In humans, the switchover is more complicated. As this one has already pointed out, the parental dependency period has been stretched to the extreme. There is no simple break in the mother/child bond as there is with squirrels or turkeys. Meanwhile, as human societies grew larger and more complex, it became ever more crucial for you to pay attention to your peers as sources of proximal knowledge.
Let this one emphasize that it is speaking of the instinct to pay attention to each other, the matching pair of plier jaws that binds mother to baby and baby to mother. This one is not speaking of particular mothers and particular babies. A baby might lose its caregiver due to her death or separation, but it will not lose its drive to pay attention to a caregiver in the abstract. It is this drive, this instinct, that this one is discussing. The instinct operates independently of how an individual child may feel, positive or negative, about its particular caregiver. As long as the instinct is active, the child will seek out a caregiver to pay attention to.
In a social animal, the drive to pay attention to a caregiver does not switch off but transfers its focus from caregiver to peers. The juvenile animal may continue to enjoy a relationship with the former caregiver, but junior may no longer feel compelled to pay her any mind.
In the human, because your period of dependency has been stretched to such an extreme length, the mechanism for turning from caregiver to peers is less like a toggle switch with opposite poles of on and off and more like a dimmer switch with a spectrum of intermediate positions between the poles. Not every individual human makes it all the way from attending to their caregiver to attending to their peers. In fact, as with most bell curves, the majority of individuals in a human population fall somewhere in the middle, with conflicting drives. Yet, it’s the two poles that define what the majority experiences.
On one end of the dimmer switch spectrum, you have adults who are still intensely driven to attend to the primal caregiver and are deeply affected by those impressions laid down during their earliest months of life. They yearn, especially in times of crisis and loss, for that higher being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, beneficent, who loves them without limit, is always watching over them, and can be summoned with cries of lamentation.
Jace: Wait, wait. I get it now. You’re talking about fundies, right?
Found One: This one is addressing your unkind assertion that people of faith are cretins. People of faith experience very real sensations that underpin their belief in God. Their belief may be illusional, but it is in no way irrational or ignorant. It’s the product of a faulty dimmer switch.
This one is addressing religious faith and not religion itself. The institution of religion involves a whole other mix of factors.
Jace: Like what?
Found One: Like the fear of death and desire for personal immortality, for one. And grief over the loss of loved ones. The thirst for justice, if not in this world then in the next. The illusion of unseen agency: superstitions, curses, blessings, good-luck charms, karma. Magical thinking. The desire for transcendence in a burdensome world. Community with fellow believers. Music, meditation, and other exogenous and endogenous euphoriants.
The complexion of particular gods and the doctrines that surround them are shaped by culture, but the drive that fuels them is the same drive that drew you to your earthly caregiver.
That’s one end of the dimmer switch. At the other end are people like you who are totally attuned to their peers and society at large. Not only have they lost all drive to attend to their primal caregiver, they scratch their secular heads over that portion of society that still hears her siren call. They are atheistic or agnostic. Scientists and innovators tend to fill their ranks (which is why science papers are peer-reviewed and not mother-reviewed).
These two positions at either end of the spectrum make up a small percentage of any population, about seven to ten percent each. Between them live the vast majority of people who experience competing attraction to the primal caregiver and to peers. They may be regular churchgoers, the spiritual-but-not-religious type, the fallen-away, the foxhole converts, or any number of lukewarm believers for whom devotion to the primal caregiver is more or less important in their lives.
In fact, religions thrive in the middle space because religions cater to both ends of the spectrum. That is, religions are communities of “brothers and sisters” (peers) who all pay tribute to the same Divine Caregiver.
Jace: With all this emphasis on the mother, it sounds like you’re saying that God should be female.
Found One: The first gods were, until they were usurped by the patriarchy, as was everything else on your world.
Jace: So what determines whether you’ll be on one end or the other or somewhere in the middle? Your genes?
Found One: Yes, but not entirely. While the instinct itself is gene-based, its expression is moderated by another structure, the epigenome.
Jace: Which is what?
Found One: As even you seem to know, DNA is a body’s library of instructions for making and maintaining all of its pieces and parts. A human’s library, its genome, is made up of about 25,000 genes. You have genes (or gene complexes) for hair color, liver proteins, blood cells — everything that makes you the happy organism you are.
Harking back to our earlier discussion about the value of local knowledge versus proximal knowledge, your genome, the library of your genes, is such important knowledge that most cells in your body contain the same, complete copy of it (extreme localization). The cells that make up your brain contain the same DNA library as the cells that make up your big toe. Each cell from any part of your body could, therefore, grow or repair a complete you. But, obviously, you wouldn’t want toes to grow inside your brain or toenails to line your gut. So there has to be a mechanism to control what parts of the library are read, where in the body they’re read, and when. You need a librarian. The epigenome is that librarian. It’s made up of an array of chemical markers and switches that lie along the length of the double helix of your DNA.
One of the thousands of processes that the epigenetic librarian controls is your instinct to pay attention to your primal caregiver, how strong it will be, and how and when it switches over to your peers. So in a sense, your eventual position on the spectrum of faith/non-faith is predetermined by your epigenome at birth.
However, your epigenome, unlike the genome it acts upon, is fairly mutable and can be altered during your lifetime. The librarian is sensitive to a whole host of environmental factors. Like whether you were malnourished during critical times in your development or exposed to certain toxins or stressors, what you eat, what you smoke, even how well your mother nurtured you or whether you were born in a time of peace or unrest.
Furthermore, you pass your epigenome down to your offspring in a way similar to passing down your genes. Therefore, a diet of junk food today, to take but one example, can effect not only your health and behavior but the health and behavior of your descendants for three or four generations.
The mutability and inheritability of the epigenome, then, has profound effects on the religious faith of individuals and populations. War, famine, prosperity, loving parents or partners, stress due to rapid technological or social change, stress due to abuse or slavery, can determine the religious tenor of the times and of the individual through several generations. And that is why this one objected to your pat dismissal of the Prophecy family as being stupid. Smarts has little to do with whether or not you are drawn as an adult to the primal caregiver. Many things, usually out of your control, will determine where on the faith spectrum you will fall, but rational thought or level of intelligence is not one of them. You can’t think your way into atheism any easier than an obese binge eater can think his way thin. Rational discussion about the idiocy of religious faith is beside the point.
Jace: Got it.
Found One: Good. So there you have it, the neurobiological basis of religious faith. Big brains good, bony skulls bad. Any questions?
Jace
: Yeah. Of all the different intelligent species you’ve come across in your travels across the universe, how common is a belief in gods?
Found One: It’s pretty rare, actually. Even species with bony birth canals can come up with work-arounds.
Jace: Such as . . . ?
Found One: Such as brain tissue with the consistency of toothpaste that can be squeezed out of the narrowest of birth canals.
Jace: Cool. One more question. If the librarian, the epipen can be changed—
Found One: Epigenes
Jace: If the epigenes can be changed during one’s lifetime, can you change them to go all the way from one end of the dimmer switch to the other?
Found One: Yes.
Sidebar: Visitor Messages
VM1 1.0
DEAR FRANKENSAUCE —
Following my receipt of your message, I have had the opportunity to do a little research on Earth cultures, especially recent popular media culture, and I must agree with you there are striking similarities to the terms I use. However, I maintain that the similarities are coincidental and not any indication that I intend to deceive Earthlings.
Our Organization of Federated Planets is in no way a play on the United Federation of Planets, and the fact that we share a similar Prime Directive to govern first contact with unaligned species is no proof of plagiarism. Rather, the Prime Directive is a logical response to the dangerous enterprise of interplanetary exploration.
Finally, Tateen is a real star system, while Tatooine is a fictional planet. Tateen, from which Pipnonia was plucked, is located in the Scutum-Centaurus arm of the Milky Way billions of miles from Earth.
But let us not become distracted by language. No matter what we call it, our purpose in coming to your planet is not to steal your cultural treasures but to assist you in guaranteeing there is another generation of humans to pass your treasures down to.
In that regard, let me ask you this: Do you have an adequate home emergency kit? For your and your family’s benefit, please be prepared! Here’s a good source of instructions: [https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit].
Sincerely,
The Visitor
VM2 1.0
DEAR BRENDA SAVOY —
All praise and glory be to our Lord God Almighty and to His only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thank you for your question and your prayers. While it is a wonderful thought, there is simply no basis for the human belief in guardian angels. And no, it is not biblical, despite the verses you quoted. But even if it were true, all guardian angels would have to be recalled from Earth to help us fight the currently raging War in Heaven. We are sorely pressed and could use reinforcements. That’s why it’s so important for you and your family and congregation to continue to pray for us that we my defeat, once and for all eternity, the Dark Prince Lucifer and his legions of fallen angels.
Your friend in Christ,
Gabriel, Messenger of God
P.S. Has your family prepared a home emergency kit. If not, go here [https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit]
VM3 1.0
DEAR KRENCH281 —
Thank you for your message. Please be assured that our purpose for visiting your world is not, as you suggest, to invade you or “shake you down.” Nor are we interested, as you further suggest, in enslaving “Earth bitches.”
Our sole purpose, as I’ve outlined in detail in this profile, is preventing certain intergalactic pirates from laying waste to your planet and destroying all life it sustains.
Please let me know if you have any further impressions or questions you’d like to share with me. I value your insightful point of view; it helps me to construct a fuller, more rounded understanding of human nature.
In the meantime, are you prepared to survive without outside resources in the unlikely (but possible) event that the “Little Nudge” causes more disruption than planned? Please take this opportunity to put together a home emergency kit. Be prepared! [https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit]
All best,
The Visitor
VM4 1.0
DEAREST FRANCES T —
You criticize me for my claim of knowing your spirit guides because I failed to prove it by naming them. You say that this indicates that I am a fraud. I can understand your reaction. Nevertheless, I assure you that my interest in the well-being of your soul is genuine and that I have no interest in deceiving you. I refrained from using the names of your spirit guides because I know that you, yourself, do not reveal them to others, not even to your psychic reader, Leanne. Rather, you only refer to them by their initials: S, B, and W (Old Dub).
Please do not be skeptical that I am acquainted with your guides. Why wouldn’t I be? They manifest in the same realms that I travel, and W, especially, has been around for a very long time. She helps many humans besides you (as she’s told you herself). She and the others have assured me it would be helpful to mention their names to you now in order to confirm the truth of my knowledge and teaching. Thus, it is with their permission that I reveal them as Sanja, Barkley, and Wing.
I will reveal another, one who so fills you with joy and exaltation each time you connect with him that sometimes you are afraid you are losing your mind. Perhaps that is why you have never mentioned him to anyone, not even to Leanne, not even by his initial. I am speaking of Tabor, naturally. Tabor has greatly impressed me and other masters for his depth of understanding of the human psyche. Did you know that Tabor is a young entity, less than one thousand years old, which is considered babyhood among us? Such wisdom from one so young!
And yet, by keeping him a secret, you do not allow him to do his good work, and he has asked me to tell you to alter your course in this. He offers the following lesson as a case in point. Leanne has advised you to work on your Third Chakra, especially as it relates to your stomach and intestines. Along with your spirit guides, Leanne has helped you see that your difficulties began in your seventh year of life when, contrary to most humans, you did not take possession of your selfhood. Your failure to claim yourself has followed you your whole life, limiting your ability to accomplish your goals and obtain what is rightfully yours (career, health, spouse, children, and so forth). You have never enjoyed the certainty that you have the right to exist, and this defect has prevented you from fully claiming your own life.
As Leanne has helped you see, the reason you failed to claim your selfhood at the usual time goes back to your birth. Your birth was an especially traumatic and intense event for your mother. She was so intimidated by her new responsibility for another life that she exchanged a piece of her soul for a piece of yours. This is never a good idea, and in your case has led to difficulties between the two of you for your entire life, as well as the pinching of your Third Chakra.
You are currently frustrated because you have been working on restoring the circulation of your Third Chakra but making no progress since your mother’s death three years ago. Tabor says you are partly to blame for this because you have not allowed Leanne to talk to him. If you had, he might have been able to provide you with a missing piece of the puzzle, namely, that you and your mother shared a previous lifetime together. No, your mother is not part of your cluster, but you did share a lifetime some five thousand or so years ago. (What legacies we share with each other!) At that time, you were the mother and she was your firstborn. Tabor says you need to explore that relationship in order to loosen today’s knot in your Third Chakra.
One more matter before I go. You ask if I am truly an angel or an alien, and you speculate that I am neither but a fraud. I do hope that this letter has changed your mind on that account. The fact of the matter is that there is no word to describe my real essence, and so I borrow these common terms that most people understand. I am an angel in the sense that I am a messenger from God and that I am an old soul, older than the Earth. I am also an alien in the sense that my current corporeal body resides on another planet.
And, no, my home planet is not Pipnonia. I know you
yearn for peace in your troubled mind and soul, but please take the danger of Pipnonia seriously. Do not succumb to depression and defeatism. You actually have important work to accomplish in this lifetime, and because you are getting such a late start, you, more than most, must make every effort to survive the coming crisis. So please take heed and follow the preparation instructions I have laid out on my profile page (either Gabriel or Visitor’s page will do). Be prepared! [https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit]
Your fellow traveler,
Crissy Lou
VM5 1.0
DEAR SOULGATERYDER —
While it is true that Organization of Federated Worlds member planets possess technologies far in advance of Earth’s, our attempt to save Earth from total destruction does not in any way put us under an obligation to share any of them with you. In fact, doing so would violate our strict Prime Directive.
Sorry, but no cure for cancer, cold fusion, or solution to climate change this trip.
However, I can bend the rules slightly in order to fulfill one of your personal wishes, namely, share the cure for acne. Watch your snail mail for a tube of special unguent. Apply according to the directions on the label, and your skin will clear up permanently within hours.
Be advised: Do not share this remedy with others, not even with close family members. This unguent is formulated specifically to your genetic code. It corrects imbalances that are unique to you and you alone. Not only will it not help others, it may even leave them with permanent scarring. So heed this warning.
Glassing the Orgachine Page 40