On The Human Species: A Philosophy on Reason and the Emergence of Civilized Humanity

On The Human Species

A Philosophy on Reason and the Emergence of Civilized Humanity

Copyright 2017 Anthony Pellegrino

Published by Androgynous Papers

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

I shall ever curse the gods for bestowing upon me the gift of reason

Table of Contents

Preface

Sense Experiencing Thinking Entities

A Spiritual Species

A Social Creature

Divisions, Enmity, and Destiny

Preface

As one gazes back through antiquity, they should realize every form of government has proven its ability to fail. The reason being is that a form of governance is only as stable as the individuals who are ruling it. In addition, regardless of the abilities, beliefs, opinions, and desires of those heading a form of governance, the success or failure of the governing body is still largely affected by, and thus in part due to the following:

1. Various natural phenomena that bring upon factors uncontrollable by man, including pestilence, weather, geographical attributes of dominions or aspired land, and untimely natural deaths within the populace or governing body.

2. The abilities, beliefs, and desires of the governed populace.

3. The abilities, beliefs, and desires of the governing body and populace of neighboring states or societies.

It has been often stated, the best thing about the American Republic is anyone can be president, sadly, this is also the most detrimental. The rule of a governing body, regardless if it is constituted of one, few, or many, will only be as capable as the capabilities of the individuals themselves, only as wise as the wisdom they possess. Thus again, the seeking mind is inclined to search further and ask what measures the success of a governing body. Let me propose the following:

1. Power, wealth, and/or economic prosperity

2. Security from neighboring peoples.

3. Dominion over peoples and lands.

4. The contentedness and prosperity of the populace.

5. The contentedness and prosperity of the governing body.

Alternatively, should one judge the success of a governing body on the mere propagation of the species it governs?

Since the success of a governing body is contingent upon many variables and does not always depend on the perspicacity of the ruler or system, but the ability, beliefs, and desires of the governmental constituents, as well as the aforementioned postulates, one should necessarily amble beyond the governing body to find a way to limit the variables and increase the probability of finding the paramount ruling system. The next logical step is to progress within the society in order to increase a knowledge of the relation between the populace and the governing body. However, can society form the government or does government form the society? The subtleties within this question are of the utmost importance, because they beckon other questions. To what extent can a government affect the beliefs and actions of the populace? To what extent can the populace affect the beliefs and actions of the governing body? Would honesty or deception be the most effective means to move the beliefs and actions of the populace? To what extent can the governing body mold the society? To what extent can the society mold the individual? What causes and moves an individual’s beliefs and desires?

In an attempt to answer these questions, I have endeavored to come to an understanding of the individual members of our species. Therefore, this paper attempts to determine if the happiness of the individual is relevant in attaining a thriving social entity that will propagate through posterity. Moreover, if the happiness of the individual is important, it is crucial to discern what happiness truly is, and then discover the best means to achieve it. For a realization of the aforementioned, I endeavored to attain a complete knowledge of our species’ attributes. Furthermore, it was imperative that I uncover the path that our species has traveled to this point, as well as hypothesize our perceived destination. In addition, I found it most important to uncover the true desires of the individual entities of our species, as well as the origin of the desires.

In an attempt to achieve a realization of the above goals, it was my intent to refrain from using subjective dogma and maintain an objective approach to this inquiry that one can comprehend without relying on contradictions or unexplainable phenomena.

Table of Contents

Sense Experiencing Thinking Entities

We are animals whose earliest ancestors merely possessed crude reason, which left them predominantly instinctive with their thoughts existing primarily as the present moment dictated. Peering within the animal kingdom in an investigative nature, an inquiry that for now excludes our species, I fail to perceive manifestations of good and evil. In viewing the preservation, propagation, and inevitable death within the daily interactions of living entities, one would not state they observed an immoral animal taking the life of one that was ethical, most sensible people would not consider a mother animal that ate her offspring as deranged or evil, and the taking of a life within a species would hardly be murder or a crime. If few would ever question this view on the world, then why is the murderer designation reserved for the human species? At this juncture, the naive or ignorant mind may simply believe that an omniscient and omnipotent deity gave humankind a soul and the ability, regardless of whether one chooses, to make sound mental choices in order to emulate the greatness that is the Deity, the Being who created humankind in His image. However, this undertaking is a true study of the human species, as opposed to an idealist mission that conspicuously relies on an ethereal guise of faith. This paper, for better or worse, is based on empirically deduced truths. Hence, to find the true disparity in the complicated and seemingly contradictory aspects of our species and the remainder of the animal kingdom, one must travel back to a time long before Homo Sapiens. One peering within the workings of Mother Nature at a time millions of years before the present would also observe living entities that were a product of evolution working in harmony with their environment. However, they would not perceive an entity as the human species, which today, in our eyes, is governed by different natural laws than all other living entities. Therefore, this paper ventures to explain the apparent disparity intimated, which is that of the illusory morality that manifests accountability in regards to the actions of our species. Hence, the enquiry truly begins at an undefined time in our past when a new line of species moved causes that inevitably spawned our species. This genesis, this directional move of causes and effects, would bring forth an entity with a discernible advantage over all other living beings.

If one briefly ponders the period before our ancestors evolved into a sense experiencing thinking entity, a period before Australopithecus, they would realize our hominid ancestors were instinctual creatures with crude reason and an existence based solely on experience. Their offspring were born predominantly singular with a rather long gestation and maturation period, which obviously mandates extreme attention and care. This needed care and attention was difficult to come by, as the species was entering and struggling in a new ecological niche. At that point, our ancestors instinctively pursued pleasurable states of consciousness that were caused by stimuli interacting with their senses, i.e., caused by events or experiences. The pursued stimuli affected their physiology with a feeling of pleasure, which intrinsically propagated survival. They needed to avert stimuli that brought about non-pleasurable states of consciousness that could precipitate the inevitable ceasing of their existence. The evasive actions would delay their inevitable desistence long enough to reproduce, hopefully their offspring would be able to accomplish the same, and theoretically, barring extinction, this would continue through posterity. This machination is the force behind the propagation of living entities within the universe, or actually, a more complex version of cause and effect, though inherently no different. However, considering these causes and effects that bring about actions that are instinctive, or at times in our species considered as volitional, should these be viewed on a separate scale or within a different light than the forces that propagate matter through the universe? Albeit before one began this inquiry, they obviously would have understood the two phenomena to be completely unrelated, at this juncture, from the mere statements pondered, one should view the interactions in the same manner. I am referring to forces or causes that move effects, or with the living entity, that move experiences. These actions are essentially the movement of matter, which is an equivalent of energy (to be discussed forthcoming) and excluding the two, one will fail to find another existence within the continuum we refer to as space. These forces/causes and effects/experiences move matter or energy, or energy-matter within an entity (within the body), in motion. Moreover, the energy within a living entity that is moved by these forces or causes can move the being from within, or move the internal energy, which incorporated with the storing of past experiences via the memory, can affect the directional motion of the internal energy as well as the entity as a whole. Hence, the complexity that makes the correlation impossible for the traditional intellect.

During every instance of our existence, our nervous system is continuously bombarded with an indefinite number of forces or causes, internal and external, that create an immeasurable number of effects or experiences, each of which in turn becomes a force or cause, which in turn yields an effect or experience, and so on infinitum. The moment this process terminates, our life ceases to exist because this is the one and only medium that accounts for the preservation and propagation of living entities. Moreover, if one possessed the most powerful computer