Primal thoughts

‘We are the prisoners of our genes.’ I have heard this statement many times since it was a favourite statement of someone I knew rather well. It is true. Some things about us are set in stone; preordained. We have a childhood and that adds a whole new layer of complexity. By the time we have become adults we are extraordinarily complex. Those people who blog and read here are particularly complex people, I suspect.

I love complex people. I was not a big game or crossword puzzle sort of child but now that I’m as grown up as I’m likely to be, I love games and I love puzzles. It is quite extraordinary how clever we are in keeping ourselves safe and well. As people who give and receive love in a slightly different way to the norm we try hard to make sense of what comes naturally to us but seems unnatural to others. We seek to understand.

We are in need of translating our thoughts. We tend to be people with a strong connection to thoughts that are primal; thoughts that occur within us in spite of civilization. If it is true that a man’s primal thought is to penetrate women; to capture them, then maybe it is true that a woman’s primal thought is to be taken by men; captured.

We grow up in systems: school, family, religious and community systems where we accept or reject a number of values and beliefs that may make our primal thoughts unacceptable to us. We must adapt. We adapt by translating our thoughts into some new schema that makes it possible for us to function with a sense that we are being true to ourselves and acceptable to society and our own values.

In this way, I find complex people such as you find here on the blogs very clever. Innately we know at some point in our lives that we have no choice but to accept ourselves and be true to ourselves and we do what we can to achieve that end. If the unconscious mind does not fit societal norms what can we do? We sublimate our thoughts. We find a conceptual substitute. This is highly adaptive. This is the survival instinct at work.

As clever as it may be, it is frightening too. Unlike those whose conscious mind and unconscious mind are a good fit, some of us may struggle with these variances. We want to be good. We don’t mean to cause anyone any trouble.

For many generations people similar to us must have been very torn, keeping these thoughts to themselves. Without the sorts of opportunities we have to find new schemas, perhaps on the Internet, they may well have lived their lives beseeched by the demons in their mind. Perhaps some of these people are responsible for the greatest writing:the poems and the novels we so admire. Their chosen schema was their writing. I wonder about this.

For some of us the sexual impulse is strong and for some of us the sexual impulse is almost overwhelming. Perhaps the strength of the primal urge dictates the translation and various obsessions. In any case, such translations and obsessions seem to me a healthy way to experience the feelings we have in a relatively safe way.

From personal experience, I know that one can feel guilty even about the translation let alone the primal thoughts. Even the translation can be out of line with societal expectation: the good mother, the good wife. At such times I must forcibly remind myself this is why I have made the translation: so that I can be everything to everyone, including myself. This requires diligence and good management. At heart and in practise, it is a good thing.