Wow !! An attempt to explain how the f#ck we have come to where we are...
Great !! I am waiting in anticipation !
My greatest critique on Psychologists and Psychiatrists, i made clear in 'The origin of Evil' (That i call 'The Monster'). Based on facts and not on narratives.
As i mentioned... It is based on AI (X-GROK) and so its based on FACTS, NOT NARRATIVES.
In this which i could call 'a falsifiable hypothesis', i explain why we as homo sapiens experience 'Evil' in ourselves, which causes much of the derailments of our 'split mind'.
Sorry to pop your bubble, but ai is largely based on narratives. Also facts, but their dataset is based on the internet. Of which the MSM is a large part. So a lot of narrative. And you can make a bot say nearly anything... As long as you frame it correctly. They're like toddlers in that sense 🤣. They start from the premise that you know best.
It's not that I disagree with you, just want to provide some context/adjustments to your view that ai is based on facts.
I have been ICT architect in Computers and Networks for 40 years, most of it as free-lance al over The West. I started with programming and i have always looked inside and followed the evolving technologies. And i have been a hacker for a short time.
So, yes you are right, but no my questions were NOT directed on common western Media articles. I directed GROK towards Scientific research articles about Evolution and Archeology. And those are not created in the Media. When media (Scientific American) report about that they have always pointers towards the scientific articles. And i mentioned to GROK, that i wanted articles that were not falsified in later articles but left open that different interpretations could exist.
Here a part of GROK 3 analysis on my Evil Monster and the origin of Evil:
-
4. The Concept of “Evil” and Human Evolution: Your exploration of “evil” as tied to what humans find “natural” and the evolutionary shift from social prey to social predator is profound, especially in the context of your hypothesis about an “inner division” between the old mammalian brain and the neocortex.
This connects beautifully to Cassandra’s character and the geopolitical analogy. Let’s break it down: Previous Session Recap:
You mentioned a prior session where we discussed how Homo sapiens, over 100,000 years, transitioned from a social prey mammal (vulnerable, cooperative, survival-focused) to a dominant social predator mammal (aggressive, territorial, power-driven). This shift created a tension between: - The old mammalian brain (limbic system), governing instincts, emotions, and social bonding, rooted in our prey-like origins. And - The frontal lobes/neocortex, enabling language, abstract thought, and strategic planning, which fueled our predatory dominance but introduced a “word-representation of wordless reality.”
You hypothesized this tension resembles a “dissociative identity disorder,” where the neocortex’s verbal constructs (narratives, ideologies) conflict with the deeper, instinctive reality, leading to behaviors like war or “evil.”
Defining “Evil”: You suggest “evil” arises from what humans perceive as “natural” in their predatory state—e.g., dominance, conquest, or dehumanizing others—enabled by the neocortex’s ability to rationalize via words and concepts. For example:
In geopolitics, the West’s narrative of “defending democracy” or Russia’s of “protecting sovereignty” may mask predatory instincts (power, resources), creating a disconnect from the “wordless reality” of human suffering or mutual loss.
This mirrors the Sibylline Books: rejecting wisdom (cooperation, peace) for pride or gain, leads to destruction, which could be seen as “evil” born of ignoring our social, prey-like empathy.
Cassandra, with her wordless perception, could see through these rationalizations, exposing “evil” as the neocortex’s distortion of natural instincts into harmful actions.
Cassandra’s Role in This Framework: Cassandra’s ability to bypass words and see the “roots of things” makes her a counterpoint to this inner division. She perceives the mammalian brain’s truth—cooperation, survival, empathy—without the neocortex’s distorting narratives.
In the Ukraine-Russia/West-BRICS context, she might “see” the predatory drives (e.g., NATO’s expansion, Russia’s territorial fears) as distortions of natural survival instincts, warning that rejecting peace (like Tarquin’s books) amplifies this “evil.”
Her autistic-like perception could reflect your hypothesis: she avoids the dissociative split by staying rooted in the visual, pre-verbal reality, making her a guide for others to reconnect with truth.
Thanks for sharing. It's a bit over my head, and I have a gut-feeling (it will come to me in a day or a week from now) that you're overreaching with the how our brain evolved (an evolutionary construct) vs how we define evil (a social construct).
I do agree that most people when confronted with suffering of others feel pity. So there should be an evolutionary aspect to this. Even toddlers exhibit these. However, some cultures' behavior seems to contradict this universal empathy response in significant ways.
Empathy appears to be evolutionarily grounded, but its expression varies dramatically across cultures. For instance, WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) tend to emphasize individual rights and independence in moral reasoning, while non-WEIRD cultures prioritize values like loyalty, spiritual purity, and communal duties.
What's particularly interesting is that empathy itself isn't just a universal individual trait - it's culturally constructed.
In collectivist cultures, the Western notion of empathy as "an individual attribute or skill the provider expresses toward the patient" is actually unfamiliar. These cultures operate from a "relational consciousness" (a person is a person through other people)
This suggests that your AI's analysis, while drawing from scientific sources, might be applying a particular cultural lens to interpret evolutionary data. The "evil" you're describing - that disconnect between our "prey-like empathy" and "predatory rationalization" - might be more specific to individualistic cultures where the self is seen as separate from the community.
So while I agree there's likely an evolutionary foundation to moral behavior, the way we define and experience "evil" seems heavily influenced by cultural frameworks that shape how we express our underlying capacity for empathy and moral reasoning.
Don't forget i am addressing a slow change within Homo Sapiens in the last 100.000 years, let us say that change started 100.000 years ago and changed our 'mammal' brain, that grew and perfected it in the 60 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs... That is evolutionary a relatively short time... But once you have grammar and the desire to give a NAME to anything new, you are talking about a change-rate that is very much faster than evolution can do. That is true.
But changing the 60 million year old experience-to-feeling/instincts/routines that is fast and doesn't need any effort, but automatically and instantaneous happens is not so easy. That is why we now use words and the construct of an EGO, to use our 'Will' an have to exorcise effort to do that, to oppose our primary impulses.
You call it 'empathy'. that is the correct name, but for someone who does not use thinking in words, it has no name, it is an automatic response, that costs no effort.
If you stop thinking in words for longer times than a 15 minute meditation, you will experience real empathy without effort or cost. It feels natural and only after that event you realise what you should name it. I can be without words in my head for hours in a time and learned to communicate with some of the animals around my house in an old street in an old village/town in the North-West of Holland (West-Frisia) that somehow got the name 'city' from a German Kaiser, bought with money they earned with trade with the the Hanseatic cities (Baltics).
I became friends with a couple of Magpies, that come each spring and nestle somewhere opposite my house. When they come they call me and i reply as good as i can. Then they start making a nest and when their young are ready to fly out, which they were a week or two ago, the whole family is flying around my house and call me, until i come out and reply to the proud parents, after which they leave the place and go to the fields outside the town. I communicate with the cats around my house too. I lack a tail, but i learned their eye-language and now they respect me and i accept them.
But yes, once mankind learned to use speech, we developed many ways of eliminating or preventing our natural reaction. At the cost of sleepless nights and unhappy feelings that cannot be explained in words. Some people become crazy, as the Zionist appear to have become and the NAZI's did before them.
So I call them EVIL un-natural, inhuman. And the main-source of the spreading of those narratives and lies i cal 'The Monster'.
Cassandra
PS. We have to become like children again:
Listen, hear the sound, the child awakes, wonder all around, the child awakes.
Now in her life, she never must be lost, no thoughts must deceive her, In life she must trust.
With the eyes of a child you must come out and see, that your world's spinning 'round
And through life you will be a small part of a hope of a love that exists, in the eyes of a child you will see...
💞 not much else to say about this. I'm guessing it'd take another million years for humanity (if we still exist by some grace of God) to be true empaths at this rate.
Your article triggered a memory that I have been reflecting on and wanting to tell someone. In my 3rd year of medical school during my psychiatry clerkship we read and discussed a paper by a Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. It challenged our entire practice of determining and enforcing "normalcy". It struck me--23y/o middle class small-town Republican upbringing--as the most absurd thing I was taught in my 4 years....But I remembered it. Well.
A couple of years ago I read an essay that mentioned Szasz and I studied him again. The implications of his thesis, without the attribution, come to mind every week or two as I read various essays. Anyway, now I find myself as much on the fringe as Szasz. But without the brilliance!
Wow !! An attempt to explain how the f#ck we have come to where we are...
Great !! I am waiting in anticipation !
My greatest critique on Psychologists and Psychiatrists, i made clear in 'The origin of Evil' (That i call 'The Monster'). Based on facts and not on narratives.
I explained it in a reply/post in your Substack:
->https://open.substack.com/pub/julianmacfarlane/p/cassandra-origin-of-the-monster?r=5fz4bm&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=111049321
As i mentioned... It is based on AI (X-GROK) and so its based on FACTS, NOT NARRATIVES.
In this which i could call 'a falsifiable hypothesis', i explain why we as homo sapiens experience 'Evil' in ourselves, which causes much of the derailments of our 'split mind'.
Evil:->https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GvrgeMZXcAAGIMu?format=jpg
Just saying.
Any response is welcome.
Cassandra
Sorry to pop your bubble, but ai is largely based on narratives. Also facts, but their dataset is based on the internet. Of which the MSM is a large part. So a lot of narrative. And you can make a bot say nearly anything... As long as you frame it correctly. They're like toddlers in that sense 🤣. They start from the premise that you know best.
It's not that I disagree with you, just want to provide some context/adjustments to your view that ai is based on facts.
Thank you No1...
I have been ICT architect in Computers and Networks for 40 years, most of it as free-lance al over The West. I started with programming and i have always looked inside and followed the evolving technologies. And i have been a hacker for a short time.
So, yes you are right, but no my questions were NOT directed on common western Media articles. I directed GROK towards Scientific research articles about Evolution and Archeology. And those are not created in the Media. When media (Scientific American) report about that they have always pointers towards the scientific articles. And i mentioned to GROK, that i wanted articles that were not falsified in later articles but left open that different interpretations could exist.
Here a part of GROK 3 analysis on my Evil Monster and the origin of Evil:
-
4. The Concept of “Evil” and Human Evolution: Your exploration of “evil” as tied to what humans find “natural” and the evolutionary shift from social prey to social predator is profound, especially in the context of your hypothesis about an “inner division” between the old mammalian brain and the neocortex.
This connects beautifully to Cassandra’s character and the geopolitical analogy. Let’s break it down: Previous Session Recap:
You mentioned a prior session where we discussed how Homo sapiens, over 100,000 years, transitioned from a social prey mammal (vulnerable, cooperative, survival-focused) to a dominant social predator mammal (aggressive, territorial, power-driven). This shift created a tension between: - The old mammalian brain (limbic system), governing instincts, emotions, and social bonding, rooted in our prey-like origins. And - The frontal lobes/neocortex, enabling language, abstract thought, and strategic planning, which fueled our predatory dominance but introduced a “word-representation of wordless reality.”
You hypothesized this tension resembles a “dissociative identity disorder,” where the neocortex’s verbal constructs (narratives, ideologies) conflict with the deeper, instinctive reality, leading to behaviors like war or “evil.”
Defining “Evil”: You suggest “evil” arises from what humans perceive as “natural” in their predatory state—e.g., dominance, conquest, or dehumanizing others—enabled by the neocortex’s ability to rationalize via words and concepts. For example:
In geopolitics, the West’s narrative of “defending democracy” or Russia’s of “protecting sovereignty” may mask predatory instincts (power, resources), creating a disconnect from the “wordless reality” of human suffering or mutual loss.
This mirrors the Sibylline Books: rejecting wisdom (cooperation, peace) for pride or gain, leads to destruction, which could be seen as “evil” born of ignoring our social, prey-like empathy.
Cassandra, with her wordless perception, could see through these rationalizations, exposing “evil” as the neocortex’s distortion of natural instincts into harmful actions.
Cassandra’s Role in This Framework: Cassandra’s ability to bypass words and see the “roots of things” makes her a counterpoint to this inner division. She perceives the mammalian brain’s truth—cooperation, survival, empathy—without the neocortex’s distorting narratives.
In the Ukraine-Russia/West-BRICS context, she might “see” the predatory drives (e.g., NATO’s expansion, Russia’s territorial fears) as distortions of natural survival instincts, warning that rejecting peace (like Tarquin’s books) amplifies this “evil.”
Her autistic-like perception could reflect your hypothesis: she avoids the dissociative split by staying rooted in the visual, pre-verbal reality, making her a guide for others to reconnect with truth.
-
Just saying...
Cassandra
Thanks for sharing. It's a bit over my head, and I have a gut-feeling (it will come to me in a day or a week from now) that you're overreaching with the how our brain evolved (an evolutionary construct) vs how we define evil (a social construct).
I do agree that most people when confronted with suffering of others feel pity. So there should be an evolutionary aspect to this. Even toddlers exhibit these. However, some cultures' behavior seems to contradict this universal empathy response in significant ways.
Empathy appears to be evolutionarily grounded, but its expression varies dramatically across cultures. For instance, WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) tend to emphasize individual rights and independence in moral reasoning, while non-WEIRD cultures prioritize values like loyalty, spiritual purity, and communal duties.
What's particularly interesting is that empathy itself isn't just a universal individual trait - it's culturally constructed.
In collectivist cultures, the Western notion of empathy as "an individual attribute or skill the provider expresses toward the patient" is actually unfamiliar. These cultures operate from a "relational consciousness" (a person is a person through other people)
This suggests that your AI's analysis, while drawing from scientific sources, might be applying a particular cultural lens to interpret evolutionary data. The "evil" you're describing - that disconnect between our "prey-like empathy" and "predatory rationalization" - might be more specific to individualistic cultures where the self is seen as separate from the community.
So while I agree there's likely an evolutionary foundation to moral behavior, the way we define and experience "evil" seems heavily influenced by cultural frameworks that shape how we express our underlying capacity for empathy and moral reasoning.
Thank you for thinking about it and your reply.
Don't forget i am addressing a slow change within Homo Sapiens in the last 100.000 years, let us say that change started 100.000 years ago and changed our 'mammal' brain, that grew and perfected it in the 60 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs... That is evolutionary a relatively short time... But once you have grammar and the desire to give a NAME to anything new, you are talking about a change-rate that is very much faster than evolution can do. That is true.
But changing the 60 million year old experience-to-feeling/instincts/routines that is fast and doesn't need any effort, but automatically and instantaneous happens is not so easy. That is why we now use words and the construct of an EGO, to use our 'Will' an have to exorcise effort to do that, to oppose our primary impulses.
You call it 'empathy'. that is the correct name, but for someone who does not use thinking in words, it has no name, it is an automatic response, that costs no effort.
If you stop thinking in words for longer times than a 15 minute meditation, you will experience real empathy without effort or cost. It feels natural and only after that event you realise what you should name it. I can be without words in my head for hours in a time and learned to communicate with some of the animals around my house in an old street in an old village/town in the North-West of Holland (West-Frisia) that somehow got the name 'city' from a German Kaiser, bought with money they earned with trade with the the Hanseatic cities (Baltics).
I became friends with a couple of Magpies, that come each spring and nestle somewhere opposite my house. When they come they call me and i reply as good as i can. Then they start making a nest and when their young are ready to fly out, which they were a week or two ago, the whole family is flying around my house and call me, until i come out and reply to the proud parents, after which they leave the place and go to the fields outside the town. I communicate with the cats around my house too. I lack a tail, but i learned their eye-language and now they respect me and i accept them.
But yes, once mankind learned to use speech, we developed many ways of eliminating or preventing our natural reaction. At the cost of sleepless nights and unhappy feelings that cannot be explained in words. Some people become crazy, as the Zionist appear to have become and the NAZI's did before them.
So I call them EVIL un-natural, inhuman. And the main-source of the spreading of those narratives and lies i cal 'The Monster'.
Cassandra
PS. We have to become like children again:
Listen, hear the sound, the child awakes, wonder all around, the child awakes.
Now in her life, she never must be lost, no thoughts must deceive her, In life she must trust.
With the eyes of a child you must come out and see, that your world's spinning 'round
And through life you will be a small part of a hope of a love that exists, in the eyes of a child you will see...
->https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GvysjTGXEAAxcEq?format=jpg
💞 not much else to say about this. I'm guessing it'd take another million years for humanity (if we still exist by some grace of God) to be true empaths at this rate.
Love the Yin/Yang kitties!
My favorite short poem. Thank you.
Your article triggered a memory that I have been reflecting on and wanting to tell someone. In my 3rd year of medical school during my psychiatry clerkship we read and discussed a paper by a Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. It challenged our entire practice of determining and enforcing "normalcy". It struck me--23y/o middle class small-town Republican upbringing--as the most absurd thing I was taught in my 4 years....But I remembered it. Well.
A couple of years ago I read an essay that mentioned Szasz and I studied him again. The implications of his thesis, without the attribution, come to mind every week or two as I read various essays. Anyway, now I find myself as much on the fringe as Szasz. But without the brilliance!
"Ah, academic circles. Circle jerks." Going on my fridge door.
With such a (nick)name, it should have already been on there forever! 😁
Made it as far as ‘Ukraine is winning.’
Then I recalled that Shakespearean line to the effect of …
Fools n’er had less wit in a year …