This is a very simple idea, but as you’ll see its implications are incredible.
So this is a little analogy or metaphor to introduce this idea. I want us to imagine
what would happen if we were to put a fully conscious brain on a migratory stork, now
we picked storks because we’ve got to put a big brain on it so they might be able to
carry it, they probably couldn’t, but for the story we can imagine that they can.
They winter in the swamps in South Africa and then migrate around
the coast of Africa, to the roof-tops in Europe where they nest each spring. Now they
don’t understand where they should and shouldn’t fly, they’ve learnt that through Natural
Selection. In fact with these storks there’s two flight paths, one goes up the White Nile,
one goes round the coast of Africa. Now the way they learnt that perfect orientation of
where to fly and where not to fly was through Natural Selection, those storks that tried
to fly across the Sahara died. Where as those storks that had a genetic make-up that inclined
them to fly 'left', maybe they had shorter left wing or something and they weren't
as strong? Whatever it took. There would be massive genetic adaptations to the magnetic grid of
the Earth. But through Natural Selection they’ve learnt exactly where
to fly and where not to fly. So they are perfectly orientated to where they should and shouldn’t
fly. But very importantly they sure as hell don’t *understand* where they should
fly and why they shouldn't fly. It's not an understanding based orientation.
So what would happen if we put a brain, a big conscious brain, massive association cortex
like we’ve got on the head on one of these storks and we jump in an ultra lite and we
fly along behind? We called him 'Adam Stork' because you’ll see this story relates to
the story of the Garden of Eden. We jumped in an ultra lite and we’ve got Adam Stork
here following the flight path with all the other storks, and we want to actually see
what is going to happen…. and he’s flying along. Adam Stork is thinking
now, is a self adjusting organism, he’s fully conscious able to understand
cause and effect sufficiently to manage events to his own chosen end. So he can choose what
he wants to do. He’s, as it were, wrested management of his life from his instincts
because he’s a sufficiently conscious being able to understand cause and effect, sufficient
to manage cause and effect, to manage events to his own desired end. But he doesn’t know
what those ends might be. So we’re following Adam Stork along, surely
Adam Stork is going to start thinking for himself, he’s going to start thinking “I’m
feeling a bit tired I might fly down to that island, there’s an island down there”.
So he heads off to carry out his first grand experiment in self adjustment. But what’s
going to happen, he’s going to get half way down and deviate
off course from the other storks and his instincts are going to
start to in-affect criticise him for flying off course and he’s going to be in a dilemma...
"Either I obey my instincts or I don’t, if I obey them I’ll feel good because my instincts
won’t criticise me anymore and all the other storks who are following the flight path they’ll
be happy to see me back on course and everyone will be happy— except my conscious
brain". But Adam doesn’t want to be at odds with his instincts so he flies back
on course. So we’ve seen him divert, hesitate, fly around in a loop, then fly back
on course. So he’s now flying back on course so his instincts are happy and his other friends
are happy… but he’s not happy, his mind is still thinking and trying to work
things out. He has no knowledge at this stage, no basis to decide what he should and shouldn’t
do and he’s only going to find out what are the right ideas and what are the wrong
ideas by experimenting. It’s called Heuristic Refinement. He’s got to experiment in different
ideas to find out what are the right ideas and what are the wrong ones.
So he starts feeling a bit hungry and he looks down and sees another island with some apple
trees on it, and he thinks he’ll carry out another grand experiment in self management.
“I’ll fly down and have a feed of apples, why not?” no reason at this stage,
he’s got no knowledge. I’m only going to find out what’s right and wrong by experimenting.
So again he carries out a grand experiment, heads off down towards the island with the
apple trees, so we see him heading off again and again he hesitates, because his instincts
are trying to pull him back on course and all the other storks are screaming out “hey
Adam you’re off course come back here”. So his instinctive self and all of nature,
all the innocent world, that’s all associated with his instinctive self because he grew
up with nature, with the sun, the rain, the sky, trees, the other birds, clouds, they’re
all in a sense ‘friends’ of that original instinctive state, and so by association the
whole world is on his back, criticising him for flying off course. But this time he doesn’t
give in because he works out "I have got to find knowledge, I’ve got to carry out these
experiments, it’s only by thinking and trying to work out what I should and shouldn’t
do, what might work and might not work and I’m going to find out what does work and
what doesn’t, I have to experiment in self adjustment to master this marvellous tool—
this brain, which after all is nature’s greatest invention surely—the conscious
thinking mind. So this time we see him hesitate but he perseveres,
because he’s worked out “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do”, so he heads off
towards the island. Now the intensity of the criticism is going to magnify, its going to
get much louder. His conscience, this instinctive voice within him is going to be screaming
at him “you’re off course Adam”. Now ideally at that moment, day one of Original
Sin if you like, what should have happened ideally is Adam Stork should have sat down
on a limb somewhere with his instinctive self, and the other instinctively-obedient storks
and had a little talk to them and said "just hold on, stop
criticising me, there’s a reason why I am needing to do this, I’m conscious now,
I’m using a different form of information processing to the genetic learning system,
I’m using the nerve-based learning system which can remember events, and on the basis
of being able to remember past events, we can compare them with current events, we can
find commonly occurring events on the basis of what’s commonly occurred in the past
we can start to make predictions about what’s likely to occur in the future, we’re an
insightful learning system. And so he could say to the other storks, “You’re
not, you’re a gene-based learning system, you acquired your perfect orientation through
Natural Selection which is blind, its not an insightful form of learning. Those ideas that
don’t work, those storks that tried to fly across the Sahara got frizzled and didn’t
make it so their genetic make up didn’t 'hold'. That’s how we acquired our instinctive
orientation, but that’s not an insightful learning system”. The gene-based learning
system is not insightful it’s blind, and nerve based learning system based on memory
sufficiently developed as it has become in humans, can become conscious, the unsaid words
'conscious of how experiences are related, how information makes sense of experience'. And on the basis,
start managing events to his own desired end. Wrest or take management from the instincts
and take over become a self-managing or what is called a self-adjusting system. So he can
sit down on a limb and explain to the other storks and to his instinctive self that there
is a good reason why he has to carry out these experiments. His
instinctive self and the other storks and all of nature, who are all friends of the original
instinctive state, would all say “sorry for criticising you,
we’ll bare with you, you know we’ll tell you when you’re off course, but we won’t
criticise you”. That would’ve been marvellous, but that’s an impossibility, he’s setting
out to find knowledge, he doesn’t even know about genes and nerves yet he has no capacity
to explain anything that’s what he’s setting out to find, he’s stuck in a conundrum:
he hasn’t got the understanding that he needs to defend himself, so he can’t explain
himself. It’s a terrible, terrible situation. He’s got to do what he’s got to do. For
all appearances he appears bad, but he isn’t bad. At any time he can fly back on course
and stop the criticism and feel good, but he will not be contributing to the accumulation
of knowledge by doing that. So he can’t sit down and have a talk with his conscience
or his instinctive self, or his soul or the other birds that are still obedient to their
instincts or appease nature, the whole natural world which is all associated with his original
instinctive state, he’s got no ability to explain himself. So what inevitably had to
have happened, I suggest he only had three things he could do, and the seven deadly sins
of sloth and slovenliness, etc all round up under these three things.
1. He tried to block out the criticism, “I don’t want to listen to it, I’m not bad
but I can’t explain to you why, one day I will be able to, until that day I’m just
going to not listen to you cause I can’t do what I’ve got to do and cope with this
unjust criticism and I can’t shut you up, I can’t stop the criticism, because I haven’t
got the explanation and I’m going to have to keep doing what I’ve got to do to get
the explanation.” The human condition is absolutely shot through
with paradox, we’re good when we appear bad, we’re bad when we should be good, oh,
it just gets so complicated, that’s why that climbing rope analogy is so powerful
because it looked impenetrable, how can you make sense of that, how could we be good when
we’re bad. It looked impenetrable, that’s why you need a very simple analogy, like this,
to make sense of the impossible. Anyway he blocks out the criticism because
he can’t defend himself against it, he becomes alienated, he lives in denial, which we’ll
come to later which is Plato’s cave, this famous analogy of living in a cave where we
hide from the glaring light of the sun which is the truth about ourselves which we can’t
face, which the fire in the mouth of the cave represents that’s blocking the exit, and
all they can look and see is shadows on the back of the cave. It’s the most famous analogy
in the whole of philosophy as I’ll explain later. Because there’s so many truths and
we’re going to hear a lot them today and their going become so nervous about some of
these truths, you’ll hear people squirming because the whole doors going to be unlocked
about what has been going on. But its all going to be defended. So he blocks out, so
alienation, denial, psychosis, phsyc means soul, isis means healing. Psychiatry, they
all mean related to healing, why has it been killed off, why does it have to be healed?
Why did it get knocked out?, because we had to deny this criticising instinctive state.
2. He gets angry towards the criticism, he says “hey listen mate get off my back, I’m
not bad I’m not bad, I never was and one day you’ll understand why and until then
get out of my face”. When you see people waving their fist, that’s humans historic
symbol of, ‘Mate I can’t explain it to you but I’m not bad, I may be one upset
human, but I am not bad’. So he gets angry and 3. he determines to prove himself, he
becomes egocentric and if we look up ego in the dictionary, it says ‘The conscious thinking
subject or self, the conscious thinking self’, so the ego is just another word for consciousness
this large brain, he becomes ego-centric, ego centred. The ego the conscious thinking
self becomes centred or focused on trying to prove that he is good and not bad. He becomes
preoccupied trying to validate himself, looking for a win, anything that will give him some
sense of worth against this tirade of unjust criticism that he is having to live with.
So he becomes massively egocentric, centred on trying to validate his conscious self.
He becomes angry, egocentric and alienated as the three only responses available to him
to cope with the horror of his condition, his situation. And as I said those three things
angry, egocentricity and alienation basically will round up all the supposed sins of the
human situation. So it’s a very paradoxical situation the
human condition, how could we be good when we appear to be bad and there’s a marvellous
expression of that, Joe Darian’s 1965 song The Impossible Dream from the play The man
of La Mancha, it has this incredible line in it, ‘We had to march into hell for a
heavenly cause’. We had to fly off course in the pursuit of a heavenly cause, namely
knowledge and suffer massive self corruption, anger, egocentricity and alienation, and if
you listen to the words of this they’re truly extraordinary, ‘To dream the impossible
dream, to fight the unbearable foe’, so now we are going to dismantle all mythology
and I mean the whole damn lot as this unravels, so we’re just starting with something.
So the paradox is shot through with the paradox of the human situation, ‘to dream the impossible
dream’. So no fully conscious stork is going to be able to relieve himself of his condition
until he finds sufficient knowledge to be able to defend himself and explain himself.
So he’s going to have to invent science, he’s going to have to sit down and start
accumulating knowledge, sufficient knowledge to one day be able to explain the human condition,
learn about nerves, learn about genes, learn that there are different forms of information
processing system, and realise that if those two learning systems exist in the one organism
they were going to end up in a clash, and only then could he sit down with his instinctive
self or the natural world and make peace and reconcile, ameliorate his condition. So no
stork until sufficient knowledge is found can relieve himself of his condition.