Living in ways contrary to your automatic, silent instincts is a thought, a theory life has implanted in man which purports to represent an improved way to live collectively. If you are a total hermit, no one cares how you conduct your life, and true, if you enjoy living collectively, then civilization is an improvement on the alternative. You living more thoughtfully than instinctively is the acceptable cost. But as promised, the fairy tale behind this common one is a whole – whole lot more fun, for it sings to the eternally-adolescent-few the nursery rhyme that goes:
“It’s all in your head.
It’s all in your head;
whether you’re civilized is,
all in your head.”
The collective of ordinary man can measure being civilized only by behavior. If a person lives according to the local laws, customs and morals they are deemed civilized. Man has found no way to enforce rules controlling what men think. Someone may think that a particular custom is silly, or law unwarranted, but as long as they behave in a manner that respects it – all is well. There are born on this planet, to this species, a few people for whom the inner “all” of being civilized IS not “well” – never has been well – is not well now, and is not getting any weller.
A pertinent translation of one common mythology would be that in the Garden of Eden tale, (which herein is placed entirely in the history of human consciousness), Adam is man-suddenly-made-civilized – indeed FORCED into being civilized. At the instant the landlord Jehovah told him to leave the idyllic setting, and you wanna guess who the Snake would, in this telling then be. The few – yeah, yeah,you gotta turn him kinda sideways and partially inside out, but nevertheless, there he was, every few-man’s original progenitor.
Notice in the story that The Snake did not bite the apple and do-the-deed, that resulted in its eater becoming thoughtful, (hearing the voice of God), and civilized. No, no he got someone else to do it – Adam, who represents the dazed, confused and dozing part of your consciousness. (Are you ready to twist the tail of the tale ever harder until it hollers: “Reveille?!”)
J.