Conflict, Consciousness, and the
How violent conflict has created our sense of self
Permanent Psychological Deficit
Evolution is driven by conflict and change. In the face of adverse conditions resulting from the instability of natural forces, all species on earth have been forced to adapt and evolve or become extinct. The same holds true for the human race both in a genetic sense and a psycho-social sense. Changes in human behavior are as critical to survival as changes in human genes. The development of consciousness is an important step in human psycho-social evolution and was caused by the conflicts between and instability within pre-conscious human societies. In the era before consciousness, humans obeyed the orders of their kings unquestioningly, which created rigid societies prone to collapse when the king encountered a problem that he could not solve. The eventual breakdown in trust between kings and their subjects created a need for autonomy which resulted in the development of consciousness. Consciousness also prevented the establishment of rigidly obedient societies, but did not end the problems of conflict and social instability. It merely made conscious people more able to benefit when conflict and instability arose and has led to the escalation of both.Sections
Consciousness is a state of hyper-vigilance that enables a human to take action against perceived dangers before they occur. Consciousness allows humans to visualize themselves within both time and space and act out scenarios in their mind, allowing them to avoid dangers that are not immediately discernable. Conscious visualization requires intense mental activity which must be stimulated by a constant source of fear. Since real life dangers don't present themselves at all times, this constant source of fear must occur within the mind in order to stimulate a steady flow of consciousness. This constant source of fear I refer to as a "permanent psychological deficit" which motivates humans to use conscious thought in an attempt to find ways to relieve their fears. The permanent psychological deficit is created by exposing an individual to their fears of death, pain, and abandonment on a regular basis until those fears are felt at all times regardless of the presence of an actual threat. Once established, these fears become an inherent part of a person's emerging consciousness and are then exploited by the social order to control the individual.
Ideologies are systems of social behavior that guide the creation of the permanent psychological deficit and exploit their members. Fears such as those of divine punishment and divine abandonment are common themes in religious ideologies that are used by parents to forge permanent psychological deficits in their children. By incorporating non-falsifiable beliefs, such as beliefs in heaven and hell, ideologies can wield the power of life and death over their followers. Secular ideologies wield similar power, using non-religious sources of fear and rewards to control their believers. Ideologies are emergent systems and are subject to the same forces that guide the evolution of life on earth. Ideologies survive by spreading, evolving, and forcing rival ideologies into extinction. Ideologies use human "hosts" to accomplish these goals. Humans are pawns in a great ideological conflict and consciousness makes them better champions.
Appendix
Our culture views violence as a last resort and that might lead you to believe that it is a minor part of any relationship, however, in reality it is the foundation upon which all relationships are built. Violence is the most powerful form of social control. All manner of bribery, coercion, reasoning, and stimulation can be used to manipulate people, but if all else fails, killing them will quell their dissension. Violence is effective. It is the last resort because no further response is necessary. And when dealing with people who will never give in, violence often becomes a necessity.
So it seems that we can get rid of violence by getting rid of everyone who will never give in. That way all that is left are reasonable people who will eventually agree without having to resort to violence. However, the reigns of social control tend to go to the people who are very unwilling to give in. They are viewed as having strength, character, and vision, and they are hard to bargain down or make a deal with. They accumulate a following of people who give in easier than they do and often instill in them a similar sense of unwillingness to give in. The result is a group of people of a similar mind and purpose who act on the commands of their leader. Thus, since social orders are founded by those unwilling to give in, it is impossible to get rid of all those with stubborn character. The best that you can do is get rid of everyone who stands against the powers that be and form a uniform society.
However, any group that achieves such uniformity is one that is brittle, and prone to collapse when confronted with new problems. Furthermore, when the leaders of such groups die, there is often a dispute about who will succeed the throne. This leads to internal struggles even before the death of the leader. Additionally, any problem which can be construed to be the fault of bad leadership can bring about internal dissension. In all of these power struggles it is the unwillingness of the competitors to give in that leads to intense disputes and violence. The uniform society is united on the surface, as evident when it declares war on other societies, but divided on the inside and thus never perseveres.
On the other end of the spectrum is a society which is not built around stubborn leaders. These are more flexible to change, but are also very vulnerable to more uniform and determined societies. Lacking the unwillingness to give in they surrender too easily and are soon defeated and enslaved by the powerful. Human history shows all too often how peaceful and open societies routinely get conquered and exploited by those that are singular of purpose.
And so there is a natural succession in human societies to have power coalesce around strong leaders who then clash with others in violent conflicts. Win or lose the leaders eventually fall to internal conflicts. Their power dissipates only to form again around another strong leader. The cycle of violence is never ending.
So what about our society? Aren't we diverse and peaceful? Nothing could be further from the truth. America makes war at the drop of a hat to extend its interests. America uses military and economic threats to manipulate other governments. America cycles through leaders every four or eight years. The capitalist economy thriving in America allows massive and frequent turnover in power and influence. Competition is zealously encouraged and permeates almost every part of daily life in America. Religious freedom has given way to ideological battles in politics. Lawyers do battle for their representatives in civil and criminal cases that are growing in number and packing courtrooms. The divorce rate is increasing. Call-in radio and television shows as well as the internet have become battlegrounds for heated clashes of opinions. And the most popular show on TV was one where producers turned survival, a situation where people need to cooperate, into a winner take all competition. We are not peaceful, and we are uniform in our belief that all the turmoil is a good thing.
Unwillingness to give in is not going away, in fact it is being nurtured and encouraged and grows stronger with every battle. The cycle of violence continues and likewise grows more and more intense. Of course, in America's internal struggles, the violence is mostly psychological instead of physical, but the damage done is just as real.
The most extreme expression of the unwillingness to give in is the willingness to die for an ideology. If a person cannot be reasoned with, coerced, bribed, or swayed by any method, the conflict that they have with their opposition can only be ended through extreme means. Death, imprisonment, or banishment are what must be forced on someone who is willing to fight to the death for their cause. Although it appears on the surface that being willing to die for a cause is simply asking to be killed, it takes on a new dimension in a group context. The unwillingness to give in helps groups of uniform purpose to not only survive conflicts with their ideology intact, but to achieve victory. Killing, or imprisoning a large number of people is a very costly proposition with that cost often being in human lives. If the cost of eliminating a group of people who are willing to fight until death is greater than the cost of a concession to pacify them, the concession will often be made. Thus, the willingness to die for an ideology is a powerful bargaining chip. The threat of violence becomes the foundation of the relationship between the opposing sides.
Furthermore, the willingness of a group of people to go to more extreme methods, to suffer more pain, or to endure more deaths can often make up for numerical or technological disadvantages. The threat of pain or death often causes cowardice on the battlefield, enabling a smaller army to intimidate a larger one into submission. The principle of willing to go to extremes extends to any conflict. In sports the ones who train the hardest win more often, in intelligence tests those who study harder will often score higher than others. Working hard, enduring pain, and making sacrifices are the keys to victory in any sort of competition.
Some of these sacrifices can be justified by the concept of delayed gratification. Pain in the present is worth pleasure in the future when the pleasure outweighs the pain. But many sacrifices that people make have either a negligible reward or no reward at all, and when it comes to death, there is no physical reward that can offset the cost. However, if a person can be convinced that any sacrifice that they make for the group will be returned with interest with death being no obstacle to the reward, they can often find the motivation to go to the greatest extreme if necessary. This is the role of the ideology, to make individuals willing to sacrifice everything for the benefit and empowerment of the whole.
Religions provide the most obvious examples of ideologies that promise rewards after death. An eternity in heaven, reincarnation as a more desirable life form, good karma, etc., are promised to those who obey religious doctrine. Millions of people have sacrificed their lives believing that some part of them would live on after death and that their sacrifices would be divinely rewarded. Of course, there is no proof of life after death, of any gods, of divine rewards, or of any spiritual side of life. In fact, most religions seem like the writings of someone with an overactive imagination and an inferiority complex. Yet people continue to hold religious beliefs, and often hold them with more determination than other more reasonable ideas.
The most immediate question that I should seem to have to answer before dismissing all religious beliefs as absurd is whether or not I can prove that every single religious belief is false. The fact is that I cannot. I cannot prove that any religious belief is false, and that is precisely the reason why none of them should be believed.
At the root of the problem is the issue of falsifiability. Falsifiability refers to any theory that can be proved false by some piece of evidence. Newton's second law is an example. If you measure the force on an object, its mass, and its acceleration, Newton's second law says that the force will equal the product of the mass and acceleration. If your measurements don't show that relationship, Newton's second law is falsified.
Compare this with any religious belief (and I define a religious belief as being anything not falsifiable), for example the belief of a survivor in a plane crash that a god was personally responsible for saving their life. What can falsify this belief? Do the deaths of others in the plane crash mean that god does not exist, didn't care about them, or simply wasn't involved at all? No, as a believer might say, it was simply their time to die. What if the survivor was in another plane crash and died. Does that falsify the belief? Again no, says the believer, God works in mysterious ways. For any question someone might raise about a religious belief, or any piece of evidence that seems to contradict it an explanation can always be made for why the belief is not disproved. Each explanation, if questioned, can be supported by more explanations, and so on and so forth. There is simply no end to them. I'm sure that many of you have gone through this endless process of questioning beliefs and receiving explanations until complete frustration has set in. In time you might come to the conclusion that if you cannot prove a belief false, it must therefore be true, and that is a great mistake.
The fact of the matter is that any belief can be supported in this way no matter how absurd it may be. Every question or contradiction can be turned away with another explanation. Of course, the more reasonable the explanation sounds, the more convincing it is. Explanations often use authoritative statements, appeals to the emotions, and extensive analogies, but can also use logic, scientific facts, and commonly held truths to support the belief, but no matter how well formed the support for the belief is, if it is not falsifiable, it is inconsequential. An infinite number of beliefs, all contradictory and all non-falsifiable, can be imagined that are supported by exactly the same evidence and can be defended with as many well formed arguments as any other religious belief. None of them can be proved wrong, and they all contradict each other, so only one can be right, but with no evidence that supports one belief over any other, the chances of choosing the exact right one are one over infinity. Not even Pascal would touch that wager. To go one step further, neither the odds nor the outcomes change based on what you think, believe, or do. Doing what you believe to be the right thing to gain a more favorable afterlife may in reality be the exact wrong thing. There's simply no way to tell. The only logical conclusion is to disregard all beliefs and not let them influence your behavior in any way.
But the vast majority of people embrace a belief system. And although the fact that what they believe is not falsifiable makes their belief illogical, it is the non-falsifiable nature of the belief that enables it to burrow into their minds. Real gods, such as churches, idols, leaders, heroes, icons, armies, etc. can be vanquished. Their omnipotence can be falsified. Churches can be torn apart by dissension or led astray by insane priests, idols can be smashed to pieces, leaders can be killed, heroes can turn into goats, armies can be defeated, and anything real can be conquered or destroyed. But a non-falsifiable belief can withstand any assault. There is always another explanation that makes doubt go away. There is always a solution to any dilemma that returns hope to a darkened world. There is always a way to put words together that renews the dream and lifts the spirit. Our ancestors learned this the hard way. God had to be a figment of their imagination or a conquering army would tear off their god's head and leave it on a spear for all to see. Imaginary gods can hide inside the minds of their believers and not even enslavement can purge them from the mind of someone who truly believes. The believer can keep repeating the non-falsifiable tenets of their belief system, preventing all attempts at changing or removing their ideology. Gods that take that firm of a hold inside someone's mind can only be destroyed by total annihilation: everyone who believes must be killed and all traces of that god must be swept from the face of the earth. That can be done, and has in the past, but it is a very costly proposition. A non-falsifiable ideology enables a group of people to achieve their maximum ability to survive and thrive.
Belief systems also provide the believer with a variety of psychological benefits, such as security, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of oneness with a larger whole. But they also inflict psychological damage upon the believer, making them dependent on the belief system to provide those needs. There are many ways that belief systems have evolved to take hold of a believer's mind. These will be discussed in the next section.
Religions are not the only examples of ideologies. Modern forms of government are also based on non-falsifiable belief systems. Socialism, communist, and democracy are based on intangible concepts such as equality, free will, unalienable rights, and idealistic visions of what it means to be human. These concepts are infused into the minds of citizens providing them with a sense of self while at the same time making them dependent on the system to maintain it. The citizens of a country will make great sacrifices to support and defend it just as believers do for their religion. The only differences between church and state are semantic.
There is a major problem with ideologies that lead people to make great sacrifices, and that is that the thing that benefits the most from the sacrifice is not the individual or the group, but the ideology itself. Ideologies exploit the workings of the human mind and thus do not necessarily have the benefits of the group as their first priority. Ideologies that lead people to work hard, sacrifice, die for their beliefs and push themselves to the limit will outlast or conquer ideologies that do not. Ideologies follow the same laws of survival of the fittest as everything else in nature, and thus it benefits an ideology to be predatory. Most ideologies rationalize violence and killing in the name of their central, and non-falsifiable, beliefs, and successful ideologies lead their members to provoke conflicts. This provocation can be in the form of a direct assault, a gradual imposition of military, economic, or political power, spreading the word via missionaries, media, or other forms of propaganda, or secret communication between individuals in a country dominated by a rival ideology. War, violence, and conflict on many levels are often the result of these provocations, giving the believers of one ideology the justification to eliminate the believers of the other. The fact that ideologies live so deeply in the minds of the believers makes extreme measures to get rid of them necessary. The first priority of an ideology is to survive in a hostile climate, the deaths and suffering of believers on both sides are only a means to that end.
Exploiting psychological weaknesses is the hallmark of ideological beliefs and conversion. Modern day humans are vulnerable to a great number of attacks both emotional and logical which modern day ideologies seek to exploit. The most obvious of these is the fear of death which I consider to be one of two major psychological weakness.
The fear of death is a uniquely human weakness being that we are the only species that can see into the future far enough to know that we are going to die and that there's not a single thing that we can do about it. This fear often taps into the survival instinct present in most higher animals which is aroused when danger is sensed, but it also, and more importantly, taps into the notion of the dissolution of the self, the self being another uniquely human characteristic, which is aroused when something which holds great significance to a person is lost or threatened. Both parts of the fear of death can be exploited by ideologies. The simplest method is to exploit the survival instinct by pointing a gun at someone or threatening them with death in some other way to gain their obedience. However, there is a limit to how much you can force some to do with this method since it is difficult to make someone sacrifice their life under the threat of death, and some people will choose immediate death as opposed to a life of suffering with no possibility of relief. These problems can be solved by attacking the other facet of the fear of death, the dissolution of the self. The solution is not to threaten someone with a premature demise, but to convince them that the dissolution of the self does not have to happen. The drawback to this approach is that it's harder to convince someone that they will live forever if they do what you say than to convince someone that you will shoot them, but one big advantage is that you can talk endlessly about death, damnation and salvation without being personally threatening. In this way you can remain on friendly terms with the person you are trying to convince. After all, you aren't going to kill them, that will happen anyway, you are merely trying to save their ego identity from the same fate. This helps in the propagation of the belief system since it can be spread among friends, family, and acquaintances with a reduced chance of alienating them. Leaders using this method are seen as beneficent rulers as opposed to tyrannical despots. When using the "benevolent" method of evoking the fear of death, people are still controlled by their fears, but their fears are redirected to things other than the rulers and authorities. This makes such a ruling system more robust since the people cannot get rid of their fears by simply killing their tyrannical leader.
The dissolution of the self can be a horrifying prospect. This is due to the way people are brought up dependent on their self image. A person's self image is the sum total of everything that they are and have done. It's a person's occupation, accomplishments, appearance, associations, abilities, beliefs, skills, and everything else. A person's self image is a powerful determinant of how others will treat them. A good self image generally means compliments, opportunities, and successes. A bad self image generally means ridicule, abandonment, and failure. It's clear how improvements in self image become strongly associated with all things good and how a reduction in self image becomes strongly associated with all things bad. Death, the complete annihilation of the self, is the end of the good and the beginning of an eternity of bad. Reductions in the self image are like a taste of death, and often bring on the anxiety, paralysis, and nervous activity typical of exposure to the primal fear. Most people will do anything to avoid those painful psychological states.
It is the elicitation of those very states that is the cornerstone of religious conversion. Somewhere within a person's vast sense of self lie a great many weaknesses that can be exploited. By focusing on these weaknesses the fear of death can be evoked and magnified to the point where it can overwhelm the potential convert. In this state a person's critical thinking ability has all but gone away and they become much more willing to embrace any solution that can remove the pain. This is where the ideology exploits the other major psychological weakness.
The willingness to submit to a figure of supreme authority is a major psychological weakness found in most humans. It stems from parental associations made during a person's early childhood. In those years a person's parents are truly godlike and obedience to their authority is often rewarded with love, attention, rewards, and other forms of gratification. A person's parents seem able to solve any problem, make any pain go away, and shine light on what seems to be impenetrable darkness. In later childhood the image of the parent's as omnipotent beings slowly fades as the world is better understood, but the connections forged in those early years are still present in the brain, they merely lie dormant, disconnected from the parents that no longer live up to them.
These dormant associations, which connect feelings of love, rewards, and delivery from pain to omnipotent figures are the target of religious conversion. The goal of the conversion is to replace the omnipotent image vacated by the parent with the omnipotent image of the religion's god. If successful this rewiring of the person's brain allows things associated with the religion, such as a religious authority figure or holy book, to influence the person as powerfully as their parents did when they were infants. Although the god image is a figment of someone's imagination, the effects that it can have on someone's mind are very real and can be very powerful. Simply obeying what is written in a holy book or following the directions of a church leader can trigger feelings of "divine" love and acceptance. These feelings awaken the dormant connections associated with childhood impressions of omnipotent godlike parents. When triggered, these feelings seem as if they were coming directly from a god and reinforce the idea that the god is real in spite of its non-falsifiable nature. It is in this way that a belief system can slowly burrow it's way into the mind of the believer. The non-falsifiable nature of the ideology creates a one-way gate for psychological reinforcement. Anything that supports the existence of the god, such as the often powerful feelings of "divine" love, is embraced as being true. Anything that opposes it is explained away. As with any form of conditioning, enough positive reinforcement establishes the connection in the brain, sometimes permanently depending on the power and frequency of the reinforcement, and without negative reinforcement to offset it, the belief in the ideology can be very difficult to remove.
It is worthy of note to mention the phenomenon of the fanatic, a person that is obsessed with an ideology. These types of people resemble drug addicts in their religious devotions and this is indeed an accurate assessment. The brain is a neuro- chemical organ that contains several chemicals capable of giving someone a drug-like high. By stimulating certain areas of the brain these chemicals can be released causing a feeling of anywhere from mild pleasure to divine rapture. Fanatics are generally people who have discovered how to generate this stimulation and who do it on a regular basis. The neural pathways they use to get their high are the ones associated with divine love and acceptance. Similar to other addicts, they crave the feeling of divine love and seek to please their god in any way that they can. Many of them even go through withdrawal periods between highs where the dark side of their belief system comes on in full force. For these people their fanaticism often leads to deep psychological problems.
Simply exploiting weaknesses is not enough for ideologies to survive and propagate. It greatly increases their chances for survival if they can also create and exacerbate psychological weaknesses in the members of its community.
The weakness created by fear of the dissolution of the self is exacerbated by the process of building up the ego. Building up someone's ego, or self image, is done by associating a person with their actions, appearance, occupation, accomplishments, etc., and the things they are said to own. In this way a person's self image extends far beyond their body, and more importantly, beyond their direct control. This has a dual effect of making someone more powerful and at the same time more vulnerable, and the more a person's ego is built up, the more vulnerable they become. Someone who has a lot of possessions receives a lot of gratification from them, but becomes more vulnerable to theft, taxation, and others trying to take what they own in other ways. Someone who has a popular public image can receive praise and attention from a great number of people but also receives criticisms and attacks from an equally great number. Someone who has put a lot of their life into building a successful career or marriage has a lot to lose when change threatens their position. The more someone has identified with their ego, the more they stand to lose, and the more others will seek to take away what they have. Since losing self image is like a taste of death, especially when the things a person stands to lose have given them a great deal of satisfaction, they have no choice but to defend themselves. And the remedy for any loss is to regain what was lost or make gains in other areas. Improving one's self image is always seen as a good thing, and the greater the improvement the better. In this way, death seems to be pushed away and life is embraced.
The threat of loss of self image is a powerful motivational tool. Leaders of all ideologies make use of it to make their members more productive and willing to make sacrifices. Threats to more important areas of a person's self image are made safe again with sacrifices in less important areas, and threats to the most important facet of a person's self image must be stopped at all costs. This is where the non-falsifiable beliefs of an ideology play a very important role. Ideologies can wield complete power over someone if they can convince them that the most important facet of their self image is something that is in the control of the ideological system. The most obvious example of this is the concept of the soul. The soul is a myth. It can neither be proven nor falsified. Yet many religions have convinced their followers that it is their most important possession. Nothing that a person does, owns, or is, measures up to the fate of the soul, and that fate is determined exclusively by religious texts as interpreted by religious authorities. This gives them tremendous power over their members. It takes little more than a hellfire and damnation sermon to motivate a Christian congregation into action. A threat is made to the soul, and the people rise to defend their most prized possession, to the death if necessary. This is the pinnacle of exploitation, giving a person an eternal promise in exchange for eternal obedience.
All ideologies wield a similar power. America prides itself with it's devotion to the concept of freedom. Freedom too is only a promise, a word intended to mean all things to all people while making no guarantees. In essence it is a promise to all it's believers that they are free to build up their own egos as far as they can, while downplaying the very real limits imposed by a truly gargantuan system of laws and a privilege based economic system. Practical limitations are ignored and people are encouraged to associate freedom with their wildest dreams. This allows the government to motivate it's citizens by declaring something to be a threat to their freedom. The word is seen by each person as being their access to their most passionately held dream, something that they have already sacrificed much toward attaining, and they respond by giving up less valuable things. If freedom isn't enough motivation, the government can always evoke the threat to the economy, which is essentially the fickle god of capitalism, and attack a great number of things important to peoples' self images.
The willingness to submit to a figure of authority is the other major psychological weakness and it is exacerbated through various child rearing tactics. The willingness to submit to authority stems from the need to feel love and acceptance and to be delivered from hardships, things that a child grows dependent on from their parents. This dependency can be increased with two essentially similar but outwardly different methods. The first is to spoil the child by giving them everything (and often more) that they want or need any time that they want it. There is a limit to how much a parent can provide for a spoiled child and eventually the child has to deal with the realities that everything desired cannot be obtained. The second is to abuse or neglect the child. Love and acceptance is given sporadically, by only one parent, or in the form of abuse. In a life of emptiness or volatility, a child's need for love and acceptance is magnified. In both cases, the child goes through a process where they experience great degrees of love and great degrees of it's absence. Often children are subject to more than one method. They are spoiled at times, abused at times, neglected at times, etc. Whatever the combination, the result is a feast or famine type of conditioning which tends to make the child prone to obsessive, compulsive, and addictive behaviors toward the needs for love and acceptance. These children are not satisfied with a normal level of positive reinforcement and instead seek out extreme levels of what they crave. This extreme need makes them vulnerable to anyone who can offer them what they need. Additionally, they carry on this obsessive need for the rest of their lives. Ideologies can victimize these people quite easily since they promise extremes in many things such as eternal salvation, divine love, a personal relationship with a deity, and heaven on earth. These people become addicted to ego expansion. Enough is never enough. A new peak is always sought.
This inevitably leads to conflict. There is nothing that can fulfill the self images of all who want more, especially when competitiveness is considered. The desire to have more than everyone else creates an endless cycle of fighting for supremacy. The most extreme efforts are rewarded with success and elation and thus propagate, solidifying them as answers to all image problems. The trouble is that the building up of one's image necessarily results in the diminishing of other's images, most often in the absolute sense, but at least in the relative sense. With physical objects this is obvious, but it applies to everything, even those things which appear to be private gains. All gains raise the standards for everyone else who must work harder to attain their rewards, avoid punishments, and maintain their level of self image. These new standards ripple through society and get passed down to future generations. This creates a social structure where everyone is trying to both protect what they have while taking away from someone else. There is no time to rest, you must defend and you must attack. Even in times of surplus, where everyone stands to make gains there is a struggle to get a greater share of the excess. In lean times, when everyone is losing, the fighting reaches a fevered pitch.
At first it seems like these "problems" are easy to fix. All we need to do is simply raise our children properly and to keep our egos in check. The trouble is that people who are satisfied with what they have are far less motivated than those who crave more. The ones who are always hungry for more despite having far more than their share are the ones who struggle hardest for and win the reigns of power. They are our leaders, our heroes, our trusted authorities, our idols, our role models, and often become very important parts of our own self images. We support them, we idolize them, and we strive to be like them for we dream of having what they have. In many situations we are them.
It's easy to look at the most extreme examples of people whose desires have become obsessions and blame them for the world's problems while seeing oneself as normal, stable, and free from out-of-control desires, but this perspective relies on a relative definition of normal. When compared to more primitive people, modern people are all obsessive, neurotic, and emotionally unstable. Compared to child rearing in primitive cultures, we are all abused, neglected, and spoiled to a great degree. If the most extreme examples of compulsive competitors were removed from our society it would not change the dynamics of the culture. The ferocity of the competition would diminish slightly, but only temporarily. The historical trend is one of increasing competition and of expansion of that competition into all facets of our society.
And it is also important to note that our leaders are not in control despite the fact that they hold the reigns of power. They too are obedient followers of ideologies that control their self images, ideologies that oppose each other and that have evolved to be predatory. Ideologies lead armies of psychologically exploited people into conflict in an effort to survive and propagate. They survive by exploiting us and exacerbating our psychological weaknesses. The lucky few of us "win" while the rest lose, but we are all pawns in an ideological game.
Divine abandonment is a recurring theme in Middle Eastern religions dating back before the bible and it is common to find references to it in most modern religions. The questions of "Where has god gone?", "Why has he forsaken us?", and the emphasis on faith as the way to fill the void left by an absent or infrequent god appear time and time again in religious texts. Any theory attempting to explain religion must account for this theme as it is hard to believe that anyone would willingly accept a religion where gods were so neglectful of their followers unless it struck a deeply personal chord with them.
In the previous section I suggested that the willingness to submit to a figure of supreme authority is one of two major human psychological weaknesses and that it stems from long forgotten parental associations made during a person's childhood. I also suggested that this weakness was exacerbated by child rearing tactics that leave the child starving for parental attention. This need, impossible to fulfill since no parent can ever measure up to their godlike image once the child has grown, forms the basis of the concept of "divine" abandonment. Divine abandonment had little to do with god and everything to do with parent-child relationships. Throughout this section I'll use the word "divine" to refer to the impressions of parents with godlike powers (from a child's perspective) found deep within the mind.
Feelings of divine abandonment have two main features, dependence and powerlessness, both of which are at near maximum in a young child's bond with its parent (or parent surrogate). When the need for the parent is coincident with the parent's absence the powerlessness of the child is apparent. It cannot fulfill it's need and is completely dependent on the parent. It's first reaction is to cry out in order to summon the attention of the parent. If no parent appears the child is filled with anxiety. Stress levels elevate in the child as time passes with no response. At this point a great many things can happen in the child's brain, some positive and some negative, but in any case the groundwork for the feeling of divine abandonment are being laid. The idea that a trusted guardian could simply not appear to help when the need arises is planted in the child's mind along with the fear, anxiety and stress that went with it. The fear of divine abandonment is present in more than just humans. In animals it can clearly be seen in a young foal's first steps along with the motivation that the fear brings about. When a mother horse gives birth, she must teach the child to walk very quickly. This is important due to survival conditions in the wild. She does this not by holding the foal up while it takes it's first unsure steps, and not by giving instructions or advice. She does something very simple, she walks away. Although her walk does provide an example, the key is a powerful feeling of abandonment that motivates the foal to follow her no matter how much it hurts to stumble and fall. Tapping powerful sources of motivation is critical to the survival of an individual or belief system. One can speculate that there exists no greater motivational force, or at least that it is second to the fear of death. A horse cannot simply wait for a predator to appear to motivate her child to run, she must be able to instill motivation before danger is encountered. Instincts such as survival and parental bonding must be strong to provide the motivation needed to propagate the species.
Life for animals is simple compared to humans. Learning to run when the rest of the herd runs and eat when the rest of the herd eats is pretty much the sum total of important knowledge that a herd animal must learn. With humans life is far more complicated, and much more complicated than of our closest relatives, chimpanzees. As society becomes more complex and dangers lurk in more and more places, a child must learn a great many different behaviors in order to avoid getting hurt. A child can be taught directly by the parent under the threat of punishment or withholding of a reward in which case there is the threat of divine abandonment (the temporary loss of a parents love). A child can also be left alone to discover the consequences of their actions all alone in which case feelings of divine abandonment are felt directly. Due to the large number of exposures to situations that create anxiety in the child that are necessary to teach them how to be a citizen in society, feelings of divine abandonment are greatly strengthened and with them the associated feelings of anger, resentment, despair, hopelessness, and indifference that occur when anxiety levels reach high levels during exposures to stress.
One might think that a child that simply becomes completely obedient to its parents and authority figures could avoid all stress and anxiety and thus avoid feelings of divine abandonment entirely. This is not possible for two reasons. The first is that humans must repress their basic animal instincts in order to be citizens in a human society. Powerful drives such as those for food and sex must be inhibited and only indulged at given times and places. Inhibiting these desires can often be very difficult. It takes a powerful motivational force, like the threat of divine abandonment or death, to keep them in check. The second reason why automatic submission to authority cannot save a person from anxiety is due to the same reason for the origin of divine abandonment. Blindly following a leader or ideology is a sure path to extinction. Without the ability to change, such as everyone mindlessly following the wisdom of the ages unquestioningly, a social group would become static and predictable, and would easily be conquered by a rival social group. Thousands of years ago, cultures in the middle east found this out the hard way. Laws were written in stone. Gods, and the kings and priests who represented them, were infallible. Traditions were faithfully followed for generation after generation. Change only occurred when you forced someone who was different to conform to your system. When these civilizations grew and came into conflict, the losers discovered that they had to change. Their gods were not absolute, they did not always protect. Their kings and priests did not have all the answers, they could be mistaken or wrong. A distrust of authority crept into society as a survival mechanism, giving the social order the ability to change, but also eliminating the last recourse for anxiety avoidance in times of stress and uncertainty. Submission to authority was no longer the answer to all problems. The world was unpredictable and security became fleeting. The gods had abandoned humanity.
Divine abandonment is perhaps one of the worst things that a human being can feel. It's source is in one of the deepest and most primitive parts of the brain. When a person can feel a divine presence, all is well, but when they cannot the anxiety is almost limitless. Examples of how feelings of divine abandonment can torture an individual can be found in the Psalms of David as well as in other religious literature of that time period. Thus it is not surprising that when a trusted authority suddenly departs, those that followed will implore that authority, begging if they have to, to return. It is also not surprising that when a trusted authority is shown to be fallible, those that followed that authority quickly find another to fill the void. The overwhelming feelings of helplessness can easily drive people to extremes to restore security and order. This is the key. People are very vulnerable to those who can make them feel divine abandonment and are very motivated by those who can promise a return to security and comfort. When feelings of divine abandonment are instilled and exploited in members of a society, the members of that society become both highly motivated and easier to manipulate. The last three millennia have been a race to see which ideology can utilize this psychological mechanism to the fullest.
Perhaps the most notorious of these exploitative ideologies is Christianity. In Christianity, God doesn't just abandon the person who does not obey, he sends them to hell for all eternity. But the hallmark of Christianity is salvation through suffering of the type characterized by Jesus Christ. Jesus suffered to a degree that no other person could endure, at least according to the bible. He endured ridicule, hostility, a long journey through the desert, and finally torture, abuse, and crucifixion. Yet through all the suffering his faith remained. Even at the end of his life when he called out to god, his feelings of divine abandonment weren't enough to shake his faith. It makes for a good story, but without a psychological hook it's impossible to explain why millions of people believe it. The hook stems from the fact that feelings of divine abandonment are more deeply seated in the mind than any other painful feeling. If a person is suffering torture, pain, ridicule, or anything else, the suffering can be relieved by "divine intervention", or rather the feeling of the presence of a god. This feeling can be aroused by stimulating the associations forged in the mind between a godlike parent and a dependent infant. The process of religious conversion (becoming enlightened, born again, etc.) awakens the dormant associations in the mind and reconnects the godlike parent image with that of the religion's god concept. These connections are reinforced through religious rituals. Feelings of divine intervention can be stimulated by various rituals such as prayer, reading the bible, going to church, and so forth. To the convert, these feelings appear to be coming directly from a god when in reality they are coming from a primitive area of their brain. These feelings can be stimulated to a greater degree in the presence of suffering. Activities such as fasting, sacrificing a prized possession, accepting hardship, or agreeing to a serious undertaking without compensation have the collateral effect of increasing the pleasurable feeling of divine presence. This is due in part to conditioned delayed gratification and anticipation of a reward, and in part to the phenomenon of disinhibition. Disinhibition occurs when the mind is under stress so great that it cannot maintain normal function. When the stressed state collapses a wide variety of odd experiences are reported as some parts of the brain become exhausted and inactive while other parts become stimulated and overactive. These odd experiences range from floating feelings, disorientation and dissociation, to full blown aural and visual hallucinations. These experiences are often called spiritual or religious experiences and have religious themes. The religious themes are not surprising since the feelings of powerlessness during the stressful event evoke memories of divine abandonment. The sudden transition to a state of disinhibition in the brain often reverse the feelings of divine abandonment to those of divine intervention. The spiritual experiences take on the shape of what is being felt in the brain, very often a sense of divine deliverance from a hopeless situation (For instance seeing angels or Jesus appear in a desperate crisis). When accompanied by powerful feelings and/or hallucinations, conversion often occurs. Many religious rituals exploit this neurobiological mechanism in order to bring about conversions or re-dedications of faith. It's worthy of note that not all states of disinhibition lead to feelings of divine deliverance. Many lead to feelings of extreme fear or other emotions. However, the incidences of these types of spiritual experiences are greatly reduced when they occur in a religious context, such as a revival, or occur after exposure to the religious experiences of others. In these cases, the expectations of what should happen influence the mind and often guide it to producing the expected experience. It's also worthy of note that temporarily deactivating parts of the brain via oxygen starvation (which can be achieved by climbing a high mountain, becoming proficient in meditation, taking psychoactive drugs, or many other methods) can cause similar effects. The end result of the religious conditioning associated with feelings of divine abandonment and divine intervention is that the believer gains a way to alleviate pain. By stimulating the deep connections in the brain that are associated with the feelings of godlike parental presence through prayer, bible reading, fasting, etc., pain that is felt in more superficial areas of the brain can be relieved or eliminated entirely. This is because the areas of the brain associated with "divine presence" can have a greater impact on a person's neurochemistry than those associated with pain and suffering. This is provided of course that the divine intervention mechanism has been conditioned to the point where it is strong enough to do so. Religions and ideologies focus on conditioning that mechanism in accordance with their symbols, texts, and authority figures. This gives them great control over the individual.
But religions and other ideologies aren't the only things capable of exploiting feelings of divine abandonment. Anyone or anything that can provide the security and comfort that was lost during the child rearing process can wield great power over a person. Spouses and significant others are sources of love and attention that can fill the void and often command obedience and commitment. Work and careers as well as goals outside of work lead to accomplishments that stimulate feelings of parental approval, giving bosses and managers greater power over their employees. Raising children is a way to vicariously experience the feelings of a "divine presence" and children can gain manipulative power over their parents as a result. As a side note it is interesting that parents who needs their child's love to alleviate their own feelings of divine abandonment end up passing on the same psychological deficiency. In their need to raise a child who can fill the divine void, they tend to create children who are acutely dependent on them and vice versa. A need for love implanted in the child makes the parent's need for love easier to fill and the two become psychologically interdependent. It's rather ironic that love, often held up as the ultimate in good, can have such a damaging effect. It could even be conjectured that almost everything we do has some tie to stimulating feelings of parental approval, and all this is made necessary by the powerfully constructed psychological deficit known as divine abandonment.
Because the feelings of divine abandonment are such a powerful source of motivation, creating a permanent deficit of a divine presence in the mind is a way to make a person highly motivated and active their entire life. A permanent deficit can never be satisfied for long. No matter how great a feeling of divine presence a person feels when they accomplish a goal, receive someone's love, or in some way alleviate the pain, once their neurochemistry goes back to it's normal state, the feelings of divine abandonment return. A perfect example is that of the biblical David. Given what the bible claims he accomplished one might think that he would feel awash in divine blessings, yet he continues to plead longingly for God for his entire life. Given the success of Israel under David it is easy to see how ideologies that generate people with such psychological deficits can survive and propagate. David was a fierce warrior and charismatic king who defended Israel against all its enemies. Israel enjoyed some of their greatest years under the rule of King David. Some claim that people such as David come along only once in a blue moon, but I suggest that the world is now full of them. All around I see people productive to the point of being obsessed. They work hard, sacrifice, take risks, and bend or break laws and conventions to reach greater and greater heights. Some do it for their god or ideology, some do it for love, some do it for money (security), but all of these needs are symptomatic of a powerful psychological deficit. This deficit is not much different than a drug addiction, and in fact feelings of divine presence are associated with the release of chemicals in the brain that cause a natural high. Addiction to those chemicals is no different than addiction to any other, and certainly explain the powerful driving force behind most if not all members of a modern society. Although people who stand far above others in terms of drive and motivation are rare, I would contend that the average levels of motivation have been increasing for thousands of years. The signs of divine abandonment are everywhere.
The psychological deficit caused by divine abandonment can often result social alienation and self absorption. With so many people in society with psychological deficits who will go to extremes to satisfy them, it is inevitable that many will seek to satisfy their needs by exploiting others. The modern world is rife with people who will lie, cheat, and use others for their own gain. The victims of these acts will tend to insulate themselves from others in order to avoid getting mistreated again. The distancing serves to protect their vulnerability, but also exacerbates their psychological need by making it harder to satisfy. The result are people who go from the extremes of over indulgence and lust to abstinence and recrimination (of the self and others). It is the psychological equivalent of bulimia. Our society encourages this behavior as well as exploits those who are seeking to indulge or protect their needs. Just as the commercial sector gains when people binge drink or go on spending sprees, the religious sector gains when people pledge to abstain and lead moral lives. Everything that would indulge, redirect, or help to protect a person's psychological deficit seems to generate a new cottage industry. People's psychological needs are big business. The world is full of gods, and they're all false. Furthermore, when people have deep psychological deficits, their attention tends to concentrate on their own needs. This increases the degree of alienation in a society. Few have time to spend with other on their problems when they must concentrate on their own. Of course, you can always pay someone to listen to your problems.
There are many ways to raise children with permanent psychological deficits. The simplest is to give them excessive love and attention early and wean them from it as time goes by. The feelings of a divine presence are strengthened and then neglected. Abuse is another way. Powerful negative conditioning makes even small displays of affection seem wonderful. Implanting such a deficit makes parenting and subsequent education much easier. When a smile or a frown, a good grade or a bad one, a positive comment or a negative one, or the gain or loss of currency carries with it the power to drive a person to drastically alter their behavior, motivating them to overcome all obstacles in the pursuit of a goal is attainable. Continued reinforcement of the feelings of divine abandonment being overcome (temporarily) through socially productive activities will produce individuals that are highly motivated. And it is this type of highly motivated behavior that is held as the product of successful parenting and education, not the psychological well being of the individual nor the associated well being of others and the world in which they live. Highly motivated individuals, no matter what the cost, are the key to the survival of a social system and the ideology that dominates it. It is the ideology that control the person and the society and which benefits from all the sacrifices that its believers make. In the end humans are sacrificed for the good of ideologies.
In the first section I discussed the increased survival potential of a society that was based around an ideology which featured a strong unwillingness to give in. This survival advantage is important given that social orders expand, experience disasters, and come into contact and conflict with other social orders. This is in many ways similar to the Darwinian struggle of different species in nature. A given society survives because of the strength of devotion of its members. They are unwilling to give in to problems of overpopulation, drought, famine, war, and foreign influence among others. These problems are solved with territorial expansion, technological innovation, migration, conquest, and self defense. It also improves a social order's survival chances if these activities are done preemptively or at the slightest provocation rather than delayed until it may be too late to prevent problems. Thus it benefits a society to be predatory, to be paranoid, to prepare for the worst, to preemptively strike and provoke other societies, and to be constantly improving it's mastery over nature. Although cooperation with other societies is another important survival characteristic it is not as benevolent as it seems. The end purpose is to improve both societies' survival chances against a common foe. Removal of that common foe inexorably leads to conflict between different social orders.
In the Darwinian struggle, nature tends toward a balance. Climate changes, natural disasters, and other anomalies disrupt and alter that balance and lead to periods of upheaval where some species evolve, some become extinct, and others remain the same. But these events are rare and balance between all species is the norm. However, for modern humans this is not the case. The last few thousand years of human history have been ones of continuous upheaval and contain increasingly more dramatic cultural shifts as opposed to settling upon a balance. On the surface there appears to be no reason for this. Humans have developed technology that makes them safe from all conceivable threats to their existence. Predators can be scared off or hunted and killed, food can be grown in abundance at will, medicine is available to reign in deadly diseases, and shelter from all natural disasters can be provided or rebuilt if necessary. There are no threats to humanity. Well, save for one, humanity itself. And, disconcertingly enough, the threat from other humans is so great that it drives us into a continuous frenzied state of panic, preparedness, and paranoia. We are constantly evolving our social order in response to perceived threats from other social orders that are evolving in response to perceived threats from us. It is a vicious cycle that is gaining speed and intensity.
The question becomes, "Why do humans prey on each other?". The answer is that modern humans have been raised with a permanent psychological deficit which makes them continually dissatisfied with what they have. This deficit motivates them to seek out things in an attempt to satisfy their need. Taking things from others is an unavoidable consequence of an insatiable need. This desire for more is a survival advantage since it tends to make those who have it more aggressive, resourceful, possessive, and devious, among other social survival skills. Once the unsatisfied desire for more has taken hold in enough individuals in a society it spreads to the others and eventually the whole. Everyone else must motivated enough to be at least constantly vigilant against the desires of others, and if they are to prosper in such a society they must be motivated enough to be aggressive as well. The less motivated gradually get stripped of all they have and become inconsequential or extinct. Social orders, such as governments and religions have arisen that have institutionalized the creation and propagation of the permanent psychological deficit. They inflict it upon others and force it upon their young during child rearing. These social orders have long since overrun the globe with few exceptions, bringing everyone into the realm of unsatisfied needs. The result is a world full of ideological factions in conflict and competition with each other. With no one satisfied with what they have, a balance can never be found.
The permanent psychological deficit is created by exploiting basic instincts towards survival and child/parent bonding. These instincts are sensitized and conditioned in such a way that the person will always feel unsatisfied unless they perform a complicated set of behaviors. These behaviors are generally those which are seen as socially productive, but that is not always the case. In most people the permanent psychological deficit causes a deep need which is satisfied by doing things for the good of the social order. The depth of their need determines their degree of motivation, and the frequency at which it is satisfied determines how much of the need is felt. It is much like drug addiction only that the drugs involved are those produced in the brain and which are regulated by neural activity. However, there are other people whose permanent psychological deficits are too deep to be easily satisfied or that can only be satisfied by anti-social behaviors. These are people that tend to cause social disruption since the social order cannot control them by providing a way for them to satisfy their needs. These people endeavor to change things so that they can find satisfaction and this puts them at odds with others and often with the entire social order.
Due to the strong psychological forces involved the conflict between a person and another person, or with the social order itself will often escalate. Violence, physical or otherwise, is often exercised during the conflict. In almost all situations and cultures, violence is unacceptable and one side must be punished for it. The common choice is to punish the side that displays the most anti-social behaviors. The intent of the punishment is to make it more difficult for the anti-social person to find satisfaction in anti-social behaviors, however it can have the opposite effect. Some people are slowly driven toward greater and greater ways to cause social disruption since their need becomes more and more difficult to satisfy. Additionally, people who can be satisfied from socially encouraged behaviors can be driven to socially disruptive behaviors if they have a strong psychological deficit and their ways of satisfying it are made more difficult or are removed altogether. It is this latter example that is becoming more and more common in modern society: the slightly obsessed and eccentric but otherwise well mannered individual who one day snaps and goes on a murderous rampage. The reason for this is that as social competition escalates, a social order requires people to be far more motivated than in the past to drive the wheels of social progress. This motivation is accomplished by instilling deeper psychological deficits in the young and exploiting them to a greater degree. Competition between people for limited prizes provides a path to satisfaction, but also makes it more difficult on those less fit to satisfy their needs. The result is a psychological pressure cooker. Most can endure the stress and make steam, but some simply explode.
Most people look at the situation from the point of view that anti-social people are the source of the problem. They are simply people with psychological problems or are unfit to survive in the world and removing them will cure all social ills. This is incorrect, but the attitude serves to bring most deviants in line as well as intensify the anti-social needs of the few. Getting rid of all the anti-social people in a society would be a mistake since those anti-social few play a valuable role in a social order, they cause it to evolve.
Societies that do not evolve are doomed to extinction. Even a society whose members are highly motivated, completely loyal, and unwilling to compromise on anything will eventually fall behind others that can change and accommodate new methods to build a stronger society. Thus, it benefits a social order to generate a number of individuals who are anti-social and who will struggle to change the way things are. The struggle to rise above the constant administration of normative behavior forces many anti-social individuals to succumb to a life of unsatisfied desires. Some are simply discarded as waste products, sacrificial lambs in the pursuit of a stronger social order, but there are a few who manage to press on and alter the social order for better or for worse. The new order may rise above others, fall into ruin, or founder and require more changes to survive, but the end result is the same. The fittest social order is the one that survives, and survival is based on the exploitation of the individual for the good of the social order. The ideals and intentions of the individual seeking change are irrelevant. The effect that the change brings will serve the inevitable purpose. Changes which allow an increase in the exploitation of the human race for the benefit of the social system are the ones that are adopted and make the social order more powerful.
Violence as a tool for stability or change is an unavoidable social force. Social evolution often requires revolution with those that cannot give in forcing the new order to silence them. Today the western democracies decry China when it uses violence to silence its critics, but no western democracy can claim moral superiority in this matter. The Chinese government is a relatively young institution compared with western democracies. Younger nations have more opposition than older ones since older ones have crushed rebellion years before and have their violent births behind them. But all nations contain strong opposition and all governments use violence as a means of social control. Governments work towards solidifying their control over the population by reducing their people's ability to effect change. Although these actions squelch rebellion in the present, they sow the seeds for more dramatic uprisings in the future. As social orders grow stronger, the acts of violence and rebellion grow more extreme. The atrocities of the past are pale in comparison to those that will come in the future. Each rebellion or war, successful or not, becomes a lesson for all to learn about how not to be. The failed ideologies of the past must be destroyed and forgotten and the youth must be taught to never behave in those ways. Each time an ideology falls a new layer is added to the ideological teachings passed down to the next generation. Another list of don'ts is forced upon the world. Motivational forces via the permanent psychological deficit must be increased to enable people to find new directions through the vast array of unacceptable behaviors enforced by the social order. To use the previous analogy, the psychological pressure cooker that is the human psyche is made stronger and tighter and the heat (stress) is turned up higher. Explosions become more spectacular, but social orders need these explosions to evolve. The propensity for spectacular violence is a survival advantage for the society. Violence is very much a necessary part of modern society.
Our particular roles in society matter not. We are all party to violent acts and we are all victims of it. Ideologies clash and we are the pawns in the game.
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,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.
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."
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 in fact 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.
Presented below in question and answer format is how the theory outlined above applies to the terrorist attack against the United States of America on September 11, 2001. The quoted text is from the sections given above.Q. Why did the terrorists use such an extreme act of violence instead of publicly airing their grievances?
A. They have aired their grievances, but it had no effect. U.S. foreign policy toward Islamic nations has grown more belligerent over time despite protests both peaceful and violent. Escalation became necessary since all other options were exhausted:
"All manner of bribery, coercion, reasoning, and stimulation can be used to manipulate people, but if all else fails, killing them will quell their dissension."
"Violence is effective. It is the last resort because no further response is necessary. And when dealing with people who will never give in, violence often becomes a necessity."
The terrorists had been escalating the level of violence in their attacks for many years to no avail. The only surprise about the Sept 11, 2001 incident was its magnitude. The terrorists objective is to force the U.S. into changing its foreign policy. Both sides are extremely stubborn and thus the escalation on both sides.
Q. Why can neither side give in?
"the reigns of social control tend to go to the people who are very unwilling to give in. They are viewed as having strength, character, and vision, and they are hard to bargain down or make a deal with."
Simply put, you don't become a leader if you concede easily, and you don't stay that way if you start giving in.
Q. How can such a small group of radicals be such a big threat?
"the willingness of a group of people to go to more extreme methods, to suffer more pain, or to endure more deaths can often make up for numerical or technological disadvantages."
"The most extreme expression of the unwillingness to give in is the willingness to die for an ideology."
The willingness to die gives a small group more potential to cause great damage. This potential is even greater in our highly technological age as we all saw on Sept 11.
Q. Why would someone die for an ideology?
A. The ideology of the believers has exploited their psychological weaknesses. First their fear of death is magnified:
"Somewhere within a person's vast sense of self lie a great many weaknesses that can be exploited. By focusing on these weaknesses the fear of death can be evoked and magnified to the point where it can overwhelm the potential convert. In this state a person's critical thinking ability has all but gone away and they become much more willing to embrace any solution that can remove the pain."
Then their willingness to submit to "divine" authority is recruited to make the fear of death go away:
"Simply obeying what is written in a holy book or following the directions of a church leader can trigger feelings of "divine" love and acceptance. These feelings awaken the dormant connections associated with childhood impressions of omnipotent godlike parents. When triggered, these feelings seem as if they were coming directly from a god and reinforce the idea that the god is real"
If the convert is sufficiently conditioned, their belief in heaven, paradise, reincarnation, etc., can overcome their fear of death. They are willing to die for an ideological cause. If you read the final instructions given to the hijackers you will see that the idea that their actions will please god and result in blessing and paradise is mentioned over and over again. Religion is a powerful form of psychological leverage.
Q. What is the "sufficient conditioning" that gets them to that point?
"Divine abandonment is perhaps one of the worst things that a human being can feel. It's source is in one of the deepest and most primitive parts of the brain. When a person can 'feel a divine presence', all is well, but when they cannot the anxiety is almost limitless."
"overwhelming feelings of helplessness can easily drive people to extremes to restore security and order. This is the key. People are very vulnerable to those who can make them feel divine abandonment and are very motivated by those who can promise a return to security and comfort."
"Because the feelings of divine abandonment are such a powerful source of motivation, creating a permanent deficit of a divine presence in the mind is a way to make a person highly motivated and active their entire life. A permanent deficit can never be satisfied for long. No matter how great a feeling of divine presence a person feels when they accomplish a goal, receive someone's love, or in some way alleviate the pain, once their neurochemistry goes back to it's normal state, the feelings of divine abandonment return."
For someone in the war torn areas of the middle east it is easy to find a source for feeling of divine abandonment. Promises of peace followed by betrayal and death of loved ones are common and cause feelings of anxiety and pain. The injustice of the events make it seem as though god has turned his back. When similar events recur over and over they reopen the old wounds and make them cut deeper, eventually becoming a permanent source of suffering. When their suffering becomes great enough, a person often becomes very religious in order to frequently evoke the feelings of a divine presence (through ritual and prayer) to ease the pain. If the suffering becomes too great, death in the name of god becomes a favorable option since it is both an escape from the pain and the highest form of sacrifice (and thus the one most highly rewarded) that one can make to one's god.
Q. That's too bad for them, but we aren't like that are we?
A. Suicide warriors have been around for a while in Japanese culture and in the Palestinian's struggle, but the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon were something new in the world. In the common cases of murder/suicides, like when someone straps on a bomb and blows themselves up in a crowd or when a person snaps and shoots his family and co-workers, their emotions play an important role in pushing them over the top. But for the Sept 11 terrorists, their suicide was planned far in advance, with plenty of time for their emotions to wear off and for rational thought to change their minds. All the time they were learning to fly planes they knew they were going to fly them full of passengers and fuel into buildings and die in a truly horrifying fireball. They could have easily deserted the cause and become wealthy airline pilots, but such was the strength of their resolve (through conditioning) that they carried out their missions. They knew that only one thing could ease their suffering, an extreme form of self sacrifice. That type of commitment to a spectacular murder/suicide is something the world has only seen once before:
Columbine
Just as the World Trade center attack stands apart from other suicide bombings, Columbine stands apart from other school shootings. Like the terrorists, Klebold and Harris planned their suicides far in advance with plenty of time for emotions to wear off and for rational thought to change their minds. Instead they planted bombs all over their school, chained many of the doors shut, and executed their plan on a set date. Had everything gone off as planned, the death toll would have been much higher, but many of their bombs did not explode and thus the number of dead and wounded didn't make the attack stand out as far from other school shootings as the World Trade Center attack stood out among other acts of terror. However, Columbine was the result of a truly a new advance in the evolution of human psychology. Whereas most murder/suicides fit this pattern:
"It is this latter example that is becoming more and more common in modern society: the slightly obsessed and eccentric but otherwise well mannered individual who one day snaps and goes on a murderous rampage."
Klebold and Harris were able to control their emotions despite being in a state of suffering so severe that only death could relieve it. But it couldn't be just a normal death, it had to be a spectacular one, since only a spectacular death, shocking to behold and full of retribution would ease the pain they were feeling. This is the reason why they laughed and made jokes as they walked through the halls shooting fellow students. It wasn't that they enjoyed killing, it was that the full weight of their suffering was finally being lifted from their shoulders and they experienced a joy they had not felt for a very long time.
Q. But Klebold and Harris lived relatively normal privileged lives. They didn't grow up in a war zone. Where did all this pain come from?
A. The socialization process in modern cultures involves the sensitization of the individual to an extreme degree. This is critical for motivation:
"When a smile or a frown, a good grade or a bad one, a positive comment or a negative one, or the gain or loss of currency carries with it the power to drive a person to drastically alter their behavior, motivating them to overcome all obstacles in the pursuit of a goal is attainable."
Sensitization, which is done by one's parents, other authority figures, peers, and the media, is intended to make small issues into large ones. If you want your society to produce the next Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, or Lance Armstrong you need to instill in the children a powerful drive that enables them to make great sacrifices to overcome all obstacles. Small victories have to carry with them enough meaning to overcome the pain that must be endured to achieve them. Sensitization makes the small victories seem huge, but it also works in reverse. Small failures can seem huge as well, bringing with them great psychological stress. This stress is motivational, but if victories of the degree that can counter the failures are unattainable, even a small failure can turn into a permanent source of suffering.
People who are suffering sometimes lash out in socially unacceptable ways and are punished for it. The intent is to redirect that emotional energy toward achieving positive social goals. However, if those goals are unattainable or if achieving them does not satisfy the person, the painful emotions are only made worse by the punishment. Most people reach their breaking point and either surrender their distant goals and settle for less, explode and go on a rampage, or silently commit suicide. But Klebold and Harris were strong enough to reach a far greater breaking point. Their modern upbringing, anger management classes, and modern pharmaceuticals (Harris was on anti-psychotic drugs) enabled them to contain emotions that were strong enough to make them feel that a spectacular suicide was their only escape. It is while containing those emotions while seething underneath that they conceived their plan for the most spectacular murder/suicide in the history of public schooling.
One might think that the "mistake" made in socializing Klebold and Harris was in making them feel such strong emotions. This is incorrect:"And it is this type of highly motivated behavior that is held as the product of successful parenting and education, not the psychological well being of the individual nor the associated well being of others and the world in which they live."
Klebold and Harris were extremely motivated. This motivation through stoking the fires of their emotions is an intentional part of the socialization process. The "mistake" was in allowing them the opportunity to commit their explosive suicide. Our society has corrected this mistake and it is now much harder for people suffering like Klebold and Harris to alleviate their pain. The vast majority of those tortured souls will simply live with their suffering and relieve it when they can, but for a few the suffering will reach even greater levels and we will all witness the spectacular ways that they will quench it.
"As social orders grow stronger, the acts of violence and rebellion grow more extreme. The atrocities of the past are pale in comparison to those that will come in the future."
Given the examples of Klebold and Harris, it is not necessary for the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon to have grown up in a war zone. It is likely that they were raised in a modern middle classed family, one that knew the value of sensitizing their children and teaching them to control their emotions, and thus were both motivated enough and in control of themselves enough to follow through on the most spectacular suicides the world has yet seen. Primitive societies don't produce such people.
Note that the response to the terrorist attack is the same as the response to Columbine, punishment and prevention. This forces another layer of emotional control to be added to anyone who desires to act out in a similar manner. Most will be discouraged, but not all.
Q. What does the future hold?
A. Escalation.
"Each rebellion or war, successful or not, becomes a lesson for all to learn about how not to be. The failed ideologies of the past must be destroyed and forgotten and the youth must be taught to never behave in those ways. Each time an ideology falls a new layer is added to the ideological teachings passed down to the next generation. Another list of don'ts is forced upon the world. Motivational forces via the permanent psychological deficit must be increased to enable people to find new directions through the vast array of unacceptable behaviors enforced by the social order. To use the previous analogy, the psychological pressure cooker that is the human psyche is made stronger and tighter and the heat (stress) is turned up higher. Explosions become more spectacular, but social orders need these explosions to evolve. The propensity for spectacular violence is a survival advantage for the society. Violence is very much a necessary part of modern society."
Welcome to the 21st century.