17 Aug 2005 @ 08:57, by John Oates
Humanity's past, present and future, in a nutshell
With few exceptions, animals are utterly geared to appropriate instincts. About 30,000 years ago one such exception, probably the chimpanzee, possessing a quite large and efficient conscious intelligence, was beginning to seek advantage over competitors by going beyond the bounds of instinct. In response to this adventurous urge it underwent a brain mutation – a probable doubling of neocortex capacity to its optimum.
This enormously increased capacity augmented one chimpanzee’s conscious intelligence resulting in a new species of being, the human. But the first humans did not fulfil the potential of their whole new brain/mind by allowing it to replace instinct as their main motivator and make them Earth’s first truly intelligent species. Instead they devoted half of the increased capacity to unbridled pursuit of the instinctive drives, pushing aside those inhibitions of instinct that got in the way. We are now the most recklessly ambitious and dangerously destructive species on Earth.
Had humanity embraced its whole brain/mind in the first place the result would have been very different. The function of optimum intelligence is truth, and with truth to guide us we would have made our society in every respect good, rejecting all of the unnecessary drives, principles and practices of instinct. Instinct-driven humanity has achieved many things, but from the wrong motives so that they are chiefly the wrong things, giving us a false society that I call the Machine.
The other half of our mind-mutation has been closed off from direct influential contact with the conscious; isolated. But as a result of its consequent freedom and independence this other mind, that I call the postconscious, is able to pursue its function – truth, especially if encouraged. Most human thinking, from chess, finance, through science, to philosophy, takes place in the conscious mind whose function is not truth, cannot be because it is geared to the competitive instinctive Machine and all its false ramifications. However, the postconscious is able to convey basic moral truths to consciousness by way of the ‘still, small voice of conscience’.
To rescue itself from its dire situation the human race needs to reverse the original decision to divide its mind into two separate halves. The conscious mind/self needs to open up to and be guided by the postconscious. But, after five thousand years of civilisation, again with few exceptions, humans are impregnated with the Machine’s principles, practices, and thinking, that now need to be made redundant. The exceptions are those who, for whatever reason, are free and independent of Machine influences and are dedicated to, even obsessed by the discovery and realisation of humantruth, perhaps for a lifetime.
We are now in the position that while this truth may be known, by a few, it remains unknown to the many. Centuries of following the wrong trail have given us deaf ears. But, as we become increasingly aware of unjust practices, terrible events and looming disasters, also troubled by the prompting of conscience, our thinking advances. It is to be hoped that we break with the Machine before it ruins us entirely.
Further reading: www.humantruth.org
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