Over the past 6,000 years a pattern of thought and action has been firmly established within human consciousness: fighting for power, influence, and resources.
Throughout history, in all cultures, individuals and groups who have gained technological/military superiority have used it to advance their influence and power at the expense of everyone else. The enlightened ones have been few and far between. Human beings have been playing a zero-sum game with each other for millennia.
This pattern of thought and action has been so firmly established that it has grown to monstrous proportions. It has resulted in a powerful, almost overwhelming vibration or resonance within human consciousness. It is so bad that we call it “human nature”: we say that the natural tendency for all human beings is to fight, not cooperate.
The easiest explanation for this behavior is that primitive man was constantly fighting the environment to survive, which naturally led to a mindset of struggle and competition.
However, as life has become easier over the past two centuries we have actually seen an increase in war and conflict. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, and the 21st isn’t setting records for good behavior.
It’s as if there is a source of antisocial-ness and conflict embedded in the psyche of humanity.
Why has fighting and conflict continued its dominance in human and international relationships?
The mindset of a psychopath aligns perfectly with the advancement of personal influence and power at the expense of others. Let’s take a look at definition 2 of a psychopath in the American Heritage dictionary:
“A person with a personality disorder indicated by a pattern of lying, cunning, manipulating, glibness, exploiting, heedlessness, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, sexual promiscuity, low self-control, disregard for morality, lack of acceptance of responsibility, callousness, and lack of empathy and remorse. Such an individual may be especially prone to violent and criminal offenses.”
Here we have “human nature” in its grossest and crudest form. I was a bit shocked when I read this definition, but then I thought about the people who engage in child trafficking, pedophilia, Satanic Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (MKULTRA), drug running, and arms trafficking. Reading the books of Brice Taylor and Cathy O’Brien document the activities of the psychopath, which cover every word of the above dictionary definition.
One or two of these traits are found in many people; that doesn’t make them psychopaths. However, the psychopath has most of them, particularly a lack of empathy and remorse, a disregard for morality or professional ethics, and a lack of responsibility.
Are psychopaths born or made?
Are psychopaths born with such twisted personalities, or are they the product of their environment? A little child who is sexually abused in the way described in the Taylor and O’Brien books may indeed be transformed into a psychopath. But if psychopaths are made in this way, why did these two women seek recovery and attain full integration of their personality?
A psychopath feels no need to do this, which suggests that 4% or 5% of the human population may simply be born with psychopathic personalities. (See “Prevalence of Psychopathy in the General Adult Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” García et al., Frontiers in Psychology, August 5, 2021, and Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare.)
If that is the case it would explain why, after 6,000 years of the present civilization, we still have not achieved social harmony.
My guess is that psychopaths somehow key-in to the dominant resonance of self-interest within the human psyche, and run with it. Paradoxically, it may be that the psychopath is more sensitive and intuitive than the rest of us, being able to pick up on the thoughts within mass consciousness. In this way – because psychopaths resonate to selfish and destructive behavior – these folks continue to enhance that resonance within the Human Thought Space, generation after generation. Their presence in any organization or group inevitably leads to confrontation and instability.
SMH. How can a person be born with such a degraded personality?
It is difficult for me personally to believe that a certain percentage of the human race is born with a tendency to psychopathy. Look into the eyes of any baby and tell me that kid is a psychopath. I won’t believe it. Perhaps there is another explanation for psychopathy, or at least a remedy we can use to improve human nature.
What if human nature is affected by how we define ourselves as human beings?
In a way, this is obvious. If a person is constantly told he or she is stupid, they will begin to think this way and will do stupid things and have low self esteem. (Either that or they will rebel and become an anger case. Both are dysfunctional.)
Perhaps human behavior doesn’t change because we have a wrong definition of what a human being is, and what human consciousness is. Some people even say that “human nature” cannot be changed.
I decided to consult two reputable sources and looked up human nature on the Encyclopedia Britannica site, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site.
Brittanica said this:
“A broader problem [of defining human nature] is that of determining which ostensibly fundamental human dispositions and traits are natural and which are the result of some form of learning or socialization. Recent research in genetics, evolutionary biology, and cultural anthropology suggests that there is a complex interaction between genetically inherited factors and developmental and social factors. Basic drives shared with other primates are related to food, sex, security, play, and social status. Language use by humans is now generally recognized as genetically enabled, though the acquisition of any specific language also requires appropriate environmental stimuli. Some common behavioral differences between genders (e.g., regarding aggression) also appear to have a genetic basis, as does sexual orientation.”
Wow. This definition is typical of modern attitudes toward human beings, who are regarded as walking expressions of genes. The genes a person inherits are completely out of their control, of course, which turns the human being into a mindless biological meat robot.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is even more confused about human nature:
“Alongside such varying and frequently conflicting normative uses of the expression “human nature”, there are serious disagreements concerning the concept’s content and explanatory significance—the starkest being whether the expression “human nature” refers to anything at all. Some reasons given for saying there is no human nature are anthropological, grounded in views concerning the relationship between natural and cultural features of human life. Other reasons given are biological, deriving from the character of the human species as, like other species, an essentially historical product of evolution.”
The definitions of consciousness on these two sites are even more confused, so I won’t bother listing them. For kicks I looked up “consciousness” on Wikipedia, the home of Orthodoxy. It says,
“its [consciousness] complex nature has led to extensive explanations, analyses, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians for millennia. There is no consensus on what exactly needs to be studied, or even if consciousness can be considered a scientific concept. ”
With understanding of human nature and consciousness this muddled, is it any wonder our societies are breaking down?
Incredibly, after 6,000 years, we as a species still don’t know what a human being is.
With the above in mind, let’s take a stab at defining human nature and consciousness in a simpler, clearer, and more positive way.
The human being as a spiritual/physical meld
1) Human nature originates within the inherent nature of consciousness.
2) Consciousness exists independently of physical bodies.
3) Therefore, human consciousness does not come forth from, or originate in, the brain. When you die you are not dead; self-awareness continues.
4) Consciousness is self-awareness. More precisely, consciousness is the awareness of being aware. This definition is self-reflexive. It mirrors the process of perception, understanding what has been observed, and gaining wisdom and experience from what has been observed.
5) Human consciousness is a temporary melding of a non-physical personality with a physical body.
6) The degree of self-awareness distinguishes the depth of consciousness and the scope of awareness and perception.
7) Physical lifetimes separate consciousness into physical units via incarnation and create a being + body physical entity called the human being. Every human being experiences the world from different coordinates at all times, which leads to different perspectives. In this way, lifetime after lifetime, personalities are formed from each human being’s unique experiences.
Corollary: These unique personalities continue after death and expand in Knowledge during subsequent lifetimes.
8) Human consciousness (being + body) is finite but the conscious personality is immortal.
Corollary: Consciousness decreases entropy in the world by creating order from chaos in the physical universe. In other words, consciousness is not only the animating principle, but the organizing principle.
9) The ultimate purpose of an arc of physical lifetimes is to recognize that a greater reality exists outside the five senses of the body, and to discover the being’s inherent connection to Source/God.
These definitions expand the nature of a human being beyond the material, elevating people to divine creations within the material world.
The psychopath is the bent gear in the system.
Psychopaths can act to increase chaos if it causes harm to others. “Revolutionaries,” anarchists, and those who knowingly promote or commit violent acts with intent to harm (not self-defense) are psychopaths. Psychopaths also favor rigid, centralized control systems such as Global Governance. In this way they increase their own power and influence while strangling the life and creativity out of society.
Will redefining human consciousness magically remedy the human condition?
Who knows? We have never tried defining what a human being is in this way, on a whole-species basis. Presently, “authorities” define a human being as a walking meat-blob of gene expressions and firing neurons. This is a definition a psychopath might come up with!
What if we started teaching our children that they are immortal personalities and that when the body dies they continue on? Children are recently incarnated. They will understand this instinctively, unless someone beats it out of them. (If there is any resistance to this idea from a small child, that could be evidence for the “born a psychopath” theory.)
Perhaps our primitive human nature hasn’t matured because we teach our kids about fear, and that forever death is the ultimate end of every human being. That’s pretty scary and must create an inner tension, even in a child.
My friend Maurice Turmel has written a book about his bad experiences with religion and how he personally resolved them. Installing control systems in religion is the ultimate betrayal of a human being, for religion is supposed to connect a person to God, the Creative Source.
What sort of person would try to mess up a practice associated with finding enlightenment and God?
A psychopath, of course.
By ignoring the animating/spiritual component, the inherent divine nature of human beings and the continuity of consciousness is denied. This causes an inner tension throughout life, even if it is not consciously recognized.
Final thoughts
● We can characterize the nature of consciousness by saying that it is continuous and unbroken.
● Human nature reflects what human beings think of themselves. Elevating what we think of ourselves – re-defining what a human being is – may help to propel us to a higher state of consciousness and mitigate our tendency to fight and kill each other.
● The troubling reality that a certain percentage of people are antisocial or psychopathic may be remedied by adopting a new view of ourselves that postulates human consciousness as a meld between a physical body and an immortal, non-physical personality. If all endings are happy endings – that is, no matter how bad it gets the self-awareness of a person continues after the body takes it last breath – then the anxiety level of individuals about life will decrease, and their comfort level in life will increase.
● If a human being can be born with a psychopathic personality, realizing peace on earth may be a much harder but not impossible task.
NEXT: A Bigger Picture explanation for psychopathy.
