Pro-Choice or Pro-Life? Chapter 3, The Reflective Contemplative Dwelling Mind.
Gregg Zegarelli Esq.
Managing Shareholder at Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC
Part I. The (Insecure) Reflective Dwelling Contemplative Mind.
To manage an effect, we start by isolating the cause. Therefore, to understand the effects of human beings, we must, as Socrates said, start at the beginning.
So here goes: Human beings are insecure. Let us start right there. Let us hold onto that fact, and let us never let it go. Insecurity is the alpha and omega of life.
Now, this statement of fact that we are insecure is not intended to be quippish about our weight, our height, or our bad hair day. But rather to state that insecurity is part of our core fabric, starting the very day that we are born. Insecurity is not something about us, insecurity is us. Indeed, every one of us is born into this life—insecure; that is how we enter, and how we exit. We can pack years of complex study of psychology and sociology onto that simple fact, but that is where human nature starts, and that is where it ends. It is sometimes hard for us to admit the fact that we are insecure, but we'll get to that...
The fact of our insecurity is not difficult to prove: we simply put a newborn human infant into the jungle, alone. The infant will die—it is statistically assured. Yes, some people might desire comfortably to believe, to dream, or to hope that a shrewdness of apes will adopt, nurse and raise the infant, but I'll suggest they would not test their theory in the real world with their own child whom they love.
Such as we experience it, life itself does not provide security. We are always in need of something; indeed, there is always something threatening our happy survival. Yes, even the most powerful kings and Caesars still tend to test their food. If Mother Nature does not conquer us first, then she is succeeded by Father Time.
In this physical world of defending ourselves from these threats to our security, even that lowly and simple insect, the cockroach, has the advantage over us.
But, so far as we can tell from available evidence, we differ from the cockroach in one particular attribute—one profound attribute that is not in the physical realm of existence—to wit: We are self-aware.
Self-awareness is a complex state of mind. It is the Descartes, "I think, therefore I am" circular awareness of our awareness. It is the contemplating self—the reflective self.
Yes, both human beings and cockroaches are alike in the need to deal with physical existence and survival, but, so far a we can tell from available evidence, the cockroach does not reflectively dwell upon the task. So says D. H. Lawrence:
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
It is profound to be aware of—and to admit—our natural state of insecurity, because this fact is the very cause from which our mental state as human beings is effected at its most fundamental core. Our natural state of insecurity is the starting point of understanding human nature—it must be so, because it is first, absolute and universal. It may be that other animals share the quality of reflection by self-awareness at some level, but so far as evidence suggests, the fulfilled potential of human beings for that contemplative dwelling reflection is unmatched in scope and complexity.
Existential self-awareness is more than instinctual thinking or autonomous action, but in the nature of what we call "free-will," such that we (as a general rule) have the capacity to choose our conduct, if not our manner of thinking. We human beings are at the top of the free-choice-food-chain. Indeed, whether by god or evolution, certain other strata of life simply cannot make free choices—they cannot and they could not. If worms and bees chose to protest or to take a needed vacation, then the physical world as we know it would end. Yes, certain strata of life must do what they do in a statistically static and predictable manner, to maintain physical life existence by and with that pervasive concept to which all things gravitate: equilibrium of a natural order.
Once we agree that all human beings are fundamentally and profoundly insecure as a natural condition of existence—being an indivisible and axiomatic function of the quest survival and comfort—actions by human beings start naturally to fall into place. First survival, then comfort.
But, as we have determined the profound insecurity of human beings, and as we have also determined that human beings have a reflective contemplative dwelling mind, there are concomitantly two existences—if we can call it such—for human beings. Existence within the physical world (no more or less than a cockroach), and existence within that special place of humanity, being the reflective contemplative dwelling mind.
Now this is important: Our bodies will do things for survival and comfort, and so will our minds. We know that the sphere of the body does what the sphere of the mind tells it to do (as a general rule), but, the human mind—because it is a reflective contemplative dwelling mind —also does (as a general rule) what it tells itself to do.
Yes, we might say that the reflective contemplative dwelling mind has a mind of its own. Well-ordered, the duality of the mind controls the body and, yes, the mind also controls itself.
Part II. Tools and Weapons.
Security and insecurity are definitional opposites of each other, but they do not necessarily implement as opposites. Insecurity needs and desires, and therefore it acts. Security may or may not act, as it does not have the compulsion of causation. So wisely observes George Bernard Shaw, if not in a manner less fundamentally observant:
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Indeed, as a general rule, human beings are thinkers, but causation to act is not in thinking per se. Rather, causation is needing or desiring, being a function of insecurity. If life perfectly granted animals the security of happy survival in the state of nature, every act would necessarily tend to be detrimental. But, alas, that is not the self-evident fact of life.
Therefore, insecure human beings, such as other lesser animals, by god or evolution, as the case may be, are or have become problem solvers in the quest for happy survival. Perhaps, in the far past, some animals survived happily, without necessary causation to act, but we will never know, because those animals are now extinct.
And so it is or has become that, if survival and comfort require human beings to beaver a dam, we beaver a dam. To do so, we develop weapons—or "tools," if that word is more comfortable—to conquer the task. All tools (or weapons, if preferred) are created for the purpose of conquering something. (Only common definitional connotation separates weapons as a subset of tools for use to conquer animals; that is, a hammer that conquers wood is a tool; a hammer that conquers a human is a weapon.)
But, the important point is that conquering the physical world—such as the beaver or the cockroach—is only the physical half of it.
So much more, if mental survival and comfort require that we build dams in our self-aware reflective contemplative dwelling minds, then our mind will use available tools to do so within itself, and, if it does not have the tools, it will naturally try to create them.
The mind seeks survival and comfort for the holistic self, in both body and in mind. It is wired to conquer problems. Yes, the healthy mind is wired to self-correct problems to self. As a general rule, the human mind will naturally tend to attempt to achieve survival and comfort internally and externally.
The body wants to survive and then it wants to be comfortable. And, so does the mind.
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We all have heard the relatively recent social comment that we "build walls" within our minds (or must tear them down), being one particular characterization of the rule that the mind seeks survival and comfort for itself. Yes, the mind will castle walls to defend itself. Whether the duality of the reflective contemplative dwelling mind is part of the quasi-physical dynamic of two hemispheres of the human brain remains to be determined, but the human mind will defend itself as a function of creating security and comfort for itself.
Now, in the physical world, we understand that a conditioned lion will eat us, so we invent a spear, which is a physical weapon to provide a defense, for physical security and comfort. But, that is simply a physical weapon for a physical threat, matching an invented tooth for a natural tooth. But, we also tend to fear the lion.
Fear of the lion tends to be in two parts: a) the fear and insecurity that is the cause to act and to create the spear (or to cause the cockroach to scamper); and b) the fear and insecurity (with discomfort and anxiety) after having made the spear, with nothing to do but to wait, to reflect, to contemplate, and, yes, to dwell. Both categories of this fear are completely natural, but they are different. Generalizing, the first category of fear causes a physical response for survival that is shared by many animals; but, the second category of fear—that is, the reflecting, the contemplating, and the dwelling—is more than an insect's fight or flight, but concomitant with the human being's sophisticated self-awareness ("Am I going to die? What is happening? Why is this happening?") reflective contemplative dwelling mind.
The statistics vary, but, at one in 11 million, we have greater odds of being born with an extra finger, being hit by a meteorite, or winning a Gold Medal, than dying in an airplane, and, yet, we've all naturally—albeit less perfectly—reflected, contemplated and dwelled during a really bumpy airplane ride, "Is this the end?"
So says the magnificent Seneca the Younger:
There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.
Suffering in imagination is pain to the mind. The mind, such as the body, seeks survival first, and then comfort. Accordingly, the mind, such as the body, will act to cure pain.
We build houses and walls in the physical world, and we build houses and walls in our minds. And, such as it is for building houses and walls, and in defending ourselves, we need tools (or weapons, if you prefer).
And, in the natural quest for security and comfort, what is the greatest of tools? What is the greatest of weapons? Another human being. Therefore, we tribe, as will be discussed in Chapter 4.
See also:
Gregg Zegarelli is Managing Shareholder of Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group, PC. Gregg is nationally rated as "superb" and has more than 25 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes, including startups, INC. 500, and publicly traded companies. He is author of One: The Unified Gospel of Jesus, and The Business of Aesop™ article series, and co-author with his father, Arnold Zegarelli, of The Essential Aesop: For Business, Managers, Writers and Professional Speakers. Gregg is a frequent lecturer, speaker and faculty for a variety of educational and other institutions. © 2019 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
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