instincts

• herd instinct insufficient to account for present society

68:2.4The herd in­stinct in nat­u­ral man is hardly suf­fi­cient to ac­count for the de­vel­op­ment of such a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion as now ex­ists on Uran­tia. Though this in­nate gre­gar­i­ous propen­sity lies at the bot­tom of hu­man so­ci­ety, much of man’s so­cia­bil­ity is an ac­quire­ment. Two great in­flu­ences which con­tributed to the early as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man be­ings were food hunger and sex love; these in­stinc­tive urges man shares with the an­i­mal world. Two other emo­tions which drove hu­man be­ings to­gether and held them to­gether were van­ity and fear, more par­tic­u­larly ghost fear.

• reduced land yield or increased population brings worst traits of human nature to surface

68:6.4When the land yield is re­duced or the pop­u­la­tion is in­creased, the in­ev­i­ta­ble strug­gle is re­newed; the very worst traits of hu­man na­ture are brought to the sur­face. The im­prove­ment of the land yield, the ex­ten­sion of the me­chan­i­cal arts, and the re­duc­tion of pop­u­la­tion all tend to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the bet­ter side of hu­man na­ture.

• man’s technique varies, but his disposition remains unchanged

69:5.13Ac­cu­mu­la­tions of wealth early be­came the badge of so­cial dis­tinc­tion. In­di­vid­u­als in cer­tain tribes would ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty for years just to cre­ate an im­pres­sion by burn­ing it up on some hol­i­day or by freely dis­tribut­ing it to fel­low tribes­men. This made them great men. Even mod­ern peo­ples revel in the lav­ish dis­tri­bu­tion of Christ­mas gifts, while rich men en­dow great in­sti­tu­tions of phi­lan­thropy and learn­ing. Man’s tech­nique varies, but his dis­po­si­tion re­mains quite un­changed.

• man’s technique varies, but his disposition remains unchanged

84:5.13Civ­i­liza­tion never can oblit­er­ate the be­hav­ior gulf be­tween the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but in­stinct never. In­nate ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion will never per­mit eman­ci­pated woman to be­come man’s se­ri­ous ri­val in in­dus­try. For­ever each sex will re­main su­preme in its own do­main, do­mains de­ter­mined by bi­o­logic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and by men­tal dis­sim­i­lar­ity.

• innate drives toward growth and self-realization function unless inhibited

100:1.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is markedly in­flu­enced by phys­i­cal health, in­her­ited tem­per­a­ment, and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment. But these tem­po­ral con­di­tions do not in­hibit in­ner spir­i­tual prog­ress by a soul ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There are pres­ent in all nor­mal mor­tals cer­tain in­nate drives to­ward growth and self-re­al­iza­tion which func­tion if they are not specif­i­cally in­hib­ited. The cer­tain tech­nique of fos­ter­ing this con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ment of the po­ten­tial of spir­i­tual growth is to main­tain an at­ti­tude of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues.

• training of intellect annulled by instinct

111:7.5“Much of my dif­fi­culty was due to the un­end­ing con­flict be­tween the two na­tures of my sub­ject: the urge of am­bi­tion op­posed by an­i­mal in­do­lence; the ide­als of a su­pe­rior peo­ple crossed by the in­stincts of an in­fe­rior race; the high pur­poses of a great mind an­tag­o­nized by the urge of a prim­i­tive in­her­i­tance; the long-dis­tance view of a far-see­ing Mon­i­tor coun­ter­acted by the near­sight­ed­ness of a crea­ture of time; the pro­gres­sive plans of an as­cend­ing be­ing mod­i­fied by the de­sires and long­ings of a ma­te­rial na­ture; the flashes of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence can­celled by the chem­i­cal-en­ergy man­dates of the evolv­ing race; the urge of an­gels op­posed by the emo­tions of an an­i­mal; the train­ing of an in­tel­lect an­nulled by the ten­den­cies of in­stinct; the ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual op­posed by the ac­cu­mu­lated propen­si­ties of the race; the aims of the best over­shad­owed by the drift of the worst; the flight of ge­nius neu­tral­ized by the grav­ity of medi­ocrity; the prog­ress of the good re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the bad; the art of the beau­ti­ful be­smirched by the pres­ence of evil; the buoy­ancy of health neu­tral­ized by the de­bil­ity of dis­ease; the foun­tain of faith pol­luted by the poi­sons of fear; the spring of joy em­bit­tered by the wa­ters of sor­row; the glad­ness of an­tic­i­pa­tion dis­il­lu­sioned by the bit­ter­ness of re­al­iza­tion; the joys of liv­ing ever threat­ened by the sor­rows of death. Such a life on such a planet! And yet, be­cause of the ever-pres­ent help and urge of the Thought Ad­juster, this soul did achieve a fair de­gree of hap­pi­ness and suc­cess and has even now as­cended to the judg­ment halls of man­so­nia.”