The duality of man, and the process of unification.

I am lost here.

The more I find out about myself, all throughout myself, I see myself ever more divided.

I am not schizophrenic. I don't have split personalities. Not at all. I am very well balanced, a tad overzealous, passionate about things. But all in all, balanced and well adjusted.

The thing is I have this aspect of my mind that I have come to see in everyone. A duality. We all have this sort of duality to our constructed mind and our natural mind.

I see it as a sort of conflict between the savage and the civilized man.

The mind of a human is in its natural state, un-confrontational, not war like. Its self defense is "flight" overwhelmingly Vs. the constructed minds "fight" response.

If it rains, we run to shelter under a tree or whatever. If not we build an umbrella.

If we are faced with an unknown threat, we get away from it. We only face it dead on when the later is not possible. The decision to face it comes from the logical, constructed mind analyzing the inability to run and deciding how best to fight the threat. Build a weapon, build a trap, ect, "strategy", more constructs.

I see myself internally as the wild man and the civilized man. The wild man is impulse and instinct. He feels natural. Like the right thing to do. I don't doubt him. He is my natural state. What I flow into.

The constructed civilized man is not natural except by repetition, and conditioning. By the wild man being trained to surrender to the civilized man. He is not natural, he is not a sure thing. He is a gamble that promises to pay off.

He is also a last resort. To me is not as powerful as the wild man, he is not a force of nature, but rather contemplates the forces of nature. The wild man is what my mind is, the constructed civilized man is what I make my mind to be.

This duality can tear you apart. It is also capable of harmony. To me that harmony is the OLNY purpose of enlightenment or higher thought. The civilized man is not the higher thought. He himself contemplates the same world as the wild man with the same eyes. His response is the only thing that varies. The civilized, constructed man looks for alternatives to what is natural, sometimes relying on the thought process, but linked to it. He is still operating out of instinct, a trained and conditioned instinct that leads him to think of a response instead of taking the first to occur to him.

The civilized man is fight, his civilization requires conflict to exist. The wild mans does not. The wild man runs from danger, the civilized man learns to overcome it. To fight it. His world of thought is not contemplation, but analysis, and more response. He learns to make inferiors pay his society tribute so his society can dedicate some to learning, architecture, math, philosophy, ect. He needs his useless eaters to be fed and sometimes better fed than the producers. This requires him to find tributary societies to maintain a higher level of comfort in his own circles. If not he must then divide his society and establish one such class of people to pay tribute and make the leisure of his "civilized" men possible.

A similar process happens in my mind, Our minds. We set aside certain aspects of our natural state, the wild man inside and condition him to surrender, pay tribute to the civilized aspect of the mind. We learn to be trained by our "higher" thought. We do so by fight, conflict.

I thought for a long time that the conflict was FROM by savage side. I find it is really from my civilized side creating conflict with my savage side. Forcing it to submit to my civilized training.

In all this I see the harmony as yet another "side" to ourselves. Neither constructed or natural. It is the offspring, the product of both wild and civilized sides. A son of the union of the "fight" side and the "flight" side. I seeing them as separate aspects and springing from the extremes of the duality inherit of humanities psyche.

I see the harmony of the two as the true identity. Not the natural "savage" or the seemingly unnatural "civilized"

The savage will run to death and become stagnant if never challenged. The civilized will fight to death and over work itself into a frenzy. The balance is what keeps the savage running, avoiding conflict, but stopping to better his situation. It keeps the civilized form over producing and over consuming for too much leisure, form creating too much conflict.

I will call this harmony, true you. Many have done so already.

This helped.

Originally posted by manykapao


The thing is I have this aspect of my mind that I have come to see in everyone. A duality. We all have this sort of duality to our constructed mind and our natural mind.

What you describe sounds like this, only in Western terms, no?

tao-in-you.com...

Everything in this world is a dualism. In it, you can always find yin and yang.

reply to post by Sissel


yes, it is like ying and yang. I do see a duality to everything, but especially so in people.

An interesting perspective and I enjoyed reading it.

I tend to see this basic dual nature in myself in terms of Yin and Yang, or feminine/masculine,
also could be said-
Emotion/intellect
Body/mind
collective consciousness/ self consciousness


I am not sure we make exactly the same discernments, but it sounds like it, in essence.
They can be at odds with each other, or they can be cooperative with each other.
I don't value either side more than the other. They have different strengths and gifts and are maximized when balanced with each other.

reply to post by Bluesma


yes it has been described as female and male energies. I would call the savage the male energy and the female the civilized man.

The savage is tamed by the civilized man, like the male is tamed by the female. I see that.

Like the tale of Gilgamesh, Enkido is subdued by Gilgamesh, but more importantly once he knew of the female sex, their energy. It was what tamed the savage. The savage, Enkido lost potency, but gained balance with the civilized Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh gained a companion. Learned to love because of it. Learned humility as well. That his potency was not enough to subdue his mortality like he had done with his savage(Enkido).

But I digress, yes I think we agree. The female energy is the civilized aspect of our lives.

EDIT:

In a way this is being played out in our society as well. The civilized part of us, that searches for greater understanding of the world around us, wishes to face off with nature and challenge MORTALITY itself. Our savage side wishing to embrace the death we see as primal and necessary to our identity. That we will lose our humanity by reaching immortality.

The transhumanists can be seen as the civilized minds maxim expression and ultimate goal, like a Gilgamesh, wishing to challenge mortality by reason (civilized minds potency) alone. The religious, or rather spiritual side trying to preserve the potency of the natural state of the human condition. Trying to go untamed like an Enkido.

We are trying to find a balance, a harmony to our understanding and cope with our capabilities, without killing the natural savage that is integral to our very being, and without ignoring the civilized man that is just as important to our existence.

Coping with capabilities of a modern society can be seen as the ying and yang learning to find balance.


or this can be simplified as science VS religion. Left VS right. Male VS female. ect.

I think when it is not a V.S. created by the civilized minds natural tendency to create conflict we see harmony. When the savage is not scared so as to run as well.

When religion is not provoked or acts out of fear, and when science is not closed and feral with its conclusions.
When they are one but acknowledging their duality, more is gained. The true self.

reply to post by Bluesma


Agreed and nice post

Why is it that everyone is so "Wordy" on this site...

Thoughts and symbols are your friends!

reply to post by blazenresearcher


I don't understand what you mean by that.

Wordy?

So are you psychic?


Words are our friends. They are what is behind Symbols. I could have used symbols I guess. But that would not be very productive on this subject.

I have gotten both sides of this. Some people say they want direct to the point statements, that symbolism and allegory are ineffective. Others say they prefer it.

I am not going to please half of you.

Originally posted by blazenresearcher
Why is it that everyone is so "Wordy" on this site...

Thoughts and symbols are your friends!

I like words. They're my friends too. They are symbols, vehicles of thought.

Originally posted by manykapao
reply to post by Sissel

 

yes, it is like ying and yang. I do see a duality to everything, but especially so in people.

All one can say is

welcome to reality