Getting to the Root (2) . . .

G. I. Gurdjieff, drawing, it seems, on a much more ancient wisdom, saw the average man as being composed of different independently functioning ‘centers’: there was basically the intellectual center, the emotional center, and, combining the physical and instinctive, an instinctive-moving center. These centers tended in general to be out of balance with each other, with consequent knock-on problems for the health, sanity and stability of the ordinary man. A fundamental aspect of the Gurdjieff system involved reconciling the centers, helping and training them to function like a well-oiled team, and no longer at odds one with the other.

This, of course, is to a certain extent a simplification of what Gurdjieff taught—but it is sufficient for the moment to our purposes here.

In several of the last few mailings, I have suggested that the wellsprings of our actions lie more with the instincts (and, indeed, the emotions too) than with our rational mind or will. In one mailing, I suggested that the existence of ethics demonstrated how it was possible to bring the instincts under conscious control. But as it generally works, this represents a fairly brutal control. A stamping on the instincts rather than a co-operation, much in the way that one would morning-after put a campfire out.

Looking at your typical ‘ethical’ man, the impression one often gets is of a rather dry old stick, who having succeeded in strangling his natural instincts, is rather proud of the fact. Yet an argument can exist that often he is deceiving himself, that rather than being in control of the instincts he is in fact a victim of their deviousness—or the deviousness of at least one of them.

In a recent mailing I mentioned the almost instinctive drive of man’s need to make sense of the world, to create a world vision, whether it be true or false, that will allow him the illusion of being in control of things. Of a comparable power is the drive to ‘belong’—something discussed in an even earlier posting. Those that claim to know about these things—the experts—say that the social instinct in man shares the same neural pathways as are involved in physical pain, so that the urge to belong operates arguably on the same reactive level as that which compels the fool to pull his finger back from the flame.

And lest you think I exaggerate, a recent report, for what it’s worth, in the Daily Telegraph, carried the following: ‘Love really does hurt, according to scientists, who found that breaking up can cause physical pain. Researchers discovered a genetic link between physical pain and social rejection . . .’ (DT, 5/12/2009).

What I am suggesting is that the outward probity of individuals has often less to do with an ethical approach to life than with the compulsive desire to belong. The strength of specific impulses varies from individual to individual—but if in any particular instance the overriding one happens to be the desire to belong, then there is not necessarily any virtue underlying the adoption of an ethical stance. What is involved is simply a roundabout way of satisfying the ruling instinct—much as in the case of the serial masturbator or the compulsive coward.

Now I am not saying that the ethical life is not possible—of course it is. But what I am suggesting is that often what appears to be an ethical life is only a simulacrum of it, much in the way that in nature the, say, harmless scarlet kingsnake is an at-first-glance copy of the venomous coral snake—though perhaps the analogy should be other way round.

The ethical man (if such a creature there be) arrives at his principles through the confluence of his desires, conscience and a perception of the broader social needs. The pseudo-ethical man arrives at his ‘principles’—the principles of the ‘social ethic’, as I described it in an earlier posting—as a consequence of his being inwardly driven to embrace them. And the dangerous thing is that in his panic to belong he tramples ruthlessly underfoot any aspect of his nature that might seem threatening to the paradigm of respectability that he craves. A third option, of course, is that of drawing a cloak about the privacy of one’s ‘sins’—rather like the figure on the Sandeman’s Port bottle—and surmounting it with a pious face.

In the mailing cited immediately above, I also mentioned the Ten Commandments and the sins or tendencies they were logically intended to curb—tendencies that are in themselves not directly instinctive, but are rather expressions of an innate and more basic animal/human drive to individual survival and self-expression. If you look at the list closely, they are all personal sins. If they have a social context at all, it is only to the extent that everybody has a propensity to them. They are expressions purely of individual self-interest, and as such ultimately at war with all other individual self-interests.

Yet there are circumstances where such self-interests can combine together to their mutual advantage. One thinks, for example, of the vast herds of wildebeest etc. that migrate up and down the Serengeti Plain, where the individual’s chance of survival is greatly increased through the sheer mass of numbers involved.

And something similar occurs in human life. In an earlier posting—and I’m sick at this stage of citing earlier postings—I mentioned the human propensity under threat to ‘circle the wagons’. For the fact is that there is an instinctive human reaction when nervous and scared to fold like sheep. Walter Laqueur, in his book, The Terrible Secret, reports a standard response among ghettoized East European Jews to news of massacres and exterminations as ‘“they can’t kill us all”’.

But, of course, they could—or nearly so. And this points to a danger implicit in the operation of any unconscious instinctive mechanism: automatic reactions that historically have aided survival may, through time and the development of technology, turn into their opposite. This is not to say that the idea of safety in numbers is not necessarily a correct one—most times it is; but there are circumstances where it may not be so.

The reason I raise this point is that I think it illustrates the possibility for a fruitful cooperation between the instincts and the intellect, as opposed to a knock-down-and -winner-take-all type of relationship.

Imagine some vague sense of danger that has the effect of setting people nervously milling and gathering together out of instinct; then allow also for an individual who is influenced by the general mood. The immediate unconscious impulse is for him to gather together with the rest. But it is within the power of his rational mind, if it understands the implicit fallibility of the instinctive response, to put up a hand, as it were, to the impulse and say: Wait a while—you may well be right. But there are circumstances where this particular response may be wrong. Let’s just discuss it for a moment . . .

It may turn out that he after all goes with the crowd, it may turn out that he doesn’t. And it may turn out that whatever decision he makes, it will be the wrong one. But the fact is that whatever conclusion he reaches will be as a result of a partnership between the two separate aspects of his nature, the intellectual and the instinctive; and that fact alone may give him the slightest of edges when it comes to deciding on the right course.

We have concentrated here on only one aspect of the instincts—the human tendency to crowd together under threat. But if that one can sometimes be iffy, then it opens up the possibility that under differing circumstances so also may all the instincts. And the knowledge that we cannot automatically depend on the instincts to do the right thing by us in changed situations makes it sensible that we adopt alternative strategies. It allows for the introduction of the intellect as friend, intimate or counselor to the instincts, and not necessarily as enemy—a cooperation in aid of what was after all the fundamental purpose of the instincts: our individual survival and opportunity for self-assertion.