Milwaukee Renaissance

It was explained in preceding sections that the genetic refinement of integration
process requires that each reproducing individual remain a separate individual struggling,
competing and fighting selfishly for its own reproduction. It was emphasised that even
though, as a result of this integrative limitation, there are so many individual organisms
competing and fighting for survival in nature, such behaviour is not the main characteristic
of existence, rather behaving integratively is; it is just that genetic refinement can’t, as
a rule, overcome this need for the reproducing individual to always remain a separate,
selectable individual fighting selfishly for its own reproduction. It is an integrative
limitation of genetics that there has always to be survival benefits to the reproducing
individual for it to develop a particular behaviour.

With the human condition understood and integrative meaning able to be
acknowledged this integrative limitation of the selfishness of genetic refinement can at
last be acknowledged. However, in the situation that has existed where understanding of
the human condition hadn’t been found and there was a very great need to contrive some
excuse for our upset, divisive competitive, aggressive and selfish condition, it was this fact
that genetically the reproducing individual has to carry on as a separate individual fighting
selfishly for its own reproduction that provided the means to falsely justify our species’
upset behaviour. All we had to say was our competitive, aggressive and selfish behaviour
‘is only natural because, after all, we are only animals and animals are always competing
with each other, fighting and killing one another. Animals are, as Tennyson said, “red in
tooth and claw”—so that’s why we are’.

With the development of science this original misrepresentation of what is going on
in nature, namely the integration of matter, was given an equally erroneous biological
basis. It was referred to as Social Darwinism, the corruption of Charles Darwin’s theory of
natural selection as being concerned with ‘the survival of the fittest’. As emphasised, the
real concern or objective of genetic refinement, or ‘natural selection’ as Darwin originally
termed the concept in his 1859 book The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
was the integration or development of order of matter. It was Darwin’s associates, Herbert
Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace, who persuaded him to replace the term ‘natural
selection’ (as used in the first editions of this great book) with the term ‘survival of the
fittest’. They argued the term ‘natural selection’ could be interpreted as implying the
involvement of a personal selector. Darwin’s friend and great defender, Thomas Huxley,
called it an ‘unlucky substitution’ (Charles Darwin, Sir Gavin de Beer, 1963, p.178 of 290) and from the
perspective of science needing to avoid as much denial/ dishonesty as possible it certainly
was. While a personal, interventionist, ‘creationist’, ‘designing’ God was not involved,
God in the form of an integrative purpose to existence was. While Darwin’s idea of natural
selection did not recognise the involvement of integrative purpose in change, the concept
of natural selection did not preclude it. Natural selection simply recognised that some
varieties of a species reproduced more than others. Whether or not those that reproduced
more could be viewed as winners, as being ‘fitter’ or more worthwhile or ‘better’ than
others, was not decided. With integrative meaning acknowledged, it can be seen that
‘losing’ in the sense of not reproducing can be consistent with integration. Understanding
that unconditional selflessness or love is the theme of existence, the glue that holds wholes
together, we can see that unconditionally selfless behaviour, where an individual gives
their life for the maintenance of the larger whole, and as a result does not reproduce, can
be very meaningful, a fitter, ‘better’ way of behaving. Social Darwinism’s ‘survival of the
fittest’ concept however said that those who reproduced more than others were ‘fitter’, that
the object of existence was to survive, that the only reason a behaviour will develop is if it
has survival value—in effect that selfishness is the fundamental characteristic of life, the
natural way of existence.

While this was a radical misrepresentation of Darwin’s original presentation of his
concept of natural selection, for upset competitive, aggressive and selfish humans it was a
valuable misrepresentation of the natural world because if selfishness is all that’s going on
in the natural world then that is the reason we are selfish, and have needed to be selfish. In
this false but useful representation of living in a selfish world, cooperative, selfless, loving
moral values become entirely human inventions. They become values that if we want
to aspire to because, independent of biological reality, we have, for religion-inspired or
culture-inspired or other supposedly non-biological reasons, decided they are values that
are to be attained then we are going to have to achieve them by repressing our supposed
natural, biological, selfishness-driven original instinctive state. Instead of any suggestion
that our original instinctive state was to living in an utterly integrated, unconditionally
selfless, harmonious, gentle, idyllic, ‘Garden of Eden’, ‘Golden Age’, it was asserted that
we were once selfish, competitive and aggressive ‘wild’, ‘fierce’, ‘primitive’, ‘savage’,
‘barbarian’ ‘brutes’ and ‘beasts’ like the supposed rest of nature and that the task of being
a human was to learn to contain this dreadful biological heritage. This scientific denial and
evasion of the truths of integrative meaning, of our fabulous integrated past and of the true
nature of our unconditional-selflessness-orientated moral sense was diabolically dishonest
but at the same time necessary—because, as emphasised, having to face those truths
would make our task of having to live with our unexplained corrupted reality suicidally
depressing.

While this ‘selfishness-is-natural’ excuse was useful in relieving the insecurity of
our human condition, there was always in the background an awareness that there were
situations in nature that seemed to contradict this idea that selfishness is universal. As
explained in the previous section, while most of nature is, ‘red in tooth and claw’—the
members of most species compete and fight with each other for food, space, shelter
and a mate—not all situations in nature are characterised by selfish competition and
aggression. When King Solomon said ‘Go to the ant…consider its ways and be wise’ (Proverbs
6:6), he was referring to the industry of ants but any observation of ants will reveal that
that industry is based on extraordinarily selfless dedication by each ant to the greater good
of the colony. There are situations in nature, such as in social ant and bee colonies, where
there is remarkable selfless cooperation and while the lessons of such cooperation-based
industry can make us ‘wise’ it can also confront and expose us terribly with the dilemma
of our upset, divisive competitive, aggressive and selfish human condition. The truth
is the selfless behaviour of ants and bees in their remarkably selfless, cooperative and
harmonious colonies has long been a confronting and exposing sore point for humans.
It was Edward O. Wilson, who, after a life-long study of ants, finally got the
confronting ant and bee monkey off our back. In his famous 1975 book Sociobiology:
The New Synthesis, Wilson explained that while individual ants—and this also applies to
social bees—appear to be behaving unconditionally selflessly they are, as was explained
in the previous section, each behaving selfishly, because, by selflessly looking after their
colony and its queen who carries the genes for their existence, they are indirectly selfishly
ensuring the reproduction of their own genes. In so-called ‘kin selection’, individuals of
some species have also developed the ability to behave selflessly towards other related
members because by fostering them they are in effect fostering the reproduction of their
own genes that their relatives share. The point Wilson was making is that while reciprocity
involves selflessness, it is actually a subtle form of selfishness—it is overall selfish
behaviour. The obvious reason Sociobiology became such a famous text is that the selfish
reciprocity explanation put forward in it could be used to dismiss any selfless behaviour
in nature—including selfless behaviour in humans—as nothing more than a variety of the
selfishness that was said to be characteristic of all of nature. In fact in Sociobiology Wilson
claimed his work to be ‘the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior…including
man’ (p.4). The human-condition-relieving, selfishness-is-all-that-is-occurring-in-nature
account had supposedly been reconfirmed.

Our ‘awe’ inspiring, as Kant described it, marvellously unconditionally selfless,
truly altruistic, integrative meaning/ love/ God-representing moral grandeur was being
dismissed as nothing more than a subtle-form-of-selfishness. While such an account was
immensely guilt-relieving for upset humans it amounted to an all-out assault on the truth
about the very nature of our instinctive self or soul. Only a year after Sociobiology was
published Oxford University-based zoologist Richard Dawkins joined the assault. In his
1976 book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins stated that, ‘We [humans] are survival machines—robot
vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes [p.v of 352] …we,
and all other animals, are machines created by our genes [p.2] …we are born selfish [p.3]’ (1976 edn).
Emboldened, Wilson published another book in 1978, provocatively titled On Human
Nature, which focussed more directly upon the supposed ability to explain (actually to
dismiss) our moral sense as nothing but a subtle form of selfishness, saying ‘Morality has no
other demonstrable ultimate function’ other than to ensure ‘human genetic material…will be kept
intact’ (p.167).

It wasn’t long before this particular study of social behaviour was given a title:
‘Evolutionary Psychology’. While this term recognises the fact that genes can and do
select for cognitive brain structure like they select for any other body structure, there was
also an inference that reciprocity’s ability to explain all acts of selflessness, including
humans’, meant that biology could now explain humans’ psychological state, our human
condition no less. Basically, if integrative meaning doesn’t exist and change is random
then there is no ‘moral’, ‘ethical’, ‘right’-versus-’wrong’ ideal state, moreover if selfless
behaviour is not to do with creating some noble, al-true-istic, Godly, integrative state
but rather nothing more than selfish survival behaviour, like supposedly all behaviour in
nature, then there is no dilemma of the human condition to have to face. In 1994 science
writer Robert Wright published a book introducing this new field of study, with another
provocative title, The Moral Animal—Why we are the way we are: The new science of
evolutionary psychology. Using reciprocity’s supposed ability to explain our morality,
Wright wrote that, ‘What is in our genes’ interests is what seems “right”—morally right, objectively
right, whatever sort of rightness is in order’ (p.325 of 467) and ‘In short: “moral guidance” is a
euphemism’ (p.216).

In 1998, only a few years after Wright’s book was published, Wilson published another
book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, in which he took the art of denial to its
absolute extremity, suggesting Evolutionary Psychology’s alleged ability to explain the
moral aspects of humans meant biology and philosophy, the sciences and the humanities,
indeed science and religion, basically reality and ideality (ideality now dismissed as just a
‘euphemism’), the dilemma of the human condition no less, could at last be solved (actually
not ‘solved’ but eliminated as biologically unfounded). He spoke of ‘the attempted linkage
of the sciences and humanities…of consilience, literally a “jumping together” of knowledge…to create
a common groundwork of explanation’ (p.6 of 374), and went so far as to claim, ‘The strongest
appeal of consilience is…the value of understanding the human condition with a higher degree
of certainty’ (p.7). An extract from Consilience, published in the prestigious journal The
Atlantic Monthly (Apr. 1998), in an article boldly titled The Biological Basis of Morality,
featured this introduction: ‘Philosophers and theologians have almost always conceived of moral
instincts as being transcendent or God-given. Is it possible, though, that ethical reasoning derives
not from outside but from our very nature as evolving material creatures?’ Just how bold Wilson
was in his claim to have made sense of the philosophical, spiritual and religious aspect of
human life using reciprocity is illustrated by one of the headings used in the extract, ‘The
Origins of Religion’. Religions have been the custodians—albeit using abstract, metaphysical
terms—of integrative meaning represented by the concept of ‘God’, of the existence of our
‘Garden of Eden’ innocent integrated past and its representation in us of our moral ‘soul’,
and of our corrupted ‘fallen’, human-condition-afflicted, ‘sinful’ present state. These truths
certainly can be explained biologically without invoking a ‘transcendent’, interventionalist,
‘creationist’, ‘intelligently-designing’ God, as has been done in this book; as can the
deeper issue of ‘the human condition’, the dilemma of the existence of good and evil in the
human make-up, as has also been biologically explained in this book, however to use
biological lies to ‘explain’ them and by so doing ‘produce’ the reconciliation or ‘consilience’
of science and religion is an act of diabolical dishonesty, almost the ultimate denial and
assault on truth. Of course, in terms of needing to avoid the scientific demystification of
God and of what our soul actually is and of the true nature of our moral sense, the essential
achievement of Wilson’s work was that he seemingly provided a way to deny these truths.
Indeed Wilson made his overall point unequivocally when he said in Consilience: ‘[Jean-
Jacques] Rousseau claimed, [that humanity] was originally a race of noble savages in a peaceful state
of nature, who were later corrupted…[but what] Rousseau invented [was] a stunningly inaccurate
form of anthropology’ (p.37). It has been said that the most forceful and thus effective lie is
the lie that is the complete opposite of the truth. This statement by Wilson is just such an
all-out, no-holds-barred, unrestrained, outrageous reverse-of-the-truth lie.
Understandably a backlash developed against this extreme selfishness-justifying,
right-wing dismissal and denigration of our moral instincts. Randolph Nesse, Professor of
Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Michigan, for example said: ‘The discovery
that tendencies to altruism are shaped by benefits to genes is one of the most disturbing in the history
of science. When I first grasped it, I slept badly for many nights, trying to find some alternative that
did not so roughly challenge my sense of good and evil. Understanding this discovery can undermine
commitment to morality—it seems silly to restrain oneself if moral behavior is just another strategy
for advancing the interests of one’s genes’ (The Origins of Virtue, Matt Ridley, 1996, p.126 of 295).
As a result of this backlash, selflessness-emphasising left-wing versions of the
reciprocity explanation for our moral sense emerged. In his 1999 book Death, Hope
and Sex, biologist James Chisholm for example argued that ‘human…moral sentiments…
evolve [from]…reproductive strategies [ways of increasing your chances of reproducing your
genes]…[that] value equality [since it can be shown that] inequality is a major source of risk and
uncertainty’ (p.xi, p.xii of 296). Again, in a similar fashion to Wilson but this time from a leftwing
cooperation-and-compassion-emphasising viewpoint, Chisholm brazenly proclaimed
the greater significance he saw in his theory when he said, ‘the view of human nature as a
manifestation of our reproductive strategies…says it is rational to be compassionate, and that can help
us ameliorate our all-too-human condition’ (p.xi).

Basically Wilson, Dawkins and Wright chose to emphasise the benefit to the
individual from acts of reciprocity—’sure you can give to others but only do it in order
to receive a reward for yourself’—while the emphasis by Chisholm and his associates in
the left-wing camp was on reciprocity’s benefit to the group—’you give to others so that
society is maintained however because of the nature of the reciprocity tool that you have
to employ there unavoidably has to also be a benefit for yourself’. One was individualistic
and the other socialistic in emphasis.

The problem was both these ways of interpreting and explaining our moral sense
were completely deficient, simply because reciprocity could never explain the altruism
of humans’ unique moral sense. Again, altruism means unconditional selflessness and
reciprocal acts of selflessness are not unconditional. The truth is reciprocity failed to
even begin to explain the unconditionally selfless, truly altruistic, genuinely loving and
compassionate, all-sensitive, ‘awe’ inspiring, wonderful moral sense in humans. If we were
behaving selflessly because it was going to selfishly aid our own chances of reproducing,
as Chisholm for example suggested, our whole being would have known that and we could
not and would not have been able to build the profound appreciation of unconditional
selflessness or love that is our moral sense and conscience. We all know, if we are honest
about it, that our conscience expects our treatment of all humans, indeed our treatment
of all living things and even of the Earth itself, to be caring, kind and loving. In fact
such Machiavellian behaviour as Chisholm described so offends our conscience that that
response in us alone is evidence enough of just how strong and authentic our moral sense
is. In the 2001 TV documentary series Testing God, in the part titled Darwin and the Divine
which focused upon these prevailing biological ‘explanations’ of humans’ moral sense,
Reverend Martha Overall from the South Bronx in the USA was seeking to make this point
about the immense deficiency of such accounts when she said they are ‘very superficial…
the real truth lies in the goodness in the hearts of people, especially the hearts of…children [and
those]…who will go out and save somebody who is homeless and drunk and addicted…that kind
of relationship to another human being on the basis of nothing more than their humanity and their
basic goodness, one to another, is far more truthful than a bunch of numbers’. A ‘bunch of numbers’,
scientific evaluation, is fine but it had to relate to the issue and equate with the overall
evidence to be true and reciprocity doesn’t begin to explain our ‘awe’ inspiring moral sense
or relate one little bit to our soul’s memory and awareness of a ‘Garden of Eden’, ‘Golden
Age’ in our past and potential for the future.

While the left-wing selflessness-emphasising ‘explanation’ for our moral sense
made its supporters feel good for appearing to support ideality and for appearing to not
be going along with the selfishness-emphasising right-wing interpretation of our moral
sense, its selflessness-emphasising version was actually more dishonest and deceitful
than the selfishness-emphasising account. While selflessness and compassion were being
supported by the likes of Chisholm, the truth of an utterly cooperative, al-true-istic, souland-
morality-creating ideal past for humans and the issue it raised of our present corrupted
human condition were not at all being acknowledged or engaged by the reciprocity
explanation for our moral sense. In fact these truths were still being ardently evaded.
What was actually occurring was even more dishonest than Wilson, Dawkins and Wright’s
undisguised denial of the truth of our unconditionally selfless soul, because to disguise
lying as truth is so much more sinister. Indeed the deceitful left-wing, pseudo idealistic
art of only mimicking the truth becomes an outrage when it is suggested, as Chisholm
did, that such deceit can help ‘ameliorate’ our ‘human condition’ when the human condition
is precisely the problem of lying which was being greatly added to, not ameliorated. This
left-wing art of only mimicking the truth and the very great danger of doing that will be
explained at length in the latter half of this book. There it will be revealed that pseudo
idealism was the most sophisticated form of lying to ever have been developed; it took the
art of lying to the maximum, which means it took humanity the furthest possible distance
away from the truth and thus any chance of achieving its freedom from the human
condition.

The problem the left-wing emphasis on selfless idealism created for the right
wing camp was how could selfishness be upheld. Unsurprisingly enough, E.O. Wilson
again came to the rescue. The May 2006 edition of National Geographic featured an
interview with Wilson in which he talked about an impending book he and zoologist Bert
Hölldobler are writing, titled The Superorganism. It was explained in the previous section
that negative entropy was able to integrate single-celled organisms into multicellular
organisms—as well as some smaller multicellular organisms such as bees and ants
into the next larger whole of integrated multicellular organisms—by elaborating the
reproducing individual. It was explained that the limitation of the genetic mechanism
or tool for integrating matter was that the reproducing individual always had to remain
independent fighting for its own reproduction and that one way to integrate more matter
without violating this necessary integrity of the reproducing individual was to elaborate or
enlarge it. It was further explained that this integrative mechanism couldn’t be employed
to integrate organisms that were large in relation to their environment, such as humans,
because it resulted in too great a loss of variability. In the National Geographic article
Wilson acknowledged that for multicellular organisms ‘The Superorganism…colony is the
next level of biological organization’ and then, truthfully enough, in explaining how they
developed, first referred to Darwin’s idea of ‘group selection’ where ‘What counts is the group,
and that [for example] worker ants are just part of the colony, just an extension of the queen. Her
heredity is what matters. If she is producing separate organisms that serve her purpose, then all
together, these colonies can prevail over solitary individuals’; he then elaborated saying, ‘The
colony, by group selection, has developed traits that could not be possible otherwise—communication,
the caste system, cooperative behavior. It’s a unit of activity and of evolution. One colony against
another is what’s being selected. This happens to be close to Darwin’s idea but in modern genetic
terms. It has to do with defense against enemies. Naturalists have discovered more and more groups
that have altruistic workers and soldiers—ants, termites, certain beetles, shrimp, and even a mammal,
the naked mole rat’. After giving this explanation of how ant colonies developed and
behaved Wilson then however added that we humans are ‘the one highly social vertebrate
with altruism and high levels of division of labor, though not sterility, unless you want to throw in the
priestly caste—which you might. We’re the one species that has reached this level, and we dominate…
And ants are constantly at war. Well, so are we!…It may turn out that highly evolved societies with
this level of altruism tend strongly to divide into groups that then fight against each other. We humans
are constantly at war and have been since prehistory’. So, according to Wilson, we now accept
that we humans are biologically capable of being cooperative and even altruistic but
only in the cause of behaving extremely selfishly and competitively as groups. The truth
is that, firstly, being large animals we weren’t able to employ the device of elaborating
the reproducing individual, so from that point alone we couldn’t have become integrated
the way ants have. Secondly, the ‘altruistic’ behaviour in these ‘superorganisms’ is not the
real, unconditionally selfless altruism that, as will shortly be explained, characterises our
moral sense. And thirdly, our current competitive, aggressive and selfish behaviour is
psychologically not biologically derived; it is a consciously based, insecure, upsetting,
frustrating, depressing struggle we humans have with the world, in fact with our
instinctive self. Our divisive behaviour is the result of a psychologically upset state, which
we all intuitively know is the case if we are prepared to be honest. Our condition is a result
of a psychological dilemma and insecurity. It is a psychosis. Ants aren’t struggling with
a psychosis; they aren’t psychologically upset creatures like humans. Their situation is
nothing at all like ours.

Blaming the human condition on genetic opportunism is ridiculously transparently
false, but then again we had to find some excuse for our condition while we couldn’t
explain it. The great danger however of taking the art of denial to such extremes as
Wilson and Chisholm have is that it threatened to hide humanity forever from any truth
and thus any chance of ever finding the all-important liberating understanding of our
human condition—and, as has been emphasised, being an issue about behaviour the
human condition was ultimately the responsibility of biologists to understand and by so
doing ameliorate. Wilson did acknowledge this when he said in Consilience that, ‘The
human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences’ (p.298 of 374), but how
outrageously deceitful was it for him to say this when he is clearly the absolute lord
of lying, the master of keeping humanity away from any truth and thus any chance of
finding insight into the human condition. The understanding of the human condition that
has been presented in this book had to be found by resisting at every turn the almost
overwhelming tidal wave of biological denial and dishonesty now flooding the world,
and it was only because of a rare few who maintained any biological integrity, such as
Laurens van der Post, Arthur Koestler and Eugéne Marais, that all the denial was able
to be stood up to and the dignifying understanding of our condition put together. As an
example of how much resistance I have met in my personal journey to address the issue
of the human condition, in December 1983 I went to London and personally submitted an
8,000 word summary of what was to become my first book, Free: The End of The Human
Condition, to John Maddox, the then editor of Nature magazine, considered at the time
the leading science journal in the world, and also to Colin Tudge, the then Features Editor
of New Scientist magazine. Both declined to publish the article, with Maddox saying to
me twice that the concept of integrative meaning arising from negative entropy ‘is wrong’
(transcript of 15 Dec. 1983 meeting with Maddox). Maddox, now Sir John Maddox, wouldn’t allow
the argument to progress to ‘base one’, to ‘get off the ground’. Initially Nature magazine
wouldn’t even accept my submission (their reference G-12057 JM/MS can be read at <www.
humancondition.info/nature>). It was only after I wrote an offended letter of protest saying
I had come ‘half way around the world to see you’ and I felt like ‘a piece of mud that had been
scrapped off on your doorstep’ that Maddox agreed to see me. In hindsight I am so immensely
proud that with virtually no structural support around or behind me I took the truth from
out in the back country in Australia across the world right into the heart of the den of
denial which has a massive infrastructure of support spanning the globe and stood my
ground there against the head dragon of denial.

In a more recent example of how great the tidal wave of biological denial is, 110
copies of The Human Condition Documentary Proposal, containing all of the fully
accountable biological synthesis that is being presented in this book, were sent by the all precious
group of supporters this information has now to all the relevant editors, writers
and departments at National Geographic and the National Geographic Society before the
interview with Wilson referred to above took place and was published and yet pretty well
no interest in it at all was expressed by those people at National Geographic.
What has been encouraging is that the Documentary Proposal has, along with
numerous angry, dismissive responses, received over 100 endorsements from many of the
world’s leading scientists and thinkers, including physicist Stephen Hawking and Noble
laureate Charles H. Townes. The truth is on its way. As Teilhard de Chardin said, ‘the
Truth has to appear only once…for it to be impossible for anything ever to prevent it from spreading
universally and setting everything ablaze’ (Let Me Explain, 1966; trs René Hague & others, 1970, p.159 of 189).
Soon all the gremlins of dishonesty, as necessary as they have been, will crawl away into
their holes forever and all the suffering from the effects of our human condition in the
world will be brought to an end.

Incidentally, in the National Geographic interview Wilson says he has ‘another book in
progress…called The Creation, and its subtitle is A Meeting of Science and Religion [in which] I take
a very strong stance against the mingling of religion and science’. As has already been explained,
the way science coped with the great truths contained in religion of integrative meaning
represented by the concept of ‘God’, of the existence of our ‘Garden of Eden’ innocent
integrated past and its representation in us of our moral ‘soul’, and of our corrupted
‘fallen’, human-condition-afflicted, ‘sinful’ present state, was to simply maintain that
religion is totally unrelated to science. The truth of the matter is, as both Nobel and
Templeton Prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes has said, ‘For they [religion and
science] both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with
the same substance. As we understand more in each realm, the two must grow together…converge
they must’ (The Convergence of Science and Religion, Zygon, Vol.1 No.3, 1966).
(Note, Part 2 of the Documentary Proposal also presents analysis of the history of
biological denial.)

17. How our primate ancestors became fully integrated and we
acquired our unconditionally selfless moral sense

It was explained in Section 14, ‘The genetic tool for integrating matter’, that
negative entropy, or ‘God’ if we are to personify the integrative process, was unable to
use the device of elaborating the reproducing individual to achieve the integration of
large multicellular organisms. That left the question, had the most amount of order in
the developing hierarchy of the integration of matter on Earth finally been arrived at? In
answering this question it was said that negative entropy found one way to continue the
integrative process, and that it was our primate forebears who were able to utilise it. It
will now be explained how it was that our distant ancestors became an unconditionally
selflessly behaved, fully integrated species, the instinctive memory of which is our ‘awe’-
inspiring, as Kant described it, moral sense.

It was explained in Section 14 that for the coming together or integration of parts
into a larger whole it is vital that all the member parts consider the maintenance of the
whole above the maintenance of themselves. For integration to occur unconditionally
selfless behaviour was necessary. It was further explained that as a tool for integrating
matter genetics was limited in that each reproducing individual had to always remain
selectable and thus independent, selfishly competing for its own survival. This meant
it was normally impossible for reproducing individuals to develop the unconditionally
selfless, self-sacrificing traits needed to bring together or integrate reproducing individuals
into a larger whole. While this integrative limitation of genes having to always selfishly
ensure their own reproduction was the normal situation, negative entropy did find one way
to overcome it. That way was through nurturing—a mother animal’s maternal instinct to
care for her offspring. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates that it was this nurturing path to
integration that our ape ancestors took.

The following will explain how nurturing could develop the unconditionally
selfless behaviour needed for the integration of reproducing individuals. Genetic traits
for nurturing are selfish (which, as just stated, genetic traits normally have to be), for
through a mother’s nurturing and fostering of her offspring who carry her genes the
mother’s genetic traits for nurturing are selfishly ensuring their reproduction into the next
generation. However, while nurturing is a genetically selfish trait, from an observer’s
or recipient’s point of view it appears to be unconditionally selfless behaviour. After
all, the mother is giving her offspring food, warmth, shelter, support and protection for
apparently nothing in return. This point is most significant because it means from the
infant’s perspective, its mother is treating it with real love, unconditional selflessness. The
infant’s brain is therefore being trained or conditioned or indoctrinated with unconditional
selflessness and so, with enough training in unconditional selflessness, that infant will
grow to be an adult that behaves unconditionally selflessly and, with all the reproducing
members so trained, it will be a fully integrated society of reproducing members.
The ‘trick’ in this ‘love-indoctrination’ process lies in the fact that the traits for
nurturing are encouraged, or selected for genetically because the better infants are cared
for the greater are the infants’, and thus the nurturing traits’, chance of survival. There
is however an integrative side effect, in that the more infants are nurtured the more their
brain is trained in unconditional selflessness. As was explained in Section 14, there are few
situations in biology where animals appear to behave selflessly towards other animals;
normally they compete selfishly for food, shelter, territory and mating opportunities.

Maternalism, a mother’s nurturing of her infant, is one of the few situations where an
animal appears to be behaving selflessly towards another animal. It was this appearance
of selflessness that provided the opportunity for the development in our ape ancestors of
love-indoctrination or training in unconditional selflessness.
To develop nurturing—this ‘trick’ for overcoming the genetic learning system’s
inability to develop unconditional selflessness—a species required the capacity to allow
its offspring to remain in the infancy stage long enough for the infant’s brain to become
trained or indoctrinated with unconditional selflessness or love. Being semi-upright as a
result of their tree-living, swinging-from-branch-to-branch, arboreal heritage, primates’
arms were semi-freed from walking and thus available to hold dependants. Infants
similarly had the capacity to latch onto their mother’s bodies. This freedom of the upper
body meant primates were especially facilitated for prolonging their offspring’s infancy
and thus developing love-indoctrination. A species that cannot carry and thus easily look
after its infants and where the infants can’t easily hold onto their mothers cannot prolong
infancy and thus develop love-indoctrination. For example, gazelle fawns must be up on
their feet and out of the vulnerable infant state within minutes of being born if they are to
survive. It follows then that as the nurturing, love-indoctrination process developed our
primate ancestor would have become increasingly upright. Humans’ bipedalism is a direct
result of the love-indoctrination process and as such must have occurred early on in the
emergence of humans, as fossil records now confirm.

Rhesus monkey with infant. This picture illustrates the difficulty
of carrying an infant and suggests the reason for bipedalism.
While bipedalism was the key factor in developing nurturing, other requirements, in
particular ideal nursery conditions, also played a pivotal role.
If the available food, shelter and space was compromised, or other difficulties and
threats from predators excessive, then we can assume that there would have been a strong
inclination to revert to more selfish and competitive behaviour. The successful nurturing
of infants required ample food, comfortable conditions and security from external threats.
However, it wasn’t enough to simply look after them, the infants had to be loved, and
so maternalism became about much more than mothers simply protecting their young;
it became about actively loving them. Significantly, we speak of ‘motherly love’, not
‘motherly protection’.

Taking into account all of these considerations, love-indoctrination was an extremely
‘difficult’ development even for primates. It also has to be remembered that delaying
maturity, as love-indoctrination does, postpones the addition of new generations that are
so vital for the maintenance of a species limited mostly to single-offspring births. New
generations ensure variety. The many challenges involved would explain why many
primate species haven’t been able to significantly develop love-indoctrination and thus
cooperative integration.

The bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees, or Pan paniscus as they are scientifically
termed, live in the food-rich, shelter-affording ideal nursery conditions of the rainforests
south of the Congo River and are by far the most cooperative / harmonious / cohesive
/ integrated primate species. The comfort of the bonobos’ environment and their
cooperativeness compared to the environment and cooperativeness of their common
chimpanzee cousins who live north and east of the Congo River is evident in this quote:
‘we may say that the pygmy chimpanzees historically have existed in a stable environment rich in
sources of food. Pygmy chimpanzees appear conservative in their food habits and unlike common
chimpanzees have developed a more cohesive social structure and elaborate inventory of sociosexual
behavior. In contrast, common chimpanzees have gone further in developing their resource-exploiting
techniques and strategy, and have the ability to survive in more varied environments. These
differences suggest that the environments occupied by the two species since their separation by the
Zaire [Congo] River has differed for some time. The vegetation to the south of the Zaire River, where
Pan paniscus is found, has been less influenced by changes in climate and geography than the range
of the common chimpanzee to the north. Prior to the Bantu (Mongo) agriculturists’ invasion into the
central Zaire basin, the pygmy chimpanzees may have led a carefree life in a comparatively stable
environment’ (The Pygmy Chimpanzee, ed. Randall L. Susman, ch.10 by Takayoshi Kano & Mbangi Mulavwa, 1984).
And yet, in an indication of just how difficult it is developing love-indoctrination,
even the bonobos living as they do in their ideal conditions have found it necessary
to employ sex as an appeasement device to help subside residual tension between
individuals. Bonobos are significantly more gentle, cooperative and harmonious than
their common chimpanzee relatives but there is still a residual amount of tension and
aggression. In bonobos we see the love-indoctrination process well underway, but not yet
completed.
Developing love-indoctrination to the point where the indoctrinated love or
unconditional selflessness or altruism or morality becomes instinctive (a process that will
be explained later in this section) was akin to trying to swim upstream to an island; any
difficulty or breakdown in the nurturing process and you are ‘swept back downstream’
once more to the old competitive, selfish, each-for-his-own, opportunistic situation.
In the context of our own human origins, it follows that for our ape ancestors to have
become totally cooperative and integrated, as is asserted occurred, they must have lived
in ideal nursery conditions in their home somewhere in Africa. (We know from fossil
evidence that our original ancestors emerged in Africa but we don’t as yet know the exact
location of this original ‘nursery’—as we have intuitively recognised, Africa was, as we
say, ‘the cradle of mankind’.)
It should be explained that there is a limiting factor in the development of loveindoctrination
that needed to be overcome. While the nurturing of infants is strongly
encouraged genetically, because it ensures greater infant survival, the side effect of
training infants to behave selflessly as adults is that the selflessly behaving and even selfsacrificing
adults don’t tend to reproduce their genes as successfully as selfishly behaved
adults. The genes of exceptionally maternal mothers don’t tend to endure because their
offspring tend to be the most selflessly behaved: they are too ready to put others before
themselves. The more aggressive, competitive and selfish individuals take advantage of
their selflessness, with males in particular seizing any mating opportunities for themselves.
It’s that old joke, ‘the meek will inherit the Earth, if that’s alright with you blokes’; in
other words, ‘you’ve got fat chance of that ever happening mate while we tough men are
around’.

While the problem of selfish opportunism breaking out could be substantially
countered by ensuring all members of the group were equally well nurtured with love,
equally trained in selflessness, this all-equally-nurtured situation would be a delicate one
to maintain. As mentioned, any breakdown in nurturing and the situation reverts to the old
each-for-his-own structure. It is clear then that ideal nursery conditions were critical to
ensure there was no disruption to the all-important task of nurturing.
While unconditional selflessness can be developed through the love-indoctrination
process of a mother’s nurturing care of her infant, it was clearly a very difficult and slow
process. What was needed was a mechanism to assist and speed up the development of
integration. That mechanism took the form of sexual or mate selection.
In the coming Section 25, ‘Why and how did consciousness emerge in humans’, it
will be explained how the nurturing, love-indoctrination process liberated consciousness
in our ape ancestors. It was the emerging conscious intellect in our forebears that began to
support the development of selflessness. As our ape ancestors gradually became conscious
they began to recognise the importance of selflessness and as a result began to actively
select for it. (With regard to being able to ‘recognise the importance of selflessness’, while
the integrative, selfless, loving theme and purpose of existence has been denied by humans
suffering from the human condition, it is an obvious truth to a conscious being who is
not living in denial of it—every object or ‘thing’ around us is a hierarchy of selfless,
cooperative, ordered matter.) Our ancestors could carry out this selection for selflessness
by consciously seeking out love-indoctrinated mates—members of the group who had
experienced a long infancy and exceptional nurturing and were closer to their memory
of their love-indoctrinated infancy; that is, younger. The older individuals became, the
more their infancy training in love wore off. Our ape ancestors began to recognise that
the younger an individual, the more integrative he or she was likely to be. They began
to idolise, foster and select youthfulness because of its association with cooperative
integration. The effect, over many thousands of generations, was to retard our physical
development so that we lost most of our body hair and became more infant-looking in our
appearance as adults compared with our adult ape ancestors. This explains how we came
to regard neotenous (infant-like) features—large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and
hairless skin—as beautiful.

The following three photographs, of an adult common chimpanzee, an infant common
chimpanzee and an adult bonobo, show the similarity between the adult bonobo and the
infant common chimpanzee, indicating the effects of neoteny.

These photographs of an infant and adult common chimpanzee show the greater
resemblance humans have to the infant, illustrating the influence of neoteny in human
development.

This photograph of a common chimpanzee foetus at seven months shows body hair
on the scalp, eyebrows, borders of the eye lids, lips and chin, precisely those places where
hair is predominantly retained in adult humans, again illustrating the influence of neoteny
in human development. Clearly, humans are an extremely neotenised ape.

It follows that since before love-indoctrination emerged males were preoccupied
with competing for mating opportunities, females must have been first to select for
integrativeness by favouring integrative rather than competitive and aggressive mates.
This helped love-indoctrination subdue the males’ divisive competitiveness.
Despite being unaware of this process of love-indoctrination, primatologists have
verified sexual selection of cooperative integrativeness by females: ‘Male [baboon]
newcomers also were generally the most dominant while long-term residents were the most
subordinate, the most easily cowed. Yet in winning the receptive females and special foods, the
subordinate, unaggressive veterans got more than their fair share, the newcomers next to nothing.
Socially inept and often aggressive, newcomers made a poor job of initiating friendships’ (Shirley Strum,
National Geographic mag. Nov. 1987); and ‘The high frequencies of intersexual association, grooming,
and food sharing together with the low level of male-female aggression in pygmy chimpanzees
may be a factor in male reproductive strategies. Tutin (1980) has demonstrated that a high degree
of reproductive success for male common chimpanzees was correlated with male-female affiliative
behaviours. These included males spending more time with estrous females, grooming them, and
sharing food with them’ (The Pygmy Chimpanzee, ed. Randall L. Susman, ch.13 by Alison & Noel Badrian, 1984,

By assessing a primate species’ ability to develop love-indoctrination and sexual
selection, and hence develop integration, it should be possible to compare where each
species stands on the integration ladder.

Further comparison between bonobos and common chimpanzees clearly evidences
what has been said about the love-indoctrination, sexual selection process, for the bonobos
make visible the entire process. Indeed if it wasn’t for the bonobos the all-important role
played by nurturing in the emergence of humans would be significantly more difficult to
verify and denial of our nurtured origins might reign forever.
Before comparing bonobos and common chimpanzees it needs to be explained why
there has been this need for denial of the all-important part played by nurturing in the
emergence of humans, and indeed in our individual lives as a product of that heritage.
The reality is that after the issue of our human condition, the truth of integrative meaning
and the truth that we once lived in an innocent, completely integrated state, the next most
confronting and depressing truth that we upset humans have had to cope with is this truth
of the significance of nurturing in our species’ past and in our own lives. The reason it is
so confronting and depressing is because, necessarily, since the upset state of the human
condition emerged, no parent has been able to adequately nurture their offspring and no
child has been able to be given the amount of nurturing his or her instincts expect, and
unable to explain these deficiencies we are left feeling criticised by them. The extent of
humans’ insecurity about our inability to nurture our offspring for example is evident in
this quote, ‘The biggest crime you can commit in our society is to be a failure as a parent…people
would rather admit to being an axe murderer than being a bad father or mother’ (Sun-Herald, Sunday
Life mag. 7 July 2002). As will become increasingly clear as this description of the nurturing,
love-indoctrination process progresses, the reason this nurturing explanation for human
origins has not been recognised is because it raises unbearably confronting implications
for upset humans. In fact it is only now that we are able to explain the human condition
that it becomes safe to acknowledge the all-important role nurturing has played in the
maturation of humanity and in our own lives. Indeed in the coming Section 18, ‘John
Fiske’s 1874 recognition that nurturing created our moral sense’, it will be explained
how an American philosopher, historian and author, John Fiske, first put forward this
nurturing explanation for human origins only 15 years after Darwin published his idea of
natural selection in his 1859 book The Origin of Species, however because the nurturing
explanation is so confronting for upset humans the idea was largely ignored to the extent
that it disappeared from scientific literature. It has been mentioned how mechanistic
science hasn’t even been able to tolerate the word ‘love’, having no definition for it.
Unable to tolerate the concept of love or integrative meaning it is clear there has been
little chance of mechanistic science tolerating a love-indoctrination process for achieving
integration. The extent of upset humans’ insecurity about our love-less, divisive state has
been immense.

To return to the comparison between bonobos and common chimpanzees, as
mentioned, common chimpanzees are found in equatorial Africa, north and east of
the Congo River. The social model of the common chimpanzee is patriarchal or male dominated.
Although there is a focus on nurturing of the young by common chimpanzee
mothers, the environment in which the females live is often disturbed by the males’
aggressive competition for mating opportunities. Further, the climatically unstable and
geographically challenging environments in which common chimpanzees live means their
social bonds are periodically subjected to stress, such as from food scarcities during drier
times. This pressured existence also results in fierce inter-group confrontation. Common
chimpanzees also regularly hunt colobus monkeys as a source of protein.
In contrast, the bonobos live in the ideal nursery conditions of the warm climate
south of the Congo River, a stable environment that offers ample food and the safety
of the jungle’s canopy for sleeping, traveling and shelter. As a result, the social model
of the bonobos is vastly different to that of the common chimpanzees. Firstly, the
social dynamic of the bonobo society features a gender reversal to that of the common
chimpanzees. Bonobo females form alliances and dominate social groups—distinctly
male activities in common chimpanzee society. Bonobo societies are matriarchal, female dominated,
controlled and led, and the entire focus of the social group seems to be
concentrated on the maternal or female role of nurturing infants. Bonobo females have,
on average, one offspring every five to six years and provide better maternal care than do
common chimpanzees. Bonobo infants are born small and stay in a state of infancy and
total dependence for a relatively long period of time. Bonobos are weaned at about five
years of age and are dependent on their mothers for seven to nine years while common
chimpanzees are weaned at about four years and are dependent for an average of six years.
Bonobos infants also develop more slowly than other ape infants. Possibly the selection
for a longer infancy period had the side effect of lengthening all the stages of maturation—
possibly the stages are all linked genetically so that the lengthening of one stage results in
the lengthening of all the stages—because the age at sexual or reproductive maturity for
bonobo females and males is 13 to 15 years while for common chimpanzees it is only 10 to
13 years for females and 12 to 15 years for males. This lengthening of all stages as a result
of selecting for a longer infancy may explain how we humans acquired our comparatively
long life spans. Amongst primates only the bonobos have well-developed breasts similar
to those of humans, presumably due to the bonobos’ emphasis on nursing. Primatologist
Takayoshi Kano is one of the world’s leading experts on bonobos and, since 1973, has
led the longest-running study of bonobos in their natural habitat at a site in Wamba,
Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). In an interview conducted with Kano,
his long-time collaborator Suehisa Kuroda commented: ‘The long dependence of the son
may be caused by the slow growth of the bonobo infant, which seems slower than in the [common]
chimpanzee. For example, even after one year of age, bonobo infants do not walk or climb much, and
are very slow. The mothers keep them near. They start to play with others at about one and a half
years, which is much later than in the [common] chimpanzee. During this period, mothers are very
attentive…Female juveniles gradually loosen their tie with the mother and travel further away from
her than do her sons’ (Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, Frans de Waal & Frans Lanting, 1997, p.60 of 210). The bond
between the mother and her son is of particular importance in bonobo society. The son will
maintain his connection with his mother for life and will depend upon her for his social
standing within the group. The son of the society’s dominant female, the strong matriarch
that maintains social order, will rise in the ranks of the group. This presumably ensures
the establishment and perpetuation of unaggressive, non-competitive, cooperative male
characteristics, both learned and genetic, within the group. Historically it is the primate
males who have been particularly divisive in their aggressive competition to win mating
opportunities and therefore the gender most needing of love-indoctrination. This quote
makes the point: ‘Patient observation over many years convinced [Takayoshi] Kano that male
bonobos bonded with their mothers for life. That contrasts with [common] chimpanzee males who
rarely have close contact with their mothers after they grow up, instead joining other males in neverending
tussles for dominance’ (article Bonobos: The apes who make love, not war by Paul Raffaele, Last Tribes on
Earth.com website).

Biologist and psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
is America’s leading ape-language researcher. In Kanzi:
The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (1994), authors
Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin offer this insight
into bonobo society and its emphasis on nurturing:
‘Bonobo life is centered around the offspring. Unlike what
happens among common chimps, all members of the bonobo
social group help with infant care and share food with infants. If
you are a bonobo infant, you can do no wrong. This high regard
for infants gives bonobo females a status that is not shared by
common chimpanzee females, who must bear the burden of child
care all alone. Bonobo females and their infants form the core
of the group, with males invited in to the extent that they are
cooperative and helpful. High-status males are those that are
accepted by the females, and male aggression directed toward
females is rare even though males are considerably stronger’
(p.108 of 299).

An extract from the 1995 National Geographic
documentary The New Chimpanzees provides a good
example of the important role a strong matriarchy plays
in the prevention of divisive selfish and aggressive
behaviour. To quote from the narration: ‘An impressively
stern [bonobo] female enters and snaps a young sapling. Once
she picks herself up she does something entirely surprising for
a female chimp, she displays [the female is shown assertively
dragging the sapling through the group], and the males give her sway [a male is shown cowering out
of her way]. For this is the confident stride of the group’s leader, its alpha female, whom [Takayoshi]
Kano has named Harloo.’

Bonobos are much gentler in their behaviour than their common chimpanzee cousins.
They are relatively placid, peaceful and egalitarian, exhibiting a remarkable sensitivity
to others. In fact physical violence is rare in bonobos yet is customary amongst common
chimpanzees. Male aggression has been tamed and unlike other great apes, there is little
size difference between the male and female of the species. As mentioned, even sex has
been employed by bonobos as an appeasement tool for subsiding conflict and tension.
While infanticide is not uncommon amongst common chimpanzees it appears to be nonexistent
within bonobo societies where the group cares for even orphan bonobos. In
common chimpanzee society orphans are occasionally adopted by a female but are not
especially cared for by the group. Social groups of bonobos are much more stable than
social groups of common chimpanzees with bonobos periodically coming together in
large, harmonious, stable groups of up to 120 individuals. Anthropologist Barbara Fruth
spent nine years studying bonobos in their natural habitat and observed that ‘up to 100
bonobos at a time from several groups spend their night together and that that would not be possible
with common chimpanzees because there would be brutal fighting between the rival groups’ (article
Bonobos: The apes who make love, not war by Paul Raffaele, Last Tribes on Earth.com website).
Bonobos have more slender upper bodies than common chimpanzees and are more
arboreal. Bonobos often walk upright; in fact they are by far the most upright of the great
apes. It has long been claimed that it was the move to savanna and the need to see over
tall grass that led to upright walking yet the bonobos live in the jungle, so some other
influence must be at work that is selecting for upright walking and, as described, the
evidence indicates that that influence was the need to develop nurturing.

Unlike common chimpanzees bonobos regularly share their food and while the former
restrict their plant-food intake to mainly fruit, bonobos eat leaves and plant pith as well as
fruit, a diet more like that of gorillas. While bonobos have been known to capture and eat
small game they are not known to systematically hunt down and eat large animals such as
monkeys, as common chimpanzees do.

As mentioned, bonobos are remarkably neotenous in their physical features. There is
also a marked variance in features between individual bonobos, suggesting the species is
rapidly changing. This in turn indicates the bonobo species has hit upon some opportunity
that facilitates a rapid development. Evidence indicates that that opportunity is the ability
to develop integration through love-indoctrination and mate selection.
The following section of dialogue about bonobos comes from the 1996 Discovery
Channel documentary, The Ultimate Guide: Great Apes. It confirms some of the main
points that have been made about bonobos thus far. The segment commences with
the following observation by primatologist Jo Myers Thompson: ‘A female [common]
chimpanzee’s life is rugged. They have hardships just in daily activities. They are probably lower on
the hierarchy, the social status, than males throughout the society and for instance males beat them
up, chase them, bully them around and that doesn’t happen in bonobo society. The female bonobos are
not bullied and chased. Although there can be some male aggression it’s very minor. Female bonobos
are never raped as far as we know; they have first choice at feeding sites. Their life is much more
peaceful.’ The program’s narrator then states: ‘The physical difference between [common] chimps
and bonobos are quite telling. Bonobos have shorter, smaller faces and a more slender physique
retaining many of the features seen in juvenile [common] chimps. They’re rather like [common]
chimps frozen inside adolescent bodies. Even their voices are high-pitched and child-like. The male
aggression that is so common in [common] chimps is much reduced in bonobos and even relations
between neighbouring groups are often peaceful.’ Thompson concludes: ‘Why do they [bonobos]
need to be aggressive? They don’t have to fight for food, they don’t have to fight for sex, they don’t
have to fight for inter-relationships, they don’t have to fight for space. Why would they be aggressive?’

To context how successful other primates have been in developing integration through
love-indoctrination and mate selection: gorillas appear to have been more successful than
common chimpanzees, yet not as successful as bonobos, for example, gorilla societies are
still patriarchal or male-dominated. Interestingly, while bonobos depended on the safety
of trees for the secure, threat-free environment needed to develop love-indoctrination,
gorillas apparently selected for physical size and great strength, particularly in the
males of the species, to protect their groups from outside, predatory threats. To quote
anthropologist Adolph H. Schultz, the adult male gorilla ‘is a remarkably peaceful creature,
using its incredible strength merely in self-defence’ (The Life of Primates, 1969).
The legendary and visionary palaeontologist Louis Leakey foresaw ‘that knowledge
of the past would help us to understand and possibly control the future’ (Disclosing the Past, Mary
Leakey, 1984), and in 1959, against prevailing views, began the search for fossil evidence of
the emergence of humans in Africa. The search was to prove stunningly successful. In
another inspired move he handpicked three women to study the great apes in their natural
habitat—Jane Goodall, who began her field study of common chimpanzees in 1960; Dian
Fossey, who began her field study of gorillas in 1967; and Birute Galdikas, who began her
field study of orangutans in 1971. As part of his plan to only study the African apes Leakey
originally wanted Galdikas to study bonobos but because living in the Congo was so
difficult Galdikas ended up studying orangutans in South East Asia instead.
Leakey ‘struck gold’ with Dian Fossey because she fearlessly acknowledged the truth
in what she was observing about the crucial role nurturing was playing and of the resulting
exceptional gentleness and cooperativeness of gorillas. Fossey was a remarkably strong
willed woman and the universally practiced denial-complying variety of science held little
sway over her. It seems entirely appropriate that after she was murdered at her research
station in Rwanda in 1985 she was buried alongside her gentle gorilla friend Digit, who had
given his life defending his group from poachers.
Without the help of understanding of the human condition few, if any, have been able
to cope with the honesty of Fossey’s studies and, as a result, she has been misportrayed
as merely a fanatical gorilla conservationist, as the 1988 film of her life, Gorillas in the
Mist, depicted her as. The following extracts from Fossey’s 1983 book Gorillas in the Mist
however shows just how courageous a scientist Fossey was because they clearly reveal
the strong relationship between nurturing and integrativeness that is love-indoctrination:
‘Like human mothers, gorilla mothers show a great variation in the treatment of their offspring. The
contrasts were particularly marked between [the gorilla mothers] Old Goat and Flossie. Flossie was
very casual in the handling, grooming, and support of both of her infants, whereas Old Goat was an
exemplary parent’ (ch.9).
The effect of Old Goat’s ‘exemplary parenting’ of Tiger (her son) is apparent in the
following extract: ‘Like Digit, Tiger also was taking his place in Group 4’s growing cohesiveness.
By the age of five, Tiger was surrounded by playmates his own age, a loving mother, and a protective
group leader. He was a contented and well-adjusted individual whose zest for living was almost
contagious for the other animals of his group. His sense of well-being was often expressed by a
characteristic facial “grimace”’ (ch.10). The ‘growing cohesiveness’ (developing integration)
brought about by ‘loving mothers and protective leaders’ is love-indoctrination.
Dian Fossey’s account of the love-indoctrinated Tiger later in life illustrates how
nurtured love is necessary to produce the integrated group. It describes how the secure,
integrative, loving Tiger tried to maintain integration or love in the presence of an
aggressive, divisive gorilla after the group’s integrative silverback leader, Uncle Bert,
79 The Great Exodus
was shot by poachers: ‘The newly orphaned Kweli, deprived of his mother, Macho, and his father,
Uncle Bert, and bearing a bullet wound himself, came to rely only on Tiger for grooming the wound,
cuddling, and sharing warmth in nightly nests. Wearing concerned facial expressions, Tiger stayed
near the three-year-old, responding to his cries with comforting belch vocalizations. As Group 4’s
new young leader, Tiger regulated the animals’ feeding and travel pace whenever Kweli fell behind.
Despondency alone seemed to pose the most critical threat to Kweli’s survival during August 1978.
Beetsme…was a significant menace to what remained of Group 4’s solidarity. The immigrant,
approximately two years older than Tiger and finding himself the oldest male within the group led by
a younger animal, quickly developed an unruly desire to dominate. Although still sexually immature,
Beetsme took advantage of his age and size to begin severely tormenting old Flossie three days after
Uncle Bert’s death. Beetsme’s aggression was particularly threatening to Uncle Bert’s last offspring,
Frito [son of Flossie]. By killing Frito, Beetsme would be destroying an infant sired by a competitor,
and Flossie would again become fertile. Neither young Tiger nor the aging female was any match
against Beetsme. Twenty-two days after Uncle Bert’s killing, Beetsme succeeded in killing fifty-fourday-
old Frito even with the unfailing efforts of Tiger and the other Group 4 members to defend
the mother and infant…Frito’s death provided more evidence, however indirect, of the devastation
poachers create by killing the leader of a gorilla group. Two days after Frito’s death Flossie was
observed soliciting copulations from Beetsme, not for sexual or even reproductive reasons—she had
not yet returned to cyclicity and Beetsme still was sexually immature. Undoubtedly her invitations
were conciliatory measures aimed at reducing his continuing physical harassment. I found myself
strongly disliking Beetsme as I watched his discord destroy what remained of all that Uncle Bert
had succeeded in creating and defending over the past ten years…I also became increasingly
concerned about Kweli, who had been, only a few months previously, Group 4’s most vivacious and
frolicsome infant. The three-year-old’s lethargy and depression were increasing daily even though
Tiger tried to be both mother and father to the orphan. Three months following his gunshot wound
and the loss of both parents, Kweli gave up the will to survive…It was difficult to think of Beetsme
as an integral member of Group 4 because of his continual abuse of the others in futile efforts to
establish domination, particularly over the indomitable Tiger…Tiger helped maintain cohesiveness
by “mothering” Titus and subduing Beetsme’s rowdiness. Because of Tiger’s influence and the
immaturity of all three males, they remained together’ (ch.11).
It is clear from this account how very easily any disruption to the love-indoctrination
process can lead to regression back to the competitive, opportunistic, each-for-his-own,
pre-love-indoctrination situation.
In the case of orangutans, love-indoctrinated integration is inhibited by the scarcity
of food in their native forests of South East Asia. In fact orangutan infants are nurtured
with love in a long infancy only to suffer being ‘thrown out of love’ when, as adults, they
have to set out and live mostly solitary lives due to the shortage of food. Older orangutans
have a reputation for being morose and bad tempered—perhaps this ‘outcast’ existence
is the cause. As some evidence for what has just been put forward, an article in Scientific
American in 2006 describes a study comparing orangutans living in the isolated Kluet
swamp in Sumatra with those cut off from the swamp by the wide Alas River. The moist
swamp habitat supplies abundant food all year round unlike the habitat available to the
orangutans outside the swamp. The Kluet orangutans are more social, outgoing and
gregarious. They also show a greater propensity to innovate and use tools presumably
because the greater interaction allows for innovations to be shared, passed on and thus
accumulated (Scientific American, Vol 16, no 2, 2006, pp30–37).
In the case of baboons, a quote included earlier indicated female baboons are
beginning to contain competitive male sexual opportunism, which implies baboons
The Great Exodus 80
are able to develop some integration through love-indoctrination and mate selection.
However, again, the environment in which baboons live is normally one in which food
is not plentiful and this would seem to be the main limiting factor in developing loveindoctrination
and thus integration amongst baboons.
Of the monkeys, the capuchins from South America have by far the largest brain
to body size and are considered to be much more intelligent than other monkeys—yet
they have not attained the level of consciousness where they have an awareness of the
concept of ‘I’ or self and can recognise themselves in a mirror, as can bonobos, common
chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans. The relationship between consciousness
and the love-indoctrination process will be referred to shortly. Capuchin females are
extremely maternal and nurse their infants for a longer period than other monkeys,
weaning their infants in their second year. Both male and female capuchins live for
over 40 years compared to the 20 odd years managed by most other monkeys, possibly
reflecting the drawn out stages of maturation that may result from extending the infancy
stage to allow for longer nurturing. Female capuchins decide when and with whom to
mate and have been observed to form successful coalitions against males. Male against
male competition is less obvious amongst capuchins than in other monkeys and, like the
bonobos, capuchins frequently engage in same-sex sexual interactions.
The following descriptions of the endangered muriqui or woolly spider monkeys
indicate this species has been able to develop some degree of love-indoctrination:
‘Wrangham and Peterson suggest that a South American monkey, the muriqui, displays similar
behaviours to the bonobo, with females being co-dominant, males less aggressive and females more
sexual than other mammals’ (from www.massey.ac.nz/~kbirks/gender/viol/bonobos.htm, website of Stuart Birk,
senior lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand). ‘The mating system [of the muriqui] is polygamous, with
individuals being promiscuous. Embracing is a behavior important to maintaining social bonds. There
is very little aggression among group members. Males spend a large amount of time close together
without aggressive encounters’ (references: Emmons & Feer 1997, Flannery 2000, Nowak 1999, from Animal
Info—Muriquis on website www.animalinfo.org).
We can see that of all the non-human apes bonobos are by far the most integrated;
that is, cooperative and thus peaceful. They are also the most intelligent. Bonobos are
exceptionally intelligent, almost certainly the most intelligent species after humans. In
the coming Section 25, ‘Why and how did consciousness emerge in humans’, it will be
explained how nurturing liberated consciousness and, with it, insightful intelligence. The
fact that the bonobos have been able to develop such a high degree of nurturing and are
also so intelligent will evidence this coming explanation for the origin of consciousness.
This quote reveals how much more intelligent bonobos are than common
chimpanzees—it also reveals the nurtured happy disposition and greater psychological
room of bonobos: ‘Everything seems to indicate that [Prince] Chim [a bonobo] was extremely
intelligent. His surprising alertness and interest in things about him bore fruit in action, for he was
constantly imitating the acts of his human companions and testing all objects. He rapidly profited
by his experiences…Never have I seen man or beast take greater satisfaction in showing off than did
little Chim. The contrast in intellectual qualities between him and his female companion [a common
chimpanzee] may briefly, if not entirely adequately, be described by the term “opposites” [p.248 of 278]
…Prince Chim seems to have been an intellectual genius. His remarkable alertness and quickness to
learn were associated with a cheerful and happy disposition which made him the favorite of all [p.255]
…Chim also was even-tempered and good-natured, always ready for a romp; he seldom resented by
word or deed unintentional rough handling or mishap. Never was he known to exhibit jealousy…
81 The Great Exodus
[By contrast] Panzee [the common chimpanzee] could not be trusted in critical situations. Her
resentment and anger were readily aroused and she was quick to give them expression with hands and
teeth [p.246]’ (Almost Human, Robert M. Yerkes, 1925). Shortly it will be described how this conscious
intelligence that we can see rapidly emerging in the bonobos led to one variety of ape,
or perhaps some varieties of apes, to develop into what we recognise in the fossil record
as the australopithecines, and from them, to the upset, human-condition-afflicted genus
Homo, us.
The following quote provides insight into how exceptionally sensitive, cooperative,
loving and intelligent bonobos are—and just how few exist in captivity: ‘Barbara Bell…a
keeper/trainer for the Milwaukee County Zoo…works daily with the largest group of bonobos (5
males and 4 females, ranging in age from 3 to 48 years) in North America, making it the second
largest collection in the world (the largest can be found at the Dierenpark Planckendael, in Mechelen,
Belgium). There are only 120 captive worldwide. “It’s like being with 9 two and a half year olds all
day,” she says. “They’re extremely intelligent.”…”They understand a couple of hundred words,” she
says. “They listen very attentively. And they’ll often eavesdrop. If I’m discussing with the staff which
bonobos (to) separate into smaller groups, if they like the plan, they’ll line up in the order they just
heard discussed. If they don’t like the plan, they’ll just line up the way they want.” “They also love to
tease me a lot,” she says. “Like during training, if I were to ask for their left foot, they’ll give me their
right, and laugh and laugh and laugh. But what really blows me away is their ability to understand
a situation entirely.” For example, Kitty, the eldest female, is completely blind and hard of hearing.
Sometimes she gets lost and confused. “They’ll just pick her up and take her to where she needs to
go,” says Bell. “That’s pretty amazing. Adults demonstrate tremendous compassion for each other.”
The bonobo’s apparent ability to empathize, in contrast with the more hostile and aggressive bearing
of the related [common] chimpanzee, has some social scientists re-thinking our behavioral heritage’
(The Bonobo: “newest” apes are teaching us about ourselves, Anthony DeBartolo, Chicago Tribune, 11 June 1998).
Primatologist Frans de Waal and photographer Frans Lanting’s 1997 book Bonobo: The
Forgotten Ape features another description from Barbara Bell of the truly extraordinary
empathy and kindness that exists between bonobos. Fittingly, the extract comes from a
chapter titled ‘Sensitivity’: ‘Kidogo, a twenty-one-year-old bonobo at the Milwaukee County Zoo
suffers from a serious heart condition. He is feeble, lacking the normal stamina and self-confidence of
a grown male. When first moved to Milwaukee Zoo, the keepers’ shifting commands in the unfamiliar
building thoroughly confused him. He failed to understand where to go when people urged him to
move from one place to another. Other apes in the group would step in, however, approach Kidogo,
take him by the hand, and lead him in the right direction. Barbara Bell, a caretaker and animal
trainer, observed many instances of such spontaneous assistance and learned to call upon other
bonobos to move Kidogo. If lost, Kidogo would utter distress calls, whereupon others would calm him
down or act as his guides’ (p.157 of 210).
The same book contains this description of the bonobo’s apparent sensitivity to other
creatures: ‘Betty Walsh, a seasoned animal caretaker, observed the following incident involving a
seven-year-old female bonobo named Kuni at Twycross Zoo in England. One day, Kuni captured a
starling. Out of fear that she might molest the stunned bird, which appeared undamaged, the keeper
urged the ape to let it go. Perhaps because of this encouragement, Kuni took the bird outside and
gently set it onto its feet, the right way up, where it stayed, looking petrified. When it didn’t move,
Kuni threw it a little way, but it just fluttered. Not satisfied, Kuni picked up the starling with one hand
and climbed to the highest point of the highest tree, where she wrapped her legs around the trunk,
so that she had both hands free to hold the bird. She then carefully unfolded its wings and spread
them wide open, one wing in each hand, before throwing the bird as hard as she could towards the
The Great Exodus 82
barrier of the enclosure. Unfortunately, it fell short and landed onto the bank of the moat, where Kuni
guarded it for a long time against a curious juvenile. By the end of the day, the bird was gone without
a trace or feather. It is assumed that, recovered from its shock, it had flown away’ (p.156).
In Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind, Savage-Rumbaugh describes the
extreme elation and affection shown by the young adult male Kanzi, her famous bonobo
research subject, when reunited with his mother Matata after a number of months apart: ‘I
sat down with him [Kanzi] and told him there was a surprise in the colony room. He began to vocalize
in the way he does when expecting a favored food—”eeeh….eeeh….eeeh.” I said, No food surprise.
Matata surprise; Matata in colony room. He looked stunned, stared at me intently, and then ran to
the colony room door, gesturing urgently for me to open it. When mother and son saw each other,
they emitted earsplitting shrieks of excitement and joy and rushed to the wire that separated them.
They both pushed their hands through the wire, to touch the other as best they could. Witnessing
this display of emotion, I hadn’t the heart to keep them apart any longer, and opened the connecting
door. Kanzi leapt into Matata’s arms, and they screamed and hugged for fully five minutes, and then
stepped back to gaze at each other in happiness. They then played like children, laughing all the time
as only bonobos can. The laughter of a bonobo sounds like the laughter of someone who has laughed
so hard that he has run out of air but can’t stop laughing anyway. Eventually, exhausted, Kanzi and
Matata quieted down and began tenderly grooming each other’ (pp.143–144 of 299).
When thinking of our human plight—of suffering from insecurity about our
human condition of being competitive, aggressive and selfish when the ideals are to be
cooperative, loving and selfless—it can be seen that the bonobos, with all their social
harmony, gentleness, sensitivity, empathy, selflessness, exceptional maternalism and
favouritism towards the more nurtured cooperative members, are extremely exposing and
confronting for us. It is no wonder the bonobos are, as Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting
titled their book, The Forgotten Ape—or that ‘De Waal’s bonobo research [which acknowledges
the ‘sensitivity’ of bonobos, as shown in the quotes from his book] came under sustained attack’
from some anthropologists (article The Future of Bonobos: An Animal Akin to Ourselves by Douglas Foster,
from the Alicia Patterson Foundation website, www.aliciapatterson.org).
In Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind Savage-Rumbaugh states: ‘even
though I could describe on paper, with proper scientific documentation, what Kanzi did, I knew
that I needed to show people images of Kanzi as a living, breathing, thinking being. My words and
numbers were but the pale bits and fragments we call data, data that was dwarfed by the presence
and power of Kanzi himself’ (p.7 of 299). Due to mechanistic science’s compliance with
humanity’s need to live in almost complete denial of anything to do with the all-loving,
integrative, instinctive world of our soul, it is virtually impossible for the discipline, as
it has operated, to allow any truth out about how extraordinarily integratively orientated
bonobos are. Visual footage and images of bonobos are about the only means by which the
truth can be revealed. Even the anecdotes offered above reveal more holistic, denial-free
insights into the world of bonobos than all the mechanistic detail given earlier. Possibly
the most extraordinary visual footage I have seen appears in the documentary Kanzi:
An Ape of Genius (NHK Productions, 1993). It shows Kanzi actually mediating in a dispute
between Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and a bonobo named Tamouli. This documentary also has
revealing footage showing the hurt expression on the face of a bonobo named Panbanisha
when she is reprimanded for over-exuberant behaviour. While bonobo infants are never
disciplined—as Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin wrote in Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of
the Human Mind, ‘if you are a bonobo infant, you can do no wrong’—in our human-conditionafflicted,
chaotic and pressured world discipline is sometimes necessary.
83 The Great Exodus
Alarmingly bonobos—which were only identified as a species separate from common
chimpanzees in 1929—are considered an endangered species today. Hopefully now that we
can understand our human condition and realise we are in fact the great heroes on Earth,
not the evil villains we have lived in such fear of being, our insecurities can subside and
we will be able to accept the acute value bonobos represent in terms of understanding
the origins of humanity, and treat them accordingly, as a recognised and treasured part of
our common heritage. The concern is whether our current resentment of their exposing
relatively ideal behaviour and confronting ability to nurture their offspring—together
with the confronting significance that that nurturing has for understanding ourselves—
will result in humanity being unable to be properly concerned for them such that they
are allowed to become extinct. Upset humans’ history of persecution and ultimately
destruction of any exposing and confronting innocence has been horrendous. Clearly bold,
visionary efforts will be required to preserve bonobos.
The extent of the perverse satisfaction upset, corrupted humans have derived from
retaliating against the unjust condemnation that innocence represents is revealed in this
comment by W.D.M. Bell, an African big-game hunter of the early 1900s: ‘There is nothing
more satisfactory than the complete flop of a running elephant shot in the brain’ (African Safari, P. Jay
Fetner, 1987, p.113 of 678). Another sport hunter made his feelings of satisfaction from being
able to ‘get even’ with unjustly condemning innocence perfectly clear when he said:
‘Next thing I knew, a large male chimpanzee had hoisted himself up out of the underbrush and
was hanging out sideways from the tree trunk, which he was clutching with his left hand and left
The Great Exodus 84
foot. Looking down my barrel at ten yards was man’s closest relative, an ape, which, when mature,
has the intelligence of a three-year-old child. Wouldn’t I feel like a murderer if I shot him? I had
some misgivings as my globular front sight rested on the ape’s chest and my finger on the trigger.
But then, gradually, insidiously, my thinking took a different turn. I thought of the gorge-lifting
sentimentality—most of it commercially inspired—that has come to surround chimpanzees. I thought
of the long list of ridiculous anthropomorphic books about the “personalities” of these apes. I thought
of that chimp who fingerpainted on TV and sold his “works” for so much money he wound up having
to pay income tax. I thought of one ape who was recommended for a knighthood, the ape who was left
his master’s yacht, the ape who was elected to parliament in some banana republic; and various other
apes who were made astronauts and honorary colonels. Gathering like storm clouds in my mind, these
thoughts roused me to such a pitch of indignation that there appeared to be only one honorable course
of action. I blasted that ape with downright enthusiasm and have felt clean inside ever since’ (ibid.
p.117–118). In Peter Beard’s 1963 book of astonishing photographs, The End of the Game,
he reproduced a page from the journal of the famous African white hunter, J.A. Hunter, in
which Hunter recorded having dispatched ‘996 Rhinos’ from ‘August 29th 1944 to October 31st
1946’ (p.137 of 280).
The truth is innocence has been viciously attacked by us upset humans in whatever
form it took. Our strategy of denial of the issue of the human condition and any truths that
brought it into focus was actually an all-out attack on the whole domain of innocence.
While it is for the most part now well hidden by a mask of civilised restraint, the hate
of the hunter who ‘blasted that ape with downright enthusiasm’ is in truth the hate that fills
all upset humans for the unjust criticism they have had to live with for 2 million years.
The true magnitude of this anger in upset humans will be explained and described in the
coming Section 26, ‘How our particular instinctive orientation greatly compounded our
upset’.
It now needs to be explained that with love-indoctrination and mate selection of
cooperativeness occurring over many generations, selflessness would have eventually
become instinctive or innate. This is because once unconditionally selfless individuals
were continually appearing, the genes ‘followed’ the whole process, reinforcing that
selflessness. Similarly, when the conscious mind fully emerged within humans and went
its own way—embarked on its course for knowledge—genetic adaptation followed,
reinforcing that development. Generations of humans whose genetic make-up in some way
helped them cope with the human condition were selected naturally—making, amongst
other adjustments, humans’ alienated state somewhat instinctive in humans today. We have
been ‘bred’ to survive the pressures of the human condition; to block out or deny the issue
of the human condition has been our main way of coping with the dilemma of the human
condition. Genes would inevitably follow and reinforce any development process—in this
they were not selective. The difficulty was in getting the development of unconditional
selflessness to occur, for once it was regularly occurring it would naturally become
instinctive over time.
In the case of our human ape ancestors, it is being suggested that love-indoctrination
and mate selection of cooperativeness occurred for a sufficiently long period for
cooperative integrativeness to become an instinctive part of their/our make-up—to create
our ‘moral sense’ no less.
Finally, it needs to be described how the bonobos, the most integrated variety of
primates, compare with the fossil evidence of our human ancestors. ‘Lucy’, the 3.5 million
year old Australopithecus (afarensis) fossil ancestor of humans discovered in the Rift
Valley of Africa in 1974, shows an amazing similarity to the bone structure of the bonobo.
The two are very similar in brain size, stature and in the length of the lower limbs, and
85 The Great Exodus
are fairly similar in overall body proportions. Lucy’s pelvis shows that she walked fully
upright. The pelvis of bonobos, while not quite as adapted to upright walking as Lucy’s, is
significantly more adapted to upright walking than the pelvises of common chimpanzees.
Interestingly, the finger bones of the australopithecines are more curved than those of
common chimpanzees (Stern and Sussman, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 60:279-
313 1983, p198). Since curved fingers are an adaption suited to climbing this may indicate
that the australopithecines’ immediate forebears were apes that frequently lived in trees,
possibly like the bonobos which are the most arboreal of the African apes. Possibly this
arboreal aspect is related to jungle living as opposed to savannah life. Maybe it was a
similar food rich tropical environment that the bonobos benefit from that our ape ancestor
also benefitted from in terms of being able to develop love-indoctrination.
While we have not traditionally thought of
humanity’s maturation as progressing through the
same stages humans go through in our individual
lives, since all the members of a variety of early
humans would have shared a relatively similar
mental and psychological state it makes sense that
each variety of early humans can be described
collectively by that shared mental and psychological
state.
Individually we each mature from ‘infancy’
to ‘childhood’ to ‘adolescence’ to ‘adulthood’. To
elaborate, infancy is when we develop sufficient
consciousness to discover that we are at the centre
of the changing array of experiences around us. We
become aware of the concept of ‘I’ or self, which,
as mentioned, is what bonobos and the other great
apes are capable of. Childhood is when we begin
to actively experiment or ‘play’ with the power of
conscious free will, the power to manage events to
our own desired ends. In the case of humanity, it is
this experimenting in self-management that led to
a conflict with our instincts and the emergence of
the upset angry, egocentric and alienated state of
the human condition. Adolescence is when we go
in search of our identity, in search of who we are—in fact, go in search of understanding
of our upset, corrupted human condition. It was only understanding of why we became
upset that could end our uncertainty about whether we were evil, worthless beings or
not. Adulthood is when we finally become understanding of ourselves, in particular
understanding of why we became divisively behaved, and as a result are able to mature
from insecure adolescence to secure adulthood and become upset-free conscious managers
of our world. In short, infancy is ‘I am’, childhood is ‘I can’, adolescence is ‘but who am
I?’ and adulthood is ‘I know who I am’.
In the case of humanity, love-indoctrination took place in our species’ infancy,
when we were trained in love and became cooperative and integratively behaved. As
will be explained in Sections 24 and 25 when consciousness is explained, infancy was
also the period when consciousness was liberated by the training in love. Since bonobos
are approaching the state of complete integration and are exceptionally conscious and
thus intelligent they are clearly approaching the end of the infancy stage, on the brink
The Great Exodus 86
of ‘childhood’. As the summary that will be given shortly will point out, bonobos are a
species living on the threshold of the metaphorical ‘Garden of Eden’, ‘Golden’, totally
integrated, cooperative, harmonious, peaceful state that our primate ancestors were able to
develop and which our ‘moral sense’ is a memory of.
To context where bonobos are in the journey negotiated by our human forebears: our
ape ancestor was Infantman, which emerged some 12 million years ago with the emergence
of apes. Infantman then gave rise to fully integrated, happy, untroubled, upset-free, playful
Childman, the australopithecines, which emerged some 5 million years ago. Thus, bonobos
are where we were some 5 million years ago. The similarity of bonobo skeletons with the
early australopithecine fossil skeleton of Lucy confirms this.
To complete the description of our human journey thus far: some 2 million years ago
the australopithecines matured into fully conscious, thoughtful, troubled, upset, humancondition-
burdened and insecure Adolescentman, Homo, us. Now, with the finding of
understanding of our upset, human-condition-afflicted state humanity is brought to the end
of its insecure adolescent stage. The search for our species’ identity, for understanding of
itself, particularly for understanding of why we became divisively behaved, has ended and
our species can now enter its secure, fulfilled, peaceful adulthood.
These fossil skulls that have been found of our ancestors, with the descriptions
given of them underneath, provide a summary of the different stages of maturation
our species has progressed through. A full explanation will be given later in Section 29
about these different stages and the associated varieties of our ape, australopithecine and
Homo ancestors. There is also much said about these stages and the fossil evidence of
our ancestors in my earliest books Free: The End of The Human Condition (1988) and
Beyond The Human Condition (1991), which can be read online at <www.humancondition.
info>. You can clearly see in these skulls the emergence of the large brain case to house
the developing ‘association cortex’ (where the association of information necessary for
thinking takes place) that followed the nurturing infancy stage and triggered the breakout
of the problem of the human condition. It should be mentioned that more varieties of
australopithecines and Homo have been found by anthropologists than those depicted here
however these remain representative of the main varieties.

A more complete summary will be given shortly but, briefly, it is clear that the
bonobos are exceptionally peaceful and cooperative. Indeed all the evidence suggests that
they are a relatively large multicellular animal species that is well on its way to developing

Consciousness

In the case
of autism, a 2006 Time magazine feature article about autism acknowledged the rapidly
increasing levels of this particular childhood disorder in the world, quoting that ‘According
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1 in 166 American children born today
will fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum. That’s double the rate of 10 years ago and 10 times the
estimated incidence a generation ago’ (15 May 2006). The article then said that ‘most researchers
believe autism arises from a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and environmental triggers’.
Nowhere in the feature article was lack of love cited as a possible cause, but again how
could parents possibly cope with having to accept such an explanation—they ‘would rather
admit to being an axe murderer than being a bad father or mother’. Blaming genes has been
infinitely more bearable than blaming our alienation from our true, natural selves and
our resulting inability to adequately nurture our offspring. The problem is this extreme
dishonesty means there has been no analysis of what is really going on in our human
world. We are not learning anything about ourselves. Lying is a form of madness, insanity,
stupidity, ultimately of self-destruction. As Berdyaev was quoted as saying at the very
beginning of this book, ‘knowledge requires great daring’. If we want to stop the ‘doubl[ing]
rate’ every ‘10 years’ of the ‘incidence’ of childhood disorders and resulting adult dysfunction
in the world we have to get real/ honest. What makes honesty possible for everyone now
is that being able to explain the human condition means we can understand that being
alienated/ neurotic was not a criminal state, something to be ashamed of, but rather an
unavoidable end result of humanity’s necessary, heroic search for knowledge.
111 The Great Exodus
The truth about the spiralling increase in ADHD, autism and schizophrenia in society,
is that it is a direct result of the levels of alienation in society having increased to extreme
levels. The exponential increase of upset and alienation in society will be explained and
documented in some detail later in this book but the truth is that the levels of alienation in
society now are such that pretty well all humans are but cardboard cut-outs of what they
would be like free of the human condition. While adults aren’t aware of their immensely
embattled, upset, alienated—virtually dead—condition because they are living in denial
of it, new generations of children arriving into the adult world who have yet to adopt
adults’ strategy of denial can fully see the difference between the original, ideal, innocent
instinctive state and the immensely upset alienated state and somehow have to cope with
the distress it causes them. The ‘Resignation’ chapter in A Species In Denial describes
how adolescents go through an agonising process of adopting humans’ historic strategy
for coping with the human condition of resigning themselves to a life of living in denial
of it and any truths that bring it into focus, but until a young person has adopted this
defence they remain exposed to the full horror of the dilemma of the human condition.
Having not yet adopted this denial children have always struggled mightily with the
imperfection of the upset world they can see around them but with the gulf between
humans’ original innocent state and our current immensely upset, alienated state being so
great now, new generations find the gulf almost unbearable, and for increasing numbers
of children actually unbearable. The truth is ADHD and its more extreme states of autism
and schizophrenia are varieties of childhood madness. R.D. Laing got to the heart of the
matter of madness when he famously said, ‘Insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an
insane world’. An unevasive analysis of autism is given by D.W. Winnicott in his book
Thinking About Children: ‘Autism is a highly sophisticated defence organization. What we see is
invulnerability…The child carries round the (lost) memory of unthinkable anxiety, and the illness is a
complex mental structure insuring against recurrence of the conditions of the unthinkable anxiety
[pp.220, 221 of 343]…It might be asked, what did I call these cases before the word autism turned up?
The answer is…”infant or childhood schizophrenia” [p.200]’. Revealingly, the word schizophrenia
literally means ‘broken soul’; to quote R.D. Laing again, ‘Perhaps we can still retain the now
old name, and read into it its etymological meaning: Schiz—”broken”; Phrenos—”soul or heart”’ (The
Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967, p107 of 156).
What has made it especially difficult for new generations trying to cope with our
corrupted adult world is that adults have been unable to admit to being corrupted in
soul, in fact, as pointed out, adults haven’t even been aware that they are corrupted—if
adults were aware they were corrupted and alienated they wouldn’t be alienated, they
wouldn’t have blocked out and thus protected themselves from the truth of their upset
condition. With new generations able to clearly see the extent of the corruption and
alienation in the world around them, this lack of any honesty by adults—in effect denial
that there is anything wrong with them or their adult world—left children dangerously
prone to blaming themselves. In encounters between the innocent and the alienated
where the alienated say in effect there is nothing wrong with them or their world, in
the innocents’ instinctive state of total trust and generosity they are left believing there
must be something wrong with them, that in some way or other they must be at fault. In
their immense naivety about the upset, alienated world, together with their great love,
trust and generosity, innocents question their own view, not the view being presented
by the alienated. The innocent do not know people lie because lying did not exist in our
species’ original innocent instinctive world. The innocents’ trusting nature made them
codependent to the alienated, susceptible to believing the alienated are right rather than
The Great Exodus 112
accepting their own view of the situation. The destructive effects of lies upon others was
once called ‘addiction via association’ but, as just mentioned, it is now known of as the
problem of codependency, ‘the dependency on another to the extent that independent action or
thought is no longer possible’. Children come from such an innocent, wholesome, trusting,
loving, generous, integrative instinctive world that they all too readily blame themselves
in situations where they are faced with a denial. Then, when they decide they must be
at fault, their sense of self-worth and meaning is completely undermined and to cope
with that ‘unthinkable anxiety’, as Winnicott accurately described it, they have no choice
but to psychologically split themselves off from the perceived reality, adopt a state of
‘invulnerability’. This dialogue from the 1993 film House of Cards spoke the truth: ‘People
say about the following categories that these kids have a problem or are disabled, or psychologically
dumb, etc, but really they are children, through hurt or some kind of trauma, that have held onto
soul, and not wanted to partake in reality—retarded, autistic, insane, schizophrenic, epileptic, braindamaged,
possessed by devils, crocked babies.’ We can see here another reason why the truth
of an utterly integrated, loving, all-sensitive past and present instinctive soulful state in
us was now such a confronting and exposing truth and why adults were so much more
comfortable believing that our species’ instinctive past was a brutish and aggressive
one. Again, the ‘Resignation’ chapter in A Species In Denial describes in some detail
how much adults’ dishonesty and silence about the truth of their corrupted condition has
devastated children. Thankfully the adult world can now tell children the truth about
their immensely upset condition and that honesty alone is going to make an enormous
difference to the psychological wellbeing of future generations.
One of the problems of not being able to be truthful about the real cause of childhood
madness is that treatment of it can be dangerously misdirected. A 2006 report about the
alarming increase in childhood disorders said, ‘Truly alarming evidence from pharmaceutical
prescriptions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) drugs shows that in 2005 one in
25 children in many poorer areas of Australia suffer from ADHD’ (The Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2006);
another article emphasised that, ‘Because it is so convenient and guilt-relieving to be able to
attribute a child’s difficult behaviour to a neurochemical problem rather than a parenting or broader
social one, there is a risk that this problem will become dangerously over-medicalised’ (The Australian, 8
Dec. 1997).
In his extremely brave 1970 book The Primal Scream, world leading psychologist
Arthur Janov dealt head-on with the consequences of parents’ inability to love their
children with anything like the amount of love children received before the intruding battle
of the human condition emerged. Note the acknowledgment of the extent of the denial
that sets in to cope with becoming extremely corrupted: ‘Anger is often sown by parents who
see their children as a denial of their own lives. Marrying early and having to sacrifice themselves for
years to demanding infants and young children are not readily accepted by those parents who never
really had a chance to be free and happy [p.327 of 446] …neurotic parents are antifeeling, and how
much of themselves they have had to cancel out in order to survive is a good index of how much they
will attempt to cancel out in their children [p.77] …there is unspeakable tragedy in the world…each
of us being in a mad scramble away from our personal horror. That is why neurotic parents cannot
see the horror of what they are doing to their children, why they cannot comprehend that they are
slowly killing a human being [p.389] …A young child cannot understand that it is his parents who
are troubled…He does not know that it is not his job to make them stop fighting, to be happy, free or
whatever…If he is ridiculed almost from birth, he must come to believe that something is wrong with
him [p.60] …Neurosis begins as a means of appeasing neurotic parents by denying or covering certain
113 The Great Exodus
feelings in hopes that “they” will finally love him [p.65] …a child shuts himself off in his earliest
months and years because he usually has no other choice [p.59] …When patients [in primal therapy]
finally get down to the early catastrophic feeling [the ‘primal scream’] of knowing they were unloved,
hated, or never to be understood—that epiphanic feeling of ultimate aloneness—they understand
perfectly why they shut off [p.97] …Some of us prefer the neurotic never-never land where nothing can
be absolutely true [the postmodernist philosophy] because it can lead us away from other personal
truths which hurt so much. The neurotic has a personal stake in the denial of truth [p.395]’.
It is worth including the following quote to illustrate how this extreme ‘personal
stake in the denial of truth’ has manifested itself in mechanistic science. In his 1989 book
Peacemaking Among Primates, Frans de Waal records: ‘For some scientists it was hard to
accept that monkeys may have feelings. In [the 1979 book] The Human Model…[authors] [Harry F.]
Harlow and [Clara E.] Mears describe the following strained meeting: “Harlow used the term ‘love’,
at which the psychiatrist present countered with the word ‘proximity’. Harlow then shifted to the
word ‘affection’, with the psychiatrist again countering with ‘proximity’. Harlow started to simmer,
but relented when he realized that the closest the psychiatrist had probably ever come to love was
proximity.”’
In his 2002 book They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life, child psychologist
Oliver James acknowledges that ‘Our first six years play a critical role in shaping who we are
as adults’, and says ‘One of our greatest problems is our reluctance to accept a relatively truthful
account of ourselves and our childhoods, as the polemicist and psychoanalyst Alice Miller pointed out’
(Intro), and that ‘believing in genes [as the cause of psychoses] removes any possibility of “blame”
falling on parents’ (ch.1).
The following dialogue from the 1989 film Parenthood uses humour to illustrate how
our near total inability to be honest has impaired any advance in science: Counsellor: ‘He’s
a very bright, very aware, extremely tense little boy who is only likely to get tenser in adolescence. He
needs some special attention.’ Karen: ‘It’s because he was first.’ Counsellor: ‘Hm?’ Karen: ‘It’s because
he was our first. I think we were very tense when Kevin was little. I mean, if he got a scratch, we were
hysterical. By the third kid, you know, you let him juggle knives.’ Counsellor: ‘On the other hand,
Kevin may have been like this in the womb. Recent studies indicate that these things are all chemical.’
Gil: ‘[points at Karen] She smoked grass.’ Karen: ‘Gil! I never smoked when I was pregnant…Will you
give me a break?’ Gil: ‘But maybe it affected your chromosomes.’ Counsellor intervening: ‘You should
not look on the fact that Kevin will be going to a special school as any kind of failure on your part.’
Gil: ‘Right, I’ll blame the dog.’
The quote from Frans de Waal mentioned the work of Harry F. Harlow, an American
psychologist who in the 1950s studied the effects of isolation and touch deprivation on
rhesus monkey infants using surrogate wire and cloth mothers. While these experiments
did show the importance of affection and nurturance on psychological development they
were unethical and if it wasn’t for our inability to confront and acknowledge truths that we
all actually know, in this instance the critical importance of nurturing, there would never
have been a need to find such stark evidence for the importance of nurturing. Harlow
found that a new-born monkey raised on a bare, wire-mesh cage floor survived with
difficulty, if at all, during its first five days of life. In an even more extreme experiment he
found that monkeys raised in total isolation in a small metal chamber he called the ‘pit of
despair’ developed the most extreme symptoms of human depression and schizophrenia
and, as adults, were unable to raise offspring. At the same time a psychologist at Yerkes
Primate Centre in America named Richard Davenport was rearing baby chimpanzees alone
in small boxes for two years at a time. The isolated chimps soon developed stereotypies
The Great Exodus 114
such as rocking and head banging. The photo below is of a monkey Harlow raised in
partial isolation from birth to six months that developed severe behavioural abnormalites.
The photo shows this individual now full-grown, biting itself at the approach of the
photographer.
In an address titled The Nature of Love that was given by Harry Harlow on his
election as President of the American Psychological Association on 31 August 1958 he
made this opening observation that reinforces what has been said earlier about science’s
inability to consider the issue of love: ‘Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks,
not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be
unaware of its very existence. The apparent repression of love by modern psychologists stands in
sharp contrast with the attitude taken by many famous and normal people. The word “love” has the
highest reference frequency of any word cited in Bartlett’s book of Familiar Quotations’ (first pub. in
American Psychologist, 1958, 13, pp.573–685).
The last word on the importance of nurturing is best left to Olive Schreiner who, in
The Story of an African Farm, wrote: ‘They say women have one great and noble work left them,
and they do it ill…We bear the world, and we make it. The souls of little children are marvellously
delicate and tender things, and keep for ever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the
mother’s or at best a woman’s. There was never a great man who had not a great mother—it is
hardly an exaggeration. The first six years of our life make us; all that is added later is veneer…The
mightiest and noblest of human work is given to us, and we do it ill’ (p.193 of 301). In the 1996 TVmovie
An Unexpected Family, the judge involved in the drama says, ‘every problem we
have in this world is because a child wasn’t loved’. Like Schreiner’s quote, this comment lays
all the blame for the ills of the world on the lack of nurturing children receive but the
truth is the origin of ‘every problem we have in this world’ is the upsetting battle that broke
out between our conscious self and instinctive self and that the ‘mightiest’, most important
‘human work’ has actually been to defeat the ignorance of our instinctive self as to the fact
of our species’ fundamental goodness. It was this battle that men were largely responsible
for that unavoidably relegated nurturing to a secondary position of importance in human
endeavours. Not only were men preoccupied with their fight, women had to help men and
115 The Great Exodus
also take on a role of inspiring them with their image of innocence, their object beauty. As
emphasised in the previous section, women have had to inspire love when they were no
longer innocent, ‘keep the ship afloat’ when men crumpled—all the while attempting to
n