How Emotional Intelligence was Overridden by the Civilized World
Chet Shupe
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The Species as the True Organism
For centuries, we have built our theories of mind, morality, and society on the idea that the individual is the fundamental unit of life. We have prioritized personal property, individual rights, and justice systems designed to protect the self from others.
But what if the real organism is not the individual, but the species?
If that were true, we would find meaning not in competing against each other to serve self, but in cooperating to serve the species that gave us life. I don’t intend to prove this. But the brain model I’ve developed is based on the belief that the species is the true organism. I arrived at this view because, when I tried to diagram how the brain is organized, nothing else made sense.
When life is observed from the perspective that the species is the real organism, many contradictions dissolve. The soldier’s sacrifice, the hero’s selflessness, the mother’s devotion—these are not irrational acts. They are the inborn sensibilities of a system tuned to live in service to life.
When we serve the species that gave us life, our innate wisdom rewards us—not with wealth or privilege, but with a deep sense of contentment and belonging with others who are sharing in that service. Serving the species isn’t about righteousness. It’s simply that, if our species is to continue gifting people with the experience of life, its members must act as agents of the species—placing its needs above their own, just as a government cannot exist unless its citizens prioritize the state’s needs over their own.
Agents of Life vs. Agents of the State
But we have innocently subordinated our lives to legal systems designed to sanctify the individual. In doing so, we moderns have shifted from being agents of life to agents of the state. We are compelled to prioritize the needs of the state over those of our species. This leaves us in an unnatural state of suffering.
Our suffering is not the result of moral failure. It is emotional intelligence trying to warn us—that if we continue to ignore the needs of our species, eventually
it will cease to exist. Being true to our feelings, rather than to the directives of the state, is not about passing a moral test. It is about human survival.
The Spiritual Cost of Survival
Trying to explain human behavior while believing that each person’s life is sacred is like trying to explain the movement of the planets while believing Earth is at the center of the solar system. Nothing makes sense. Our current way of life, built on the sanctity of the individual, is only possible because governments provide laws to guide us—not because it satisfies the soul. If it did, our souls would be our guides. No prescriptions for behavior would be needed. We accept this way of life, even though it doesn’t bring contentment, because we want to survive. But the cost of survival is spiritual repression, which diminishes the value of the very life we’re trying to save.
A Way Beyond Shame
I hope to show that there is another way—a way of life where we reveal our souls’ needs by helping each other serve life, rather than living in shame for how we feel. Shame that arises because our culture has taught us, by word and deed, that if we can’t manage on our own, we’re not good enough.
But for that to happen, we must see the life of our species as sacred—not our own. Given the indoctrination we’ve endured, and the comfort we’ve learned to take in it, this shift is difficult.
Though I promise nothing, I believe that if we can let go of the idea that our individual lives are sacred, we may, in time, be relieved of a heavy burden: civilized man’s unnatural fear of death. Our heads don’t know this, but our hearts do: Only when we are free to die are we free to truly live. Regaining the freedom to truly live is our destination. But we will have to let it happen. We will never get there if we make it our goal.
Rules as Barriers to the Human Spirit
First, we must understand why setting goals suppresses the wisdom of our souls. Intellectual intelligence has no intuitive grasp of this. But emotional intelligence sees every rule, every long-term objective, as a neon sign on the front door that says: The Human Spirit Is Not Trusted Here.
The spirit cannot tolerate rules—not because of the spiritual insult they imply, but because where rules exist, the spirit cannot fulfill its natural role: managing the behavior of thirty or forty people so they find contentment in supporting one another on behalf of the species.
A single rule—who does specific chores, who can sleep with whom, when the lights are to go out at night—interferes with life’s process. And when a process of such incredible complexity is interfered with, things begin to go wrong for reasons no one understands. This prompts our rational minds to take satisfaction in pointing out who they have decided is to blame. And where does that leave us? Pretty much where we are now—lonely, disconnected, confused, and estranged.
I say all this to make one thing clear: If we are ever to complete the journey to the place where we can truly live, the last leg of the journey will be entirely under the guidance of the human spirit.
One last thing before we move on to the brain model. How can we expect people to turn away from the glory that civilization promises, and instead dedicate their lives to the well-being of a community of sisters and brothers who promise nothing—nothing, that is, that exists in the objective domain? I’ve given this some thought. Here’s my answer:
If we ever reach the point where we value civilization as much as Jesus did—which, as he made clear in his Sermon on the Mount, is roughly as meaningful as a pile of rocks—then those sisters and brothers might resemble angels waving us home, standing in the middle of the wide-open Perley gates.
Well, that might be a bit much. But you get the idea.
The Brain as a Control System
At the center of this essay is a control diagram—a model of the brain that sees consciousness not as a hierarchy of intellect but as a dynamic system of inputs, feedback, and responses. The structure is simple: sensory signals arrive, emotional intelligence interprets, and the conscious mind acts on that interpretation. When circumstances are natural, emotional intelligence knows the way. Contentment appears as evolution’s reward for supporting life. And life continues—not perfectly, but well enough to thrive. However, with the rise of civilization—when people decided that well enough wasn’t good enough—the concept of good and evil was introduced. This was a notion that emotional intelligence had never encountered. That knowledge started to bias its judgments, leading the conscious mind to make decisions that no longer aligned with life’s needs. Discontent emerges as evolution’s response—a signal that we, as living beings, are no longer serving life.
And life continues—at least up to now. But ever since gaining the knowledge of good and evil, the experience of being alive has never been the same. Rational authority now surpasses intuitive understanding. Legal obligations take priority over spiritual ones.
Are we alive—or is this a performance? And if it is a performance, who is it for? Where is the applause?
The essay reveals how the knowledge of good and evil transformed life from a soul-guided experience into an act—a revelation necessary for the relationships that make life a self-sustaining process, to reemerge.
So, what exactly is emotional intelligence? And how can the same brains that built rocket ships and mapped galaxies be so vulnerable to self-deception—so eager to believe that the unknowable future is ours to control? What is a spiritual home?
To answer these questions, I’ve created a “Brain Model” diagram. It offers a visual reference for studying human behavior—not biologically, but functionally.
The Honor of Serving Life
When studying anything—especially something as intricate as the brain—the first step is to identify its purpose. I’ve concluded that the brain exists to produce behavior that optimizes the likelihood that the species will flourish. Nothing more, nothing less. That might seem like a letdown for those who believe our destiny is to explore the far reaches of the universe. But if you ever have reason to think that’s a bit of overreach, then taking care of life on Earth doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, for our brains to be commissioned by evolution to handle such a complex job of managing the life of a species is a great honor. What more could our brains ask for? To me, managing a species’ survival is so complex that if evolution had assigned the brain additional tasks, it’s unlikely any species would survive. That’s the foundation upon which this model is built.
As you read the description of the diagram, keep in mind: you don’t have to understand every detail. Feel free to skip the finer points if you prefer. What’s important is seeing the big picture—understanding why modern humans depend on cold, hard facts for guidance, instead of the warmth of our living hearts. This mistake is not only affecting our wellbeing but also the wellbeing of life on Earth.
The Intimacy We Were Made For
But we are not here to take care of the world or the countless other lifeforms that make it their home. The web of life can take care of itself. We are here to participate in the web of life by caring for one another through the intimacy inherent in interdependent relationships. We are social primates by heritage. Without intimacy, we are not whole. Without intimacy, we don’t truly know ourselves—that is, what Nature made us. Without intimacy, we are never at peace with ourselves. And without intimacy, all the emotional faculties evolution gifted us to support each other in our service to life—including our ability to love and be loved—are wasted.
The Lament of the Loveless
As I struggle my way through this loveless existence, I realize I am among the fortunate few. There are countless others whose struggles are far greater than mine. Here is my lament: it’s not that we humans don’t know what we want. Jesus told us what we want two thousand years ago. People were—and still are—so drawn to his message that he became one of the most highly regarded spiritual leaders of all time.
What we want is to love one another, take care of one another, serve one another, forgive one another, and carry one another’s burdens—just as he said. Deep down, we know that giving our lives in service to others is our only path to contentment. Yet, the people of his day—just as today—did not know how to realize what they wanted.
So instead of considering the possibility that something has gone wrong, we blame ourselves and each other for not being able to get what we want. And that only deepens the suffering. That’s why I shed tears from time to time. I believe something has gone seriously wrong, but we had no way to realize what it was or when it happened. It’s when I think about how different things could have been, if only… That’s when I grieve.
The Illusion of Good and Evil
Through a merging of my background in systems control theory and a few chance events, I stumbled upon what I believe happened about forty years ago, and it caused pain. At that time, I thought I was making the world better by developing weapons to protect good institutions from evil ones. But once I understood what had happened—at least as I saw it—I no longer believed in the concept of good and evil. If I weren’t here to do good, then what was my purpose? That’s what hurt. It hurt so deeply that there were moments I couldn’t see the ground beneath me—not because it wasn’t there, but because, emotionally, my life had nothing to stand on.
But one of the graces of Nature is that the mind can recover from almost any shock—except, perhaps, when a mother loses a child. In my experience with women who have lost a child, I don’t believe they ever truly recover from that.
Once I got past the shock of it all, I’ve spent my life trying to explain to others what I think I see. People might wonder, Why do this, if it causes suffering? A fair question.
Toward Spiritual Trust
First, I believe that once people see through an illusion—in this case, the promise that by doing good, and not doing evil, will lead to an ideal existence—they will never regret it, even if it costs them their lives.
And second, only when people realize that they are not culpable, nor is any other human on earth, for our inability to have what we all want—to love and be loved—will we have reason to stop blaming one another. This realization is the precursor to spiritual trust—the precursor to loving one another, which is what we all seek.
The Brain Diagram: A Model of Trust
The diagram I’m about to describe has been key to my effort to connect the words that might help others see what I believe I see—or, as I prefer to think of it, to help people regain their trust in the wisdom of human nature.
The Six Elements of the Brain Diagram:
Emotional Intelligence reveals—through feelings—an innate wisdom that has been accumulating genetically since the first stirrings of life on Earth. By abiding by the “Law of Life”— do what feels right and avoid doing what feels wrong—countless species live in sufficient harmony for life to flourish on this planet.
Intellectual intelligence is the brain’s adaptive element. It learns where life’s necessities—such as food, water, and shelter—can be found, and acquires the skills needed to make use of them.
Consciousness is our window on the world, which opens in two dimensions: subjective reality and objective reality. Subjective reality reveals life’s needs through feelings. Objective reality reveals the physical domain in which those needs must be satisfied.
The pattern processor processes the millions of signals arriving from the sensory system, to provide the mind with an objective awareness of its circumstances.
The correlator detects differences between the signal arriving from the sensory system and the one arriving from intellectual intelligence, instigating corrective action.
The Motor System is the brain’s output.
Subconscious Behavior and Adaptive Learning
To understand how the elements of the diagram interact, we begin with the “subconscious behavioral system.” This system includes the pattern processor, intellectual intelligence, correlator, and motor system—each depicted with heavy lines in the diagram. Consider the experience of driving a car: it’s not uncommon to realize, after several minutes, that we have no conscious recollection of what just occurred. This doesn’t mean the brain was inactive. Think back to how difficult driving felt the first time you sat behind the wheel. That same complexity is still present, but now, through repetition and learning, intellectual intelligence—the brain’s adaptive element—has acquired the necessary skills to manage the task automatically.
Through experience, intellectual intelligence learns where the road should appear in relation to the car. When the vehicle drifts to the right or left, the output of the pattern processor no longer matches the expectations held by intellectual intelligence. This mismatch generates a signal at the correlator output, which directs the motor system to adjust the steering wheel accordingly. The goal is to restore alignment between the sensory input and the learned pattern—indicating that the vehicle is correctly positioned. Once this correlation is achieved, the motor system input returns to zero, signaling that no further action is required. Routine behaviors—such as driving a car or playing a musical instrument—are managed in this way, subconsciously, without the involvement of emotional intelligence or conscious awareness.
When Emotion and Consciousness Take Over
These two elements—emotional intelligence and consciousness—come into play when an unexpected event occurs. Imagine another vehicle running a red light and placing you in immediate danger. The pattern processor registers the event, but intellectual intelligence, having little or no prior experience with this specific scenario, does not. As a result, the correlator’s output contains all the relevant information about the impending accident. This signal is distributed to multiple destinations. First, it crosses the “threshold of emotional response,” alerting emotional intelligence that something unusual has occurred. It is also sent to intellectual intelligence, since any information appearing at the correlator output must eventually be learned in order for the brain to manage similar situations subconsciously in the future. Although avoiding a car that runs a red light is not routine, the fact that this information is applied to intellectual intelligence ensures that the event will be remembered. This explains why people often vividly recall the details surrounding moments of unexpected news—such as the assassination of a religious or political leader.
The correlator output, which contains information about the impending accident, is also sent to emotional intelligence, which responds by changing the body’s chemical state. This rewires the neurological system, which prepares the mind-body to react to the situation optimally. Finally, the correlator output is directed to conscious awareness, one of the two main inputs to the conscious mind, providing it with an objective view of the emergency. The other primary input is fear, which results from the highly aroused chemical state that the emotional mind has induced in the body. The conscious mind reacts to the emergency by maneuvering the vehicle to avoid a collision, thereby restoring the body to its unaroused chemical state.
Feelings originate from the conscious mind’s capacity to evaluate the body’s chemical state. Each state appears as a particular feeling. The conscious mind enjoys activities that bring the body back to its normal, unaroused state—such as eating to satisfy hunger or sex to resolve arousal. When the feeling is resolved, the conscious mind feels content. That contentment is the aim of all conscious actions.
For social primates like humans, the deepest source of pleasure is serving life—caring for each other’s needs within informal family relationships. Emotional intelligence rewards such service with a general sense of contentment shared by the entire family. In modern life, friendships often provide this reward because they remain informal. However, family relationships, now formalized through prescribed obligations, rarely offer the same satisfaction. No individual or couple can truly serve life when their behavior is subject to the approval of the state.
Worse yet, when things go well, the system gets the credit. When they go badly, the individual is blamed for not meeting the system’s standards. In both cases, the human spirit suffers.
I’ve veered from the brain model here to offer a reminder: this thesis contains harsh truths—truths many may not wish to hear. And who could blame them? Yet, something dark is unfolding, and many sense it. The popularity of The Matrix films reflects this unease: the feeling that we’ve been reduced to maintaining our station in a mindless universe, where every attempt to escape leads only to more mindlessness.
I would rather be preaching to the choir than delivering bad news. But I continue in the belief that I’ve glimpsed how the Matrix came to be. Though the consequences are foreboding, the process is quite natural and can’t be unseen, once seen. If I am right—and I have no proof—then knowing its origins might help people escape it. Not through rebellion, but by establishing spiritual homes: homes where we experience the pleasure of contentment that Nature owes us for serving life by “caring one another’s burdens.” If even a few people could experience that… just imagine what might follow.
Feelings as Evolution’s Compass
Emotional intelligence is multi-minded. It attends to all the species’ needs simultaneously. When circumstances require action, such as the individual needs to put on a jacket, or needs to get the attention of a special other, emotional intelligence issues a feeling, such as a chill, or romance, to inspire the needed behavior. And both behaviors serve the species. If the emotional mind could not detect temperature or produce a feeling, such as a chill, to inform us that we needed cover, we could freeze to death and never know why we are dying. People who have frozen to death are of little use to our species. And when emotional intelligence tags a couple with feelings of romance, it tells them that our species wants a new member, and it wants the conception to occur now. It also makes clear, in no uncertain terms, which individuals it wants involved in the conception. As for why those specific individuals and why now, that is not for us to know. We can only speculate.
However, because of the brilliance in how evolution arranged things, we never need to know the answer to questions such as, ‘Why do I need to drink water now?’ or ‘Why do I need to make love to that man now?’ The behavior required to sustain the life of a species is justified by feelings, never by knowledge.
There is one thing we can be certain of: If we are true to our feelings in response to the situation at hand, we will experience contentment. That is our reward for serving life. But if we deny those feelings—whether to honor a promise made long ago, or to protect a future we are imagining—we will suffer. Feelings of romantic love, like hunger or thirst, become excruciating when unmet. And just like an animal that suffers when it cannot find water, we suffer when our feelings go unfulfilled—even if we have a perfect excuse. That’s the point: Though our species is taking damage, ultimately its survival depends on our feelings being satisfied in real time. So, when we ignore how we feel—regardless of the reason—we pay a price. Even the idea that we’re “keeping a promise” doesn’t get us off the hook.
We need to think about that the next time we consider making a long-term promise. That’s a lot to ask of people living in a culture that functions only because we make and keep promises. But if anything is ever going to change, we need to ask: What are those promises costing us in terms of suffering?
Promises and the Silencing of the Spirit
Our long-term promises are, in effect, depriving us of our spiritual lives. And perhaps even more troubling. How can our spirits prove themselves trustworthy when the promise-makers are outlawing them—the very people (all of us) who, by making promises, reveal that we don’t trust our spirits? In doing so, we are silencing the only voice that, as I see it, can take us to our spiritual homes.
Consciousness and the Prioritization of Needs
Returning to our principal subject, in contrast to the subconscious mind’s multi-mindedness, consciousness is single-minded. When multiple feelings surface at one time, indicating there is more than one need to be satisfied, the conscious mind attends to the strongest feeling, thus to the greatest need first. For example, if an animal is grazing in open terrain as a blizzard approaches, the drive for shelter intensifies while hunger wanes. Once the desire for shelter outweighs the desire to satisfy hunger, the conscious mind starts evaluating its options by “what-iffing” it’s circumstances—what if I go here, what if I go there—to determine the best option to satisfy its needs.
In the end, understanding the finer details of the brain diagram are secondary. What matters is understanding how reality is experienced by the conscious mind—as the interplay of two domains. The first is objective reality, supplied by the senses and by what intellectual intelligence has learned regarding the features of the habitat. The second domain is subjective reality, supplied by emotional intelligence, which reveals the species’ needs through feelings. Together, they shape a living organism’s understanding of the world and its motivation to act within it.
Regarding survival, emotional intelligence provides the will to live—the capacity to value one’s own existence. Intellectual intelligence enables recognition of threats that endanger one’s existence. Both are essential to survival: without the ability to value one’s own existence, there would be no reason to avoid danger; without objective reality, there would be no way to detect danger.
Stage Fright and the Interference of Consciousness
Regarding further considerations on how the elements of the brain diagram interact, I leave that to the reader, if so inspired. As an example, individuals who have practiced a performance, to near perfection, are often unable to perform it as well, on stage. This occurs because emotional intelligence is so concerned about doing well, that it “emotes” feelings/chemicals of anxiety which we typically refer to as stage fright. This inspires the conscious mind to contribute, by trying to improve on the rehearsed performance, an effort that is usually counterproductive.
In short, both objective and subjective reality are required for consciousness to exist. Subjective reality not only imbues consciousness with the will to live, but also tells it what to do—do whatever you feel is the right thing to do, or conversely, don’t do what you feel is the wrong thing to do. Otherwise, you won’t be able to live with yourself.
Built-In Rewards and Punishments
The reason spiritually free people do not reward one another with trophies or punish each other with imprisonment is that all rewards and punishments required to maintain the social order needed to sustain our species life are built in. They occur instantly, and thus are unavoidable: contentment for doing what feels right, and guilt for doing what feels wrong.
Guilt, I believe, can be as severe a punishment for a spiritually free person as prison is for a civilized one. If the prisoner is fortunate, his sentence has a termination date. Guilt, on the other hand, can burden someone for life. Except in cases of behavioral disfigurements, caused either by birth defects or injury to the brain, I suspect that spiritually free cultures—those in which no legal obligations must be satisfied, and no long-term promises must be kept—rarely experienced behavioral problems. Who in their right mind would do anything that might burden them with a lifetime of guilt?
I learned that lesson early in life. I was three or four when my brother and I received identical Christmas toys—little wind-up rabbits that scooted across the floor. I broke mine by accidentally overwinding it. So, in secret, I broke his by doing the same thing. I remember that as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, all these years later. I still ask myself: what on Earth possessed me to do something like that? I don’t dwell on it. I didn’t harm or kill anyone. My brother doesn’t even remember the incident.
The Soul’s Restraints
But the point is clear: even when external restrictions are absent, the soul has its own. And I suspect those soul-felt restraints are significantly more powerful than any imposed by institutions. People don’t go around wantonly killing each other because all of us know, by instinct, it’s not the right thing to do.
If someone becomes so emotionally provoked that the arousal overrides their inner restraints, I doubt legal ones will stop them either. That’s a truth that institutions qui etly fear: that the real architecture of morality lies within, and it does not answer to law. After making the above remarks in discussions groups I’ve suggested that if all laws against murder were struck from the books, the murder rate would hardly change. And—much to my surprise—nearly everyone seemed to agree. I can’t say exactly why, but I suspect that when people anticipate public punishment, it somehow makes it easier to ignore their spiritual restraints.
The Collapse That Sets Us Free
If the international monetary system were to collapse, we would all be spiritually free. The system runs on money. No money, no system. And without the system, we would be free to do what we feel is right—for the first time in thousands of years. Unfortunately, millions—if not billions—of lives would be at risk. But I don’t believe the aftermath would resemble the dog-eat-dog world that intellectual intelligence so assertively predicts.
What the rational mind fails to recognize is this: by granting people the right to own personal property, it has—however innocently—created the very dog-eat-dog world it thinks it is preventing. But the spirit evolved to find contentment in taking care of life, not owning things. So, when disaster strikes and lives are at risk, who owns what doesn’t matter much anymore. Suddenly, reality is transformed because humans start behaving naturally again.
The Spirit’s True Allegiance
And one final thing about the trustworthiness of the human spirit. When a system asks a man to commit an atrocity—decimate an indigenous culture, torture prisoners, crucify Jesus Christ—and that man snaps his heels, salutes, and sets off to fulfill his duty to the powers that be, don’t blame it on the free human spirit. That is a spirit trying to look good in the eyes of the system that owns it, lock, stock, and barrel. In all honesty, how could we expect otherwise?
When we blame that man, his spirit, or the human spirit itself for the atrocity he’s about to commit, we need to be more discerning about the situation he’s in. Keep in mind: We create the situation that spiritually enslaves him by our dependency on institutions to survive. But this is no reason to question the trustworthiness of our own spirits if they were free. Our institutional dependency was established when our parents signed our birth certificate within a few hours of our birth. The blame game will get us nowhere. You can take it step by step right up to our leaders, and you will find that everyone is like us. We were all born into spiritual enslavement. All spirits are untrustworthy, including yours truly, when, for the sake of our material survival, we have to protect personal future interests.
Let’s face it. We are spiritual prisoners, not masters of our fates. Even spiritually free people are not masters of their destinies. They are as genetically obligated to ensure the survival of our species as we are legally obligated to ensure the survival of our state. The difference is that because their obligations are imposed by their souls, and ours by prescribed laws, their spirits inspire the behavior evolution designed them for, while the conscious mind ignores our spirits’ inspirations so that it can manage our material survival.
Hunger as a Badge of Honor
So, if the monetary system collapses, instead of the chaos we’ve been taught to fear, I believe we would see free-spirited humans sharing food they didn’t have to share. And those receiving it wouldn’t need to be policed. They wouldn’t take a bite more than they felt they needed to keep going. To the free human spirit, in such a situation, suffering from hunger would be a badge of honor, not to wear on our chests, but to wear on our souls.
And there would be people in my age bracket who, when offered food, would say: “You folks go ahead and eat. I’m okay.” The others would eat—without feeling guilty or ashamed—because in the real world, the one our spirits are born into and the only one they know, people understand: when everything is at risk, it’s the species’ life that must continue, not the individual’s.
Redemption in the Eyes of Nature
To our spirits, life isn’t about being pleasant, good, fair, or the most educated person on the block. Life is about species survival. It is through serving life that we find contentment. And contentment takes many forms. That old man who refused to eat found peace in redemption. And because others didn’t force him to eat, they honored his desire for redemption—not in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of the processes of Nature that had given him his life. No one knows what all that includes, but it doesn’t matter. The feeling is there.
And because everyone present understood what was happening—without anyone having to say a word—their spirits would be filled with meaning, even in the bleakest times. You see, the spirit finds no value in fulfilling spoken expectations. It will obey if it must—if disobedience would lead to social rejection or death—but if the expectations are spoken, that’s someone else’s business. The human spirit values meeting life’s unspoken expectations. That’s its purpose, and when that occurs, for it, life sings.
Keep in mind, none of this happened because it was intended. It happened because the monetary system failed. My, what it takes for us people who have no option other than to seek happiness in wealth and privilege to regain access to the needs of our souls.
Death Becomes Incomprehensible
Unfortunately, for the civilized spirit, which survives by fulfilling prescribed obligations, there is no redemption. How can a soul serve life when virtually every moment is spent satisfying prescribed expectations—just to earn the right to exist on this planet? People who live free of imposed obligations, whether shaped by a commune, a cult, or a state, remain spiritually free. Their spirits have agency, and with it, they can redeem themselves in the eyes of Nature. For a redeemed individual, one for whom all spiritual debts are paid, death is simply the final phase of a life well lived.
Civilized people, on the other hand, serve themselves—not by choice, but out of necessity. The system requires it. And when life is spent without agency, there is no path to inner alignment. No redemption. There is only the haunting mystery of death. Because without agency, life has not been truly lived. And without that, death becomes incomprehensible.
The Return of Repression
Unfortunately, the spiritual freedom gained from the failure of the monetary system does not last. Soon, agents of reason will appear, convincing people that they have a new answer to life’s problems, taking fingerprints as they go. In no time, all expectations about social acceptance and personal survival will be spoken, and people will be living in a state of utter spiritual repression, just as we are now. They will be waiting for the next collapse of whatever new system they’ve collectively assigned to organize billions of people under one set of laws, hoping it won’t fail them but knowing it will. They won’t know when, but does it matter? Spiritual repression is the real issue, not collapse.
Life Cannot Be Fixed
Can this cycle of rise and fall of civil cultures be fixed? Since the future is unpredictable, that isn’t a meaningful question. In my view, we should be cautious of anyone who claims they have the solution. It’s not that they are a bad person. It’s just that, through no fault of their own, they don’t see how things are.
Life is a process. It can’t be fixed. It can only be participated in.
Life’s process is complex beyond words. Trying to fix it with a rule, law, or plan—no matter how innocent the fix seems—is like trying to rearrange a china closet with a sledgehammer. The rational mind, in its innocence, has been trying to repair our species’ life with the sledgehammer of social contracting for thousands of years. Our species’ life is now so broken that it’s unrecognizable by the human spirit, which is the only entity that enables us to participate in its process. When you and I suffer from a loveless existence—I mean sisterly and brotherly love, not romantic love—though we seem hopelessly confused about that expression of love also—it’s our emotional intelligence revealing to us how shattered our species’ life is.
To try to fix life with a prescribed law is like trying to stop the flow of a stream of water with a dam. You may think you are in control, but in the end, all you have done is change the flow’s direction as it inevitably finds its way around the dam. You can’t fix life, but by trying, you can dangerously misdirect its flow. The rational mind’s unyielding effort to repeatedly fix life as its flow circumvents dam after dam has taken our species far off course.
Hopefully, there will come the day when the question becomes: How are we going to get life’s process back on track? This would require that we function as vessels of our emotional intelligence, rather than vessels of our rational minds.
In one sense, we are fortunate. Our emotional intelligence is still intact, as evidenced by how much we are suffering. Since our innate wisdom is still with us, still alert, and still messaging us, if we simply complied with its messages, we would become vessels of our soul. Then, not by anyone’s conscious intent, but simply as a result of how life works, our species would get back on track.
Love as Evolution’s Reward
To function as vessels of our souls would require informal family relationships—families bonded not by promises made long ago or by legally prescribed arrangements of any kind, but by the felt sense that each member is where they belong. Without interdependent relationships—the type that emotional intelligence rewards with mutual love for supporting one another on behalf of life—the human spirit has no authority, and love remains absent.
Love is not something we do. It is our reward for showing up—for being there for one another in our shared journey through life. It is evolution’s way of ensuring that care flows freely where it is most needed.
To clear up an issue that may come to mind: what happens when someone no longer feels they belong in a family that once felt like home? That’s emotional intelligence speaking—nudging them toward a place where their presence might matter more. Life isn’t something to fix. It’s something to feel. And part of nurturing that process is letting people leave when they no longer feel they belong, just as freely as we welcome those who do. Complicated? Sure, it’s complicated. That’s why emotional intelligence is so vast. And things don’t always work out. But what are you looking for in life, a venture or a guarantee? If it’s perfection you want, then talk to the guys over in the castle. They’ve got plenty of offerings and promises like you have never seen.
(Sorry for the little rant there.)
The Heart of the Family
Equally important, emotional intelligence must be free to select the members of the family—especially the females. As for the males, it doesn’t matter much. Give practically any group of men a mission—like supporting and protecting the sisterhood and their children, which is the mission evolution assigned us—and you’ve got a brotherhood. But for the females, things are different. They are the heart of the family. Evolution has tasked them with ensuring that the family’s life is properly managed. When one or more of them sense that something is wrong, they support each other in making sure it is addressed. Without sisterhood, no social primate species could survive. It is vital that the members of the sisterhood have the right combination of innate sensitivities so that, together, they can fulfill their role. And only emotional intelligence can understand the subtle mix of sensitivities needed for a sisterhood to manage a spiritual home.
Pre-Sisterhoods and Evolution’s Design
So, where are these informally bonded women going to come from?
When the answer to that question came to me, it was quite an aha moment. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Pre-sisterhoods are everywhere. You can find them on any school playground. They call themselves girlfriends. They usually bond at a surprisingly young age and support each other emotionally, not just through childhood into adulthood, but they often stay in touch even when living far apart as adults. It seems important to them just to know how each other is doing and that they are still there.
Given that I had speculated that the core of a spiritual home is a sisterhood, and that their emotional intelligence had bonded them as children, I figured evolution was preparing these girlfriends to function as the core of spiritual homes when they became adults. So, I asked myself: What could have thwarted their mission?
A small side note: it might sound like I’m telling women where they belong, and that concerns me. It’s men telling women where they belong that, in my view, has thrown our species’ existence into chaos. I admit that functioning with your girlfriends as the heart of a spiritual home is where I believe women belong. However, I don’t say this because it’s any of my business. I say it because it aligns with my theory, an idea I have no proof for. It’s just that in this world, so many don’t have much of a sense of where they do belong. So, if I’ve caught a glimpse—some hint—of belonging, I think it’s right to say it out loud. If you women will forgive my considerable offense of seeming to know how you should serve life, please see this as just a suggestion, something you might not have considered. If the shoe fits, take pleasure in wearing it. If it doesn’t, perhaps I’ve got some things to learn from you.
The First Social Contract
So, what thwarted what I see as the sisterhood’s evolutionary assigned mission? From the perspective of this thesis, that’s easy. It was the rational mind of men, figuring that if they granted each other the right to own a woman through the sacrament of marriage, they would be making the world a better place.
A man claiming a woman as personal property is likely the first social contract ever made. What a fateful moment. Men soon realized they needed to own land to support their new acquisition, and the justification for granting people the right to own property spread like wildfire. The social contract expanded, soon applying to every livable parcel of land on the planet—squeegeeing the earth’s surface clean of any evidence that people once lived free to answer to their souls.
The question becomes: why did the women allow the men to own them? If the spiritual authority of the sisterhood is the natural reference for social order, the women could easily have prevented it. Indeed, they could have. But evolution did not provide humans with an organizational chart. In the natural world, everyone behaved naturally—did what they felt like doing—and life-sustaining order was implicit. Why would anyone need a chart?
The Spoken Word and the Idealized Future
Apparently, evolution didn’t anticipate the arrival of the spoken word. Nor could it have foreseen how easily our rational minds would persuade us to ignore how we feel in favor of chasing the ideal future they paint in our heads. If evolution had seen this coming, maybe it would’ve handed us an organizational chart—something to show how a real human family is structured, something to keep the rational mind from making its mistake. But even then, intellectual intelligence might’ve been just as good at convincing us to ignore the chart as it is at persuading us to ignore our feelings. In that case, we’d still be where we are—men acting as if evolution spiritually equipped us to be heads of households, when it did no such thing.
Three natural forces have converged: the unknowable future, the rational mind’s capacity to imagine, and the spoken word’s ability to fill that void with idealized visions of how life should be. Together, they’ve created a feedback loop so powerful it’s suppressing the natural order necessary to sustain our species.
Although intellectual intelligence plays a key role in all this, it’s not the villain. As the adaptable part of the brain, it’s simply doing its job—figuring out how to achieve the individual’s goals. And those goals are guided by emotional intelligence: finding a place to rest when tired, something to eat when hungry, and companionship when lonely. In a spiritually free culture, all needs resemble these. They can be met in the present moment or in the near future.
But when the spoken word appeared, emotional intelligence wanted everything it already enjoys—except now, it wanted access to them in an imagined reality decades down the line. To satisfy objectives that far out, you need the ability to plan. And to make that possible, intellectual intelligence came up with an ingenious solution: social contracting.
This new ability to plan has allowed us to do remarkable things—go to the moon, for instance. But emotional intelligence doesn’t reward us with contentment for achieving objectives that, from its perspective, have nothing to do with sustaining the life of our species.
In short, we suffer because before social contracting began—back in Eden—feelings trumped plans. Since then, plans have trumped feelings. To stop suffering, we need to return to informal family relationships: people bonded by their desire to attend to each other’s real and present needs, not by promises to meet each other’s imagined future ones.
No Villain, Just a System Out of Order
I review all this not just to summarize my perspective, but to clarify one thing: there’s no single culprit behind our suffering. No religion, no ideology, no individual—not even intellectual intelligence, although it might seem I’m pointing toward it for inventing social contracting. The issue is systemic. The system—our species—is off course.
If we keep searching for someone or something to blame, we won’t just keep going down—we’ll go down looking ugly. And that only adds to the burden. On the other hand, if we recognize that something’s gone wrong with the system, we may still go down—but at least it’ll happen gracefully. And if we stop looking for someone to blame, we might see what went wrong: our misuse of language. We’ve used it to control the future, rather than as an extension of body language to communicate soul-felt needs.
Whether we recover or not still depends on providence. But at least the possibility exists.
One last point: for recovery to happen, it’s essential to understand that, no matter what occurs, we’re all in the same boat. No one gains lasting satisfaction from exploiting others. We do exploit each other, of course—but that compulsion is induced by our misuse of language. Nature didn’t create us that way.
The Hidden Foundation
Meanwhile, without an organizational chart, the women didn’t realize they had control over anything. I’m sure everyone—women and men—thought the men were in charge. It was the men showing all the bravado, beating their chests, sharpening their weapons, engaging in war dances, bringing home the big game. Why wouldn’t they seem to be running the show?
The women had no idea that by staying mostly in the background—taking care of their children, each other, and the men when they needed care—they were actually the foundation of the whole operation. To clarify: without males, things would be different, of course, but the family would still continue. Without females, there would be no sign of any social primate family on Earth. I don’t know where the females might be. But the males? They’d be standing around staring at trees, clueless about what to do. Without a mission to serve, they wouldn’t even have a reason to form a brotherhood.
Romance and the Imagination’s Spell
When a man, under the spell of romantic love, promises a woman to cherish her, love her, and devote himself to her forever, he is speaking on behalf of his imagination—not his soul. The soul does not project present feelings into an imagined future. Not even romance. It makes no long-term promises based on temporary emotions. Instead, it remains free to respond to future feelings, including future romances, should they come.
The Rational Mind’s Illusion of Control
If the rational mind had no ability to own things—no property to protect, no illusion of control over the future—it would have no reason to imagine the future at all. It could focus on the present, working in concert with emotional intelligence to attend to what is. But he did have the right to own property—indeed, once the state grants people rights of ownership, everyone has to own property if they want a place to live. So, for the future over which he presumed to have control, he was compelled to project currently experienced feelings into it for it to have any meaning at all. What better sense of meaning to fill his imagined future with than the illusion that feelings of romance last forever?
The Illusion of Forever
But he didn’t realize it was an illusion. She didn’t realize it. Neither did the human race. So, now we spend most of our time being spiritually dishonest to support innocent mistakes.
I trust the reader understands that these scenarios I present do not reflect exactly how things went wrong, but rather serve as a way to visualize how they could have occurred. I do not know the details of how the human brain lost itself in future-future land once it was given the spoken word—nor does it matter. And if it did happen according to the story above, I trust it’s also clear that I am not blaming either individual. Their souls sought fulfillment in serving life, just like yours and mine. The fact that they lost access to the wisdom of their souls, and needed to find fulfillment by making promises is something that happened to them. In fact, it has happened to us all.
Since marriage failed to deliver its promise of happily-ever-after, why did women keep participating? Because once men claimed women as property, sisterhoods disappeared. And with them, the natural support a woman needed to raise her children. Where else could she turn? Not to kin. Not to the village. Only to the state. At that point, the quality of support no longer mattered. The issue was merely having any support at all.
By granting each other the right to own women, men unintentionally dismantled the very architecture of home. And without viable homes, our species cannot manage its most essential mission: bring its next generation into the world with safety, with love, with dignity, and with soul. I need not reflect on how devastating this is.
Legitimacy and the State’s Presumption
Furthermore, once the institution of marriage became the state’s official reference for universal family order, the state issued a proclamation: any child born out of wedlock is heretofore illegitimate in the eyes of God. That was the moment the rupture became law. But why would women believe such absurdity, just because the state said it’s true? Why do any of us believe anything the state claims about sustaining life on this planet? Because, in the rational mind’s eye, the state owns this planet. As if it carved the rivers, seeded the forests, and breathed life into the soil. If you don’t accept its word as the word of God—i.e., the creator of this planet—then you’d better start looking for another planet to live on. Or simply check out. And many precious souls are doing just that. They do not protest. They do not write manifestos. They simply leave. And in their absence, we feel the depth of the insult. In view of their sensitivity to the spiritual violation we are all facing, they are likely the most precious souls among us.
The Brain’s True Purpose
When introducing the brain diagram, I noted that in developing it, my first task was to ascertain the purpose of the brain. This led me to offer a proclamation of my own: The brain exists to produce the behavior required to optimize the likelihood that our species will flourish. NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS. The state’s presumption that it has the authority to legitimize life is evidence of how mindless the brain becomes when it is serving the state.
Nature’s Silent Rebuke
Mr. Intellectual Intelligence: There is something you need to know. Being born legitimizes life on this planet. Your blessing is not required. I don’t have this direct from Nature, because Nature reveals its opinions through feelings, not words. But if I’ve got it right, you have no idea what a fool you’re making of yourself in the eyes of Nature by presuming that your blessings have anything to do with life, much less legitimizing it.
Einstein once said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe. I don’t think he said that to criticize humanity. He, of all people, knew that we are not stupid. He said it because he deeply sensed the mindlessness of our existence. And knowing he was part of it, it bothered him.
The conscious mind—whether human or animal—has a single goal: to seek contentment by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. There is only one way to reach this goal: by figuring out how to resolve whatever feeling emotional intelligence is expressing in the moment. In this way, there is no real difference between human consciousness and animal consciousness.
Contentment Across Species
Contentment is Nature’s reward for serving life. Beyond that, the particulars don’t matter. When your life is well-lived, then—in terms of experiencing contentment—you are on the top of the hill, whether you are a lion, an eagle, or a human. Delia Owens, author of the book, Where the Crawdads Sing, said; “When I was studying the lions in Africa, I would watch a pride of females who had known each other their entire lives, playing and tumbling with each other’s cubs in the late afternoon. And it made me think about my girlfriends back home, and how much I missed them.”
The Lionesses and the Girlfriends
Her words often echo in my mind. And when they do, I find myself wondering: were those lionesses experiencing a greater or lesser sense of contentment than a circle of lifelong girlfriends supporting each other in creating a home in which to bear and raise their children? I’ll never know the answer. But since I’ve equated contentment with being on the top of the hill, does it really matter whose hill is the highest?
No Fix, No Pretenses
So, where does this leave us?
Given that we’ve become dependent on abstract systems of accountability that offend our souls just to manage for our material survival, that’s a difficult question to face—much less answer. Let’s see: materially dependent on doing what hurts. Wow. Could there be a greater conflict between the needs of our souls and those of our bodies? And here I am, having brought that question to the fore, and I have no fix. Indeed, I would suggest that we be wary of anyone who has a fix.
Soul-Felt Needs in the Mud
I’m not recommending Woodstock as a way of life, but something special happened there that has a bearing on our situation. What happened is that nothing—absolutely nothing—went according to plan. For a few days, all of civilization’s pretenses were laid to rest. And so, the festival attendees were left there, in the rain and the mud, with the needs of their souls fully exposed. There were some drugs, I hear. But I think what they got high on was life. What an experience it must have been—to be alive to each other’s soul-felt needs that everyone felt and responded to as best they could, rather than needs that were anticipated and fulfilled perfectly according to plan.
I am sure there is a way for humans to live without having to hide our soul-felt needs in order to realize perfectly laid-out plans. Otherwise, our species would not exist. But I don’t know how to get there from here. Nor would I claim it’s even possible. Maybe it is. Maybe not. If you run across someone who thinks they know, well, you know what I think about that.
So, in the meantime, keep your day jobs—not only because you will need them, at least for the time being, but because, despite the mindlessness of our current situation, there are millions of people whose lives depend on us continuing to man our stations down at the grindstone factory. As for me, I can only hope that what I’m saying, should it begin to take root, does not result in too much pain, suffering, or disorder—I do understand the potential. And I also hope that emotional intelligence does, in fact, exist—I’d hate to be creating a big stir over nothing. If it does exist and people find out about it, then maybe that could get our old, hopefully ageless species back on track. Everyone should be pleased about that.
The Playground Revolution
However, there is one thing of which I am certain. Well—I have no proof that it’s true, but it feels so good to believe it is, that I’m going to believe it anyhow: If change does come, it will not come from mighty castles that bristle with authority. It will begin when several girls, upon meeting each other on a grade school playground somewhere, become lifelong friends. And when they reach childbearing age, instead of parting company, they’ll continue hanging out together—to become the core of a spiritual home, not just for them and their children, but also for us men. We, too, need a home that makes sense.
Another Story for Another Time
Enough of us men having to function as the heads of households… are you kidding me?!! Talk about mindlessness…
Well—that’s another story for another time.
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