Actual Freedom Library

Our Animal Instincts

Selected Writings on our Animal Instinctual Passions from

Richard’s Journal

Peter’s Journal

The Need to Belong

Vineeto’s Writing

Belonging

Letter to Weekend Australian

Audio-taped Dialogue

Richard | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Peter | 2 |

Vineeto | 2 |

Others

Peter: All sentient beings are born pre-primed with certain distinguishing instinctual passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. They are blind Nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to give one a start in life and to ensure the survival of the species. While absolutely essential in the days of roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease, high infant mortality, these very same instinctual passions now threaten the survival of the species.

The instinctual passions only ‘care’ for the survival of the species – the strongest, most aggressive, the crudest. Further, blind nature gives not a fig for your happiness or well-being. We are relentlessly driven, despite our good intentions and moral codes, to act instinctually in each and every situation in our lives and this is the cause of all our angst and confusion.

The instinctual program is located in the primitive ‘lizard’ brain and the almost instantaneous thoughtless automatic instinctual response is termed the ‘quick and dirty’ response. The primitive area of the brain makes an initial quick scan of all sensorial input and, if an instinctive reaction is required, almost instantaneously floods the body and neo-cortex with chemicals which then inevitably cause an automatic and unfettered emotional response – hence an instinctive thoughtless reaction becomes an instinctual passionate reaction.

Thus one is ‘overcome’ by feelings of despair or sadness, ‘overwhelmed’ with rage or anger, ‘compelled’ to blindly defend one’s ‘own’ and relentlessly ‘driven’ by sexual urges – regardless of the sensibleness and appropriateness of the action.

Fear hobbles us with a desperate need to huddle together, belong to a group, to seek solace in tradition and the past, to cling on to whatever possessions and beliefs we hold dear to ourselves, to frantically resist change and, as death approaches, desperately seek immortality.

Aggression causes us to fight for our territory, our possessions, our ‘rights’, for those we consider our ‘own’ and for our treasured beliefs. We fight for power over others lest they have power over us, or throw our lot in to fight for someone who offers us their power and protection. We lash out at others for no apparent reason and when control breaks down the innate lust to kill, maim and torture readily surfaces as is evidenced by the fact that 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone and repression, torture, domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, persecution, corruption, murder and suicide are endemic to the Human Condition.

Nurture causes us to care for, comfort and protect those we consider our ‘own’ and leads to dependency, jealousy, empathy, duty, sacrifice and needless heroism. When nurture fails within the species, as it inevitably does, we turn to animals, pets, trees, ‘endangered’ species, ‘mother’ earth and other non-reciprocating, safe objects.

Desire drives us to sexual avarice and a blind urge to impregnate, procreate and reproduce ourselves – come what may. The relentless desire to accumulate, amass, covert, dominate, control and obliterate is the direct cause of poverty, corruption, hunger and famine.

The Holy pretence of rising above the animal-instinctual mortal into the good, Divine and immortal is but a delusion and has failed to curb the ongoing instinctual violence and suffering of sentient human beings. The belief that instincts are a constant fixed program ‘you can’t change human nature’ or we are feeling beings’ is forever dooming this planet to the human-made hell it really is, as directly experienced by the many or watched in comfort and comparative safety on TV reports by the few.