ABSTRACT
It is commonly assumed that we human beings have transcended our basic animality, enabling us to function primarily at the neopsychological levels of culture, philosophical reflection, and spirituality. Careful observation, however, reveals a great gap between what modern humans can do and what they actually do most of the time. Even the most intellectually elite individuals, living in the most technologically advanced societies, seldom operate above the level of cultural conformity and social habit, and rare is the person who ponders the philosophical or spiritualcosmological implications of his or her acts as they occur. We humans like to think our every act is the product of rational thought and objective choice, and we recoil from the notion that we are slaves to pleasure or survival-targeted tendencies that operate below conscious awareness. Yet, Crook (1980) infers that "most adult human beings actually comprehend few of their sources of action and impulse and are often far from knowing consciously what they are about; what we profess to know is usually a rationalization of what has impelled or directed us from within" (p. 283; also see Barash, 1979, and Burrow, 1937/1974, for similar views). All we have considered to this point indicates that will-power, selfreflection, and the rational intellect are minor causes of behavior, for they generally guide rather than produce response output. As discussed in earlier chapters, the structural hardware of the organism, its evolved software programs, and the primers and releasers that affect them, comprise the main components of the causal matrix determining most day-to-day behavior.
