? Can we gain any understanding of ancestral conditions by observing our own modern young men and women? We may speculate that food became scarce for our ancestors, so perhaps they began to starve; we may understand that they suffered disease; and we may see that the climate cooled significantly, so that they were cold as well as hungry and ill. We understand that Olorgesailie is the 'latency period' of human cultural evolution, starting when our ancestors were the equivalent of about 7 years old, and ending at about 13, puberty. We have observed that a significant number of our children of 9 or 10 years old suddenly break out, and have 'tantrums', seem to regress to infancy, and we may recognise this as a breakthrough of repressed memory of sheer frustration at conditions imposed in Olorgesailie.
The one similarity between our own young people and our ancient ancestors may be the frustration of helplessness and powerlessness: 9 year old boys and girls have limited freedom of action, they must go to school, must do what their parents and older siblings tell them to do; and young adults must obey the law, they are forbidden to be or feel free to explore the adult world on their own terms; our ancestors were impelled to obey the laws of nature which determined their lives.
Our ancestors bellowed, cried out against the frustrations and difficulties imposed on them. One yelling two year old makes a big noise. A tribe of adults bellowing in frustration and pain will have made a tremendous noise. For our ancestors it must have been a satisfying sound; they felt increasingly helpless and powerless in their world: they could not find food, they were ill and increasingly weak, they struggled to keep warm, they could not have offspring. But they could make a noise, they could make an impact on their world; they cried out, shouted back, fought back, and the noise they made, their noise, gave them some emotional relief, and the feeling that they were not entirely powerless, they could do something.
Our ancestors roared out against nature. And then they invented the imaginary baby. We may recognise that bellowing against natural forces gave our early ancestors some sense of power; making that tremendous noise, their own noise, lessened their feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. By the noise they made, they established themselves as a force in their world; and by that noise they fought back. We may recognise that in that noise we see the origins of bullying, laying down the law, defiance against impositions, and the determination to do what we want; to be free!
So we have developed. We have become a species which invents and which bullies. Our civilisation is built on bullying. We coerce sooner than co-operate. The Dominant Ego will have its own way; the Dominant Ego will be free, although it is very plain that millions of people must be enslaved to keep one tyrant in power. Of course, there is some collusion: the poor accept the dominance of the rich. But the poor must accept the dominance of the rich. What is the alternative? Is there an alternative to the Dominant Ego? Must we be bullies?
We may understand that this almost fatalistic sense of enslavement to the Dominant Ego is an effect of the trauma and the traumatised decisions made by our ancient ancestors. By roaring back against nature our ancient ancestors found they could do something, make some impact. To some extent, roaring worked; fighting back was effective. And so they had an alternative: die miserably in cold and hunger and disease, or roar, fight back. They found an Answer to their predicament. And it seems that we have not looked further. Bullying works! Let's stick with it!
But bullying does not work. Bullying destroys. We bully nature and are destroying the planet ...
So, I am not entirely optimistic about the future. But there is hope. Human nature is fundamentally good, and we know, we are aware that we are behaving badly. We know we are making a mess; though we continue to make a mess, we are at least aware that we are making a mess. We are numb; we are aware of being numb; though we pretend to ecstasy, we do know that we are numbed. We know that we are not happy, though we pretend to be happy. We know we are not free.
In the Forests
We may understand that our difficulties began when our ape ancestors were exiled from the forests.
Experts talk of the 'retreat' of the forests, which makes the process seem somehow formal and gentlemanly, like the orderly retreat of armies in an old fashioned war. The forests 'retreated'.
For our ape ancestors it was a terrifying experience. It was a time of upheaval and chaos; there was climate change, and we may understand that there were forest fires and hurricanes, perhaps flooding, extreme weather, conditions in which vast areas of trees were uprooted and destroyed. Our ape ancestors found themselves dispossessed, homeless and very afraid.
But during the ages in which they lived in the forests, our ape ancestors enjoyed life. The forest gave them everything, there was peace and excitement, nourishment, light and shade and warmth. Our ancestors belonged to the forest and the forest belonged to them. The forest was their home, their academy, their nursery and their playground. The trees and the forest floor, all theirs. There was no guilt and no shame; they naturally kept their living areas clean, and naturally defecated as necessary, onto the forest floor, where their faeces became part of the earth again, nourishing the earth in the cycle of life.
In the forest our ape ancestors knew their world intimately and innately. They knew, particularly the mothers, knew everything that happened in their world. They knew why and where and how all the members of the tribe were; they knew when there might be danger, where and what that danger was; they knew, experienced the hunger of the predators, the flight of the birds, the sighs of life around them. And they knew that death was change. They experienced the release of energy when one died, and sensed the metamorphosis, the change that the energy took. They knew where and how and why the energy transformed. Our ape ancestors knew life.
We cannot go back to Eden. But we don't need to go back. Eden is here. Heaven, Paradise is here. The beauty and symmetry of life is here, all around us; even in our awful cities Eden is here. We have tried to destroy it, but Eden is here.
We have tried to destroy it because we have been angry and afraid, traumatised and deeply confused. We are still afraid. But there is excitement, too. And I know that Eden is here and that we have only to reach out, to allow ourselves to experience life truly. Everything that our species has experienced is in us still.
In this work we have looked at the horrors of evolution, now let us explore the good of life, the joys and excitements of our origins, here where we belong. Human nature is fundamentally good.