To help clarify a few things about the upcoming CD "Food for the Gods", I'd like to run a series of columns about my views on violence. This is the final installment.

In the first part I discussed how an unwillingness to give in is both an important survival characteristic as well as a cause of violence and conflict.

In the second part I discussed how ideologies based around non-falsifiable beliefs can possess the mind of the believer and make them willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the ideology.

In the third part I discussed how ideologies propagate by creating and exploiting psychological weaknesses.

In the fourth part I discussed the weakness termed "Divine abandonment" and how it's exploitation generates two major hallmarks of modern society, the motivation of the individual and the psychological isolation of the individual from the rest of society.

In the fifth part I assembled the pieces of the first four parts and discussed how they create a social environment that produces violence and conflict in increasingly greater degrees.

In this final part I will discuss the role of consciousness in modern society and make predictions about the future.

The centerpiece of this theory is the concept of a "permanent psychological deficit" that modern people suffer from which motivates them towards achieving goals that temporarily alleviate their suffering and bring pleasure. This deficit is brought about using a combination of the fear of punishment and the threat of the withholding of love. These two threats are represented in religion as divine wrath and divine abandonment. Not all people respond to both threats, but all people respond to at least one, and the one that works best is commonly used to forge the deficit. Of course, threats cannot be sustained forever and a single instance of a fearful event does not cause a permanent change unless it is very traumatic. However, repeated threats made during formative years can cause permanent psychological alterations. As child psychologists who study stress disorders have concluded, "states become traits". A child repeatedly exposed to fear will feel that fear for their entire life even when the threats have stopped long ago. This permanent change can happen in adults in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it requires extremely intense bombardment to cause it. In children, whose minds are more impressionable and malleable, stress disorders can be caused by much milder events.

But what exactly is the permanent psychological deficit? If it is, as I have claimed, something that all people have it follows that everyone should be able to sense it at all times, perhaps either as some nagging fear or constant yearning for affection. I contend that these feelings only manifest when the mind is not actively pursuing goals and thus occur only when the mind becomes exhausted or when it is stymied in it's pursuit of satisfaction. During the times when the mind is making progress toward a goal it can suppress the negative feelings which stem from the permanent psychological deficit because it is anticipating positive reinforcement. Exhaustion or failure removes the suppression and exposes the mind to the underlying negative feelings. Since these feelings are at least uncomfortable and sometimes painful, they motivate the mind into action. So a permanent psychological deficit would be evident by the constant activity of the mind, and the greater the deficit, the greater the mental activity it provokes. When the deficit reaches a level of sufficient strength, a state of mental hyper-vigilance distinctly characteristic of humans will manifest. This state is what we call consciousness.

Consciousness is a state of awareness where humans can visualize a universe that includes themselves. You not only are aware of the world around you, but you are aware of yourself in that world. This visualization ability also applies to the perception of time. Without consciousness you live in the eternal present. With it you can "see yourself" years in the future or past. This state of awareness is necessary for advanced problem solving. Without the ability to visualize yourself moving through space and time, performing actions, and predicting the consequences, your ability to plan ahead is very limited and you must learn exclusively through trial and error. With consciousness, you can see potential mistakes in advance and avoid them. Modern society demands that everyone be conscious. Without it survival becomes difficult or impossible since you must rely on someone else making most of your decisions for you. Our society is so complicated that even the simplest roles within it require a high degree of self awareness. This is not true of more primitive societies. And societies that aren't as advanced as ours contain members that are not as self aware as we are. As a result, less developed societies are very dependent on their leaders and tradition to guide them.

Most people do not believe that consciousness is merely a naturally occurring phenomenon. Religions couple consciousness to the soul and hold that both are immortal. And many non-religious persons hold that consciousness is not a product of matter and find rationalizations for it that give it universal scope. Still others hold that consciousness is simply beyond all explanation. These theories generally have two things in common, one is that they are non-falsifiable and thus are myths, the other is that they are the product of the fears of death and abandonment. If consciousness exists only while the brain is alive, then it follows that a person's worst fears will inevitably be realized. Immortality is the only escape. These fears are a strong part of the permanent psychological deficit which gives rise to consciousness in the first place. Interestingly enough, these fears are only realized through the conscious perception of time. Consciousness allows a person to visualize their own death and eternal separation from all of the things that they holds dear. Imagining one's self to be immortal, another conscious ability is one way in which a person fights against these fears. In this way consciousness reinforces itself. It is the both cause of existential fear and the force that can suppress it. But little headway can be made about the nature of consciousness without first examining its connection with the brain, either to explain it as being purely a product of mental activity, or to rule it out as an explanation.

One way to examine the issue of consciousness is to analyze what its primary purpose is. Ancient history sheds some light on this since it is in the period of great social upheaval throughout the first millennium B.C. where middle eastern writing styles began to include terms related to conscious self awareness. That era also marked the point at which major changes in religious beliefs and social order came about. One very important change was that it became necessary for kings to enforce their laws upon the masses where before everyone was apparently readily obedient. Consciousness had a powerful affect on the world when it came into being since the visualization of the self enabled a great many new concepts. The realization that one will die fundamentally changed religion. The ability to deceive, say one thing and do another, changed how law and order had to be applied. And the ability to plan enabled military conquests that are epic in scope, going well beyond the skirmishes between neighboring powers of previous eras. Consciousness seems to have arisen in this period, but the reasons why aren't revealed by history alone.

Another source that sheds light on consciousness is the phenomenon of hypnosis. Hypnosis is a way of relaxing the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness (reducing their activity) while keeping the other parts of their brain functioning normally. This is done by focusing the attention of the inductee on the voice of the hypnotist and getting the inductee to slowly relinquish the conscious control of their bodies. The themes of hypnotic induction focus around relaxing the body, letting go of your perception of self, and most importantly, doing everything that the hypnotist says. These themes help to relax the parts of the brain where consciousness occurs and stimulate the parts of the brain that follows voice commands. Once under hypnosis, the inductee's consciousness is reduced to either having little power, being a passive observer, or being absent altogether. In this state the hypnotist has an amazing amount of control over the inductee, who follows the hypnotist's orders without question or delay. This is useful for stage hypnosis where the hypnotist can make the inductees act like fools for an hour to the delight of the audience, or in therapy sessions where the hypnotist can delve into areas that the inductee is reluctant to talk about or is dishonest about. It is interesting to note that a person's personality, creativity, and intelligence all remain intact while under hypnosis, none of them being dependent on consciousness. People do find it difficult to lie while under hypnosis, but this doesn't mean that what they say is the truth. Inductees can embellish and even make up stories while under hypnosis thus making its use as a tool for finding hidden truths in a person's mind rather unreliable. But the one thing that is dramatically absent in the hypnotized person is their ability to resist the commands of the hypnotist. They become totally obedient to the hypnotist. A state in which you would be extremely vulnerable in modern society.

Imagine living in today's world being unable to refuse doing what anyone told you to do. Given today's advertising assault you would be broke within days if not hours having bought everything that was being pitched to you. You would not be able to survive. If your power to resist applied to everyone except one person you would be able to survive, but you would be that person's slave, performing whatever they told you to do. If everyone had to obey that one person, but nobody else, that person would be king, and godlike. And if the king was merely following traditions and repeating commands handed down to him by his father, and his father before, the kingdom would resemble civilization before consciousness evolved. Egypt, Sumeria, and the civilizations of ancient Mexico are good examples of large scale pre-conscious kingdoms. As strange as it may seem, consciousness is not required to build such great kingdoms, but they are difficult to sustain without it.

Such societies were very productive, since the king could coordinate large numbers of people to plant and grow crops, irrigate fields, and build temples to his god, but they were also very brittle. The death of the king without an anointed successor or the onset of a natural disaster that the king or his advisors did not know how to deal with would often cause the complete collapse of the society back into smaller hunter gatherer groups. Other problems that befell pre-conscious kingdoms involved an erosion of sanity on the part of their kings, some of whom ordered massive numbers of sacrifices, the construction of absurdly huge religious edifices, and suicidal declarations of war. All of these were followed obediently by the king's servants no matter how little sense they make to us today. We often wonder how Aztecs could sacrifice thousands of their people or why Egyptians constructed such monstrous pyramids. The answer is simple, they couldn't say no. Their kings gave the commands, and they followed them. But perhaps the most dangerous problem of all was the threat of being conquered. With everyone in a society obedient to the highest ranking authority figure, killing him and taking his place was an easy way to conquer an entire kingdom. For all these reasons it became imperative for people to develop the psychological ability to resist the control of others. The ability that evolved was consciousness, which blocks verbal commands from being directly carried out by the body and instead attempts to determine if obeying them will result in something good or bad. No order is obeyed without first questioning how it will impact the self. To us this seems like common sense, but to the ancients it was a tremendous step forward in thinking. The advantage is that consciousness gives a person the ability to resist control and exploitation, but there are two serious disadvantages. The first is that it greatly stresses a person's mental faculties to figure out the consequences of their actions. Rejecting someone's commands is the easy part, trying to figure out a different way to do things is very difficult, especially for people who are used to blindly following orders. The second disadvantage of consciousness is that it drives a wedge between the person and the figure who the person was formerly dependent on for instruction, support, love, and other lifelines. Becoming conscious permanently distances a person from their parents, their king, and their gods, and thus consciousness is a source of feelings of divine abandonment.

There are many passages from the era of the dawn of consciousness that tell of how people suffer when they are separated from their god. Here are notable ones:

"One who has no god, as he walks along the street,
Headache envelopes him like a garment."

"My god has forsaken me and disappeared,
My goddess has failed me and keeps at a distance.
The good angel who walked beside me has departed."

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me,
from the words of my groaning?
O my God,I cry by day, but thou dost not answer;
and by night, but find no rest."

When the wedge first gets driven between the self and "god" (the authority figure that previously dominated the person) it is an all or nothing proposition. The authority of the god figure is either absolute or it is non-existent. Once doubt creeps in and the concept of self is created, the person loses all direct contact with the god figure. The self intervenes automatically. The result can be crippling for not only does the intervention of the self block out the spoken commands of the authority figure, it blocks out the memories of those commands as well. When the conscious person encounters a situation where he normally remembers the voice of the authority figure telling him what to do, he remembers nothing at all. He stands confused, anxiously awaiting something that he knows not what. In the pre-conscious era it was common to pray at a statue, using it as a trigger for divine guidance. A conscious person doing so would hear nothing. It would seem to him that his god has forsaken him. But not only does consciousness block divine guidance, it blocks divine affection as well. The feelings of love and security formed within the parent/child bond which later becomes the god/believer bond are lost as well. The world becomes a very empty and unfriendly place.

The purpose of modern religion is to try to reestablish the god/believer bond. This is done through rituals that are very similar to the hypnotic induction process. The idea is to put the parts of the brain in charge of consciousness (the frontal lobes and other parts of the cortex) and the perception of self (parietal lobes) to sleep either through relaxation, exhaustion, or by emotional stimulation. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, rhythmic chanting, hypnosis, prayer and psychedelic drugs reduce brain activity in the cortex. Mental exhaustion techniques such as intense dancing, whirling in circles, listening to pounding rhythmic music, and triggering temporal lobe seizures (with narcotics or other methods) wear down those areas of the brain and prevent their further use until they recover. Emotional stimulation, such as a hellfire sermon, love bombing, or intense religious arguments cause high degrees of activity in the limbic system which tends to reduce activity in the cortex. All these techniques can cause people to feel the god/believer bond and lose their perception of the self resulting in feelings dubbed 'religious' or 'spiritual'. All modern religions utilize one or more of these methods. Both the religion and the believer benefit from practicing these methods. The believer is reacquainted with feelings of security and love while the church gains an amount of control over the believer. Depending on the amount of religious ritual conditioning, a church can exert a lot of power over an individual regardless of the presence of consciousness. A well conditioned person can be put into a hypnotic state rather easily and some can be made to do almost anything even though it is exactly this kind of control that consciousness evolved to prevent. Consciousness is not an impregnable defense.

The ancients had to learn the hard way. When their gods left them, when their leaders betrayed them, when their societies crumbled, they had no way of dealing with their situations. Some even became physically sick for years. At that time there was no science, no philosophy, no way of figuring out what to do in a reasoned way. People were disloyal and fickle, turning away from gods and kings and embracing others whenever hardships were encountered. Kings had to enforce order with threats of violence and death, and revolution and treachery entered into human civilization for the first time. Although consciousness had solved the problem of civilizations following their leaders blindly, and often towards disaster or doom, it created the problem of intentional exploitation. Consciousness enabled people to lie to each other in order to achieve their own ends, and in doing so it created more problems than it solved. In order to tell if someone is lying you need to be very good at thinking, but since the liar is also good at thinking you need to be better, or at least more knowledgeable. Also, you need to suspect that the person who is lying to you might not be telling the truth, and that can require quite a degree of paranoia depending on who the other person is and what they are talking about. Trying to avoid being exploited requires a heightened state of awareness. The more creative and intelligent the exploitative attempts are against a person, the more vigilant the person must be to avoid it. This vigilance against exploitation comes about in only one way, by being burned over and over again until the fear of getting burned is enough to drive enough mental activity to prevent it from happening again. This is how modern humans learn to be conscious.

Since it first evolved, the level of mental activity required to be a member of society has greatly increased. Thousands of years ago there were relatively few things to be vigilant against. Over time the number of things has increased exponentially. The ways that kings, priests, leaders, trusted figures, parents, spouses, children, and everyone else use to try to exploit others have increased in both number and complexity. In response, the demands on the psyche have increased to prevent exploitation. Furthermore, this increased mental activity enables people to think up more creative lies and ways to exploit others. Increased mental activity in one person forces increased activity in others and the cycle escalates. But there is a limit to a person's maximum mental activity, and this limit is determined by the permanent psychological deficit.

Children are not born conscious nor vigilant against exploitation. These things must be learned and the earlier they are learned the stronger they can be made. Two things must be done, the first is the creation of the self so that it interposes between the parent and the child, the second is the creation of a powerful permanent psychological deficit so that it can fuel the required level of mental activity for modern living. These two are closely related since the parent/child bond is the source of a person's strongest emotions, and thus a powerful deficit can be created by exploiting it. There is no single way in which this is done, but the basic idea is to create a powerful dependency between the parent and child and then to remove all support. The dependency can be strengthened either through love, attention, punishment, and neglect, or any combination of these depending on what works best on the child. When removed, either suddenly or gradually the child lives through the same stages of divine abandonment that the ancients went through along with all the pain, confusion, anxiety and suffering that goes with it. Their sense of self first forms, usually when very young, and becomes more deeply ingrained as the parent/child bond is broken. There is no kind way to do this since a permanent source of pain is the key element in the process. The goal is apply enough pressure to avoid producing a child that is dull and gullible while not applying too much and producing a child that is mentally unstable. But the closer that a parent comes to the latter, the more likely the child is to be exceptional, and thus progressive parenting strives to push children to maximum levels of mental activity while stopping short of insanity. But there is no solid boundary between the two and they often go hand in hand.

The pain that children feel becomes a permanent fixture of their sense of self. Throughout the process of removing support there is a tendency for the child to turn to other authority figures as surrogates. Some of this is generally accepted and directed towards a religion and a political system, but most of this is discouraged. This discouragement takes the form of exploitation of the child's trust. Children are lied to so that they will be less likely to trust others, insulted so that they respect other's opinions less, have their beliefs criticized so that they learn not to hold anything as truth so easily (unless it is the beliefs of the chosen religion or political system), and generally abused whenever they show too much willingness to trust someone else. Although a lot of these acts of discouragement appear to be attacks on the child's sense of self, the actual effect is to strengthen it. Attacks that cause children to withdraw from the world do indeed strengthen their reluctance to trust anyone other than themselves. In essence the world of the child is made to be like the last three millennia of human history with the wars, ideological clashes, conquests, defeats, oppression, submission, and all revolutions lived out in virtual form where the intensity of the emotions are the same but without the physically destructive results. The child must be prevented from thinking in any of the ways that failed in the past and to reject all authorities who would have them believe in things that have been disproved. Three thousand years of psychological exploitation must be applied to the child so that the child will be vigilant against every known trick and ploy. The requirements for the modern child are extreme, and get harder with every new generation. Of course, a child's life isn't all bad, and the lessons taught can be applied with varying levels of intensity with many taking the form of good natured jokes and tricks, but since the goal is to produce a permanent state of hyper-vigilance in the child, the lessons will get harsher until the desired effect is obtained.

The enduring question is "why must there be exploitation?". Most religions view it as sin and harshly discourage it. Secular systems of morality also find it repugnant. It would seem that if we could get rid of the propensity to exploit others then the result would be a utopia. However, despite the best efforts of every moral and ethical system, exploitation has proliferated. The reason for this is inherent in the permanent psychological deficit. Since the negative feelings flowing from the deficit can never be satisfied for long, there is always a need for more. Also, since the ability of an experience to bring pleasure tends to diminish over time, the intensity of pleasurable experiences needs to be increased in order to satisfy the permanent psychological deficit. And when those pleasures eventually run out, others are sought. Enough is never enough. Everyone wants more and in time there isn't enough to go around. Conflict is inevitable and exploitation is necessary to take things away from others who do not want to relinquish it. The dawning of consciousness resulted in the dawning of epic military campaigns. For those ancient kings, making war wasn't enough, the enemy had to be crushed, and every victory resulted in another call for conquest. Kings boasted of their achievements by etching the details of their victories in stone. Kingdoms were expanded obsessively until the inevitable point where they collapsed under their own weight. This lust for conquest continues today and embroils the world on an all too regular basis. With permanent psychological deficits growing more and more demanding, the magnitude and intensity of conflicts in all areas of life become more brutal and exploitation and atrocity become accepted as norms.

Consciousness is not a natural state for humans. Living in a continuous state of vigilance for fear of exploitation and in a constant search for pleasure is far from how our ancestors lived. We live in a state of constant stress, often at dangerous levels, but we view this as natural simply because it is the norm in our society. Certainly children are born with a natural curiosity. Their brains are essentially empty and they are biologically driven to fill them. This is similar to how an empty stomach motives a person to find food. However, the total of things that need to be learned to be a part of modern society far exceed what a child is motivated to learn from biology alone. When the child's natural curiosity wanes as their mind reaches a natural balance, there is still a great deal more that they must learn, and the motivation for this extended learning comes from the permanent psychological deficit. Nature is not sufficient and an unnatural state must be imposed. Compared to all other life forms on the planet, who do little more than fulfill their basic biological needs, we are radically abnormal. Animals kill only what they need to eat (or a little more and leave it to scavengers). Humans kill for food, pleasure, out of anger, and for ideologies and sometimes kill so many others that they have difficulties disposing of the bodies. Humans also indulge in other excesses in the pursuit of pleasure in the areas of food consumption, sexual stimulation, drugs, religious rituals, and almost anything else that relieves negative feelings. If not for the fact that our social order has evolved to incorporate these excesses, almost all humans would be seen as psychotic. Instead we are productive members of a society gone mad. We comfort ourselves in the fact that there as always someone else more psychotic, obsessed, or fanatical than we are, and excuse our own similar, milder acts. The brutalities of upbringing, the callousness of the adult world, and the inevitable rape of ideals that we once thought were sacred all become accepted as parts of life. We survive psychologically, although some only marginally, and then demand that others must match our suffering as a way of earning their keep. Helping the next generation is permitted, but lightening their load is not. We pass on our world of pain to the next generation, with a few additions of our own, and convince ourselves that they are inheriting a world better than one into which we were born. We see our successful campaigns to extract more pleasure from the world ( but only to offset our deep pain) as evidence that we have contributed to global improvements when instead we have only sunk deeper into the quagmire.

This is the point in the essay where one would normally expect a call to arms and the presentation of an alternative. Such is the common practice of a social order constantly seeking solutions. But despite all the solutions, the number of problems they create grows faster. It is a self defeating proposition. Thus I will attempt no such self deception. This search for truth is merely my own way of temporarily satisfying my own permanent psychological deficits as your reactions to it are attempts for you to do likewise. Even if my theory is true, it is irrelevant since it cannot alter the course of history. Although humans may use it or parts of it to satisfy themselves, they cannot avoid the inexorable slide towards an inevitable conclusion. However, like the music I record, it makes myself and others feel better for a little while, and that is its sole reason for existence. It claims legitimacy exclusively by right of being.

As to the inevitable conclusion of mankind I can only make predictions based on the theory I've given. Some have predicted an "end of history", where a utopian ideology will envelop the world and make conflict and struggle a thing of the past. I believe that such a state existed on earth for millions of years prior to the evolution of consciousness. Human culture existed in a state of near stagnation with cultural evolution progressing at a rate close to that of genetic evolution. Since the dawn of consciousness, cultural evolution has been progressing at an exponential rate, feeding on itself, and moving away from a stable state. Natural barriers to the procession of progress such as limits on the human mind and the number of people that can exist on earth are being felled by technological innovation (computers, space travel, and ideology - make no mistake about it, consciousness and ways of thinking are every bit as much technology as are software and hardware). So it appears that human culture can expand with no limits. However, I see two trends that will likely combine to spell a cataclysmic end. The first is the combination of technology with the need to make war. In the last 50 years this has produced weaponry that can easily destroy the entire world. Of course, it has always been possible to destroy all life on earth given enough time, but now the effort is minimal and the safeguards are few. The trend is toward making the power to obliterate so overwhelming that it could even be triggered by accident or through ignorance. And rest assured that there are people busy making weapons that are even more destructive than the ones we currently have. The second trend is the increase in the scope of murder-suicides. The recent examples of Columbine and the September 11 terrorist attacks stand apart from other murder- suicides due to the degree of planning and preparation involved and their sheer destructiveness. It would seem that the increasing damage that murder-suicides inflict is related to the increase in the depth of the permanent psychological deficit in the individuals that commit these acts. As these deficits are made stronger with each generation, the amount of destruction that a person bent on committing a murder-suicide will seek to inflict increases. I think that at some point in the future someone will reach a point where they have both the desire to destroy the entire world and the means with which to do it. One person will eradicate the entire human race. Perhaps you're the one.

The final question is whether or not we can truly be happy, or even satisfied, as long as we have a permanent psychological deficit. Can we ever get rid of it? The answer, unfortunately, is no. The permanent psychological deficit is what makes consciousness possible. Our sense of self arises from a need to find a way to deal with the pain of being dissociated from biological needs. Without that pain our consciousness will slowly fade away. Our very essence, who we are, is built upon a long series of painful experiences whose emotional effects will never go away. Our consciousness is like a doctor treating a wound that never stops bleeding. And worse, our conscious pursuit of a cure often brings us into conflict with others suffering the same fate, and we inflict and incur greater wounds on each other. It is only during rare altered states of consciousness that the burden of living lifts from our shoulders. During these times parts of our brains shut down for one reason or another and for a brief moment our consciousness is disconnected from the constant demands of the permanent psychological deficit. The parietal lobes shut down and we lose our sense of self, stepping outside of our bodies and moving beyond the boundary between ourselves and the universe. The feeling is not so much pleasure, although sometimes it is accompanied by endorphin release and great joy, but one of peace and serenity. It is a state so foreign to us that we describe it in other- worldly, spiritual terms, and indeed sometimes our mind takes the cue and produces a religious vision. But it is our natural state, a state that was torn away from us years ago when we were forced into the service of our society. The feeling is fleeting, and at the end comes the worst part of all, that of being dragged back into your body and being reacquainted with all the pain of being alive. As your defenses slowly kick back to subdue the pain and your complete sense of self returns you realize just how much pain it is that you're living with every moment of every day. You just can't feel it because your consciousness is able to suppress it. But lasting relief is not attainable, at least in the presence of that which is your self, for the self is only made possible by the mental activity forced by your permanent psychological deficit. That which you call yourself is dependent on a steady flow of suffering. You can never find peace. What often becomes most people's lifelong quest is sheer folly. This is perhaps the most disturbing thing ever written.

And so we have little control over our actions. We do what we must do in order to keep our tentative hold on our relief from the pain that we feel. Some variation on an ideology has a permanent grip on our minds and motivates us to do things that fill us with pride and shame. But most of all it makes us pass our own interpretation of that ideology on to others, such as I'm doing now. We fight, we love, we propagate our beliefs, and our ideologies claim new victims. We are Food for the Gods.

I invite all comments. If there is a desire for this to become an open discussion, I’ll send out responses and replies to all on the Fireaxe mailing list. Names and e-mail addresses will be withheld upon request.