As exceptional as man be, there are still only two things he can do – talk and act and do or tell stories. When men are in immediate physical danger, they instinctively will act, and when not, they tell stories which are all disguised forms of planning – spurious planning. It is one man’s story telling that will bother another man sufficiently to make him tell his own accusatory stories about the first. If it is the first man’s acts which bother the second, he will do something – not talk.
Two men, two nations, can be engaged in spasmodic physical conflict, and during times of non-actual combat, be engaged in a fierce verbal one. Each relentlessly attacking the unfulfilled plans and promises of the other, and this stirs an emotion unique to man. He will show an ongoing anger toward what another has said that is different in tone, intensity and duration from the instinctive defensive passion brought up by what another has done.
Response to another man’s hollow words is something completely different, in operation, than to his threatening acts. It is especially so when actual events ultimately reveal the “irony” involved, in regard to the plans the other side had orally presented. The consciousness of ordinary men thoroughly despises this, and not scarce are those who operationally would prefer to be hit rather than lied to, as they see it.
A man’s consciousness is programmed to take plans seriously, and reflexively recoils when others seem not to, sans reliable plans – no civilizations. All that saves man from the full grip of animal instinct is the ability to plan; to plan not to behave threateningly to your neighbor; to plan commonly agreed upon actions in advance, and by such are individuals and groups of men able to live in peace.
This is easy to see concerning men collectively, but trickier when it comes to just yourself individually. As always: whatever is going on in man’s second reality outside of you is also going on, and indeed derived from, what is going on inside of you, in your brain. Art, god, politics, all exist first in man’s brain, then they make their “appearance” in the world out there. And so too does the reliance on planning originate in each man’s mind.
J.