Looking around at our society now, it would be tough to miss the amount of stress people are under. It would be even tougher to miss how unhappy everybody is. Anxiety, depression, OCD, IBS, heartburn, ulcers, heart attacks… People take medications for these symptoms (which is what most of these things are: symptoms of a larger problem) and they flood their bodies with chemicals to counteract the effects of our society on their bodies without ever addressing the real problem. Stress and unhappiness may be the number one killer of people in our culture, in one way or another. There are many reasons for this and one that is overlooked by many is the fact that we are living a life so far removed from the life we were meant to live.
If we were to look at our ancestors, we would see a very different situation than we now find ourselves living in. Man was not created to live so far-removed from nature and the earth. We have domesticated animals and plants but in the process, we have also domesticated ourselves. Humans seem to be on a never-ending quest to overcome their biology. It’s ironic and interesting to note that, while we would never expect this from any other creature, we all but demand it from ourselves and our community. This is not all bad, of course. Certain things are perhaps needed in order to live together as a group and there is an argument that the “Domestication of Man” has enabled these things to occur. However, it may be that the pendulum has now swung so far in the other direction that it’s become detrimental. The disconnection is perhaps now too great for the programming to sustain itself and a re-connection to these primitive roots is needed. This is essentially why people feel so refreshed and wonderful after they go camping. It isn’t just the break from modern stresses. It is the re-connection with nature, and with our primitive roots. It would be nearly impossible to “rewild” ourselves back to how our ancestors were, but that does not mean we cannot live a life that is more closely connected to what we were originally meant to be.
Ancient human programming dictates that men are hunters and women are gatherers. This is evident today in many situations, but let’s exclude socially accepted gender roles for a moment and focusing strictly on biology. Of course, all people are different, so we will just speak in general terms. Humans – like all animals – have certain biological imperatives that they must fulfill. These cannot be ignored or sublimated. They are the things that drive us and they cannot be “edited out” of existence. These biological imperatives include survival, territorialism, competition, reproduction, quality of life-seeking, and group forming. If you look at our society, you can see these needs being met in various ways. Some are successful but many are not. Men and women have the same needs, but they generally differ in the ways they seek to fulfill them, and in what their roles are in the group. This is, again, because of biology.
If males are traditionally hunters and warriors, then, it hardly makes sense to place them in situations where they are unable to exercise these imperatives and must constantly sublimate and ignore them. Males need to build things, hunt things, destroy things and provide things. They need to use their hands and their minds to make a life for themselves and their families. The desire to do these things will not go away. If it must be sublimated, it will come out in other ways. Perhaps this is why many men are so enamored with contact/combat sports and violent video games. It is a “safe outlet” for the frustration that builds around these urges that our society consistently preaches they should not have and must ignore.
It is the same with females. As traditional gatherers and nest-makers, females have the urge to make the home and nurture the offspring. Again, the desire to do these things will not go away. It cannot be successfully ignored or sublimated. This may be why women who chose not to have children often have many animals to care for. The urge to nurture other living things is very strong. Our society is now structured in such a way that females must also be “hunters” (providers) or they face the inability of their own family to survive, as well as the ridicule of the rest of society. For females who have children and a career, this can create a cognitive dissonance between what she feels she should do vs. what she feels she must do. This stress on her mind is detrimental to the family and to her. To that end, women who cannot have children are often very affected and stressed by it. It is not society causing this. It’s biology.
The repression of imperatives and urges can create cognitive and emotional problems in the brain, because the urges are natural but according to our society, they must be repressed. For males it can cause anger and serious frustration. These things can result in behavior that is not socially acceptable, such as fighting, gang affiliations or other types of antisocial behavior. For females, it is much the same (though it may or may not be expressed differently); it can cause aggression, depression and we’ve even seen this imperative at work in extreme cases where a woman steals another woman’s child – sometimes killing her to obtain the child. Even when the repression of natural human urges and imperatives does not result in overt or blatant violence, it takes other forms that are just as negative and destructive, such as bullying, ostracizing, manipulation, over-competitiveness and more. These are all examples of normal urges being expressed in abnormal ways because normal expression is either not permitted or not feasible in our culture and society.
Any animal that can freely express and exercise their natural urges and imperatives is happier and better-adjusted. This includes humans, but ironically, we don’t seem to include ourselves in the equation. It is interesting to note that most humans seem unaware of the inherent contradiction here. People will feel empathy for animals locked in tiny crates on factory farms or kept in unnatural habitats at the zoo, they will remark on how depressed and unhappy these animals seem, but they don’t seem to see how this applies to their own lives – even though we are basically existing in just as unnatural a habitat as a gorilla or a tiger is when he lives at the City Zoo. Certainly no one suggests giving the gorilla or the tiger Prozac to help them with their condition. That would be absurd, because the solution to the problem is obvious. Perhaps it is simply a matter of awareness, then. After all… maybe the tiger does not know he is living in an unnatural habitat, because it’s all he’s ever known.
Maybe he just needs someone to point it out.
Image source: primitivism.com
This makes a lot of sense. The interconnectivity is reaching staggering levels though technology.