Lost Cause; a person or thing that can no longer hope to succeed or be changed for the better.
I’ve thought about this for long time now this situation in Ukraine is another example. I was listening to oil specialist trader talking about how OPEC can up its game to produce more oil & gas to replace Russian oil and gas that’s been sanctioned by the western democracies.
I thought hang on haven’t you forgotten we have an ongoing existential threat with climate heating? We have to maintain our high energy lifestyle to hell with the threat and the latest bleak IPCC report.
I keep thinking surely this is an opportunity to change but no we want to go on as usual.
We have mankind again in the process of killing one another. Crazy! Millions of Ukraine refugees heading north to Poland and beyond.
For one man’s ego so he can leave a legacy after he dies. What! Who gives fuck about Putin and his legacy! Sorry for my expletive! Wherever man roams he causes environmental destruction and human and animal suffering. What are we to do of him I ask myself? Why is man such cancer on our beautiful planet. What ails him?
Is it all down to the human condition? Jeremy Griffith an Australian biologist has written extensively about the human condition even formed a movement about trying to understand it? Jeremy has written numerous books about the human condition which is underlined by his competitive, selfish, brutal and aggressive nature. Let’s face it wars are instigated by men.
The more I read about the nature of man and his incessant drive for resources, his greed for wealth and ultimate control of his environment territory and people including the plunder of the earth and life forms in general the more certain I am that we ourselves and these crazy despotic individuals will takes us down a path of our own total destruction. I keep asking why? Jeremy has some answers to this problem. It’s why some humans like to dominate other humans and try to psychological and physically control them.
This psychological and some cases physical abuse is to produce fear and to destabilise other humans. This abuse can be done by an individual or by group or even by a nation. But usually there is an instigator and it is usually an individual and most cases a male of our species! We have seen this through the history and time immemorial (Latin: Ab immemorabili) is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition.
The scientist Blaise Pascal spelled out the true horror of our species’ contradictory nature or condition when he wrote, What a chimera [a multi-faceted being] then is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth, repository of truth, a sewer of uncertainty and error, the glory and the scum of the universe!’
William Shakespeare was equally revealing of the paradoxical nature of the human condition when he wrote, ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!… In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence (perfect example) of dust? [Brutal and barbaric] Man delights not me’ (Hamlet, 1603).
I feel deeply disturbed with the repetitive indiscriminate killing of people fleeing from war torn lands to safety. I keep thinking why does this keep happening? Doesn’t man ever learn anything at all?. Can’t he ever learn to become a higher being and control his primitive instinctive nature?
Jeremy explains that we humans are fully conscious and have highly developed supersized brains through evolution of the our species. The conscious mind can understand the difference between cause and effect. We have memory if you can remember past events from those you can deduce present events. What commonly happened in the past you can make predictions of future.
This helps to refine your feedback further and further. With any new learnt skill at first you find it rather difficult for instance learning to sail or scuba dive or playing a guitar, once you become proficient you become instinctive and use your intuition and feel for what you’re doing over time you can refine that skill to fully optimise it. Conscious understanding through cause and effect. Really you’re making sense of your daily experiences and understanding of the world about you.
We humans are able with discipline to overcome our instinctive reactive self. Yes we have to hone that reactive instinctive self. You know when some react to events instead of first stopping standing back to analyse the situation first before you react. By the way I can be guilty of that at times. “Paul” simply hold you tongue and take a few deep breaths first!
Jeremy states when we became more conscious we were able to challenge our restive instinctive self’s. For the better management of our lives that in turn creates a much more harmonious existence. But we have understand the difference between our conscious selfs and are reactive instinctive self’s.
Jeremy uses an analogy if we put a human fully conscious mind and attach it to storks brain. The stork suddenly becomes fully conscious so lets call him Adam Stork. The storks make long journeys each year from Africa and fly back to Europe always to the same nesting site. They fly back to south Africa again for the winter. Every year they go back and forth. They learn through natural selection how to orientate and navigate themselves back to individual nesting sites. They like to fly along the coast line of west Africa back to Europe. They instinctively know when to leave and when to return to optimise their food sources.
Adam with his fully human conscious mind leaves South Africa for his flight north along the west African Atlantic coastline. We fly with him in a small microlight to see how he deals with his fully conscious mind and to see what transpires. Adam flies along with a flock of other storks and on his journey he starts thinking to himself “I can see an island to my left here with some apple trees I think I’ll fly down here and investigate and have some apples and a rest”. Adam heads off course for his first grand experiment in his self awareness and self adjustment .
What’s going to happen with his instinctive self he’s going try and pull himself back on course. His other fellow storks start to tell him “Adam your flying off course you must stay on course with us”. Adam has got two choices he can follow his instincts and fly back on course or keep on exploring.
But now he has a fully conscious human mind and he has to search for knowledge. He can’t take the human brain off and throw it away. He has to persevere with his search for new knowledge and by carrying out these experiments he’ll find out whats right and wrong from these experimental understandings.
Adam says “I can’t explain it but I have to do what I want to do”. Later he sees another island he flies down to experiment and he now gets criticised even more by his other fellow storks. I know my instinctive self will orientate me back to my nest sight in Europe but I want to understand why I should fly this way instead of that way? It’s an exploration of meaning and understanding his fully conscious brain.
“Yes tell me I’m off course but don’t criticise me about my experimentation experience and self adjustment”. Adam is in a catch 22 situation. He can’t explain what’s he’s doing and why he’s doing it because he’s in a search for knowledge and experience. He can only do three things first to block out the criticism “I don’t want to listen to them I’m not bad and I can’t explain why I want to this but I must”! Two he gets angry about the criticism. Three His conscious thinking self became ego centric focused on trying to validate himself to reinforce and protect himself from the criticism he’s been subjected to from the other storks.
Adam now starts to become ego centric, alienated and angry! Adam becomes the “stuff of the human condition”. Let’s look at this little story I mean who is the hero of this story? Surely it’s Adam he has the courage to suffer and to fly off course in search for knowledge and personal fulfilment in spite of his inability to explain why he has to fly off course.
He was prepared to March in to hell for a heavenly cause. Adam had to lose himself to find himself. Science over thousands of years has made it possible to explain the gene based system that give species orientations and the nerve based learning system gives us understanding. The conscious mind is natures greatest invention but the analogy is the whole world has ganged up against Adam.
Jeremy says can we now finally relieve our self’s of the human condition. Our conscious mind gives us the freedom of choice to be able to do and live what ever life we choose, even if it goes against cultural norms or convention.
Look at the courage of Alexei Anatolievich Navalny a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organizing anti-government demonstrations and running for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin and his government which tried to kill him now he’s in a Russian prison.
This is why I specifically feel upset to my core over the Ukrainian situation. Putin doesn’t like to think there is a “free thinking” “free choosing” democracy in his backyard which he can’t personally control. Especially with its young charismatic actor comedian leader who can’t be manipulated or controlled by him.
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian politician, former actor and comedian, who is the sixth and current president of Ukraine. Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine
All authoritarian regimes don’t like freedom it undermines their existence because it’s like a lighthouse that’s constantly beaming out a morse code message of “freedom” “freedom” “freedom”. That’s why it has to be squashed and exterminated because it undermines the authority and control of the tyrant.
Remember the second world war could have easily fallen to authoritarian regimes the world today would be a bleak place for the many unless you were part of the leading classes. That’s why the Russian military is struggling because of the corruption of the system it relies on to support it.
When I was a child I had a domineering mother and since then I have always rebelled against organisations or people be it in jobs or even in relationships who try to dominate me in anyway. I would find it very difficult to live in a oppressive regime like Russia or China.
Freedom is the book Jeremy wrote and he gives it away free online. I realise society, for it to function, has to have a mechanism for working and operating but again I’ve always rebelled against too much conformity which is pretty amazing for ex soldier.
All that said I’ve had to stop reading or watching news about the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Ukraine because I find it so upsetting. Why? In this enlightened age of vast knowledge we have dictator causing havoc to a people who want freedom and that freedom is a threat to one man’s existence. In the process he’s committed himself to destroying Ukraine because of their love of their freedom.
But Putin is the tip of the iceberg for me because there are so many problems we have to get to grips with. He is only part of an overall problem of constant warfare and the sophisticated nature of modern killing machines. All that money spent on military expenditure could be used to reform all our societies . Putin is psychotic and neurotic like many of my fellow humans beings due to the human condition!
Finally as ex military man it’s been interesting to watch the Ukrainians fight a Goliath war machine on the battlefield. Why? Moral fibre and determination it takes to win which gives the fighting man such a great advantage with technical superiority on the battlefield. In the Second World War in the Pacific engagement the Japanese were beaten not by battleships but by the aircraft carrier. The battleship overnight became defunct!
I think all military men will look amazed and delighted to see how a small determined organised force with an inspirational leader can win through. . This is a war of the infantry man and the drone. Russian equipment is prehistoric and poorly maintained with bad logistical support which produces poor moral.
The Ukrainians have the latest infantry anti tank and anti air missiles they can fire at will and scoot away. The military in the west will learn lots from this war especially about armoured vehicles and how vulnerable they are to the modern antitank weapons. The Russians are desperate they bludgeoning their way into Ukraine. No thoughts of winning hearts and minds here from the Ukrainian populace. They’ve stoked up so much animosity and hate.
It’s proven what a corrupt leadership does to a nation. All that said warfare is nasty horrible affair part of the terrible “human condition”