Hands, the Achilles' Heel

Peter Ffitch

Description

Peter Ffitch brings us an exciting new evolutionary theory that undermines humanity's grandiose views of our role in the natural hierarchy. While all other books about human evolution and hands have concentrated on our ability to manipulate objects and create artefacts, Hands, the Achilles' Heel reveals the much darker side to the use of hands that, as yet, has not been disclosed.Peter traces our ancestors' evolution to become terrestrial primates, freeing our hands from arboreal locomotion and allowing them to grasp and hole other members of their own species for restraint and coercion. The consequent repercussions for humanity's social and sexual behaviour has resulted in a catastrophic loss of autonomy for the human female compared to other animal species. This also resulted in the heteronomous controls by which we now regulate our lives. Understandably, our loss of autonomy has lead to us becoming the most tense, anxious and fearful species that has ever lived, which tragically has given rise to our present desecration of the planet.The question is, can we now move towards an enlightened future in which heteronomous controls become a relic of our dystopian past, allowing autonomy to regain its original priority and enabling us to live and survive within nature, just as the animals have done since the beginning of evolution?

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Evolution

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 25 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781789010886
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

HANDS, THE ACHILLES’ HEEL
THE UNDISCLOSED LOGIC OFHUMAN BEHAVIOU R


TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF
AUTONOMY, HETERONOMY
AND HUMAN FREEDOM




PETER FFITCH
Copyright © 2018 Peter Ffitch

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1789010 886

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To the countless millions who have lost their autonomy at the hands of others.




Cave painting, Kolo, Tanzania, thought to be 23,000 years old. This image of abduction is one of the earliest depictions of hominin motor-control.



Contents
Preface
Introduction
Prologue

1. The Daydream

2. The Basic Concepts
2:1 Hands And Motor-Control
2:2 Autonomy
2:3 Priorities Within The Motivational System – Safety/Danger Scales:
2:4 Loss Of Autonomy:
2:5 The Oestrous/Anoestrous Cycle:
2:6 Coercive Mating:
2:7 Male Sexuality:
2:8 The Inherent Conflict Between Female And Male Sexuality:
2:9 Permanent Receptivity:

3. Defences To Motor-Control, Anatomical And Physiological Adaptatations
3:1 Bipedalism:
3:2 Bipedalism And Mating, The Female Perspective:
3:3 Bipedalism – The Male Perspective, Mating And Fighting:
3:4 Bipedalism – The Child’s Perspective:
3:5 Reduction Of Hair Cover:
3:6 Reduction In The Size Of Canine Teeth:
3:7 Breasts On Non-Lactating Females:
3:8 Menstruation And The Engorgement Of The Womb:
3:9 Facial Expressions:
3:10 Voice Box And Speech:
3:11 Enlarged Brain (Encephalization):
3:12 Hominin Self-Domestication Or Passivity:

4. Defences To Motor-Control, Behavioural, Social And Cultural Adaptations
4:1 Selecting Safer Habitats (Trees, Caves, Seashore):
4:2 Food Sharing / Food Denial:
4:3 Home Base, Food Carrying, Pair Bonds, Defensive Family Groups:
4:4 Agonistic Buffering:
4:5 Building Defensive Strongholds And Use Of Weapons:
4:6 Clothes, Nudity, Modesty And Shame:
4:7 Individual Psychology:
4:8 Other Complexities Relating To Motor-Control:

5. Physical Restrictions Of Behaviour
5:1 Restriction And Avoidance:
5:2 On Being Seized, Avoidance Denied:

6. Bottom-Up And Top-Down Control Of The Hominin Mind
6:1 How Motor-Control Changed The Mind’s Organization Of Behaviour:
6:2 The Creation Of Top-Down Neural Pathways:
6:3 How Top-Down Mental Organization Developed Complexity:
6:4 Comparison Of Top-Down And Bottom-Up Neural Pathways:

7. The Rise And Rise Of Heteronomy
7:1 The Difference Between The Controls Faced By Animals And The Heteronomous Controls Faced By The Hominins:
7:2 Compliance – Humans As Agents Of Others:
7:3 Obedience:
7:4 The Role Of Cooperative Heteronomy In Human Socialization:
7:5 Degrees Of Severity Of Heteronomous Controls:
7:6 Duration And Severity Of Heteronomous Controls :
7:7 Length Of Time Controller Can Enforce Heteronomous Controls:
7:8 Some Of The Common Ways In Which Humans Are Subjected To Heteronomous Controls:
7:9 Assessing Heteronomy:
7:10 Assessing The Percentage Of Time Spent Under Heteronomous (Rather Than Autonomous) Control:
7:11 A Scale Of Coercion And Heteronomous Contro l:

8. Strategies To Deal With Motor-Control And Heteronomy; Active And Passive Defences
8:1 Passive Or Submissive Defences, Tolerance Of Motor-Control:
8:2 Passivity Associated With Child Carrying – Hairlessness And Adolescent Delays In Maturity:
8:3 Inhibition Of The Male Sexual Drive By Domestication:
8:4 The Active Cooperative Defence To Motor-Control:
8:5 The Thinking Defence:
8:6 Unceasing Mental Activity:

9. Heteronomy, Memories, Language And Civilization
9:1 Heteronomy, Memory And The Emotions:
9:2 Heteronomy And Language:
9:3 Heteronomy, History And Civilization:

10. Heteronomy And Education

11. The Human Personality
11:1 Animals Use No Words:
11:2 What Is Not In The Animal Mind:
11:3 Human Collaboration, Compliance And Cooperation:
11:4 The Vulnerability Of The Human Personality. The Uncertain Self:

12. Heteronomy And Mental Distress

13. Autonomous Behaviour Of Animals
13:1 How The Animal Mind Differs From The Human Mind By Being Impervious To Heteronomous Inputs:
13:2 Thoughts About Animals:
13:3 Listing Some Of The Differences Between Animals And Mankind, Highlighting The Gulf That Motor-Control And Coercion Have Created:
13:4 Animal Acceptance Of The Given:
13:5 The Unitary Mind Of The Animal And The Divided Mind Of The Human:
13:6 The Animal Experience Of ‘Hereness’ And Equanimity:

14. How We Came To Accept Responsibility For Our Own Actions And As A Result Lost Our Equanimity
14:1 Puppets In The Land Of Heteronomy:
14:2 Personal Responsibility For Behaviour (Accountability And Imputability):
14:3 Duplicity:

15. Beyond Heteronomy
15:1 Where Science And Religion Merge:

16. Summary
Preface
We do not have a convincing explanation of human behaviour. It was the existence of this gap in our understanding that first attracted my attention when I was quite young. Not that there was any realistic possibility of making inroads into the problem for, at that time, the whole subject was recognized as being far too complex to resolve. However, the lack of an established answer did create an opportunity, for I was free to explore, to see where my own musings may lead.
Having some rudimentary understanding of all this, by the time I had to earn a living I turned to a career that would not constrain my independent thinking. I trained in agriculture, purchased a small farm and became a livestock farmer. Farming opened a range of animal behaviour for observation, including the domestic livestock on the farm, the more domesticated pets living in the farmhouse and the local wild animals that lived in the fields, woods and rivers of the surrounding countryside. Over the next forty years I observed these animals not appreciating, at first, that a deep awareness of animal behaviour would eventually lead me to a radical reconceptualization of human behaviour.
Livestock farmers have an interesting relationship with their animals since they are totally responsible for their welfare; they not only have to organize the animals’ nutritional needs and health care but also have to supervise the mating of all the female animals on the farm, which in my case included mares, cows, ewes, sows, bitches, goats, hens and geese. I became skilled in managing the vagaries of thousands of these pairings and this is where I learnt how essential the rhythm of the oestrous/anoestrous cycle was to the safety of the female animal.
In contrast to the controls and restrictions of farming I also witnessed, as I strolled in the countryside, the underlying balance and harmony of the wild animals’ autonomous behaviour. As their composure worked upon my sensibilities I absorbed the unspoken flow of animal life without fully realizing the extent of their freedom of movement until, on a cold wet February afternoon in 1973, it became pivotal to my understanding of humankind and the reason for our deep-seated malaise.
Introduction
Hands, the Achilles’ Heel is a new theory of human evolution. It answers the long-standing problem that arose out of Darwin’s Origin of Species – how is it that, having evolved from the animals, we now consider ourselves to be so ‘exceptional’ that we no longer see ourselves as animals? It is about an undisclosed logic of human behaviour that in theory could have been understood a long time ago since the evidence upon which its conclusions are based are everyday experiences that have not changed for hundreds of thousands of years.
More than 250 years ago thinkers such as David Hume (1711–76) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) independently set out to establish ‘a science of human nature’; however, they failed to achieve their goal and since that time progress on the project has been strangely disappointing. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was the last influential thinker to suggest a comprehensive new theory, but his ideas failed the test of scientific credence and no other thinker has taken up the challenge.
A deep understanding of the origins of human nature should, by now, have emerged in the space bounded by other disciplines such as, Human Evolutionary Biology, Animal Behaviour, Primatology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Over the years, there have been glimmers of light but the reasons for our unique behaviour and psychology have remained as elusive as ever.
There is also an additional difficulty: any enquiry concerning human nature needs to be prepared to do battle with what Giorgi