A COHERENT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIETY

Some of the ideas I present in this essay are derived from my various readings but I have tried to integrate them into my own personal view of reality here on this physical plane known as Earth.  It is my intention to describe my views in a way that will make sense to me and hopefully to any other interested readers.

From the evidence I have studied and according to my beliefs, I conclude the earth basically functions as a sort of learning ground, a kindergarten for man.  Its ecosystem seems to work as an incredibly integrated feedback system that enables man and a complex diversity of life to survive and flourish by making conscious and unconscious choices based on individual interpretations of sensory feedback.  Most importantly, our interpretations are determined by our individual beliefs, beliefs we acquire through our parents and the different influences we encounter in life.

To me the whole setup is far too complex to be just an accidental combination of chemicals.  After reading about the awesome requirements necessary to enable earth’s life supporting systems to emerge and cooperate on such a vast scale, I have no doubt there is a divine plan at work.  We are surrounded by hints and clues and when studying the scientific details, the implications are mind boggling. 

It appears we are born into and voluntarily participate in a grand cooperative dance of life that extends to every level of our micro and macro cosmos.  Even more astonishing is the discovery that our physical reality is intimately connected with a nonphysical or, in quantum physics jargon, non-local domain.  Within this timeless and unlimited realm our individual consciousness manifests our thoughts and beliefs, literally creating the external reality we sense with our physical faculties.  This mysterious interaction, or tangling of realities is difficult to understand in our ordinary physical terms but this is not surprising when considering the incredible beauty and complexity of our world and surrounding universe. 

If I am willing to believe there is a divine plan in which we play a part, then it follows that there is a divine Creator who creates the Garden of Eden in which we play and grow.  I can go no further in my conception, other than to say that the Creator is beyond our understanding and certainly beyond any attempt to define or speak on the behalf of All That Is.  Even though I am in awe of the Creator, I also believe I carry within my being a portion of the Creator’s divine spark.

One of the basic attributes of the Divine Plan seems to be spontaneous creative cooperation between all elements, no matter how trivial or prominent the elements or events may appear.  Therefore, the ability of the INDIVIDUAL consciousness to freely interact is a primary rule of the Divine Plan.  Any attempt to suppress individual freedom only results in relatively short term disorder and a diversion into less beneficial results.  In the long run the inherent urge to freely cooperate acts as a constant guide to restore the balance of the Divine Plan. 

If this explanation is true and deep down I feel I am on the right track, its probably an understatement to say the human race has misunderstood the nature and purpose of life on earth.  Also, if my belief is correct, what is the reason for humans’ persistent, less-than-divine behavior towards each other and the environment?  The answer, of course, is that the freedom of action inherent within the divine plan allows us to create our own world for good or bad.  The choice is ours and so far, we have used our divine gift for less than noble purposes.

As I have observed, any efforts to be civil to one another are routinely overridden by an endless struggle to gain unearned economic advantage or exercise control out of mistaken beliefs about one another.  Then, depending on our moral rectitude or the lack thereof, our misguided do-good efforts often produce unintended consequences, many of which turn out to bring on greater anti-social calamity.  It’s the consequences, the results that are so puzzling to me. What can explain the centuries of slaughter and mayhem man has perpetuated on his fellows and his environment, both on a personal level and enmasse?  

There is the temptation to claim the Creator’s plan has failed but once again, that would be to misunderstand its purpose.  If there is to be any blame, it must fall on us for misusing the gift of free will.

Assuming we do have free will, are we so ignorant that, after thousands of years, we cannot learn from our mistakes and progress beyond perpetually repeating them?  We express the desire to rise above our barbaric ways and make something good of the gifts we have been given, but have not yet learned how to accomplish it.  I am writing this essay in attempt to understand why.  It is important to me to construct a coherent view of human behavior and society that will make sense, at least to me. 

Although raised in a conservative religious environment, I never really felt like it offered plausible answers to the big questions about life.  I have always held a strong feeling there is much more to our reality than currently thought and I was impelled to search beyond religious dogma and popular opinion for convincing evidence.  I turned to a broad range of philosophical, metaphysical and scientific books but none of them offered plausible answers until I discovered the Seth material in 1989. 

The view of reality presented in the Seth books confirmed my feeling there is a divine Creator and a divine plan far more magnificent than our presently limited understanding allows.  By studying the Seth material and comparing it with the science of quantum physics, I was convinced I had found a ground on which I could accurately base my views.  I was also convinced we have allowed our view of reality to be distorted by a universally accepted belief that denies any connection with the source of our being and encourages us to focus exclusively on the material world. 

Therefore, when considering the motivations for our actions, the following ideas seem to make the most sense.  

First of all, the physical conditions governing our survival are fixed.  In spite of government’s futile attempts to guarantee security in every aspect of our lives, there are no inherent, written-in-stone guarantees that ensure our survival.  It may seem like we are born into this world without any support and are at the mercy of random forces beyond our control but that’s only because we have lost sight of our spiritual origins and the assuring knowledge that each individual soul has an eternal validity.

It is a part of the Creator’s Divine Plan that we be free to create our lives as we see fit, to achieve our own goals and purposes we have set for ourselves through our individual creative efforts.  Therefore we are born with the necessary physical pre-conditions to survive - a rational mind, a full array of physical senses and the earth’s cornucopia of resources so that we may learn to use the energy of our bodies and spirits to grow and flourish within the earth’s physical feedback system. 

There is a catch to this business of being free.  It can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.  True freedom means we have the choice of embracing its liberating nature or by default, we can also voluntarily reject freedom by allowing others to take control of our lives.  Mankind’s struggle to survive and remain free has taken many roads but basically our survival and the freedom necessary to its full achievement boils down to two choices – the economic means or the political means. 

By the economic means we work for our daily bread, freely trading our labor for wages that enable us to provide for ourselves.  When we are free and not regulated by force, the economic means is the most equitable method of providing for the diverse tastes and desires of humans.  It reflects the subtle beauty and power of spontaneous voluntary cooperation between individuals as they engage in a free market to produce goods and services in exchange for goods and services produced by others.  It seems natural that the economic means is the best method of promoting and maintaining individual freedom.

In contrast, by the political means the production and free exchange of goods and services is disrupted by government regulation, a highly inefficient process that diverts our efforts into channels that ordinarily we would not freely choose.  In essence the political means is legalized theft by a state agency.  It is a direct result of one of the primary negative aspects of human nature.  When faced with the necessity of providing for our survival, we tend to seek the easiest method and the easiest method has proven to be by the use of force. 

The results of this unfortunate tendency are fairly predictable.  Long ago, humans discovered survival meant enduring the unpleasantness of physical labor.  Being a clever animal, it wasn’t long before man noticed how easily he could obtain any desirable commodity or service simply by forcing others to supply it for him.  Practicality rendered the economic means and the resulting freedom less important.  We decided it expedient to sacrifice freedom for a short-cut to riches and security.

Man’s use of force followed a natural progression from raw physical might to control by self appointed divine authorities, and finally, in the last few centuries, to its ultimate and most successful manifestation – the formation of the coercive nation state.  Once force was institutionalized and given legitimacy, man, finding self-responsibility too difficult to maintain, conditioned himself to obey the state’s authority figures.  It was much easier to surrender responsibility for his life to a “legitimate” and supposedly wiser authority that could take care of him from cradle to grave.   

Fortunately, not everybody was willing to give up their freedom.  The urge to act in a free and voluntary manner, automatically manifested in response to being pushed around by an increasingly heavy-handed state.  Since the earliest times, mankind has struggled to reconcile the childish desire to confiscate the unearned from fellow men with the basic urge to live life free of coercion.  At times we admit the problem but, to date no one has been able to find a satisfactory solution to this paradox.

Perhaps we are not asking ourselves the right questions in regards to this problem.  Given the predictability of human nature, is it wise to give any man or group of men dominion over our individual affairs?  In our society even the so-called intellectually enlightened are not immune to base human nature.  Whether from ignorance or a misunderstanding of human nature, to believe men are basically honest and trustworthy has proven to be a costly moral and economic error for human societies.  History has shown supposedly civic minded government officials invariably abuse the powers with which they are entrusted.

Unfortunately, too many of the general populace are willing to go along with the corrupt vision of the enlightened, erroneously believing their individual sacrifice for the “common good” is the ultimate good.  In essence they allow those in power to take advantage of their ignorance and the fact they are too lazy to take responsibility for their lives.  I can only see it as ignorance to voluntarily surrender freedom in the vain hope of obtaining it. 

On the other side of the coin, those who like to exercise control over others are not as concerned with such matters as trust and morality.   Being truer to their human nature, they naturally gravitate towards positions within the state where they can take advantage of its coercive power to gain mastery over others.  Under feigned concern for the welfare of the poor and downtrodden and with the consent of their corrupt consciences, they seek to fulfill their self-appointed roles as “morally righteous” protectors of mankind. 

The results of the desire to control other people’s lives is not surprising.  Securing freedom for yourself at the expense of others is a contradiction, resulting in both parties losing their freedom.  To fulfill the glorious plan of the protectors of mankind, the productive members of society are stripped of their assets in order to pay for massive, wasteful social welfare programs.  At the same time the recipients of the state’s forced righteousness do not benefit as planned but instead are mislead into surrendering their freedom in exchange for the indignity of dependency.  This enforced do-goodism has done nothing but promote resentment and anti-social behavior throughout, the results of which we see all about us in the loss of civility and the breakdown of the rule of law.  Meanwhile, as the self-appointed guardians of mankind reward themselves with the intoxicating, addictive elixir of power and prestige, freedom takes a holiday.

Fortunately, there are some men who believe freedom is everyone’s inherent birthright.  They are not interested in meddling in other people’s lives, nor are they naïve enough to voluntarily surrender control of their lives to corrupt men or to the unthinking dogma of organized religions.  Such men are wise enough to realize how easily men are corrupted when given the opportunity to exercise their basic human inclinations.  In them is the strong desire to establish the conditions conducive to the formation of free markets for ideas and resources.

Happily, among such champions of freedom were our founding fathers.  With the tyranny of the English monarchy still fresh on their minds, they conceived a check and balance form of government they hoped would be strong enough to protect individual freedom and keep under control the human tendency to misuse entrusted power.  However, even a constitutional republic’s separation of powers could not prevent the inevitable, and their noble endeavor to secure freedom and equality for all began the gradual degradation into a tool for mastery.  Clever men, ever faithful to their basic nature, found ways to circumvent constitutional safeguards in order to pursue collectivist agendas that deny individual freedom and trample on private property rights.

So…the struggle of freedom vs slavery, though it manifests through the use of force, originates in the minds of men and it is there the battle must be won.  Since we live in a feedback system where learning from our mistakes is the path to maturity then it stands to reason that we need to examine our beliefs about ourselves a lot more closely if we want to progress as a race and as free individuals.

In the meantime, if we are unable to change our entrenched predatory behavior, is there any way to effectively control it?  Its become apparent no form of government is able to do so.  Aside from the coercive state, is there any other agency capable of restraining the immoral tendencies of man?  Is there an all-encompassing moral good to which mankind can aspire, an ideology strong enough to unite and inspire us to overcome our destructive behavior and perverse excesses? 

Established religions come to mind as likely candidates but over the course of human history, they have not proven to be very effective in promoting moral behavior.  In fact wars and social chaos are often the result of competing religions attempting to dominate one another through the power of coercive states.  When they aren’t fighting each other, they try to dominate state governments for their own benefit, so clearly, religions are merely tools men use to exploit other men.  The greatest example of this can be seen in the European’s Christian desire to sail to the new world to find gold and to exploit the native Americans in the name of the Pope.

The other widely held moral guide is altruism, the belief that the individual has the moral obligation to help or serve others before considering his own needs.  Several popular phrases, “giving back to the community”, or “for the common good” are examples promoted by collectivists who find altruism fits in well with their plans for control.  Altruism is designed to generate a sense of guilt and reinforce the notion that self-sacrifice is the highest good and, coincidentally, make it easier for the state to extract and redistribute resources to its favored groups.  Altruism also has great appeal among religious groups but unfortunately, living for the sake of others leaves them wide open to exploitation by those clever men who are adept at following natural human tendencies. 

To my knowledge the most logical means of ordering human society has never been successfully employed and considering our present state of social development, I think it is unattainable.  Although the socioeconomic idea of a free market of ideas and resources has great promise in allowing cooperative behavior to emerge and flourish, corrupt men insist on interfering with its feedback mechanism, thereby altering and turning it into failed ideologies such as fascism or communism.  We all know how well those systems worked.

There’s no doubt Man’s actions are strongly influenced by religious beliefs and by plausible secular ideologies such as altruism, but in the final analysis, I am convinced there is another influence that, for centuries, has dominated and demanded an even greater allegiance from mankind, an allegiance so deeply engrained in all human cultures that it is largely hidden from view now. 

Sadly, it appears man’s highest moral good is nothing more than crass materialism.  While bowing the knee to a God or spouting devotion to an uplifting ideology, hypocritical man, with little exception, has accepted mammon as his true guiding force.  Regardless of any religious beliefs or unbelief, the production, acquisition and distribution of material wealth has united us in a common bond for millennia.  Instead of helping us to overcome our destructive behavior, the pursuit of materialism has driven us to the extremes of immorality.  Profit, affluence or even the appearance of affluence is apparently a prize worth any degradation, any demoralizing behavior.

Leaders of established institutional religions are always warning of mammon’s immoral influence but have themselves failed to resist it, fatally compromising their duty to their faithful.  Centuries of studying holy writs and mouthing endless litanies of prayers for peace and brotherly love have done little to release mammon’s grip on their lives or the lives of their followers.  Whether admitted or not, by watering down their moral guidelines and canons of law, their religion comes to mean anything they want it to mean.  It ceases to be a universal, unbreakable rule or moral guide but instead grants human nature permission to assert its ever inventive self in the pursuit of its true god – materialism. 

For centuries, Materialism has been religion’s hidden puppet master, out of sight but very much in control of the lives of even the most faithful of devotees.  Regardless of what costume of faith worn, the self-attached strings remain intact, allowing the puppets to dance about the stage of life, mouthing empty convictions while jerking to mammon’s corrupt direction.    

The new age religions that have sprung up are similarly handicapped.  Rubbing crystals, studying astrology, reading tarot cards, and the supposedly heightened consciousness to be gained from such practices has little effect in overcoming the influence of a deeply embedded belief in materialism.  Cheap trinkets lining the shelves of believers’ lives are supposed to signify a deeply held belief, but in reality, only serve to reinforce mammon’s grip on their lives.  Similarly, self-help movements and pop psychology can do little more than produce a false sense of enlightenment while core materialistic beliefs remain unexamined and unchanged. 

In fact, all the isms mankind has managed to cook up have done little more than offer variations on the same old game of using force for material gain at the expense of others.  Lip service has been earnestly paid to them all but at the end of the day, no matter what our station in life or our professed beliefs, we still pay our due to mammon, accepting our place at its altar and jerking to the chaotic rhythm of its crooked wheel. 

From the political point of view materialism is just as much in control as it is in religion.  While our society sinks deeper in materialism’s quagmire of immorality, the majority of Americans cling to the naïve assumption that ours is still a free nation governed by just men for the sake of the common good.  However, this ignores the fact that the whole apparatus of America ’s government has been subverted by men doing what comes naturally.  Instead of a strictly limited constitutional republic as our founders intended, our government is used as a tool for mastery by rich and powerful factions struggling among themselves and with the American people for control of the state’s ability to confiscate wealth and property with impunity. 

When you examine closely what our representatives are doing with our government and what we are telling them to do, its hard to be very proud of the results or reconcile their actions with the Constitution.  Our conception of a benevolent American identity does not match the actions we allow our government to take.  At the same time our concept of freedom does not match the force we authorize our government to take on our behalf. 

( insert here a short list of the less than noble endeavors such as wars of conquest, etc. )

If voting is considered to be the will of the majority, then we must assume the majority will vote according to the dictates of its own corrupted human nature.  While our representatives are deliberately attempting to manipulate our sense of patriotic duty for their own gain, we are trying to vote ourselves a piece of the national pie or trying to select candidates who will pull strings in our favor.  So what does all this pushing and pulling between us and our representatives have to do with individual freedom – nothing.

In the long run its a crooked game all around, having not so much to do with the noble ideal of providing individual freedom as it is to satisfy our primary goal of material gain at the expense of others.  Voting has become a method of choosing which faction of professional thieves will take our money, by what method it will be redistributed and who will benefit from their largess.  The thieves usually get what they want by giving us what we want.  In effect our vote allows them to pick our pockets and in return, we get a little of the action for ourselves. 

To ensure we get a little of the action, freedom and equality, those most cherished American ideals, must be trampled under the tax collector’s boot.  We may turn our heads away when he comes knocking at our neighbor’s door but there is no avoiding the fact that our vote authorizes a Gestapo-like agency, the IRS, to take, through intimidation or by force if necessary, a portion of their livelihood in order that we or some other favored group may benefit.

As part of the game, the spectacle of election campaigning is designed to carefully divert our attention away from the fact we are actually voluntarily sacrificing control of our lives, our individual liberty, in exchange for the nanny state’s handouts.  In an odd, ironic way, this whole electoral process is a symbiotic interaction in which each party is dependent on the other to gain the desired ends. 

The fact that Americans have repeated this charade for over 200 years shows how dominant Materialism’s influence is over our culture and our individual lives.  Regardless of fervent patriotic or religious blather, electoral politics, like any other system designed to perpetuate government, validates and directly supports our centuries-old tendency to employ immoral means to secure our livelihoods.  Our elected representatives are merely carrying out, on a national scale, our basic individual desire to acquire property, resources and influence by the most efficient means - through the use of government’s main attribute – coercion. 

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