Our Two Modes of Being

We are situated in the unfolding universe and live our lives to be happy, driven by our biological imperatives. In doing so, we engage the world in two distinct ways: through our intellect and through our instincts. These two forms of engagement constitute two forms of being. We adopt one or the other, or vacillate between the two, according to circumstance.

The intellectual mode is the one in which we employ the full power of our reason to evaluate our context and decide on a course of action. We here operate in the mental realm.

The instinctual mode is biological. We capture the world as it flows and simply respond to it instinctually. [I was going to say naturally, but see interplay below.] In so doing, we operate out of the mental realm, in the more primitive biological realm.

Instinctual being

This mode of being is the one rooted in our feelings, and at a deeper level yet, in our instincts geared to preservation and well-being. We see this mode of being in animals. When hungry, one eats; when tired, one sleeps; and so on. It is a mode of direct response to the needs of the moment. This mode of being is regulated by the biological rhythms of the organism. As the world turns, the organism responds.

Intellectual being

This mode of being engages the intellect in mediating between the world and ourself. Our conceptual apparatus and reason are brought to bear on the situation to determine a reasoned response to the situation we face. Intellect modulates our more primitive instinctual response patterns and may provide novel responses appropriate to the situation.

Overlayering modes of being

Humans partake of the world through a variety of realms of existence. The physical realm we navigate through is a strong imperative. If we get in the way of a moving object, for instance, or fail to move out of its way, it will hit us, with consequences dependent on its characteristics. The biological realm we live in guides us through our human drives to honor the life force that underlies nature. Eating, resting, reproducing… are all geared to that force, not only in humans but throughout the animal kingdom. This realm follows, as it must, all the imperatives of the physical realm, and overlays the latter with new imperatives. Complexity increases manifold and the higher realm modulates the lower one. For instance, the sedimentation of dead organisms leads at a later time to the formation of oil deposits in the earth; or the formation of algae in the oceans affects water temperatures and currents.

The mental realm overlays the biological one (and hence the physical one as well), modulating both as it does. This realm grew out of the biological one in an attempt to better adapt to the imperatives of the prior realms through the biological process we know as evolution. It overlays those prior realms, expanding the complexity of the universe and increasing greatly the power of modulation. Operating in the mental realm permits refashioning the physical landscape (the building of dams and producing electricity is a good example) and regulating to an extent the biological constraints that impinge on us (such as through birth control, for instance).

In time, the mental realm is being overlayed with yet further realms, with consequences for modes of being, but that is another story.

Morals

Morals concern our intellectualized manner of determining what is good for us. They constitute a formalized set of guidelines that can be communicated, learned, and used when needed. Thus, they are invented mental constructs that are used by us to regulate behavior, that of others and our own. Animals have no morals, nor do they need any, as their mode of being is purely instinctual, with no notion of good and bad.

Intellectual being has brought about modulation of instinctual being, fashioning new responses to the world around us, including in particular other people. It has fashioned new drives and new ways of ensuring long-term satiation of our biological drives. We have thus come to cultivate the land and grow food for consumption during the lean months of the year. We have thus come to earn and save money to see us through our declining years. We have also come to enjoy achievement, glorify ambition, amass power and dominate others. Morals is our attempt at sorting out these aims, some more instinctual, others an outgrowth of reason, in an attempt at regulation (both social- and self-regulation).

Interplay of Modes of Being

Eastern thought rests largely on the belief that our intellectual being has led us away from a ‘more natural’ instinctual being and in so doing, has permitted the development of artificial desires that ultimately are unfruitful. Chinese Taoism is very skeptical of the high social life and advocates instead a return to simplicity in harmony with nature (the flow of the Tao). Indian Buddhism claims desire (in the strong form of striving) to be the basis for suffering (or unease) and advocates moderation and simplicity. Zen shows enlightenment to be a return to a former state of mind that is un-intellectual and involves a direct grasping of the world that is essentially instinctual (the true Buddha nature of Zen).

Ancient eastern thought thus denigrates intellectual being, unlike Western civilization which glorifies it. The different values thereby attached to intellectual being (negative and positive) show its different status in the two civilizations. Easterners stress the dangers of the intellect in its propensity to distract from a simple course to happiness. Westerners believe in the potential for the intellect to regulate the perhaps savage aspects of intellectual being, while also adding to the basis for gratification and happiness.
We may well forget, however, that intellectual being is just as natural in the unfolding of the universe as instinctual being is. Indeed, the latter is just as natural too as physical being is. Nothing is unnatural in the unfolding of the universe. Morals only enter the equation of how the universe unfolds in a modulatory manner. They may impinge on the direction evolution takes, but that will be in the grand scheme of things. Likewise in this respect to how all new realms modulate the realms out of which they have evolved.