FOUR

CULTURAL DEFAULT AND INTENTIONAL EVOLUTION

A Worm in the Heart of the Rose

A most basic, sacrosanct, fundamental fact of our life today, an issue no more questionable to a sane person or society than would be to question gravity itself, is the axiom that ambition, the burning desire to “get ahead,” to be somebody, to amount to something, is the most natural and desirable of all traits a person can have, particularly our young.

Since such a drive is culturally induced and an automatic reflex in us, for me to declare, as I do, that this so-called ambition, honored as the greatest of values and virtues, is a demonic cancer eating at the heart of life, Earth, and the human spirit, seems a ridiculous and dramatic overstatement. Induced like a disease and sustained at every hand, this desire for cultural purging hidden within, is a need that drives the corporate executive to batten on his brother’s blood, at home and abroad, to further that executive’s fortunes—at all cost. Such fortune must constantly grow, more and more, since the need involved is a chimera, a fantasy, nothing other than a form of paranoia. And the replications of this drive, emulated in society at large, are legion and costly.

To prove our worthiness or justify our existence, we enculturated minds move, regardless of price, for the success of any goal, which we think might rid us of this inner conviction of failure (which adds to our underlying need for a safe space and its security). While the price paid is generally high—for self, spirit, society, and world—it enriches and enhances culture as a field-effect, as well as the powers behind its judgment-system, those few who “make it to the top.”

Emotional Fields and the Inversion of Evolution

The emotional index presented in the last chapter indicates, by extrapolation and extension, that emotional turmoil in a society or environment might spur production of infants with bigger hind-brains, bodies with more muscular mass, and so on; and that a placid, calm environment would have mothers produce infants with bigger frontal brains and smaller bodies, which seems evolution’s intent (a note equally pleasing with me).

Candace Pert’s work shows that “molecules of emotion,” positive or negative, will be incorporated into a genetic pattern as naturally as any of a number of influences, an issue that weighs into this book’s discussion of the two-way traffic between our genes and environment. And surely, Pert’s work throws light on our mess here in the twenty-first century.

During World War II—wherein our species violently murdered, by every hideous, painful, and horrible device, well over a hundred million of itself—surely survival reflexes were unleashed at a maximum peak for at least six unbroken years, with additional overlap of years on either end. These were times of extreme anxiety both at home and abroad, as well as overseas with the troops.

World War II was followed almost immediately by smaller wars, leading to ever-larger stockpiles of ever-greater forms of mutual annihilation, involving more and more nations until leaving no one out of the deadly equation, and surely “no place to hide.”

WW II veterans back from overseas slaughterhouses were now busy building cold war bomb shelters in their backyards to try and protect their families, the spawning of which families had kept those semi–shell-shocked boys busy since they first came back. Mounting waves of crises rippled across the spreading worldwide population as well, busy spawning and rapidly expanding their populations too, while mounting ever-larger waves of negative emotional force. Setting up such powerful reciprocal interactions directly or indirectly involved virtually all life on Earth—plant and animal—crises hardly resolved half a century later here in 2009 as I write.

Judging from the brief article of 1998 referred to in chapter 2, and the ongoing research following, one could speculate that the overall emotional state of the ever-increasing number of women giving birth was at least tinged by sheer proximity with this all-pervasive stress and concern flooding most nations. And, in the postwar population explosion beyond record, a majority of infants were born with enlarged hindbrains, somewhat diminished fore-brains, and correspondingly larger skeletal frames and heavier muscular bodies, increasingly tilting the balance of nature toward the negative, defensive end.

Indeed, as history shows, the population of “baby boomers” brought a generation that stood some six to eight inches taller than its parents (to which I can personally attest, judging by my five looming over me). This extraordinary increase of stature brought, of necessity, large expansion and growth of all physical facilities, infrastructures, food production and consumption, even beds and furniture and on and on.

The size of one’s offspring became a critical issue to parents’ pride. Bigger was better and more beautiful in all situations, parents ever so proud of their children towering above them, those children looking down on their parents. Meanwhile, the runt of any litter (never ask me who) rather lost out, tending to be unaggressive, less ambitious (a failure, if not sin, in this new world), but of necessity less caught up in the “race to the top” and “place in the sun.” In which race some of the aggressive average were always winners, though most, of course, were losers.

Male children gauged each other according to size, the larger and more aggressive the more popular and in demand, wherein growth hormones became an issue, synthetics eventually appearing. The mental set of this rising population reflected the increased hind-brain survival-hormonal influence growing at every hand, an influence touching most aspects of our lives, including sexual maturation—an issue heretofore considered “locked into” our genetic system and inviolable.

An odd statistical item in the genetics of reproduction can be attested by any astute gardener. If you want to get the earliest tomato in your neighborhood, try deliberately slicing down into a young tomato plant’s root system with your shovel, severing some of the roots. That plant will tend to produce a single bloom and fruit well ahead of the other, undamaged plants. In the same way, animals will tend to reproduce much earlier if general conditions are threatening. A rule of thumb seems to hold that early damage or ongoing anxiety-fear in a growing creature will incline that creature toward reproducing sooner than average, as though Nature says, “You might not be here long, so reproduce your kind while you can,” which, we might say, upholds Nature’s quota.

Another oddity seldom addressed was the striking change in menarche (the beginnings of menstruation). In the general post-war period, menarche shifted from a traditional mid-teen average age of fifteen years, down to age twelve (and even earlier) by the 1980s. This mid-teen average had held historically, occurring a bit earlier toward the equator, later toward the poles (in Scandinavian girls later, Mediterranean earlier).

By the late 1980s the Child Development people at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) reported that forcible rape of girls by boys under ten years of age had become an issue, although originally a statistical oddity at best. Male sexual capacities had historically appeared only in mid-teen years along with menarche. One could speculate that the species in general had speeded up the reproduction age for the same reason as that threatened tomato plant.

Other Age-Related Social Shifts

Some three generations back, our backyard sandpile play as small children expanded in later childhood into such games as “capture the flag,” sandlot pass-and-tag football, baseball, and so on. These were carried out entirely on our own and were the source of serious, engrossing pleasure, sheer fun, and, looking back at this decades later, an excellent social-cooperative “training” we had never heard of, and couldn’t have cared less about had it been so named. Winning or losing, however, played almost no part in our play of that period, since “sides” in backyard ball games changed continually as parents called individual team-members home, bringing a general re-shuffling to maintain balance of sides (a serious issue). No side “won the day,” since sides were not fixed, and scoring, beyond three strikes and you’re out, never entered our heads. We played ball to have our chance at bat—the strangely glorious feeling when bat connects with ball and that ever-so-satisfying sound found nowhere else! Or that rare pleasure at catching that high ball, or pitching a true curve ball. We played passionately for the sheer sake of play, even as we were building a strong social sense of cooperation and “fair play.”

Over time, play gave way to, or rather was taken away and given to, first, organized playgrounds with adult monitors and supervisors (lest someone get hurt and lawsuits result), and later, organized sports. We had never called or even thought of our backyard or vacant-lot ball games as “sport”—just play! But now this became sports under the supervision and jurisdiction of adults. Taking over, these adults turned play into adversarial contests ruled over by coaches and spurred on by parents and spectators, the young participants caught up in bewildering and anxious attempts to satisfy those supervising and goading adults, suffering guilt when failing to do so.

Play Dying on the Vine

Such organization of “sports” moved into childhood earlier and earlier, spurred on not by children, but by parents and “coaches.” Little League, a most insidious attack undermining childhood, took over, the small fry decked out in bright colors advertising various products. “Coaches” became a principal figure in those young lives, coaching an immediate target of adult male ego-image. The fierceness of “the coach’s” strictness and harsh demand-commands became a tradition and mark of adult manliness, and a toughness that children eventually tried to emulate. The rough stimulus and overall threat of shaming, which the coaches wrought, gave a complete cultural model-image of The Coach, with his shouting, threatening, berating, bullying voice and profanity heard over the land.

Gladiatorial types of sports grew in the place of play, amid waves of near-frenzied adult excitements over adult college and professional teams struggling for dominance in the arenas cropping up everywhere to accommodate the phenomenon.

A survey in the late 1960s of high-school students’ definitions of manliness and masculinity revealed that the ability to deliver harm or pain to another without flinching or remorse was the principle mark of a manly, adult character. Tough-man stances, clenched jaw and impassive facial expressions, along with a “fiery temper,” reflected manliness; smiling pleasantry was an indication of lack of character or strength of conviction, perhaps even a “questionable sexual orientation.” Romanticized mythical images of such toughness and masculinity were slowly emulated by the entire society.

All this encouraged and even glorified the ever larger and more combative-competitive young people these communities helped produce. The aggressive drive to “get ahead” or outshine others—thus escaping the guilt of failure—spilled over into the schools, marketplace, town hall, Wall Street, Washington, London, Brussels—on and on.

The advent of television found all this a near-perfect soil for its own explosive growth, and brought increasing waves of rabid attention to such combative events, captivating the majority of the populace, promoting sponsors and selling products, spurring more and more consumption as well as competition. A whirlwind of ever-increasing proportion reflected in multiple layers of various neuroses and phobias, while irrational violent behavior became near epidemic—the general mind-set, expectation and direction of the global populace.

Reciprocal feedback, creating ever-wider fields of negativity, resulted in a worldwide tangle of raw emotion, maintaining a state of tension and intensity in all aspects of life. Conditioning to such overloads of intensity (to which television is a heavy contributor) brings—should such intensity be withdrawn—the equivalent of sensory deprivation to both young people and older ones. Anything less than a television level of adrenal-stirring excitement tends to become disquieting and unsettling. Camping, fishing, and hiking, passionate pursuits in my day, rank at the bottom of the list to teenagers, “pre-teens,” and older children today.

In my section of Virginia, the deer population has grown far beyond previous levels because, among many factors, in recent years deer hunting has diminished markedly. The former hunters now sit riveted to their TVs watching the game, sipping beer, eating munchies, and getting fat, while the deer sport unmolested through our gardens having their own munchies and getting fat. TV sports with their mass audiences and passionate team loyalties bring adrenaline rushes to all onlookers, stadium or screen, supplanting, in a form of proxy, the keen adrenaline rushes we experienced in earlier days through play, hunting, hiking, backyard sports, and such.

More! More!

Life without television seems lackluster to most citizens—boring, of no interest. Further, such antiquated habits as we once enjoyed contributed nothing to the frenzied demand for growth. Massively sponsored by television, and expressed by nearly every aspect of life since World War II, growth, stimulated at every hand, constitutes the very breath of our nation’s economy, politics, education, and mind-set. Steady, viable maintenance, requiring the balance of all Nature, as found in the preceding century when 95 percent of people lived on farms, has given way to this dominant demand for growth—at all cost. This obsession became an outright survival issue to the entire fiber of our national thinking, even as nonviable and unchecked growth was choking our living environment and planet itself.

“More! More! Is the cry of a mistaken soul,” claimed William Blake, “less than All cannot satisfy Man.” Blake’s general All referred to the evolutionary goal of our species’ longing of Spirit, in its various guises. Demonically inverted, All is the cry of a nurture-starved, fear-based humankind, to whom possession of all the goods in the world could never satisfy, though most of us might die trying. Since in size, influence, wealth, dominance, and popularity, grow or perish is the byword today, if we are not growing our economy, our pundits warn, we are surely dying. And the same yardstick seems to apply to life in general.

The eighty-year-old, shaky and trembling on the edge of his grave, is elated when the stock market goes up, depressed when it goes down. While the vastly overpopulated Earth, decimated and stripped by the voracity for growth, gives but the grounds for ever-more rapacious growth, the social body become cannibalistic, feeding on itself.

Reconsidering the Heart

As I pointed out in my book Evolution’s End, heart is the source of intelligence, while brain-mind the source of intellect—which was evolution’s intent in separating self into two reciprocal, interactive functions. Rather like right and left hands, intellect and intelligence are a “strange loop” phenomenon, wherein each gives rise to and is critically dependent on the other, while equally requiring their independent functions.

Faced with the plethora of potential in our world, an enculturated mind, laboring under its weight of induced guilt-failure, triggers its selective attention to attend any potential, which mind thinks might lead to success, fame and fortune, self-justification, pardon from cultural-guilt—and possibly even its missing “safe space.” Trying to find a “safe space” drives most enculturated people, suffering as we do from early failure of bonding and nurturing. A safe space finds its proxy, or counterfeit, in material goods and possessions, while the only real safe space for self and Spirit, of course, lies within.

Concerning such rich potential as our world offers our selective attention, in regard to some possibility it intuits or senses, intellect asks only, “Is it possible?” In the same situation, the heart, with its intelligence, asks, “Is it appropriate?”

An enculturated intellect—which includes virtually all of us—is driven to justify its existence and prove itself worthy in the eyes of that culture, through any possibility afforded, appropriate or not. Stripped of self-worth through enculturation, we are accused of worthlessness until proven worthy in culture’s eyes. Thus, we harbor a hidden feeling of guilt for not measuring up, which failure is, in effect, a “cultural sin” lurking within us. This covert notion of failure drives us to do anything that might “measure up” to culture’s standard and so be forgiven, in effect, by that culture, which is rather like seeking absolution of sins in the middle of a drinking spree in a whorehouse.

Heart’s intelligence, on the other hand, moves only for well-being of self, body, spirit and world. And no greater contrast can be found than that between an enculturated intellect and the open intelligence of heart. Intellect and intelligence are so close, inter-related, and interdependent when functioning as an intact strange loop, but so far apart when split by culture. Through enculturation, heart is not only never heeded, but almost never heard, the lines of communication between heart and brain-mind having been compromised, or near eliminated by enculturation—and this at every level: biological, psychological, spiritual. (We do well, of course, to never underestimate the brilliance of this human intellect, nor apologize for it, even in its most base and destructive forms and actions, wherein we simply represent a split of self and God gone wrong.)

Appropriateness, as granted by heart, brings coherence, balance, and an open-ended present with a future flowing into it, free of consequence or past influence. “Behold, I make all things new,” that great being explained, a newness that does not, and cannot, include items of the outdated world-self view of the person actually opening to heart.

Unbonded and unnurtured, mind’s connections with heart are not only compromised. Our resulting intellect, lacking heart’s guiding intelligence, becomes our nemesis; it is slowly destroying us, generation by generation, the tempo speeding up now with technology at culture’s disposal. The smarter we get, the more dangerous we are to ourselves.

Since every fiber in the fabric of our current mind-set religiously believes in and relies on our rational, scientifically sanctioned intellect, any alternate actions of mind outside this cultural loop strike us as irrational nonsense, although an actual “way out” for us lies within such alternate ways. Yet, as suggested in chapter 3, we should be cautious of the “way-out” mentality, which can easily slip into techno-mechanical “fixes,” landing us right back where we started. What is called for, perhaps, is a “moving into,” which allows the future, as it were, to penetrate the closed cultural looping.

Navigating the Unknown via the Heart

Culture counters any understanding of opening to the heart by the cultural counterfeit of heart intelligence as sentiment, as sweetness and light, sympathy and projected self-pity: “Aw, come on now, have a heart.” True opening of the heart, however, requires suspending, letting go of, not only intellect—its rationality and comprehension of self-and-world—but also our ever-present and passionate drive for survival.

In this sense such opening is resonant with discovering what in previous books I have referred to as unconflicted behavior.1 This is a state of mind in which one has thrown away self and its survival concerns, wherein the ordinary “ontological constructs” are no longer binding on one (that is, for instance, where fire doesn’t necessarily have to burn, nor gravity hold).

Opening of the heart goes one step further, however. It involves not just a suspension of concern over survival of body-brain (as in unconflicted behavior), but just as critically, suspension of concern for our image of self in the public eye—identity of self as rational, responsible, and respectable. In suspending our survival drive we open to new possibilities, but in opening to the heart we abandon all possibility and identity as known, giving our self-as-mind to that self-as-heart—and no longer claiming jurisdiction over either. For our identity no longer tries or needs to be in charge.

This is not an abandonment of personal responsibility, which is a cultural criterion many people would welcome, but rather, far more extreme. This is the abandon found in George Fox and Jesus, throwing away their selves, including that noble and respectable self-responsibility admired by culture. Having thrown away even this last vestige of cultural approval, one then finds one’s self in a broader and unconstricted frame of reference altogether, the only state through which one can become an instrument of Spirit. (I speak of this with conviction, having drawn back time and again ad nauseam from the brink of that unknowing, even as sensing its freedom, in a peculiar form of interior terror that is my undoing. That is, I “chicken out.”)

Here, I recall Suzanne Langer’s observation many decades ago: “Our greatest fear is of a collapse into chaos, should our ideation fail us.” This ideation is the cultural mind-set—our reality-picture and our presence in it—which rules our thoughts, beliefs and living presence from birth. It makes for a double bind that only Self-as-Heart can go beyond.