43 CODE OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOUR
In order to sustain a true state of human being it shall be necessary to include in the constitution a code of individual behaviour. This will not be authoritative law, but a reminder to which individuals voluntarily refer for guidance and encouragement. At the present stage of contemplation, prior to agreeing the code, we should consider the following.
We have long been trying to resolve the struggle between our humanity and the Machine, but unsuccessfully because we have never escaped from the latter's domination. We still address the human questions and problems according to the automatic concepts, standards and beliefs of existing reality. Consequently our reasoning is a variously confused mixture of falseness and truth, so that we can not agree.
We now have to address these questions and problems with very different minds - according to supraconsciousness of humantrue reason. But however compelling our good intentions, we must remember that we are instinctive, conscious bodies as well as postconscious minds. Whilst our code of individual behaviour must unfailingly uphold our good and humantrue intentions, it must take account of, also fulfil, our inescapable, necessary emotions.
When discussing ideal human behaviour we shall have to decide what practices are necessary and desirable, and what are unnecessary and undesirable. Some of these decisions are bound to go against the grain of long-accustomed feeling. They will have to be honoured with grim determination, until the time comes when they are fully accepted as part of our new, humantrue nature, with our emotions gathered in support.
It is suggested that the code of individual behaviour shall be divided into three parts : Survival, Reproduction, and Fulfilment.
Survival. To prepare the way for deciding how we shall achieve survival, we should first remove from our minds and wills our present automatic concepts, practices and motives. We should cease thinking and acting competitively, with egocentric self-interest. We should cease reasoning incompletely and applying our will to the preferment of kith and kin and to gaining possession, advantage, reward and status.
The accepted intention of our postconscious guided intellect shall be to embrace co-operation, simple husbanding of resources, healthy diet, and to admit it as our own responsibility to keep humantruth, abiding by that which we know to be right and good, whatever contrary impulsions we may feel. These intentions shall be supported by the power of will switched to giving, loving, sharing, caring and cherishing - wanting allto be well, and making this its great and responsible undertaking.
Reproduction. We need to see that whereas it is vital to the human race that we continue to reproduce, by overcoming instinctive inhibitions we have allowed ourselves to pursue the mating drive to extremes which are strictly unnecessary from the practical viewpoint.
Sexual desire is instinct's means of impelling animals to reproduce. It is, and needs to be, nature's strongest but temporary drive, so that when the proper time comes it takes absolute precedence. In nature, when mating has been accomplished the sexual aim has been achieved and, there being no further need for it until next season, desire subsides, making way for other drives to assert or re-assert themselves, such as the call to defend territory, build a nest, or dig a burrow. Not so with humans. By virtue of our much more complex conscious minds we have a higher capacity for emotional stimulation than any other animal, yet our survival success does not require the use of this whole capacity. The normal animal's livelihood and safety, on the other hand, calls for a total brain capacity only slightly greater than needed for its maximum, pre-planned, vigilant activity.
The human race still follows instinctive drives and, having bigger capacity for stimulation, also has greater ability to indulge those drives The Machine has taken from us the all-round responsibility for fending for ourselves, and replaced it with narrow tasks, more secure but normally less engrossingly stimulating. So we indulge in all kinds of artificial sports and entertainments, with the help of the Machine which profits from them. We are accustomed to mating at any time because human babies can survive birth at all seasons. But we mate frequently - far beyond the needs of reproduction - for only an average of just over two births per marriage are required to maintain the population. We pursue sexual gratification further still by practicing homosexuality and masturbation, indulgencies, seemingly peculiar to humans, which have no natural reproductive function.
Our sexual practices do presently serve an acceptably important human function, however - the temporary release of tension and excape from frustration. But they are exploited by the Machine, as are all our appetites, in the interests of the money-economy. Up to a point it could be said that sexual titillation is a contribution to that important function, but when carried too far, as it is, the effect is to drag us still further below the level of postconscious awareness required for humantrue change.
I suggest that in a much more widely and deeply fulfilling humantrue society, preoccupation with sex will be much reduced, kept to its important role of contributing to happy monogamous relationships, and more closely related to childbirth. It will be no longer subject to contrary commercial pressures in the shape of provocative dress fashions, make-up, films and magazines, or stirred up to excess by the misuse of drugs including alcohol. Restrained sexual behaviour will be encouraged and reinforced by the voluntary adoption of certain rules - that it shall never harm, threaten (and this particularly includes the terrible risk of AIDS), or give offence to anyone, or be allowed to displace other more essential cares and responsibilities. The final factor to keep sex in its appropriate place will be the many and varied other interests and satisfactions which will occupy everyone in a humantrue society.
Fulfilment. I think there is no question but that when we are a supraconscious race it will be our true nature to fulfil intellect, and so find happiness such as we have never known. In respect of fulfilment, therefore, this code is not so much a matter of guiding our behaviour, since that will now come naturally, but of reminding us to keep the framework of life according to true human nature. To maintain our fundamental happiness we must ensure that the practices of the world bear out and support the pure postconscious awareness of our minds by fulfilling humantruth. It will be the responsibility of every single individual to see that this is constantly so.
To prepare the way for spontaneously humantrue individual behaviour we shall have to turn our backs on substitute fulfilments. We must reject : competitive sport; violent and escapist entertainment, real or imaginary, about automatic life and existing affairs, in newspapers, television, films and books; hard drinking, drugs and tobacco; automated holidays and games. It must no longer be required of us to be preoccupied with : money-economy reckoning, spending, worrying and cheating; false calculations and conversations; political and religious compromising, pretending, posturing and arguing. Even the formally instituted artificial caring, in old people's homes for instance, however conscientious and kindly, shall be abandoned, for it is a poor substitute for the real thing, ie care in the family or true community.
In a humantrue reality the normal process of living, including spontaneous humour and informal play, will give all the physical and basic emotional satisfaction needed. The individual intellect, all practical problems having been already long solved, will no longer be constantly applied, defensively or aggressively as at present, to competitive affairs of the Machine. It will be free to rise to another plane, such as that which exclusively absorbs musicians, or painters. But whilst it is apart from everyday considerations, it will be complimentary to, and not superior to but absolutely in harmony with, everyday life. It might be inspired by a sunset, perhaps, the same sunset as delights and calms the physical emotions, representing a total oneness of physical/intellectual human being.
It is to be fully understood that once the mind becomes supraconscious it cannot but accept humantruth, to the practice of which the greatest power of our individual will shall be inescapably drawn, but for the preservation of which we must be ever watchful. And it has to be recognised that the individual isresponsible for the whole, and that the whole must be made solely dependent on the individual. Under the constitution, this will be achieved more safely and securely than by any other means, because this is the one and only way of making and keeping the whole humantrue.
Pt.VII REALISATION
DECIDING THE CONSTITUTION
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