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"The Death of Forever: A new future for human consciousness."
Darryl Reanney (1991) (Longman Cheshire, Melbourne)
In this work, the author makes use of a model by biologist, Paul McLean, that treats the human brain as a composite structure composed of three-layered interlocking elements, each with its own software and input and output channels. The oldest layer is the reptilian brain. Above this is the paleocortex or limbic system (paleomammalian), and above that the neocortex (neomammalian).[paleo, ancient; neo, new]
The limbic system is the engine of the four basic instincts (feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fornicating). Behaviour is cyclic and repetitive. In the rat, food intake runs in a three hour cycle, oestrous repeats on a four-day clock. For the human female the menstrual cycle has the same periodicity as the moon. Also there is a universal diurnal rhythm coupled to the daily light-dark cycle imposed by the rotational periodicity of the earth.
Instinctive behavior has positive and negative feedback located in the limbic and hypothalamic centers. Stimulation of the positive center for eating activity will cause the laboratory animal to eat copiously, far beyond its real needs, while stimulating the negative center will cause it to starve itself to death. In effect these are reward and punishment centers. Test animals may stimulate themselves for twenty four hours without a rest, or they may switch off with equal dedication when the negative site is stimulated. In doing so, their actions illustrate the basically mechanistic nature of instinctive behavior.
Bedded deeply in the mind are dual programs which are the exact reciprocal in the sense that one arouses while the other diminishes the consummation of the 'drive' in question--be it eating, fighting, or mating. These linked opposites are reflected in the contrasting human attributes of pleasure and pain, reward and punishment being their derived values. At the extremes, these may become emotive hyper-states --ecstasy and agony. These opposites find expression such as heaven or bliss which equivalate to reward, while hell or agony equivalate to punishment.
The instincts derived from the reptilian core and the limbic system are hard wired into the brain and generate our "ego-awareness" which reflects basically animal behavioral traits such as eating and drinking, defending in the face of danger, the fight or flee reaction, and the instinct that drives us to reproduce. Reproduction is a unique instinct that involves two individuals, in which the emotion of lust is modified by complicating value judgements.
Instincts are triggered by a specific signal--an innate releasing mechanism (IRM). For example, the male stickleback fish, on seeing the color red on the belly of another male, will respond with an attack reaction aimed at driving the other from its territory. Hormones affect the response threshold of the reaction but are not the actual trigger signal (IRM). Out of the breeding season when hormone levels are diminished, the male stickleback ignores the red belly of another male. Once triggered by an IRM, the animal engages in a response reaction which is consummatory, acting to remove the source of motivation. Instinctive behavior is fundamentally goal-driven and goal-oriented--a negative feedback control system leading to homeostasis.
The gratification that follows consummation of an instinct means that the demands of the body no longer intrude into the realm of mentality; the psyche can sink back into the easeful slumber of semi-consciousness--homeostasis experienced as contentment or happiness. Thus consummatory pleasure is the basic archetype of human "happiness."
Whereas an aroused animal will simply carry out a consummatory act in the eternal present, in the human being the symbolate mind often interposes sets of intermediate actions between the archetypal urge and its archetypal fulfilment. For example, we may dream of what we would do if we won a lottery and, though the variations may be enormous, they nevertheless cluster around good food, a holiday in the sun, indulgent sex, absence of stress, the goals that, for the most part, form the motivational foundation of psychology. The goal orientated archetype of instinctive behavior is the basis for almost all purposeful mental activity. The force that draws behavior through complicated sequences of conscious actions all too often comes from the ever powerful magnet in the subconscious realm of the limbic brain where the pleasure/pain nuclei lie. We should not underestimate this magnet--think of the laboratory rat which self-stimulates its own pleasure center until it drops from exhaustion.
The second law of thermodynamics encodes a universal tendency for order to decay into disorder, for information to degenerate into noise, for complex systems to move back towards a state of inertia, homeostasis or equilibrium. Analogous processes operate in human psychology and there is a tendency to psychic laziness, a desire to opt out of the struggle.
In the metaphorical imagery of religion, the Devil is not merely the tempter who whispers to lie down in easeful slumber. He is also the mythical embodiment of the very hardships which make us suffer and, in suffering, transcend our present limitation. The things that seem so cruel, so unfair, so tragic are the very things which prevent the human psyche from falling back into the inertia of indolence.
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