Life is Creative Force, Co-Operation; Is Life Competition?

The purpose of this essay is to point up the nutritional pattern consistent with the way of creative co - operation as the necessary modality for the development of individual potential and for the evolution of our civilized planetary reality.

By way of introduction, I am a center of radiance serving the Light of Eternal Truth through a discipline we have entitled Conserved Absolutivity and Transactional Bio-Physics which was inspired some years ago by a vision of the Love Principle and its universal ramifications. I studied Psychology formally at Duquesne University and California State at Sonoma and emerged, with Dean’s List level records, after four years of regular study, and a fifth year of special study at Cal State, to continue my researches independently into the central process at the interface between Mind and Matter, using the tools of modern scientific logic and traditional contemplative techniques (gleaned from the study of Eastern Psychology).

The result of my researches, is the conclusion that co-operation, not competition, as is commonly assumed in our modern world, is the quintessential process of evolution. It is certainly Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest” which is largely responsible for the emphasis upon competition in the modern view of the life process. Properly appreciated and integrated, the principle of co-operation can be identified as the independent variable organizing and stabilizing all evolutionary process. We maintain that a thoroughgoing study of the principle of co-operation can provide the optimal solutions to virtually all of our psychological and social problems.

In the field of Biology, these principles, co-operation and competition, have been described by the concepts mutualistic symbiosis and parasitical symbiosis respectively. Co-operation, the associative principle, can be readily recognized as the principle responsible for the development of the core transaction evolving and supporting all intelligent beingness, the fundamental cycle of the exchange of carbon-dioxide and oxygen between plants and animals. The same principle can be recognized as the central dynamic causative of the cerebral cortex and rational thought, as well as the social patterns that have facilitated, through progressive shared agreement, the development of the collective strength we know as civilized power. In Nature, predatory and parasitical behavior patterns serve the purpose of population control. However, once the reflective level has been attained, this function is naturally assumed by the regulatory capabilities of the civilized Intellect. And, when predation and parasitism occur within the social matrix, their appearance correlates with the occurrence of anti-social behavior patterns ranging from petty unkindness to shameless sadism, to abject criminality, anarchy, and nihilism.

How does this obviously out-moded anti-social element, predation, enter into our lives? It has entered our Life in the most innocuous, apparently innocent way. It has become part of our Life through the modality of sustanence to which most of us are routinely accustomed, carnivorism. For the majority of modern people, the average diet consists of fruits and vegetables, grains, seeds, dairy products, and a selection of flesh foods, such as red meat, poultry, and fish. Therefore, the normal person fuels and stimulates their bio-system with substances of co-operative and competitive origin in the course of the normal day. Now, the body and the mind, being inseparably a part of the Unity that is the person’s life, have a tendency to sympathetically resonate the patterns of one in the other. Thus, both the reason of modern logicians and the Wisdom of Avatars and Prophets through the ages, expressed through the Holy Scriptures of every significant Faith on our planet affirm this Principle of Correspondence, often stated simply with the phrase “As Above, So Below”. The import of this reflection is simply that a given entity or society whose conscious identity is otherwise healthy, constructive, and social, a loving individual, a good teammate, a productive citizen, a valued, responsible organization, a refined Cultural Institute; an identity process which is in short, a creative asset to the life system of Humanity, is never-the-less betrayed sub-consciously, and manifested to some degree in the modality of the predator/ parasite, (or the anti-social personality), because of the carnal mode of transaction with the sustaining dimension of Life.

Thus, why does the greed, the destructiveness, the possessiveness, the isolationism seem so perniciously ingrained in the social processes of our world? Because, we have allowed the predator, the insatiable parasite, into our lives by correspondence with it’s pattern of interaction, in the taking of the lives of other living beings for nutritive sustanence. Given, that the dissociative, predatory nature has become part of us in this way, but that, in fact, we all think of our selves, whether Eastern or Western, Buddhist or Christian Scientist, as good persons and constructive citizens, how does this instinctive-level archetype come to expression in our social world? We instinctively project the destructive patterns of victor-victim, parasite and unwilling host, upon exterior life systems, the less familiar to our selves, the better. We do not consciously invite negative feeling, hate or destructiveness, into our lives, therefore, when we see it we tend to attribute its manifestation, to others. Although all such psychological projection is unhealthy, a symptom of neurosis, the more powerful personalities project these qualities of the anti-social beast into the more abstract conceptions of the essential Human beingness: another philosophical system, another racial group, another religious faith, another political system.....is identified with the problem or the “enemy”. The weaker segments of society are usually less capable of projecting the negative feelings and distorted thoughts (resulting from our destructive eating habits), so far from themselves, hence they suffer a greater incidence of broken homes, overt child abuse, community violence, and related disorders. The naive attitude prevalent at this stage of human evolution is the same: to seek the faults responsible for unacceptably negative or irrational feelings not within ourselves, but in other beings who are, in reality, essentially like ourselves. The awesomely powerful, yet simple Truth is that these anti-social patterns would have no hold within our personal or collective lives, if we did not allow their basic manifestation, the carnivoristic diet, into the design of our conscious life.

A Perfectly Conscious Life, designed wholly within the pattern of creative co-operation, (or mutualistic symbiosis), from the personal to the planetary levels, would embody the perfect ideal of Conservation of Energy and Matter within an integrated harmony of mind and body, of individual and society, of society and bio-sphere.

Modern empirical investigation will support my assertion that the human body, as well as the human social awareness, is optimally sustained on a diet akin to the natural fare available in a Garden-of-Eden situation. The common belief, that red meat or fish is absolutely necessary to build muscle or brain tissue is as patently false as the assertion that the rhinoceros and the gorilla are weaklings. The strongest, (the elephant), the most social, (the primates), and the longest-living land animals, (the tortoises), all are vegetarian, fundamentally. The lion is not the king of beasts; precisely because the elephant is less aggressive and more gregarious, they are safe from the ravages of the lion and other predators. The same is true for civilized culture: a greater tendency toward predation does not yield greater productivity; the contrary is true. Rude, destructive cultures are soon destroyed by the meta-cultural matrix. Inspiring incentives for progress within a civilized culture come forth in the manner of positive rewards for constructive accomplishments, not in the manner of cruel spoils of rape and ruin. Universal consciousness is the ideal locus for the operation of objective Mind, (the center of all intelligent culture), and parasitical symbiosis always predicates unconsciousness, destroying the all-inclusive stance of the universal perspective necessary for objectivity, therefore, it is not desirable, even in the smallest degree.

Plants have evolved an immense amount of differentiation since the reptiles foraged primordial swamps for archaic ferns and other sporaginous vegetation. And the crowning accomplishment of the carbon-dioxide respiring, photosynthesizing life-forms is the development of the flowering and fruiting trees. Trees are not only interactive with homo-sapiens for mutual benefit in the dimension of nutrition, but they also provide our oxygen, the breath of our life, in exchange for carbon-dioxide, and have developed pleasing fragrances, delicious tastes, and subtle melanges of color to delight our senses and call attention to their specifically co-operative symbiotic relationship with us in other dimensions as well. Thus, we truly must appreciate the position of the bountiful trees as the very best friends of our species on the unfathomably ancient journey of our life systems upon this precious Planet, and within this universal Life Process. Our blessed trees, and the other helpful and beautiful plants that we proudly cultivate, make the difference between a suffocating city and a cheerful, friendly environment; between a wasteland and a sheltering, abundant paradise. And, the flowering and fruiting plants developed the physical correlate to the very essence experience of pleasure itself, the experience of sweetness. The concept of the good life would be utilitarian, cold, and vapid without the real experience of sweetness.

The sugar molecule is eagerly sought and appreciated by the most attenuated taste receptors positioned at the tip of the tongue; it is the quintessence which alone can nourish the very sick and comatose; the pure fuel which is injected into the veins of the helpless when their survival itself depends upon good nourishment; it is indisputably the most energetic food substance available for the human metabolism. Instead of being equated with extravagance and tooth decay, sugar ought to be correlated with intelligent evolution in the realm of the bio-sphere. Because of its position at the top of the molecular heirarchy of food substances, we should logically expect Humankind to recognize more and more clearly in the future, the centrality of the sugar-rich orchard for the satisfaction of our needs on virtually every plane.

Mutually gratifying transaction is the quintessential archetype of interaction within the biological realm : it is the interdependence referred to by the concept of the most beneficial type of symbiosis. Interdependence is co-operation on the human plane of existence, and this Law of Life is essential to all civilized culture, from the basic nuclear family, to the vastly complex national and international meta-systems. Competitiveness really has no place what-so-ever within civilized culture, except in its “sporting” form, which is, in truth, comparativeness. I think we have shown irrefutably, that by choosing the co-operative relationship with our sustaining life matrix, rather than the competitive, we can effectively program our primal instincts to appreciate fully the joys of creative unity with Life, and banish forever the fearful darkness of self-predation and contradiction emanating from our habituation to the carnivorism of our past.