David Peat

194 From Certainty to UncertaintyBut is this analysis complete and must its pessimistic conclusionsbe accepted as the ultimate explanation for the human condition? Itseems to me that yet again it is an aspect of the Enlightenment dream,but this time turned into a nightmare. It suggests that human beingsare progressing somewhere, that they have come so far, but are not yetsufficiently strong in their control of unreason and animal instincts. Itis a view that seems to go back to the early Church Fathers and theirdesire to subjugate the flesh. It derives from the notion that the worldis somehow evil so we must purify the spirit to the point where it canleave the body behind. It is here, I believe, that one encounters mostforcefully the Western mind’s deep sense of guilt—at pleasure, at thebody, and at our desires.But pause for a moment to look at the animal world. A dispassionateobserver will not see “nature raw in tooth and claw” but a balanceof nature and a circle of life. It is true that some animals graze, gatheringtogether for mutual protection, while others hunt them for food.Yet hunting animals do not kill indiscriminately. Wolves pick out theweak and sick animals in a herd and kill for their own immediate needs.In this way a balance of life is maintained by weeding out the sick andweak and avoiding the overpopulation of any one species.Neither do the members of a species turn on each other and kill—unless they are kept in artificial or highly confined spaces. Dogs growland leap at each other but mainly this is a form of mock fighting, ahighly controlled form of display in which blood is rarely drawn. Apack of wolves show less aggression amongst themselves, and far moreself-control than a group of head-butting teenagers emerging from anEnglish pub on a Friday night. Even the most basic drive, sex, is sublimatedwithin the animal kingdom into elaborate rituals of courtship.The briefest glance at the animal world should tell us that “animalinstincts” are stylized, geared to the good order of the pack, and to thesustenance of the entire balance of life. Judging from what anthropologistshave found in various areas of the world, the earliest hunter–gather groups also lived within the balance of nature. It is true thatwhen two groups were forced to share, or to hunt, within the sameterritory, acts of aggression and even warfare occasionally occurred.Yet in several cases such societies learned to sublimate their aggression