Difference between revisions of "Good and Bad, an illusory dimension as the cornerstone of human personality"

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This chapter is under construction. Parts should be selected from the paragraphs assembled here.

Introduction

✰✰ <level 2>  This chapter deals with a typically human personality dimension.

It is a common layman's misconception that personality differences only occur among human beings. In animals differences in behaviour between individuals occur in a similar way. And in the case of socially living animals, our closest kin in evolution, the differences in behaviour between individuals are very similar to what is found in humans.

The personality-dimension which is the focus of this article, the Good-Bad, Positive versus Negative or Appreciatedness dimension, is the only major personality dimension that is exclusively human. Peculiarly, precisely this dimension is virtual and in a sense not real. It does namely not refer to or relate to any actual behaviour of the rated person, but instead just refers to the relationship between the rater and the ratee. In short, the only exclusively human personality dimension does not describe any actual behaviour of the ratee.

Still, as we will see, this dimension plays a central and crucial role in our understanding of human personality and the dynamics between the various personality dimensions.

As described in more detail in the chapters "Personality Traits in terms of Social-Role Probabilities; an innovative theoretical essay on the possibility of overcoming the chaotic diversity in personality theories" and in "Escaping from Chaos: Temperamental Personality Traits in terms of Social-Role Probabilities", the Good-Bad dimension appears on the one hand to be the largest, mathematically most important of all personality dimensions but on the other hand is merely a subsidiary function of two major dimensions of interpersonal behaviour / social-role behaviour. More precisely, it refers not to actual social role behaviour, but describes the characteristics of how social roles (actual behaviours) are worked out and are stabilized in time between parties (specifically between dominant and subordinate group members and between incrowd and outcast group members). In other words: the virtual Good-Bad dimension is atool for our social-interactive behaviour, but not the behaviour itself.

Two-dimensional Space of Social Interactions

✰✰ <level 3> To set the stage for a closer investigation, let's have a look again at two personality dimensions describing the major varieties of social behaviour (see also the relevant paragraphs in chapter "Personality Traits in terms of Social-Role Probabilities", in the chapter "Personality of Mice and Men" and "Example 1" in the chapter "Escaping from Chaos: Temperamental Personality Traits in terms of Social-Role Probabilities").

In summarizing studies and reviews of social psychological research two more or less orthogonal dimensions generally emerge as the most important points of reference (Wiggins, 1979,1982; Kiesler, 1982,1983). One of these may be labeled "Ascendancy" or "Dominant versus Submissive" and the other dimension "Acceptance versus Rejection", "Love versus Hate" or "Positive Affiliation versus Hostility" (dimensions [9] and [10] in fig.l). Specifically, the following interpretations emerge in factoranalytic studies: "Dominance versus Submission" and "Love/Positive versus Hate/Negative/Hostility" (Leary, 1957; Foa, 1961; Lorr & McNair, 1965; Hare, 1972); "Assertiveness" and "Sociableness" (Borgatta, 1963); "Authority" and "Solidarity" (Gouman, Hofstee & de Raad, 1973); "Authority/Control" and "Affection/Intimacy" (Sampson, 1971); "Aggressive Dominance" and "Affiliation/Sociability" (Golding & Knudson, 1975). And these factoranalytic dimensions of social behaviour may be found on the verbal level as well as on the non-verbal level of behaviour: "Positiveness" (affiliative behaviour) and "Dominance vs. Submission" (relaxation) are two of the most conspicuous dimensions which Mehrabian (1972) found in his R-type factor-analytic studies on non-verbal social behaviour in man. (Refer to van der Molen (1979) for a comparison of the use of R-, Q- and other types of factoranalysis in observational behaviour studies.)

Peabody (1970) points at a very basic distinction between the two axes spanning this two-dimensional domain. One of them represents "asymmetrical" interactions, whereas the other describes "symmetrical" interactions. Relations involving "love/hate" or "affiliation" (dimension [10]) tend to be symmetrical - i.e., involving similar characteristics for the two parties - and relations involving "power" (dimension [9]) tend to be asymmetrical - i.e., involving dissimilar characteristics for the two parties - (see also Wiggins, 1982 and Kiesler, 1983 for recent reviews of research on this aspect).

• • • • • • • • Ongeveer hier diverse plaatjes ******************

Fig.l about here; komt uit "Personality Traits in terms of ..." (Acceptedness * Ascendancy)

Wellicht beter: Fig.1 uit Stockholm voordracht 1988 (bevat nummering uit periodiek systeem)

From social-psychological literature the following 2 examples are given of 2-dimensional circumplex structures showing the relationships between social-psychological attitudes and characteristics.

Hier 2 figuren uit de Stockholm presentatie; "The 1982 Interpersonal Circle" en Fig. 2 van Donald Kiesler (Location of IAS, ICL, IBI and IMI segments on the 1982 Interpersonal Circle)

Als laatste hier de circumplex figuur uit "Escaping from Chaos: ....."

Note: In the trans-specific behavioural literature the symbols α, β and ω are generally used for: dominant role (α), compliant and tolerated subordinate role (β), and non-compliant, non-tolerated type of subordinate, leading to an outcast role (ω)).

Styles of Dominance

✰✰✰ <level 3> In order to gain more insight into the possible relationship between these dimensions of social role behaviour and congenital traits of temperament, we have to take a closer look at how these two social-role dimensions work out (see fig.l). Let us first therefore focus on how the "Affiliation" ("Sociableness") dimension [10] has to be interpreted at the High-Ascendancy/Dominance side of the "Dominant versus Submissive" axis [9].

Dominating individuals may behave in an easy-going way towards their companions or they may not. On the one hand a dominating person may exert a lot of aggressive dominance, bullying his subordinates all the time, on the other hand he may act as a sort of "controller" who governs social relations by social skill, sustained by appreciation from his companions, rather than by aggressive intimidation.

This polarity in possible dominance styles is so general that it has also frequently been reported in animal research (See for instance the empirical and experimental findings about differences in dominant behaviour in e.g., langurs by Poirier (1970), stumptail macaques by Bertrand (1969), in japanese monkeys by Itani et al.(1963) and by Yamada (1966), in mountain gorillas by Fossey (1972), and in chimpanzees by Reynolds & Luscombe (1969)). Differences of this sort between dominant individuals have been described in a number of species including man by Chance & Jolly (1970) and Wilson (1977,pp.311-313), and in Man by e.g., Lippitt & White (1958) and Krech et al. (1962,ch. 12). Gibb (1969), Strayer & Strayer (1976), Hold (1976), and Sluckin & Smith (1977) report such differences in dominance-styles of children, and of adolescents (Savin-Williams, 1977). Hold labels these differences thus (p. 194) :

" , there are two opposite leadership styles, called by Gibb (1969) "leadership" and "domination". With leadership, authority is spontaneously accorded by fellow group members whereas with domination there is little or no shared feeling or joint action and authority derives from some extra-group power."

Benjamin(1974,1979) and Golding & Knudson (1975), evaluating and revising earlier theories (Leary, 1957; Schaefer, 1965), construct a three-dimensional structural analytic model of interpersonal behaviour in which "differences in dominance style" is one of the crucial dimensions. In their model this dimension is labeled "aggressive dominance" versus "autonomy" and is suggested to depend on a sort of social learning. Individuals may learn to or be trained to behave less dependent and more autonomous, thus overcoming negative and aggressive dominant behavioural tendencies towards (dependent) subordinates. Similar differences are labeled as "authoritarian" versus "democratic" leadership in a survey by Krech et al. (1962).

Kirton (personal comm., 1986) also distinguishes different types of leaders, "innovators" and "adaptors". The latter tend to be more in line with group norms, traditions and established working methods. They can more often be characterized as "consensus-leaders" than the former type of leaders, the "innovators". Innovators have a tendency to be abrasive and insensitive at the social level, causing a great deal of unintentional havoc and conflict involuntarily. This type of leader is much like Rogers' "creative loner" (Kirton, 1976; Rogers, 1959). Kirton's research has shown a personality-temperamental basis to exist behind these differences in leadership style, among other things in terms of cognitive style differences (Kirton, 1986). We shall return to this temperamental aspect further below.

• • • • • • • • • table 1 about here ************

[edit] Styles of Subordinacy

✰✰✰ <level 3> Having reviewed these aspects of dominance, we shall now take a closer look at subordinacy and the varying forms it may assume.

Variation between subordinate roles in terms of tolerance and accepted-ness, in terms of incrowd-outcast differences, and so forth, are reported from social psychological research as well as from research on other socially living mammal species. In general, it appears that individuals who do not manage to attain a dominant role (α-position in fig.l) may either stay in a subordinate position while adapting to existing rule, or tend to lose their in-crowd position. Accepted (incrowd-)subordinates (β-position in fig.l) may gradually grow into a semi-outcast or outcast position (ω-position in fig.l). Such outcast-like subordinates are potential migrators, running all the risks implied (ω — > α ; or ω - >dead), whereas the better accepted incrowd-type subordinates, who show a better adaption to existing hierarchical pressures eventually may succeed the dominant(s) present in case of death or otherwise incapacitation of the latter (β —> α). Especially in relation to dispersal mechanisms operating through young individuals, such differences in social-role types have frequently been observed (Wilson, 1977; Barash, 1977). (Similar descriptions have been given for e.g., deermice (Healey, 1967), free-living populations of black rats (Ewer, 1971,pp. 135-137), free-living lions (Bertram, 1975) rhesus monkeys (Vandenbergh, 1966), free-living japanese monkeys (Itani et al., 1963; Yamada, 1966) and by Eisenberg et al.(1972) for a number of primate species.) Bertrand (1969) reports the occurrence of "scapegoats" in stumptail-macaques and de Waal (1975) in java monkeys. The latter reports that high ranking individuals often formed alliances against the lowest ranking adults or adolescents although each of the highranking monkeys clearly dominated the scapegoat in question also without any help of others. De Waal (1975,p.530) suggests:

"...., one might suppose that higher-ranking groupmembers "work off their mutal irritations and tensions"in that way. In other words: the (inevitable) confrontations between them facilitate aggressiveness, which is not expressed in aggressive actions between each other, but ((inevitable) confrontations between them facilitate aggressiveness, \which is not expressed in aggressive actions between each other, but/ in cooperative aggression (re)directed at subordinates which serve as "scapegoats"."

Whatever the reason for this "mobbing against scapegoats" may be, it certainly magnifies the differences between β- and ω-type subordinates.

• • • • • • Kort referenen naar onderstaande ************

Breaking out of the customary intelligence ceiling

✰ <level 1> So, what we see is that intelligence may / might be used to find – easier - shortcuts to short term satisfaction. And such shortcuts are quite likely to outflank the collateral behavioural effects of those primordial instincts, collaterals that serve procreational purposes, for which reasons those instincts were evolutionarily selected for in the first place. So, intelligence, applied to our own behaviour, therefore quickly leads to sterile behaviour, no matter how satisfactory from a personal emotional (very proximal) point of view.

Our hominid ancestors however, still less intelligent at that time in evolution, were living in circumstances where a high intelligence did indeed yield very high premiums. Complex communication skills for instance would increase the effectiveness of group hunting tremendously. Better communication and other advantages of intelligence would enable those hominids to become far more effective hunters. However, a too high intelligence, higher than the "intelligence ceiling", would on the other hand yield detrimental procreational effects if applied to the own (social) behaviour.

Our hypothesis is this: mother nature finally came up with a solution for this stalemate evolutionary situation. It invented in our hominid ancestors a specific awareness block regarding the own behaviour. Once this specific "Blindness for the Self" was emerging, the evolution of intelligence could carry on, also beyond the aeons old upper limit or upper ceiling as applicable in all other "intelligent" animal species.

If this hypothesis is correct, a superior capacity for language and for complex communication and for tool making only could develop in our human ancestors "in exchange for" blindness for the Self.

Such a "blindness for the Self", in short, has the following function. It serves to prevent short cuts between proximal urges in our behaviour and the desired outcomes. Such short cuts would namely destroy the functional links between the proximal organization of our behaviour with all the emotional urges implied, and the ultimate evolutionary goals of such behaviours. Whereas very satisfactory to the individuals in question, such short cuts would impair their participation in procreation, which in turn would make the short cut capacity (superior intelligence) go extinct again. Therefore a higher intelligence is in principle self defeating in the evolution of any species, unless it is combined with "Self-blindness".

In humans intelligence could only rise above that certain level after such a specific provision had been built into our behavioural system, making sure that such high intelligence only could be applied to any type of problems in life as long as it would not be applied to the bearer's own behaviour.

Built in blindness and well consolidated ignorance towards the self have therefore been the key to the evolution of higher human intelligence.

• • • • • • Onderstaande stuk overnemen ?? ****************

Self Blindness and Social-role Blindness

✰✰ <level 2> So, we have a peculiar situation in Homo sapiens. We can put a man on the moon, we can dive to the bottom of the deepest oceans, we have produced Hydrogen bombs, but . . . . . . we cannot think clearly in front of a mirror. Very strange indeed ! But now we can at least understand how this strange situation came about.

Quite obviously, we seem not to be capable of understanding our own behaviour, let alone organize it in a mutually useful way. It seems for instance far more easy to organize war involuntarily than to organize lasting peace. This failure to understand our own behaviour can indeed also be corroborated by psychological research from the last half century. It appears indeed that human beings possess an uncanny capacity to not-see how they are functioning themselves. We are struck with a very strong form of blindness for our own emotions, motivations and feelings. Of course, we do have some sort of notion of what we feel, what we see and what we want, but, as an overwhelming avalanche of scientific psychological research shows, these personal, internal notions differ greatly from reality. (See for instance: Bateson, 1972,1979, Dixon, 1976, Laing, 1967,1969,1970)

What is more, human beings in fact spend surprising amounts of energy and brain capacity to mystify and hide their own behaviour from sober and intelligent investigation, by themselves as well as by each other. Evidently, it appears that this typical blindness, blocking our awareness and thinking power in certain areas, does have a significant evolutionary advantage. This human blindness apparently is an ESS, an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.

One of the areas where this blindness is very conspicuously present is in social relations and the way social roles develop and are distributed. The ruling awareness blocks for one’s own behaviour, one’s emotions and motivations, make human beings in particular blind for how they interact socially. For more on this phenomenon of “Social-Role Blindness” and for exploring some examples of how this works and what are its consequences for the present as well as for our future, click here(***) .

In summary, the human species is peculiarly unable to think clearly about its own behaviour. Our intelligent capacities are effectively blocked regarding our personal and social functioning.

• • • • • • • • • -Onderstaande paragrafen kort parafraseren / kort naar refereren. **************

Towards "Amathology" or the science of ignorance

✰✰ <level 2> In view of the data as presented in this chapter, it would be worthwhile, and it would certainly pay off in terms of understanding the nature of mankind's most important contemporary predicaments, to establish a scientific research discipline on the mechanisms and effects of Social Blindness- and Self-Blindness. This could greatly enhance a better understanding of all the various cultural mechanisms (meme sets) that have kept us stupid until now and it might help to "grease" the way to a Point Omega transition. We could label such a research discipline as "Amathology", from the Greek word "Amathos" or "ignorance".

The next article on this Wiki (Good and Bad, an illusory dimension as the cornerstone of human personality) may constitute a part of the scientific research in the field of "Amathology".

Another issue for "Amathology" research could be attempts to solve the following scientific "bet".

The above considerations would predict that in the past millennia in many strata of human societies there may have been a selection power in favour of limited intelligence and limited conceptual capacities. Such a tendency would help stabilize existing power structures and their mind block mechanisms and thus confer survival value to the power structure / culture in question and to its carriers. This effect should possibly have been there from the start of the agricultural revolution, some 10,000 years ago, until today. (It is OK if a small minority of top dogs is intelligent. However, the masses had better be stupid !)

It should be possible to find ways to verify or falsify this postulate.

This might for instance among other things be an explanation for the archaeological finding that the skull content / volume of present day men is slightly lower than skulls from some 10.000 years ago, whereas the speed of DNA-changes in man has increased tremendously during that period.

Other Amathology research targets:

The theory on this Wiki predicts among other things that large quantities of energy and thinking capacity are being spent on maintaining and corroborating blindness for ourselves and for our assessment of other people's behaviour.

From personality psychological data it should be possible to derive proof that much of the personality psychological tools are being used for hiding, rather than soberly assessing and predicting the own and each other's behaviour.

• • • • • • • • • • Tekst hierboven maar hier en daar kort naar refereren c.q. kort parafraseren. *************

• • • • • • • • • • Dit hier onder verwerken *******

A hypothesis to be tested could be that:

An important part of all personality descriptive adjectives etc. are not correlated with any actual behaviour, but are used to maintain a colouring of the personality characteristics with strikes of goodness versus strikes of badness, thus inducing and stabilizing an attitude of support for or of resistance against the rated person in question. Sober and objective assessment of persons' behaviour is thus replaced by cognitively hiding the actual behaviours in question and by the creation of an emotional foundation for the already existing social role relationship between rater and ratee. Intelligent objective assessment is thus replaced by unhampered primordial social reflexes.

This good-bad dimension in personality research is so overwhelmingly important that it can be found in multivariate statistical analyses as the unrotated first principal component in factor analysis. The largest part of the correlations between personality descriptive adjectives is therefore not describing any actual behaviour or actual personality characteristics at all, but is just a tool for cognitively protecting primordial, primitive social reflexes against sober intellectual investigation. It should be possible to calculate from basic correlation matrixes of personality descriptive adjectives and from basic fysiological data on blood streams to the human head, how much of human energy is on average spent on maintaining a specific blindness towards own and other people's characteristics in order to protect crucial social reflexes from being understood intellectually.

If this can be shown as postulated, it can serve as proof of the enormous evolutionary importance of human blindness for the Self. Such a finding would have tremendous bearing on how humanity views itself and how we choose to proceed from here as a species.

The evolutionary importance of blindness for self and the illusion of Good and Bad

✰ <level 1> Power structures of course derive advantage from concealing that they “steal” human well being and happiness. And the best way to conceal that is to strengthen the already typical human blindness for the own behaviour, reflexes and feelings and subsequently to use that area of murky perception for inducing the dictums, norms and rules that the power structure needs. However, the latter are norms and rules that would tend to induce aversive feelings in its carriers, us modern humans, in particular in case these dictums and rules could be perceived clearly and undistortedly.

To achieve this required level of blindness, a basic trick and cornerstone of all existing large power structures is the central notion of “Good and Bad” and of “primal sin”. As is shown elsewhere on this Wiki, the Good and Bad dimension is one of the most conspicuous and striking features of the human system of assessment and judgement. We do spend enormous amounts of time and energy to keep this illusive notion of "Good and Bad" upright and kicking. It does direct human normative systems and rules of behaviour and channels our social behaviour as well. In fact, that dimension of "Good and Bad" takes care of the consolidation of our social relations and social predictability. It helps us to socially "stay in place" and it automatically makes us act as to try keeping other people socially "in place" as well.

✰✰✰ <level 3> (- For the mathematically oriented behavioural scientists among us: in the euclidian space of behavioural interactions, judgements and self-assessments, analyses of our verbal repertoire show something peculiar. In the analyses of the covariances between the words, labels and phrases, in factor analysis the first principal component before rotation is always the dimension of "Good versus Bad" or something closely related. And strikingly, this apparently most important assessment tool is not related whatsoever with any actual behaviour. It is only related with how the observer or judge is, for personal reasons beyond his own understanding, emotionally colouring in cognitively the behaviours he observes. (See herefor more detailed information about this most important but illusory personality dimension.)-)

Quantity of physical energy, invested in maintaining blindness and illusion

✰✰ <level 2> From these personality psychological research data it appears that it must apparently be of great evolutionary importance that our cognitive system spends so much processing capacity and time on maintaining the notion of Good versus Bad and the blindness for the Self coming with it. Evidently being the most important of all dimensions of human assessment and social judgement, this cognitive dimension also consumes a considerable part of the energy consumption in our brain. Our brain is one of the most energy consuming parts of our body. Our carotid arteries are relatively wide compared to those of other, closely related, species. We humans spend the greater part of our time on thinking. And a considerable part of that thinking time is spent on thinking about our own and other people's behaviour and what it means to us. Being socially living mammals this is of crucial and vital importance to us. As the above mentioned factoranalyses of the conceptual tools of that thinking show, the larger part of all that energy is spent on the first principal component of all those concepts and ideas, taking care of colouring in what we see and think with the delusive colours of "Good", "Bad", "pro- and con-". This underlines again empirically the great biological and evolutionary importance of this dimension of Good and Bad.

The illusory aspects of the Positive/negative or Good/Bad dimension

✰✰ <level 2> Strikingly however, as pointed out above, it can also be shown from ethological research on humans, that this Good-Bad dimension, being one of our major tools of social behaviour, does not correlate whatsoever with actual behaviour. Of course the notions of good and bad are quite useful in describing what is good for our health and survival and what is harmful. As such there is no problem and it shall be clear that such notions must be of crucial importance for our communication about what to avoid and what to strive after. However, there has evolved a catch in us humans. Applying these notions of Good and Bad on our own behaviour and on the behaviour of others appears to be a tricky business. Rather than just labelling other individuals as Good or Bad, which certainly also happens, we humans tend to colour any judgement or qualification with either a positive, wished for variety of that judgement, or to colour it in with a negative, not wanted variety of the same descriptive qualification.

For instance, a boss who is renowned to be a very effective and strong leader, issuing clear directives to his subordinates, in general is perceived and judged quite differently by different subordinates. A subordinate who is always compliant with the directives in the department and has no difficulty in following clear and strict instructions from above, is more likely to describe the style of management of the boss in question in positive terms like "strong, energetic, dynamic, bold and charismatic", whereas a subordinate who has difficulties in adapting to the existing rules and limitations of the department and who may be at the verge of being dismissed as "not sufficiently in compliance with company needs and directives", is more likely to describe that same style of management of the boss rather as "bossy, insensitive, dictatorial, repressive, autocratic and despotic". Listening to both types of judges, one would not expect them to describe the same person (that boss) in the same working situation. (For more information about these cognitive reflexes distorting our judgement of other individuals and of ourselves, see the article on Social Role Blindness.)

In a similar vein, people in love describe their partner in positive, flowery terms, whereas that same partner will be described in very negative terms once the relationship has broken down. Typically, the judging person will ascribe that to a dramatic change in the behaviour of that partner, but in general the judgee has not changed that much as the change of judgement suggests. For the persons issuing those judgements, it is almost impossible to objectively recognize the importance of the changes in their own perception.

Without being aware of it, we humans are in fact applying a "double" toolbox of qualifications, carrying positive sets of qualificative descriptions and negative sets of qualificative descriptions. Whereas such positive or negative qualifications, in fact, in reality, often refer to the same actual behaviours, we human judges, applying these judgement sets, are not aware that the positive or negative colourings of these judgements are just our own imagination. We are not aware that the positively judged behaviour is actually the same as the negatively judged behaviour, even in cases where we can show experimentally that the behaviour in question is or was exactly the same. (For more information about this type of research, see Good and Bad, an illusory dimension as the cornerstone of human personality.) So, apart from being very simple and useful tools for describing what items in our environment are harmful or beneficial to us, the Good and Bad differences also serve to colour all types of descriptive qualifications of one's own and other people's behaviours. In fact, by that mechanism, we are utilizing double sets of descriptions for behaviour. At the same time, we ascribe reality value to those positive and negative descriptions, beyond the actual objective assessment of what kind of behaviour has or shall occur. In other words, we, as judges, do not know that the qualifications we apply for ourselves and other people, express in particular whether we are in favour of that person, or not. We utilize a complete descriptive set of behaviours and characteristics on the positive side as well as a complete descriptive set of behaviours and characteristics on the negative side. But we do hold the differences between those two sets for actual behavioural differences, which they are not. Those differences just and only exist in our heads. The only effect they have on us, is that they do consolidate and stabilize our attitude to the judged persons in question. In that way these double judgement sets obscure reality from our sober perception and what in fact happens is that primordial social reflexes of attraction and repulsion are consolidated and stabilized by the colouring in of our cognitive social world, protecting them from intelligent investigation and understanding.

In summary, the positive - negative colouring in of judgements and assessments of behaviour, which we could label as the Good versus Bad dimension, just serves to subjectively colour our perception of behaviour and is thus merely a tool of directing our own reactions on behaviour. Instead of helping to sort out reality, it serves to mask reality and blocks a clean and sober understanding of the behaviours observed. In other words, the evidently most important tool we humans utilize for assessing our own and each other’s behaviour is a tool that primarily serves for enforcing our blindness for behaviour. Apparently, it evolutionarily pays off for us humans to spend a major part of our intellectual activity and our energy on this blinding tool of mystification and delusion. (For a further elucidation and scientific analysis of the role of this Good-Bad dimension in the overall system of the perception of personality differences, see: Good and Bad, an illusory dimension as the cornerstone of human personality)

The tale of Adam and Eve, the result of eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

✰✰ <level 2> In spite of needing to maximize confusion in their carriers about the carrier's own behaviour(al impulses), a number of great religions harbour the tale of Adam and Eve, who were thrown out of paradise after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

This tale is in fact a very adequate summary of what has been delineated in the pages above and what is the most basic condition of mankind. What the tale summarizes is what happened since the beginning of the agricultural revolution, when meme-level power structures took over the lead in human evolution and we humans had to get adapted to the basic requirements of such power structures, the "N-needs". From that point in time on, we humans started to suffer from the friction between our primordial P-feelings and the newly imposed N-needs (for more details about "P-feelings" and "N-needs" see here). The N-needs brought with them the illusory, but very strong notions about "good" and "evil", growing on the tree of the tale. What followed was ever more confusion and stress and a massive spreading of fear and neuroticism, gradually becoming the norm, rather than the exception. In short, humanity fell out of Eden, out of Paradise. The implication was not so much a falling away from intelligent thinking. The superior intelligence of Homo sapiens had already been blocked against tampering with the own behaviour for hundreds of thousands of years. Those specific awareness blocks already were in place in a relatively organic and harmonious way. No, when the agricultural revolution started it was rather a process of being drowned ever further into swamps of fear, intimidation and organized lies. Escaping from mass neuroticism became ever more difficult. Humanity fell out of Eden in a very real sense. In a very real sense life has become hell for us since that time.

So, on the one hand these great religions refer to and harbour the feeling deep within that something has gone tremendously wrong and that there is potentially available a very different option in our human behavioural repertoire of possibilities, an option that we lost somewhere in our history.

On the other hand the religions tell us that the loss of that much more pleasant option has been our own fault, is due to our own failure, thus imposing a very deep feeling of guilt into our hearts and minds.

Understanding the above, it shall be clear that putting the blame on us humans is very far from the truth indeed. As we pointed out elsewhere on this Wiki, the emergence of the meme-level power structures taking over the evolutionary lead, was unavoidable, once the evolution of human intelligence had reached a certain level. It was unavoidable and a consequence, to happen sooner or later, of the very existence of an intelligence of that level. So, there never has been, nor could there exist, any responsibility on our side for any of this happening. So, putting this particular blame for being thrown out of Eden on our necks, is just one - but a very powerful one - example of how power structures keep us subdued in neurotic misery, how they keep us malleable and predictable carriers of the power structure's memes in question. This illustrates quite clearly how parts of the truth of our situation are absorbed in an intricate system of fairy tales and lies and are converted into a tool of confusion and enslavement rather than being used as tools for bringing truth and understanding.

Meer circumplex-plaatjes er in zetten.

Ergens de figuur met het periodiek systeem van pers.heids dimensies er in zetten (= #13)

Kouwer citeren en aangeven wat wél en wat niet imaginair is. Een belangrijk deel, de 1e hoofdcomponent, is wél imaginair. De rest is gewoon feitelijk gedragsbeschrijvend. Homo sapiens stopt de meeste energie in imaginaire deel. Zó belangrijk is Blindness en het ongehinderd functioneren van de alpha - bèta - omega-reflexen.