Have we replaced our animal instincts?

[coberst]

Have we replaced our animal instincts?

We are also creatures “prone to anxiety, extremely helpless in his natural state, almost entirely devoid of instincts.” Therein lay the paradox. ”Instead of remaining free and broadly adaptive, the new symbolic animal immediately became ‘symbolically re-instinctivized’ almost as solidly as the other animals were physio-chemically instinctivized.”

Sapiens evolved into creatures with symbolic structured modes of behavior. Human consciousness extended wo/man’s reach to infinity—wherein infinity is within the extended reach of human imagination. We are creatures with the ability to create symbolically a virtual reality that extends out to the limits of our imagination.

Evolution has programmed the animal world to act automatically in certain ways under certain conditions. Humans have lost a good bit of these programmed responses because we have an ego that places our responses on hold until we have had time to reflect and construct a non-programmed response.

Humans create the world we live in; it is a virtual world constructed principally because of the neurosis we have developed in the first five years of our life.

If we try to think about a virtual world I think we must start with a natural world so that we have a starting point, something with which we can compare. What is a natural world? Is it what we ‘see’? Is it the ‘thing-in-itself that Kant tells us about? Depending upon which is a natural world I think we can begin to realize that the world we live in is a virtual world. We are creatures who create symbolic worlds that are more important to us than the world we ‘see’.

Water boarding is a good example of what we feel about death. Being sentenced to death for a crime is a good idea of what we think about the importance of death. The things people do to prolong their life one more day is a good example. We have been very successful about hiding these anxieties from our self that we have created an inferior culture in our pursuit after something that we do not allow our self to think about. Self deception is our greatest enemy and our closest companion.

I am claiming that the reaction we feel when water boarding or claustrophobia is that very fear of death. If someone asks me what is the fear of death I will say that if they can imagine the feeling of being water boarded they are feeling the fear of death. Our rather blaze attitude that we say we feel about dying is our self deception.

This fear of death that we work so hard to hide from our self is one of the major reasons that we have created a virtual realty and this virtual world we have created is going to kill us. Now ain’t that ironic?

Quotes from Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker

Do you think that humans have replaced the basic animal instincts with symbolic type instincts as the author notes?

[Nick Capozzoli]

Have we replaced our animal instincts?

Do you think that humans have replaced the basic animal instincts with symbolic type instincts as the author notes?

No, or at least not entirely. Humans are animals. We have bodies (including brains) that have evolved via natural selection. Our behavioral repertoire includes "basic animal instincts" and reflexes (you cited the response to being water boarded), but we also show more complex behaviors that are due to our "higher cortical functions," like "thinking," "language," and "human emotions."

That being said, anyone who has lived with a pet dog knows that dogs seem to behave in ways that suggest they have a somewhat more complex psychic life. It seems remarkable how dogs can interact with humans (we are of course a different species).

[Dirtbag]

I wouldn't say we're neurotic. You're not crazy if everybody thinks just like you do. People and the other animals are all trying to survive. We instinctually have to rely on our intelligence for that. We're pathetic physically but we can outsmart the other species and carry on our genes that way.

Plus... sex and fighting.

[blazeofglory]

We cannot never replace animal instincts. It is there deeply seated within us.

[coberst]

I wouldn't say we're neurotic. You're not crazy if everybody thinks just like you do. People and the other animals are all trying to survive. We instinctually have to rely on our intelligence for that. We're pathetic physically but we can outsmart the other species and carry on our genes that way.

Plus... sex and fighting.

My reading tells me that we are all neurotic and some of us are so neurotic that we cannot function satisfactorily in normal society and are then considered to be mentally ill.

All humans repress aspects of their life that might cause anxiety. This repression is called neurosis. It is the constant conflict wherein the ego constantly struggles to hold down thoughts that will cause anxiety. Freud discovered the unconscious in life and there exists a constant conflict between the unconscious and the ego. The ego keeps that in the unconscious that can cause anxiety from becoming conscious.

Humans are the only species to be self conscious. We dread death and repress that dread because we cannot live with a constant consciousness of our mortality.

Conflict is the essential characteristic of humanness.

Regression to animal existence is one answer to the quest to transcend separateness. Wo/man can try to eliminate that which makes her human but also tortures her; s/he can discard reason and self-consciousness. What is noteworthy here is that if everybody does it, it ain’t fiction; anything everyone does is reality, even if it is a virtual reality. For most people, reason and reality is nothing more than public consensus. “One never ‘loses one’s mind’ when nobody else’s mind differs from one’s own.”

Regression to our animal form of instinctual behavior happens when we replace our lost animal instincts with our own fully developed symbolic instincts; we can then program our self to uncritically follow these culturally formed instincts without further consideration. We can then do like the elephant parade; we hold the tail of the one in front of us with our trunk and march in file without any other thoughts to disturb our tranquility.

“The great characteristic of our time is that we know everything important about human nature that there is to know. Yet never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of common understanding. The reason is precisely the advance of specialization, the impossibility of making safe general statements, which has led to a general imbecility.”

The steel worker on the girder
learned not to look down, and does his work
And there are words we have learned
Not to look at,
Not to look for substance
Below them. But we are on the verge
Of vertigo.
George Oppen

Norman Brown informs us that to comprehend Freud one must understand “repression”. “In the new Freudian perspective, the essence of society is repression of the individual, the essence of the individual is repression of the self.”

Freud discovered the importance of repression when he discovered the meaning of the “mad” symptoms of the mentally deranged, plus the meaning of dreams, and thirdly the everyday happenings regarded as slips of the tongue, errors, and random thoughts. He concludes that dreams, mental derangements, and common every day errors (Freudian slips) have meaningful causes that can be explained. Meaningful is the key word here.

Since these psychic phenomena are unconscious we must accept that we have motivation to action with a purpose for which we are unconscious (involuntary purposes). This inner nature of which we are completely unaware leads to Freud’s definition of psychoanalysis as “nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life.”

Freud discovered that sapiens have unconscious causes which are hidden from her because they are disowned and hidden by the conscious self. The dynamic relationship between the unconscious and conscious life is a constant battle and psychoanalysis is a science of this mental conflict.

The rejection of an idea which is one’s very own and remains so is repression. The essence of repression is in the fact that the individual refuses to recognize this reality of her very own nature. This nature becomes evident when it erupts into consciousness only in dreams or neurotic symptoms or by slips of the tongue.

The unconscious is illuminated only when it is being repressed by the conscious mind. It is a process of psychic conflict. “We obtain our theory of the unconscious from the theory of repression.” Freud’s hypothesis of the repressed unconscious results from the conclusion that it is common to all humans. This is a phenomenon of everyday life; neurosis is common to all humans.

Quotes from Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Denial of Death

[coberst]

We cannot never replace animal instincts. It is there deeply seated within us.

I should have used the word override rather than the word replace.

[Nietzsche]

Very interesting response.

My take on it is this :

Mankind now, is not as mankind was and not as mankind will be (assuming we do not kill ourselves before we can further progress).

I would say both yes and no to us replacing our animal instincts.

Look at all the wars, murders, fights, racist behavior, not to mention the insnae amount of importance on sex people have. People STILL can not keep their pants on or be sexually responsible... This is all animal instinct to fight and defend territory and to reproduce and continue the species. Women still have the instinct to be motherly, men still have the instinct to fight and fend for the family.

These are parts of the animal behavior of humans that are likely to always be with us, because it is part of our survival instinct.

That being said, yes many of or animal physical instincts governed by sexuality and human nature are in contradiction with metaphysical, intellectual and spiritual nature of man (yes, I know uttering spiritual and intellectual in the same sentence is considered heinous by some) but the point is mankind is constantly evolving physically and metaphysically.

Take Nietzsche's philosophy of the Übermensch for example, in reference to saying mankind now is not the same as it was and not the same as it will be. This is said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra


Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.

A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive. -- from the prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/zarapro.htm

I thus believe that mankind should further his intellectual nature, by challenging currently held beliefs and values. This does not necessarily mean rejecting a school of thought, but at least examining it to see the pros and cons of a situation, and be able to objectively apply it without letting emotion come in the way of making the logical choice. For this, I quote Ayn Rand's book For the New Intellectual.


Who are to be the new intellectuals? Any man or woman who is willing to think. All those who know that man's life must be guided by reason, those who value their own life and are not willing to surrender it to the cult of despair in the modern jungle of cynical impotence, just as they are not willing to surrender the world to the Dark Ages and the rule of the brutes........ The New Intellectual will be the man who lives up to the exact meaning of his title, a man who is guided by his intellect -- not a zombie guided by feelings, instincts, urges, wishes, whims, or revelations.

Obviously, Intellect is the only way to overcome the problems caused by our animal nature. However, it is important not to let intellect come in the way of some animal instincts, for we still are animals at our very core, and these instincts do serve purpose when maintained. It is best manage and control emotion, rather than let it over run you or you completely ignore your intuition.




The illogical necessary.— Among the things that can drive a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary for man and that much good comes from it. It is so firmly lodged in the passions, in speech, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which endows life with value, that one cannot extricate it without doing irreparable harm to these beautiful things. Only the very naive are capable of thinking that the nature of man can be transformed into a purely logical one; but, if there were degrees of approximation to this goal, how much would not have to vanish along this path! Even the most rational man needs nature again from time to time, that is, his illogical basic attitude to all things. -- Part 31 from Human, All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche. http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/human1.htm#first

It is thusly a balance of logic and emotion, intellect and instinct, the physical and the metaphysical that is the best course for making, and the true path to what man might come to be. This is of course a very Taoist approach, balancing the "yin and yang" of life. That being said, I am a fan of the Tao Te Ching and Taoist thought, it is one of the oldest ways of of thinking in history, and its lessons can be found in things from the Bible, to Buddhist teaching and European Existentialism.

While I am not strongly familiar with Martin Heidegger, I am familiar with him through the great book Star Wars and Philosophy. I brushed up on the terminology I read in the book from him here . According to Heidegger, there is a difference between Ready at Hand and Present at Hand technology. According to the Star Wars book I mentioned, present-at-hand would be more towards technological framing, or letting machinery over run our lives. This is in a sense true, as mankind is very reliant on technology and as time goes on it seems even more likely we will kill ourselves with technology and leave behind a grave of radiation and machinery. Ready at hand technology would be things we use as tools to assist us. This seems to be the more natural way, but taken to the extreme this simplistic way is very monastic. Again, a balance is needed. Granted, this is probably a skewed view of Heidegger considering it was applied to Star Wars, but it is how I am familiar with his work.

In conclusion, I say we have not erased our instincts, merely that they clash with some of the technological aspects of our life. I believe the ideal man or Übermensch is someone who masters "perfection of the tao" and is in perfect harmony with instinct and intellect, physical and metaphysical...

[Apathy]

Humans major non-physical differance to animals is that we developed a language which caused us to become the first species to obtain individual self-awareness. This paved way to our inaccurate perception of time flowing and thus the knowledge that we are eventually going to die. This was not an issue in primitive (proto)- humans because they comprehended time as cyclical. But as we began to record history our perception changed and the ever-looming figre of Death dawned on us. We attempted to remedy this with the Idea of the afterlife. But with this came the creation of 'Good' and, thereafter, 'Evil'. That put our survival instincts into question. No one had ever thought that killing for something could be anything but survival. We do anything to survive, this instinct is present in even the simplest organism and is known as the "selfish gene". We have overrided some of our animal instincts so that we are 'Good'(Don't kill, don't steal, and such) due to our most basic one; to survive. Our spiritual survival has become more important than our physical one. We repress our fear of death because, if it was in the way, we wouldn't be able to survive spiritually at the expense of our physical survival. The church wants to stop scientific research because it is "Against GoD"