Our True Nature — Part II. How We Use It To Control It
By: Happy Wanderer
Tags: Humanity, Human Nature, Self, Blue Insights, Society

Our True Nature — Part II

How We Use It To Control It

Our True Nature — Part I talks about our need to personally benefit in an overt, subtle or sub-conscious way before we will take action. This story talks about how our true nature is used to control us for the greater good.

Our unique ability for abstract thinking allows us to dominate all other species. It also controls our uniquely violent selves for the greater good.

At risk of oversimplifying let’s say that of the nine known human species, homo-sapiens have a keen ability for abstract thinking. We quickly learned to cooperate, plan, strategize, manipulate and deceive and this became our ultimate weapon to eliminate all natural predators including the other eight competing human species.

Left with no effective population control our need for resources quickly led to the formation of civilizations. Made possible by our unique ability for abstract thinking we could visualize greater benefits when cooperating as members of a larger collective. Even if it came at the cost of some or all of our own personal freedoms. It was an easy sell where the promise of safety and comfort outweighed the desire and uncertainty of surviving on our own.

In 3000 BC Sumerian Mesopotamia set the stage for civilizations today by imposing hierarchical roles. There was the pharaoh at the top. Then the few who made up the privileged classes. These were family and friends of the pharaoh who enjoyed the most rights, power and wealth. Peasants and slaves made up the majority and abided by the rules dictated by the ruling classes. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Taxes, slavery, objectification, exploitation were the foundations civilizations were built on. In Mesopotamia all women and slaves were possessions, objects that were owned. Women who worked in higher classes were paid half what men got for the same work. Those caught not following the pharaohs rules were cast out or killed. Success of any civilization and society relies on our abstract thinking to impose control and balance between our self-serving nature and the greater good.

Civilized humanity is an undeniably miraculous experiment and a delicate balancing act. It’s not a perfect solution — there’s no shortage of historical and current human atrocities as proof. Even so, it’s a brilliant system that almost always keeps our violent, me-first, me-at-all-costs, me-me-me nature from running amok by using that very human nature.

It’s easy to take our unique ability of abstract thinking for granted. Perhaps an ironical result of the very gift we’ve been given. Without it you wouldn’t be reading this, or anything else. In fact, we’d have none of the inventions, comforts, technologies we take for granted today. We’d be living in caves trying to survive a barbarically hostile world one day at a time.

Today we go to jobs we hate, have to socialize with people we wish we didn’t, pay taxes, buy gifts for Christmas we can’t afford. Sometimes we wish we could step off the treadmill, escape civilization and society for a while. It seems these things that make our lives so superior are also the easiest to take for granted.

I’m choosing to be more grateful for the controls imposed on our human nature and how much we’ve all benefited as a result. Grateful too for the gift of abstract thinking that gives me hope and faith in the greater good. I’m trying not to take it so much for granted. After all, it’s the reason I have a bed to get out of in the morning.