Training your inner beast Pt 1/12: Introduction

One of the arguments used by creationists against evolution ad nauseum is “If you
tell kids they are animals they will act like animals”. By the same logic if you teach
your kids about germ theory they will try and infect you, or if you teach them about
the theory of gravity they will push everything over.   Evolution is descriptive not prescriptive.
  Before you write a prescription though you have to know the problem in detail.    
Also they never say what animal they will act like.  A dog that if trained can do nearly
anything on command or can viciously maul you?   A cat that can be loving one minute
then poop on the floor the next?   A dolphin that can solve puzzles and want to have sex
all the time.   An elephant that can paint or maul you?   Why is acting like an animal
bad?  depending on the situation and environment they can be very great traits to admire.   Actually
that sounds extremely human. What they actually mean is that kids who are
told that they are animals won't bother to control themselves because “hey I’m a
monkey and can fling at people.”   Yes you can but there will be repercussions, all
of your actions do.   We control and train our inner beast to prevent consequences.   If
an animal kills a human it gets put down.  If a human can’t control their inner animal
they get locked away or put down.   The difference is our enlarged neo-cortex riding
around on top of our oversized monkey brain and body that allows us to have some semblance
of control over ourselves. The neo-cortex rides on top of the mammalian
brain which allows for empathy and parenting instincts, which rides on top of the reptilian
brain which is the fight or flight baser emotions and basic functions.   What we are is all
of these things.   When we are alone we are the most rational creatures on the planet,
our animal brain is quieted and relaxed though it still gets in the way of our thinking,
we just cant realize it because the animal brain is part of us.   
However we can reflect on ourselves when we are alone.  We can debate with ourselves
on complex topics.  We can think about things in new ways.   It is when we are stimulated
by outside forces that we go into animal mode.   We are not pro-active creatures, we are
reactive.   An example of this was at a woman’s rights rally there was a pro-lifer
there who was jutting in and out of the crowd and the police who was supposed to keep him
away was ignoring him.   I didn’t want anyone to confront them because I knew it
was just feeding the trolls and giving them too much attention.
My GF directly confronted him because she wanted him to go away and he calmly began
using horrible statistics     The argument got more and more heated and switched to the
bible and I began using the bible to point out his flaws, and he first insulted my intelligence
then told me I was never a real christian.    Something flipped in side of me and
I just went off yelling the atrocities actually discussed in his book including being able
to rape your war bride after you killed her parents and he refused even register that
in his head as being from the bible claiming I was quoting the koran.   The cop came
up and said I needed to calm down and I just left shocked at myself.  I’m ALWAYS composed.
   As it turns out the identity of Christian
was so conditioned into me as a part of my identity that it is now a trigger for emotion
that I was unaware of.   I should have been tipped off to it by the video I made called
“response to: Ex-christian I don’t think so”.  Unless you have the opportunity to
have yourself in a particular situation you will never know some of your underlying conditioning.
  And Unless you have time alone you won't have the ability to self reflect and fix the
conditioning.    What usually happens instead is that you have
an ideal of yourself and when you enter a situation you react the way you are conditioned.
   Then if it goes against your ideal self you will have cognitive dissonance and that
messes with your head and makes you feel like crap from guilt.   So instead most people
immediately generate a rationale for why they did that.   Since memories are rewritten
every time they are accessed, this new rational gets placed into the memory and they completely
believe they acted on their own agency. One has to be like a programmer.  You spot
a flaw and work to correct the programming alone or in a safe environment and then test
the patch in the real world and then adjust from there.    After enough trials and
tweaks and awareness you can fix a irrational conditioning that goes against your ideal
self, moving your real closer to the ideal. However without the tools and understanding
to do the programming you can’t do anything.   There are probably more people who are
self-programming illiterate than computer programming illiterate in this world.  In
this series I hope to discuss some of the tools that many may be unaware of.  Though
it will take a lot of extra research on my part.
For most of our existence the concept of the individual was foreign to most people.   The
community was most important.  This is because before the industrial revolution the group
was essential for survival.   It was only until mass produced cheap goods came about
that one could survive and thrive on their own.   In tribal times being alone was not
common so there was little time for self reflection.   Our super-ego rarely came out nor did
our inner dialog.   Our ability to reflect was was limited.   People
ate together, slept together and worked together.   The only people who were able to spend
time on self-reflection were people who followed the monastic orders and relied on begging,
and donations, or they built up a complex network to be self reliant and even then they
were not alone.   Being alone was an amazing experience for many of them and felt so different
from normal.   They had time to reflect instead of react.   Their inner dialog came
out and their creativity did as well.    It allowed their feelings of spirituality to
flow. Unless we have children these days we now
have more time and energy to self-reflect than ever.   If used correctly we can make
our own behavoir and potential much higher if we know how.   When I lived alone I always
was appalled at people who made stupid decisions or how they reacted to people or situations.
  Now that I’m living with someone and around them a lot I find my inner beast reacting
in ways I never thought I would.   I am involved with new situations I never had before
encountered before and I have less alone time to reflect and when I do have alone time I
mostly just want to veg out and not think, so my self-programming is much slower than
it used to be.    Being social reduces your time and energy
to self-program, but not being social enough prevents you from testing the efforts and
changes you made.   We can train our inner beast to act reactively in the way we want
it to, instead of how we were programmed growing up.    Our monkey can react more the way
you want it to and you will be a more ideal you.   Sadly it is complex to learn and
take the time needed to do so.   So you have to weigh the costs verses the rewards
of doing so.   If its important enough you have the ability in you to change.